I'm On Thesis And I Can't Believe That!

Yeah! Here I come!

I finally got to the last episode of my amazing journey in the undergraduate art program. This is not supposed to be a long post, just a quick hurray. I'm so happy and so proud that despite all the pain I've been through since I got admitted to OCAD University I finally am going to close this season of my life to a fresh start. In this way I have to say thanks to many people. I don't want to name them as if I miss a name I cannot forgive myself but I learned a lot from the ones who treated me the best way I've ever experienced and I learned more from the ones who treated me the way of a devil.

I'm going to document my thesis process in this blog under Thesis - OCADU - BFA category and hope to build a constructive conversation with whoever is interested in my art or will join me as I move down the way.
I welcome all comments and critics and embrace everything that could help me to create a more insightful, more communicative, and more inspiring final project of BFA.

Stay tuned!

How We Understand Conceptual Art

I always used to rely on the word “concept” literally and consider conceptual art as any type of work of art that carry a meaning or narration that I could perceive and apply it to real life including realistic artworks. Based on this point of view I was wondering if I can consider a piece as art when I was not able to read the work, especially when my mind couldn’t accommodate it into my traditionally formed definition of how an art work should be. Then I could understand and enjoy the art that was definable within my pre-set perception about art: art is transforming a medium to a form of representation. Then my commonsense ontology was able to appreciate an artwork that has a physical accessible medium for me as a viewer. Everything that has been had perceptible resemblance to what is considered work of art within traditional notion of aesthetic and its definition of art to me have been assumed as art work. I was very skeptical and felt desperately confused when I saw people and art history texts were so raving about Duchamp’s Fountain or Warhol’s Brillo Boxes. 

I used to think for a long time about those texts sticking on the gallery’s wall that I could also see them in a book or paper or on a shop board, they I got totally lost in finding a reason to this question: why an art gallery accepted to put this show? How it could be art? I was confused because something inside me kept telling me that there should be a reason, it’s not possible that everyone is wrong but I didn’t have any answer to it.

Andy Warhol - Brillo Boxes - 1964

I believe many art viewers are struggling with some basic yet important questions when it comes to conceptual art. Questions such as what “conceptual” means? How it differs from other types of art? Why artists don’t make anything? If building process and skill doesn't matter in conceptual art what should I appreciate? Is putting some daily objects together and make a story for it being considered as conceptual art? Why conceptual art projects are lacking visual pleasure? And some other questions of this sort.

I learned that art cannot be precisely defined and like many other concepts in life such as love, sport, kindness, ugliness, etc. has a very elusive hard to grab definition. We actually cannot pin down art in a pre-defined frame any more as of emergence of conceptual art.

I learned how to read a work of art and how to explore work-narrative as the main characteristic aspect of a piece of art. Put it simple, I can say that conceptual art caused the context and narrative to become the essence of artwork same as of human being. Humans without context and narration are robots, there is no human being without those and this is the only way we can recognize people from each other and not just physical characteristics. Even if we have not met someone yet, we can tell what kind of person they art from the history and context they have been through, no matter how they look like. Conceptual art has acquired similar identity recognition so we don’t judge an artwork referring to our object model anymore. Our ontological commonsense has totally fractured and reformed since of emergence of conceptual art. 

Now to me the medium don’t carry the mere means and I sometimes don’t even see the medium, I’m looking for the purpose of the medium being there. Having said that, I also learned that conceptual art is not a style or even a movement. Conceptual art is that sort of a proposition, intervention, documentation, or linguistic representation that would try to cross some specific point through which we experience the whole piece. Viewer’s way of communication with the artwork is the most appealing aspect of conceptual art. The way that the viewer live the concept and interact with it and the way the viewer interpret the piece toward their own assumptions. 

I would say where the viewer-artwork communication is concern there is two phenomenological accounts that can be discussed. First of all the work-narrative would take the viewer into the artwork story and cause them to share and combine their own story within the piece and through a state of self-consciousness feel themselves as the artwork and vise versa. This is a very strong binding through which the viewer appreciates their own interpretation of the work then eventually becomes part of the artwork. The other approach would eliminate the medium and put the viewer at the heart of artwork without any physical interference. The viewer is set free to the philosophy and mere meaning of the artwork to explore, experience, live, love, hate, or make mistakes. This side would provoke many feelings and thoughts in the viewer which may not lead to an answer but challenge both logical and emotional sides of the viewer. Sometimes the viewers might be engaged with the piece they have seen for several day after they first saw the work. The viewer lives with the artwork to hold a better recognition over it over time but still there are ambiguity and question that conceptual artworks leave the viewer with. This makes the conceptual art time-less.

So we can tell the appreciation of conceptual art doesn't match any formula and is not possible to point it out clearly. Conceptual art acts like a puzzle or maze in contemporary life that challenges its viewers to resolve the problems they face when they view a work of art. I personally like to call conceptual art as the transition passage for art to get to a more mature level. Maybe that’s why it leaves us with so many questions. 

Dematerialization in Conceptual Art

When I looked through web and dictionaries to search the literal meaning of dematerialization I came across several explanations all of them referring to the fact that dematerialization means doing more with less without downgrading the functionality. In art realm though it conveys a different meaning when conceptual are is involved. Despite from traditional art in which artists represent their subjects through medium – for example in painting, sculpture, photography the medium are respectively paint, wood/plastic/metal/stone/etc., and image – whereas in conceptual art the medium is the subject itself. That’s why in traditional art artists should possess strong skills of modification of their associated medium through which give the viewer access to their art practice to be appreciated, but in conceptual art there’s no representation of an object by medium through which the viewer could access the artwork. The artwork is the medium itself.

Joseph Kosuth - One and Three Chairs - 1965
In this piece which one is the subject? The chair? Its image? Or the dictionary definition of the chair?

In the last decades of 20^th century artists and critics started to question the nature of art. The notion of questioning the art started after formalist definition of medium used in art production by influential art critic Clement Greenberg during 1950s. Based on Greenberg’s critic the role of medium in traditional art is merely concealed by presentation of a realistic scene. Then the artists get bothered by the limitations of the medium and treat them negatively. This is while in modern art the medium’s properties are part of the representation that define the nature of work of art. Based on Greenberg’s refinement each discipline of art production should follow specific characters based on which that discipline is distinct from others. For example a painting should be a flat surface on canvas on which the pigments are applied and all other specifications that are not in this frame should be removed to enable others to call it a painting. Artists of the time started a movement posing against Greenberg’s manifest which led to emergence of dematerialization and following that conceptualism. The growing concerns over the credibility of art medium as well as representation caused conceptual artists such as Kosuth, Barry, and Weiner to start a more radical questioning the art and the dominant assumption that the role of artist is to use their skills to make specific material objects. 

After Marcel Duchamp claimed ready-made as artwork through submitting a urine with a fake name autographed on it on 1916 the whole art world rejected his claim on the piece (being called Fountain) as a work of art. Later on 1960 Kosuth in his essay titled Art after Philosophy asserted that all artworks after Duchamp is considered as conceptual art as art exists within its concept. Barry also started to minimize the level of material involvement in his works every time he worked on a new series. He heavily shifted the load of interpretation of the work on the viewer’s understanding trying to introduce stronger author-viewer-object relationship.  

Dematerialization has been actually one of the first steps involved in introduction of conceptual art to the world. In traditional art the artist should produce the work of art through her/his skills and the result is an object through which the artist reach out the viewers. The viewer, then, has access to the artwork through that object and is able to appreciate it. In conceptual art, though, the artist’s skills are not of such importance and even the quality of the object doesn’t matter as much it does in traditional art. Sometimes there’s even no fabrication process involved like what ready-mades offers. So how we can realize if they are art? 

Ontological conceptualism which has been used the first time by Robert Pincus-Witten has the answer. Ontological conceptualism is the discourse through which we are able to find the start and end points of a conceptual art work. It concerns the meaning and the reason in background of the artwork, in the other word, it addresses the idea of the artwork.

Dematerialization in fact makes a line to separate the medium and the means. In traditional art artists shape and apply the medium to represent a thing whilst in conceptual art the medium itself is the meaning of the art work. Where Barry minimizes the paints and the brush strokes on his paintings and instead uses couple of canvases each with only one element on them to connect three canvases the artist tries to use the canvas as a mean of connection, as a concept or narration that target the philosophy of connection and to make the viewer think of that concept. Here the artist doesn’t paint an object on his canvas, the canvas itself is the object to convey the artist’s meaning, to transform a viewer from a merely “watch man” to an “interpretation agent”.

All these doesn’t mean that the material is to be eliminated from the art work, but its role has been shifted. So to appreciate a work of conceptual art and being able to talk it “the thing” should be there whether an empty canvas, whether a performance, whether a cast of light, etc. the main purpose is making the viewer to not only watch a visual production but experience it, to live it, and sometimes be part of it.

 

Reference:

Boundless, 2014, Conceptual Art, Internet, License CC-BY-SA 4.0, Downloaded on Sep. 27, 2014,

           <https://www.boundless.com/art-history/textbooks/boundless-art-history-

           textbook/global-art-since-1950-37/dematerialization-235/conceptual-art-835-5799/>

Goldie, P. and Schellekens, E., 2010, “The Challenge of Conceptual Art”, Who’s Afraid of  

          Conceptual Art?, pp 1-34, Routledge, US and Canada, Print.

Jones, Ronald, 2009, “Art You Experienced?”, Frieze Magazine, Issue 20, Internet, Downloaded

           on Sep. 27, 2014, < http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/are_you_experienced/>

Wyman, Jessica, 2014, Dematerialization, Collection of Course Reading for VISA3B09, OCAD U,

           (pp 17-38)

The Idea Is Everything

This video is a short but informative one on what conceptual art is and how it emerged. Marcel Duchamp is the most influential artist of 20th century. Duchamp brought the notion to the art world that anything could be a work or art. Refer to video at least 90% of contemporary artists follow Duchamp's footsteps.

The reason is what Duchamp brought to the art world is the fact that

"THE IDEA is everything"

Fountain - 1917 - Marcel Duchamp

They interview two conceptual contemporary artists on how two similar works of art could be totally different because of their different ideas. 

There are two short interviews of Marcel Duchamp in this video that tell a lot about origins of the conceptual art. When Duchamp was questioned how did he feel to be blamed for death of art he said he was delighted to be blamed as he meant to do something that didn't please everybody. He then added that he was not the figure who managed to kill off the painting though he was glad to contribute into opening a totally new way of doing art.

Today, artists and critics are wondering either Duchamp opened a totally new debate on art practice that is still fresh and attractive to talk about or he unleashed the monster. Duchamp doesn't think he unleashed the monster though and at the same time he doesn't care how history would judge him.

Bicycle Wheel - 1951 - Marcel Duchamp

Computational Sculpture Former to 3D Print

Prosthetic Knowledge Picks in an article - published on Rhizome on September 3rd, 2014 - briefly discusses the computational sculpture history. This article is from ongoing series of themed collections of creative project publishing by Prosthetic Knowledge. The article is not too long but long enough to cover important aspects of the early computational sculpture practice and to show us how artists got to explore the possibilities and potentials of the software designing in their sculptural practice, which later leads to invention of 3D prints.

The article refers to latest 3D prints which are getting popular and reminds us that they are not actually brand new. 3D prints are the latest generation of computational sculptures that have being produced since 60s. The artist who pioneered computational sculptures in his country on 1966 is Zdeněk Sýkora , a Czechoslovakian artist who is apparently the first artist who pioneered using

computer to produce art. 

"In 1964, Sykora collaborated with mathematician Jaroslav Blazek to create visual computer-aided structures which used algorithms to find different combinations of abstract elements within predefined parameters. The result echoed the aesthetics of Op Art, yet his methods were his own. Then around 1973 he abandoned structural work and began to make paintings characterized by clusters of interwoven lines. These lines - everything from their hue, length, thickness, curve, direction—were determined by a computer program that mixed equal parts randomness and precise mathematics."

 Zdenek Sykora - Topological Structures, 1969

Structure Sinusoidal, 1965

Robert Mallary is American artist who was also among the first artists who took advantage of software design skills to make his sculptures. Below images are from Mallary's Quad series (1969).

 Robert Mallary - Quad IV (1970). Laminated slabs of computer-determined marble.

 Robert Mallary - Quad II, 1968. 711⁄2 x 11 in. TRAN2 computer sculpture in laminated veneer.

The article then briefly explain how early computational sculptures have been gone through the process: 

"If a computer is to make sculpture, it must be given either a comprehensive numerical description of the basic material it is to work with, or the means to generate this material for itself. In fact, our TRAN2 program does both, using contour “slicing” as the basic method of form description and form generation. In effect, the form is sliced—much as an apple or a chunk of baloney might be sliced—into a series of thin cross sections of equal thickness which can then be graphed, digitized and encoded on computer punch cards. It is also essential that each of the slices has an axis point to position it relative to all the other slices on the vertical axis. It is by means of this “stacking” of two-dimensional data that the program converts standard computer graphic capabilities to the requirements of three-dimensional form description." 

The other artists leading in the field are Isa Genzken, Nicolas Negroponte, Jose Luis Alexanco, and Ron Resch.
Isa Genzken uses computer to produce wooden sculptures that keep the balance through one (or few) connection point to their leaning surface. For example her wooden sculpture series called Ellipsoides which have contact to the floor only on one point have been made from designed template on a computer.

Grün-orange-graues Hyperbolo "El Salvador," 1980.

Computerzeichnung (Computer Drawing) (1976). Dot-matrix printout on continuous paper, 14 3⁄4 × 172 7/16" (lost).

"Seek is an installation by artist Nicholas Negroponte in collaboration with the Marchitecture Machine Group, originally debuting at the "Software" exhibition (1970) at the Jewish Museum in New York. The installation consists of several gerbils inhabiting an enclosed space filled with blocks that are arranged and rearranged by a robotic arm. As the computer manipulates the environment, in a sense, the piecee becomes a sort of Minecraft for rodents."

Jose Luis Alexanco - Escultura MOUVNT, 1972.

 Spanish artist, Jose Luis Alexanco, uses computer algorithm to plan the design of his layered sculptures. Below we can see the program code being used in Alexanco's 3D forms of human body.

This Ukrainian-style rotating Easter egg made by Ron Resch in 1973 was the first public sculpture designed with 3D design software.

Having all these said, we can see how late technology of 3D print owe to the earlier practice of artists who dared to took the time and effort to use computer in their sculpture and installation practices. I always have this in my mind that there's no innovation all of a sudden and out of the blue, the innovations that happen in some points of human life are actually taking some former people's explorations and trials in the field to the next level.

nazanin
September 2014

Reference:
Rhizome, Sep 3rd 2014, Prosthetic Knowledge Pick: Computational Sculpture Before 3D Printing, web
<http://rhizome.org/editorial/2014/sep/3/prosthetic-knowledge-picks-computational-sculpture/?ref=fp_post_title>