Mario Merz and the Artist’s Mythology
One day this week I will be spending the entire day in isolation, drawing. Just like Mario Merz did way back in 1945.
As the story goes, re-told by the man himself forty years later, the day he left prison he spent from ‘dawn to dusk’ alone in a field drawing the grass. This piece of work no longer exists.
Merz created a mythology around this performance. By recreating this action I intend to adopt this into my own, personal mythology.
He used pencil on one small piece of paper, continuously with one line, never leaving the surface of the paper. What struck me was the contemplative and immersive nature of this type of mark making. Celant observed that Merz aim was to “submerge the self consciousness of gesture within the immediacy of existence in the world”.
My starting point began with some basic photos of a patch of grass in a field. I wondered if it is possible to re-enact Merz’s immersive drawings onto a series of these photos? How necessary is it to produce ‘something’?
