Another week and another workshop. This one was more about breathing, gestural marks and reacting to sounds whether that be by charcoal, pencil, ink or paint. To begin with we discussed several artists that relate to the workshop and need to be researched more to understand how they work and whether it is something that could be incorporated within our own practice.
The first artist we looked at was Gertrud Grunow, who taught at the Bauhaus in the early 20th century. Significantly she was employed to teach her theories to all rather than be limited to what other female teachers could teach, ie textiles and weaving. Walter Gropius was concerned about too many women being part of this establishment. Even though it was stated ‘Any person of good repute, without regard to age or sex, whose previous education is deemed adequate by the Council of Masters, will be admitted as far as space permits.’ Walter Gropius to become concerned that too high a proportion of female students would reduce the new school’s credibility - and so he unofficially restricted the number of women students. More detail is available here: THE WOMEN OF THE BAUHAUS (http://www.designcurial.com/news/the-women-of-the-bauhaus-7370218/).
Grunow taught the equitable and harmonious use of all the senses. She advocated the theory that a person’s ability to express himself depends on laws rooted in the personal sense of colour, sound and form. The sensitisation of all sensory organs, mental training and even individual psychological sessions were components of the courses. With her twelve-tone circle of colour, her work established an analogy with the twelve-tone music of Schönberg. In addition, she also explored the correlations of form and colour in a way which may be compared with the courses given by Johannes Itten (preliminary course), Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. (https://www.bauhauskooperation.com/knowledge/the-bauhaus/training/curriculum/classes-by-gertrud-grunow/).
The second artist we looked at was Robert Morris and in particular his "Blind Time drawings, 1973-2000" | 2005 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRoi4hwPA14). I felt that these had a real simplicity to them but also that by creating his parameters of what action he was going to do as he created each piece with his eyes shut the connection between the body and the paper was closer. It was this this approach I adopted when I started to create a piece for the breathing exercise. I wanted to feel the breathing, the filling and emptying of the lungs, then reflect that with my mark. I kept the marks soft and by standing up could stretch up and expand my lungs dragging my hands up and then letting them fall down the paper while they were coated in crushed charcoal. I did feel after opening my eyes and seeing the result that it represented a pair of lungs.
I also put a piece of paper on the table and went through the same process but opened and closed my hands, still covered in charcoal, in time to my breathing. I wasn't sure if it was the drawing controlling my breathing or my breathing controlling the drawing but either way there was a definite connection.
Other artists we looked at were: SUSIE GREEN, DONNA HUANCA, IMRAN QURESHI , JOAN JONAS, ALEXIS TEPLIN, PAUL THEK & BMPT. I found these all quite interesting and the merging of the work and the body an approach that produces some very unique results but also blurs the boundary between the figure and the art.
The second part of the Workshop was more about reacting to sounds and gestures. It meant, to a certain degree, that a sound had to be created to respond to, which was fine, although I felt I was reacting to the motion of making the sound rather than listening. I may try to do the same exercise but outside and listen to ambient sounds, that way i might be able to create more of a varied set of marks and potentially put together something that reflects a musical score.
The idea was that the resulting pieces could potentially be 'performed' in so much as you could bodily react to the marks made. One piece (Joel's) we looked at felt very triumphant, almost like the end of a symphony, exploding to a climax. Another had almost heartbeat regularity marks and waves on as if it was a stats chart (Catherine's). Mine was a little more overlapping with a series of regular indicators as to what I had heard or rather sounds I had made. Looking at it now I can see deeper noises, longer sounds and sharp taps, pings.
For the final piece I worked with Catherine and between us we created a series of gestures that we translated onto the paper, taking it in turns to gesture and respond. Had there of been more people there it may have been different but it worked well with just the two of us reacting to each other and seeing how one's movement was translated to a flourish on the paper. I purposefully kept a limited palette as I felt defining the colour would take longer, however the difference between our palette's was interesting with Catherine's much more pastel than mine. I kept to white, black with a splash of red for the sounds piece so with this one I added some more colour but this was chosen purely randomly as I wanted to keep the response as quite an intuitive thing. On discussion I felt the whole piece was constrained by the frame of the paper and had we been able to paint over a larger space the marks would have been grander, maybe we should have kept attaching paper to create a random area to work on or just painted on the walls. Below is a few close ups of the final piece, these I find more satisfying than the whole, which is often the case.
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