Undone
Always wanted a sombrero, now I’ve got one but nowhere to wear it.
Plan is to obtain hats and ‘undo’ them; take them apart entirely. It’s a little fancy that’s been on the back burner for ages, but it feels instinctive and different to what I have just been doing, it could prove interesting.
At this point I will take a photo of the hat before and then after its undoing. I’m thinking of placing the remnants back on the head in the same position.
I wonder whether this approach (more instinctive, quick) produces more interesting work? I worry that the more I plan and work something out, the more it sucks the life out of it.
Myth and Homage: Merz in the field
Merz spent a day in a field, drawing just one image of the grass. I’ve re-enacted this with a view to create a personal ritual and homage. Merz fell upon a personal discovery that day: that ‘art was the message’.
Using 80+ colour photos of a patch of grass from a field, 10 X 15cm, I wanted to find my own message using similar restrictions: the continuous line, isolation and ‘being in the world’. I wanted to find out something for myself, to experience how he felt. Drawing alone, as he did, I found that I was looking for a way to connect with drawing again in my practice.
I have found that restriction and self imposed rules have given me the most fertile ground to engage with drawing again. I have also found that I have a bold, scribbly line.
The most spontaneous approaches created the most interesting marks/ responses. A continuous line on a small space requires a certain amount of determination and concentration, but I managed to draw without thinking, with an empty mind. Each line is connected, no line exists in isolation but in direct relation to another. When the pen left the page, the drawing was over.
A crucial point came when I hit my reserves, and in danger of repeating previous drawings and becoming too self aware of mark making. This is when I made some interesting work, after I had churned out the rubbish! These drawings have been a process. I’m thinking about how they could be useful.
Testings
I’ve been testing out a few different formats for the drawings: the black and white photo isn’t grassy enough though…so colour it is. I want it to be clear that it’s a drawing on a photo of some grass.
The size has been reduced to a tiny 10 by 15cms and I will print out as many as I can before my printer finally blows.
I’ve found a certain freedom already in the mark making process and it would be great if I could produce 100 drawings on the day. I’ve surprised myself because these are gestural marks, not meant to be anything other than filling a very small page.
I can relate to Marion Michell’s comment about the issue of re-approaching drawing and the problem of making the first mark. I think the constraints placed on this way of drawing has released me from the burden of any representational expectations.
Being in the world
Merz made his drawing last all day and didn’t take the pencil off the paper. I’m not going to attempt that. A re-enactment is part interpretation and ritual.
It was only by chance that I discovered how to respond to Merz’s time in the field: I doodled carelessly on one of the grass photos. Instead of faithfully recreating Merz’s grass drawing, I want to draw on as many photos as it takes for my time in the field.
Merz’s work that day was about ‘being in the world’ and not painstakingly reproducing what he saw in front of him. Each drawing should be mindless, about nothing. The question is, how long can I sustain thoughtless drawings?
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’?
