Having delivered this workshop* to several schools and colleges as a way of getting students to draw freer and more abstracted rather than literal. I decided to see if I could gather a few fellow MA Fine Art Students and get them to not only draw from my poor instructions and detail but to do it directly as a monoprint at uni. I had a practice first to see how the process worked and what as required.
Although I was drawing from other people's interpretations for this experiment it do show the difference between water based mono print and oil based.
Once i had the space booked and the MA Guinea Pigs it was just down to the instructions. I created x5 different ones that varied in many aspects. I really wanted everyone to just draw what they heard and be instinctive in the way they interpret my instructions. They are intentionally bad, I play with the visual language, I move around the object, am vague with position, size and proportions. I also gave people the option of drawing with a pencil or biro, so they could see what they were drawing but also a small stick, that would leave a mark from the ink but you couldn't see what you had drawn until you the reveal.
Everyone really embraced the idea and what it was creating, they also had a lot of fun and got very frustrated with my instructions and were constantly trying to guess what the object was. Which only one person got once but even then they weren't convinced.
The first item I asked them to draw was a Petrol Driven Hedge Cutter. The instructions are here:
Long and thin piece at one end
Other end has a triangular round bit that is hollow, sort of tube like
This has two bits attached, one on top, one inside, one triangular, one long and thin, might be connected?
In the middle is an oblong box, a bit curvy, smooth, sort of rectangularly oval
Oval shaped top with 15 slits in
Coming out of this is a three dimensional T-shaped bit, quite small, sticks out at a funny angle
Triangular bits coming out of the side of the long piece, quite a few, flat but pointy
Curved piece that wraps around it
Looks like a box on the side, squarish, with smooth corners
Square bit stands out, cube shaped on the tube shaped triangular piece
In front of the curved piece is a flat rectangular bit with some writing on
A cylindrical shape on one corner of the box on the side
Some of the results are here:
There are similarities, certain aspects can be identified but what I like about this workshop is the different interpretations. I often get students to take their drawing and using a pile of resources make a representation of their drawing as a 3D model. Something I am considering for this, to abstract the final object further, maybe making a maquette first and then discussing with 3D as to how it (or they) can be constructed larger.
This workshop allows me to use play with communication, instructions, misinterpretations, the nuance of language, coding and disruption to networks, something I have been doing for a while looking at various forms of the above. Sometimes directly through code but here it was just through verbal instruction and the choice of how and what I said creating the abstracted prints. By deliberately giving poor instructions I could control the level of understanding and translation of the image from my observation to artists' hands.
The idea of ownership and intellectual property is something I have had to consider. Who owns the finished pieces? They were my instructions but I didn't draw them. But without my instructions they wouldn't have existed and the way I instructed guided the participants to go down certain paths, I deliberately led them astray and delayed giving certain information. I wrote the music and was the conductor, if not the musician performing the piece.
Referring to my ASU2 Learning Agreement I started to look at other 'Instruction Art'. This is nothing new and is still practised today, especially in the larger art 'factories'.
Instruction drawings can be a questionable way to create work. It blurs the line between conceptor and creator bringing into the issue of ownership. This I have experienced many times in my Art Director career where an initial idea is fulfilled visually by a Photographer or Illustrator, they assume the intellectual property of the image even though they didn’t conceive it.
Robert Rauschenberg, White Paintings- 1951, 1965. © 2019 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art. (https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-understanding-11-great-artists-instructions-left)
This example shows how the artist may have thought they were give implicit instructions, everything is open to interpretation. How much leeway is dependent on the level of instruction and even then the hand of another will always differ to the hand of the artist with the idea. It brings into question how much the artist is prepared to let go, giving the interpretation over to the person creating the work. A studio assistant will still create something different to the way the artist would, even if he was standing there and giving detailed instruction after detailed instruction. There may be times in which the artist wants the interpretation to be decided by the maker. As an Art Director I could conceptualise an idea but I am not a Photographer or Illustrator, a specialist was brought in to fulfil that role and by doing so the final outcome will be elevated and the combination of elements coming together to form the finished piece.
Merce Cunningham. Aeon (.a). 1961/63. © 2019 Merce Cunningham. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.
With Cunningham's dance piece the instructions are taken on by a performance artist or dancer. They can't possibly expect every gesture or movement to be instructed, and why should they. It needs to come to life and be realised.
“They really bring you back to the studio—the making of the work,” ....“And that’s why they are both so moving and informative: They bring you to a place where usually you’re not allowed, to that moment where the work is really imagined.”
Christophe Cherix, MoMA’s chief curator of drawings and prints.
I feel there is more to experiment with, more to take forward but also more research to do. I know other artist's use this process and I want to find out how they feel about it. For instance; Yoko Ono’s Painting to Be Stepped On. Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawings. Carolee Schneemann’s Meat Joy. That is before you delve into the more modern production houses that employ multiple technicians to create the artist's work. Damien Hirst's Art Factory or Olafur Eliason's Marshall House in Reykjavík.
On reading 'From Studio to Factory: Is Overproduction the Greatest Threat to the Market for Contemporary Art?' by Georgina Adam, (January 2, 2018). See: https://news.artnet.com/market/dark-side-of-the-boom-excerpt-1188020
The sheer size of some of the 'Art Factories' is astonishing, and to some extent totally understandable, how do you think some of the pieces we all consume in galleries and open space are created, moved and installed? The author of the piece describes the sort of spaces she has encountered as part of the report, when referring to Zhang Huan’s studio in Shanghai, she states 'formerly a state-owned hydraulics machine factory, in 2005, ...The sheer scale of the factory/studio begins to dawn on me as we step over train tracks and past three wrecked carriages, one propped up against buffers'
Adam continues by explaining how many people/technicians/artists work there. 'Zhang employs some 80 assistants in the studio, but in the case of large-scale projects (he says he makes about two a year) this can rise to 200. “They stretch and prepare the canvases, separate the ash, apply plaster to sculptures, order materials, work with silicone, but I do the final creation,” says Zhang.' They seem faceless and nameless. I get the impression in certain scenarios they are like a colony of ants swarming over the work, moving, creating, taking away and adding, all seen over (apparently) by the artist themselves. Surely it is impossible for the artist to make every decision of where every mark, grain of sand or plaster goes, that has to come down to the hand(s) producing the work.
Adam also visits the artist Sterling Ruby (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/sterling-ruby-14439) in Los Angeles. By comparison to Zhang's studio Ruby's seems even larger, a former truck factory that covers over 4 acres in Vernon, a part of Los Angeles that is virtually uninhabited. The main hanger space is divided up by temporary walls and work is displayed in a variety of ways, hanging, laying, placed. Adam describes a where there are a number of courtyards; 'in one stands a forklift truck, in another parts of a chopped-up submarine, while blue tarpaulin cloaks a refurbished bus once used by a Californian prison and a giant canary-yellow “electric chair” stands bleakly against a wall. A battered car is propped up, sitting on a pipe.' Ruby says he has between 12 and 20 assistants, again no details are given as to their roles and ownership of any work.
The article goes on to discuss the need for new, large and innovative art in galleries and open spaces such as the Tate's Turbine Hall, as well the sort of tie-ups that have happened commercially between fashion brands, hotels and industry. In order to meet this demand art has to be produced. In summary of the article Adam uses a quote from the New York-based journalist Christian Viveros-Fauné: “You can only get so much out of a single artist—and the market wants repetition rather than innovation.” In order to meet these demands there needs to be production of the art and by the sound of it large scale production. Comprehending this and the world these artists live in does certainly make you question their integrity, motive and what a privileged position they are in.
* The original workshop concept is the property of Norwich University of the Arts and is currently delivered to undergraduates.
Since I delivered this workshop and wrote the blog about it I have also been exploring how to use AI to inform my instruction art. This can be found here: https://carldurban.wixsite.com/website/post/what-next
See the chapter 'Explore AI using CHAT GPT. '