Cluster 7

CLUSTER 7: FIGURE AS FORM

The rules of play for The Exquisite Corpse (le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau): "They sit five at a table. Each of them notes on a sheet of paper, hidden from the others, a noun, which is to serve as the subject of a sentence. After this sheet has been folded so that the script cannot be seen, they give it to their neighbor" (Ulrich-Obrist 14) 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
How do we understand the human body as a form? We may be familiar with the dimensions and we know its weight and balance from physical experiences like wrestling, falling, sitting, or sleeping, but how can you transform active experiences into a static form? How do you capture movements or postures in clay? This project addresses these questions, exploring "form" and "figure" from an intuitive perspective, while experimenting with the properties of clay. 

Beginning with a series of drawings and collages based on the Surrealist game of The Exquisite Corpse (looking for chance combinations of forms and concepts) and preparatory drawings exploring the figure (exploring formal concerns--scale, orientation, balance, cropping) you will search for a format for your sculptural work in clay. In preparing the studies, you may find it useful to try MANY different poses-- feel your weight shift, the tension in your body change, and consider possible readings from your poses. Draw bodies imagined, out of scale, alert, lost, disoriented, quiet. What does it mean when you stand that way?  

Using clay (and your drawings as models), you will then build your figure as a mass. Where is it weighted? How is it affected by gravity? Will it appear heavy or light? How many points does it need to balance? The cluster moves fluidly between works on paper and works in clay, and between individual and collaborative work. The sculptural aspects of the cluster are temporary but will be recorded through drawing.

THE COLLABORATION
This cluster is a collaborative process. In the manner of the Exquisite Corpse, the figure is divided. Half of you will make the upper portion of a figure and half will make the lower portion. A template for the meeting point will be provided. At the end of the process, working as a group, we will determine which halves will come together. It is these combinations that will be translated to finished/developed drawings. The final collaboration takes place with all the foundations classes when figures are halved again and reconfigured before recycling.

THE DRAWING 
Drawing will inform your process through every step in this cluster; look for ways that documentation can aid you as you develop and transfer your concept from drawing to clay and back. The project is completed with drawings of the assembled form. This drawing is informed by your physical understanding of the final form.

THE ENVIRONMENT
The clay we are using is from Seattle Pottery. If the clay is not contaminated and remains damp throughout your working process, it is possible for us to recycle it at the end of this cluster.

INSPIRATION WALL
Bruce Naumann         
Rachel Whiteread    
Eva Hesse
Gabriel Orozco
Henry Moore
Constantin Brancusi
Gaston Lachaise
Renato Giuseppe Bertelli
Charles Long
Louise Bourgeois

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE
Week 1
Mon    Discussion on site-specific installation work
Wed    Introduce Cluster 7, Exquisite Corpse drawings figure drawing exercises, Allocate clay to class. Set-up studio. View Art: 21, Gabriel Orozco 
Fri        TBA

Week 2
Mon    Building forms in clay, drawing studies of built forms
Wed    Combine with other class forms, drawing combined forms 
Fri       No class for Foundations students; Second-year reviews to be conducted. 

Week 3
Mon    Class discussion on all projects (clay forms and all drawings)
Wed   Introduce Cluster 7
Fri     Collaborative critique/ remix clay works

***

Before I run this huge pile of books downstairs, here's the list of some of the artists I was bringing to the table for this project:

Alberto Giacometti (the DVD is awesome)
Louise Bourgeois
Jean Arp
Michelangelo
John Heartfield (on reserve)
Nancy Spero
Henry Moore (next year I'd like to take a field trip to see the Moore sculpture-- it is a Moore, right?-- in front of the Seafirst building, on 4th Avenue)

Dada and futurist music, including pieces by Schwitters (from 1932, really) and Huelsenbeck, among others (CL 963)

I don't even know what to say about this

Richard Serra

Hand Catching Lead, 1968

video here

image source: http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2007/09/walking_the_pat.html

Process and Theory

I'll be posting it all as a Google Document shortly, but here's a trailer for the upcoming course next quarter at The Evergreen State College

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This studio-based course will explore a broad range of process-oriented work through individual and collaborative projects, readings, and discussions. We’ll experiment with different ways to make paintings, sculptural objects, installations, and drawings; studio works will be complemented with relevant texts. What do your actions mean for the viewer? How is the art you make a record of your experience? What can it suggest when you twist, crumple, layer, crease, open, mix, rotate, stack, support, collect, store, bend, shorten, tear, split, cut, drop, splash, arrange, or simplify?

In class we’ll make many things quickly, working both independently and in team-based environments. Your works this quarter may look different than other art classes you’ve taken; many will be temporary, ephemeral, and unfinished. The works may be considered as propositions; as experiments or trials. Many of our works will exist in documentation or notation only. It’s about the process, not the product.

COURSEWORK
Four hours each Saturday will be devoted to developing your studio practice and will include demonstrations, research, discussions, concentrated work on projects (with individualized attention), and critical feedback from peers and instructor-- learning to discuss artwork/practice, deepening your experience and the experiences of the viewer. The learning objectives for the course include a deep analysis of your own processes for creating visual art. Classes will consist of a series of introductions—systematic research and discussion of the ways that you choose to make the art that you do, the historical context for similar works, and feedback for others in the class on things that they are creating.

Initially, I’ll offer some prompts for the things we make, and some broad, fluid topics will guide us: we’ll look at your processes in terms of everyday actions (what do you do repeatedly, and why?), mapping and surveillance (moving through spaces, responding to our movements in diverse environments), interventions (where can these actions occur, for how long, with what audience), and exchange (where does the work go?).

Establishing drawing and writing as primary tools for investigation will link all of our projects. They will offer you the ability to quickly record an idea, responding visually to new situations, concepts, or places, and may act as preliminary research for larger/extended projects or series of work. Drawing and writing (as activities) are tentative, preliminary, and questioning. Some pieces will be built over multiple sessions, but much of our drawing work will happen quickly, like glancing. In line with this, we will be exploring the campus at Evergreen, observing the ways we move through the space, and recording the objects, people, and architecture that make up our surroundings. What objects describe a place? How do you use your space?


The majority of your production in this course will take place in the classroom. This is designed to give you as many opportunities as possible to take advantage of an active learning community. While some projects may be collaborative, others may develop individually, but having access to each other’s progress in every forum is crucial in building visual language (or, more appropriately, visual discussion).
Each cluster of works will include presentations and discussions of the projects. We’ll discuss the form that these will take more in class.

As the course focuses on developing an understanding of your own action, your self- evaluations and faculty evaluations will both play vital, active roles in your studio work this quarter. It is suggested that you keep everything you write over the course of the quarter, looking for connections between seemingly disparate pieces, no matter how unrelated the works may at first appear.

In support of this work, you will also be expected to maintain a process book. The process book is a required element of this course. The format of this book will be your choice, but it is recommended that it be a size easy for you to transport, as it will be accompanying you both in and out of the classroom. In addition to the “process book” assignments given, this book is for you; it is a repository of what you see, hear, think, and speculate. It will be a place to work things out, to store things for later, to try something new. You will need to have your process book at each class session. In fact, carry it everywhere.

COURSE EQUIVALENCIES: Process-based art, Drawing as an everyday practice, Intermediate drawing. No prerequisites required.

READINGS/WORKS CITED
The “theory” part of the course title will extend from the works themselves. We’ll be reading a broad range of artist’s writings, where they describe how, where, and why they make the things they do. While much of the writings are grounded in philosophy, cultural studies, arts criticism, sociology, and other fields, my intention with focusing on the words of the artists themselves is two-fold: first, to offer you the chance to read how the artists themselves are problem-solving in their practice, and second, to use those writings as models for your own writing. Writing—in a variety of forms—will augment all of our projects this quarter. You will be writing notes on your production, writing proposals for works, responding to one another’s work, and writing as exploration, akin to sketching.
Some of the works you’ll encounter and utilize include:

Burgin, Victor. Some Cities. London: Reaktion Books, 1996.
Dean, Tacita, and Jeremy Millar. Art Works: Place. London: Thames & Hudson, 2005.
Fogle, Douglas. Painting at the Edge of the World. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2001.
Koolhaas, Rem. Mutations. Bordeaux: ACTAR, 2001.
Richter, Gerhard. The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings 1962-1993. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995.
Schaub, Mirjam. Janet Cardiff: The Walk Book. Walther Konig, 2005.
Schimmel, Paul. Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1998.
Selz, Peter and Kristine Stiles. Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings. Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1996.
Smithson, Robert. The Collected Writings. Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1996.
Ulrich-Obrist, Hans. Do It. New York: Independent Curators International, 1997.
Ulrich-Obrist, Hans and Barbara Vanderlinden, eds. Laboratorium. Antwerpen: Dumont, Promotie Antwerpen Open, 2001.
Vyzoviti, Sophia. Supersurfaces. London: Gingko Press, 2006.
Warhol , Andy. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again). New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1975.