Painting IV
----"Creating Life"
David Labby
theory
images
failures
The student is required to submit a proposal for
this course. My proposal and samples of my coursework are available
here.
Painting IV Art 3210 proposal: "creating
life"
goal:
To use painting as a way to create life - not just
a visual depiction of something, however clever or technically inpressive - but
a brand new visual world that is created from the nothingness of the blank
canvas - something from nothing. If successful, the end result comes directly
from the artist's soul, doesn't neccesarily refer to something external or
recognizable in the "real world" but is more of a peek into the inner world of
the artist and will have a unique energy, a life of it's
own.
source:
improvisation, intuition, the human
imagination
technique:
Use the blank canvas as a starting point to
express as honestly and as freely as possible - whatever - is in your mind at
the moment. Let one mark be the source of the next mark, one color - the source
of the next.
description:
Not "art for art's sake" but a technique
of artist as creator of life ...an approach to expression that is completely
unplanned and spontaneous. During the process, an internal sense of design
usually begins to reveal itself. The painting may even begin to resemble
something that you can't quite recognize but is still somehow familiar
...organic, carrying a life of it's own.
David Labby
1/19/2005
supplemental: In addition to the above, also adopt the
Painting III curriculum exercises and research into Impressionism, Fauvism and
Cubism but do that work outside of class.
...place mouse pointer on image for more information about the
painting...
...click on images for a larger view...
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March 28, 2005
Automatism: techniques for exploring
inner space
My personal goal in the visual arts is to express my
"inner space", the inner reality of my spirit - using color, form...the stuff of
art. In the process, I hope to create a life, an energy - where there was none.
I know that may sound like pretentious artspeak but I’m very sincere
about it.
I’ve been expressing my inner space for the last few years
through what I call my "doodles" (improvisational mark making) but one of the
advantages of art school is that you’re given the opportunity to stretch ...to
allow yourself to be pushed in different directions ...or even in the same
direction - just much farther along the path than you would have gone by
yourself.
After more than 20 years from my first experience in formal
art schools, I’m experiencing that creative pressure in just my first few months
back in art school. I’m being asked to push my boundaries and to research the
history of the ideas that interest me.
Fr’instance...over the years on
my own, I’ve developed the idea that to authentically express my inner space
through drawing, painting, etc. my attention needs to be "split" somehow. Not
focusing directly on what I’m doing more easily allows what is already within me
to come out naturally. I don’t pre-plan anything in my designs and try my best
to let improvisation control the process. The technique of split attention and
improvisation is intended to yield a visual echo or a peek into my subconscious.
Enter the creative pressure of a mid-term art review...
Instead
of relying solely on my homegrown techniques for expression, why not explore and
research the history of art to see if anyone else has been interested in these
same kinds of things? It was suggested that I look into the work of the
surrealist painter Roberto Matta. There couldn’t have been a more appropriate
suggestion!
"Post History
Chicken Flowers" by Roberto Matta, 2002 ...in the last year of his life
"I am interested only in the unknown and I work for my own
astonishment."
~ Roberto Matta
Many of Matta’s paintings were
efforts to reveal glimpses into his subconscious. Technically, much of his work
was at an enormously large scale so that he wasn’t as easily tempted to step
back and analyze the entire piece ...since, of course, he couldn’t actually see
the entire composition while working close to it.
Another technique was
to work as fast as he could - to "stay ahead of his own conscious thought." Both
techniques were used as aids to peek into the unseen, hidden, subconscious
world.
Matta’s first contribution to Surrealist painting, and the most
important, was the discovery of regions of space until then unknown in the field
of art."
~ Marcel Duchamp
Of course, those "regions of space"
were the inner, hidden, psychological regions within us all. Matta and other
surrealists devoted lifetimes to exploring inner space. There’s actually a word
for all this striving to reveal the subconscious: automatism.
The
Merriam Webster dictionary defines automatism as "suspension of the conscious
mind to release subconscious images" ....simple and elegant if you ask me.
Additionally, Andre Breton, one of the founders of surrealism, defined
surrealism as "pure psychic automatism."
Surrealism provided a fertile
ground for automatism as a visual technique so it deserves some exploration.
Surrealism or "pure psychic automatism" was ...is... not monolithic - it evolved
in two different directions, one essentially abstract and the other symbolic.
(some art historians say surrealism ended in 1955 but I disagree, the search for
inner space continues today)
The abstract branch of the surrealist tree
or "automatists" as they were called, felt that the process of releasing images
from the subconscious naturally yielded abstract forms. These forms come
directly from the subconscious mind of the individual artist and by definition,
since we all are human - also from a cosmic unconsciousness that we are all
connected to.
Essentially, we all share a common "inner space." The
images coming from this process are therefore both personal and universal. The
theory is that at it’s deepest, most fundamental source - our subconscious
yields colors, shapes and forms that although they may evoke the recognizable,
are essentially abstract. Roberto Matta’s work is an excellent example of the
abstract strain of automatism.
"A dream that is not interpreted is like a letter that is not
opened."
~ Sigmund Freud
On the other hand, dream images are
a wholly different beast ...a symbolic visual language that avoids abstraction
in favor of naturalistic, recognizable forms. These "veristic surrealists"
wanted to allow the images of the subconscious to rise to the surface
undisturbed so they could be analyzed and interpreted. Salvador Dali’s work is
an excellent example of this symbolic strain of automatism.
Both strains
of surrealism/automatism are concerned with suppression of the conscious self in
favor of letting the inner space of the subconscious come through. But how does
one go about actually doing this? Are there any visual techniques that have
proven themselves to be useful for peeking into the subconscious?
In
addition to Mattta’s "large scale-work fast" and my "split
attention-improvisation" mentioned earlier, there are a number of formal
automatist visual techniques in the history of art.
cubomania - is a collage technique where a finished image
is cut into squares and then reassembled without regard for the original
image. Gherasim Luca was one of the first artists to use this technique.
decalomania - is the process of spreading thick paint on a
canvas, then laying a surface (like paper, foil, etc) on top of it while still
wet - and then pulling it off - the resulting image/texture is used as the
beginning of the work. Max Ernst used this technique extensively.
altered lithographs - Richard Genovese popularized this
technique of altering prints through automatic suggestion. This technique uses
the relationship between sounds of words and images as inspiration for the
finished work.
coulage - is an "automatic" or "involuntary"
(and I would add - accidental and uncontrolled) technique where hot, molten
material is dropped into cold water. The resulting forms are incorporated into
the finished product.
entoptic graphomania - is another
"automatic" technique of drawing in which dots are made at sites of impurities
in a blank sheet of paper and then lines are made to connect the dots. (this
description reminds me of what I’ve been calling my "doodling" for the last
few years)
In any case, it seems to me that the overriding
principles behind these techniques are to find ways for the accidental, the
unintended, the random - to come through in the visual work. These elements have
the potential to express something of the subconscious ...something of that
normally hidden "inner space."
proposal for 2nd half of Painting
IV:
In the last six weeks of this class, I will complete six paintings (one
painting a week) incorporating the techniques of automatism.
In addition,
I want to do a few fundamental things:
---- work
in large scale (no dimension less than 3 feet)
---- explore the medium of paint itself (pull away from the
flat and thin - explore the impasto)
---- move
away from the center of the canvas, focus on expressing a freer, more
improvisational feel
Sources: "Surrealist Manifesto" Andre
Breton 1924, Wikipedia http://www.wikipedia.org 2005, "Taking the Leap" Cay Lang
1998
Failures
I think documenting failures can be useful. Looking at mistakes and trying to figure
out why they are mistakes helps you grow. If you know why something didn't work - it
becomes easier to do the things you want to do visually.
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These three failed because an internal sense of design never came through. The technique
of automatism is just a starting point for me. Uncontrolled "scribbles" can be a fine
starting point but something unified, something that has a sense of "visual rightness" needs
to emerge for a work to have the energy I like. I know it's all very subjective but that's
the nature of the beast I suppose.
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Instructor: Professor Clyde Downs
back to David's portfolio
page
NSU Visual Arts
David - email
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