Visit to Bradford to see the Mill Machines at Work

CFA Contemporary Fine Arts

'Die Wahren Orte' Exhibition (No.1 exhibition in the Berlin Biennale!)

Alexander Ochs curated this exhibition based on the idea of 'true places' and whether they should be discussed in the past or present tense. As can 'true places exist in a world of constant flux under a globalised market'? It is interesting to note that Ochs spends half his year in Berlin and the other half in Beijing, so he must do a lot of wandering between these two very different worlds. I found this exhibition quite exciting as all of the eight artists seemed to be dealing with existence and superficiality in their own individual quest for a 'true place', whether in culture, art, time, location etc., though the resulting work was incredibly varied.

I really liked Yang Maoyuan's response as he had created a line-up of Buddha heads, which were reminiscent of the heads of the Buddha-figures that are everywhere in Asia. Therefore the series seemed to comment on the use of serial technical fabrication, thought the mock-antique patina and a fragmented condition alluded to actual archaeological finds. By weathering the marble to such an extent, the sculptures were also deprived of any trace of individuality, which made the act of falsifying an imitation even more prominent.

However my favourite piece was a room length installation by Yin Xiuzhen. The piece, 'Collective Unconscious', not only had a strong visual presence but it also had an audible quality, as she had a Chinese pop-song, which apparently praised the city of Berlin, playing within the vehicle. The artist had utilised a mini-van, an old Chinese 'shared taxi', which she had cut into halves. The 'shared taxi' was used in the 80s and 90s, as an affordable means of transportation within the rapidly growing metropolis. However due to its cheap design and bad quality, the Chinese government withdrew it from circulation during the 90s. Therefore by extending the vehicle, using a long, rhythmical caterpillar like insertion made of clothes, the vehicle looses any pretence of stability and sturdiness. What I really enjoyed about this piece was how the viewer was allowed to climb into the work and sit on any of the multitude of seats inside. The clothes were also used to hint at the low cost but bad quality produce of China.

Andy, James and myself in the back of the mini van

Jean Tinguely

YouTube Videos of Jean Tinguely's Artwork

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqlifVWAG8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx7e5BRekIA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mocfm6FdWRo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0rVxhYFlwM

Trip to Berlin, March 3rd-7th

We stayed in Mitte, very close to Alexandra Place, near Rosa Luxemborg station. During the three days, we went to a ridiculous number of museums and art galleries, averaging around four or five. I have a pile of phamplets, exhibition magazines, sheets of info etc. James has brought a folder for all the collected memorabilia but to be honest mine will probably be left to gather dust on my book shelf, so I thought it was best to write a few reviews of my favourite pieces/ exhibitions, so some evidence will exist!

We went to the 'Alte Nationalgalerie' (the National Gallery). It was astonishingly similar to our National Gallery in the decor and layout. I enjoyed the French Impressionists work on Level 2 and the Realism on Level 1. I was also impressed with the Neo-Baroque sculpture and the Auguste Rodin sculpture 'The Age of Bronze', 1875-76. Apart from that, I can not recall anything else worthy of note but I am sure hundreds would disagree!

We also visited the Institute for Contemporary Art, which was exhibiting '...5 Minutes Later', curated by Susanne Pfeffer. The work is this exhibition varied considerably in my opinion. In the large entrance area, the furthest wall simply read; 'VISITORS CAN CONTEMPLATE FOR 5 MINUTES THE INVISIBLE ASPECTS OF THE VISUAL ART IN THE EXHIBITION'. This immediately made me doubtful... It wasn't until I reached the third floor and began watching the video installations that I thought the exhibition had been worth the trek. With particular reference to Lutz Mommartz's video art pieces, 'As if it was from Beckett', 1975, and 'Way to the Neighbour', 1968.

'Way to the Neighbour', Lutz Mommartz, 1968.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaCkR0q_TVE

Various Holiday Snaps:

Armley Exhibition Proposal

Sarah Baumann

Materials: Clay, resin, varnished wood, polyester, found objects

My art practice focuses on mechanical and industrial forms drawing inspiration from outside a traditional fine art context. By expressing the hand of the artist and eliminating mechanical geometry, the sculptural work is drawn into speculations about authenticity and reproducibility. Therefore the work is thrown into the language of craftsmanship and art though not entirely disrupting its potential for being recognised as a mechanical expression.

Piece 1:
I plan to create a relatively large sculptural piece, with a base of 120cm x 45cm, which will combine clay elements alongside abandoned and disused mill machine parts. The clay will serve to minimalise the mechanical-technological nature of the work by making the viewer closely observe the handcrafted machine parts. The assemblage will also emphasise the spatial relationships between various parts in the piece, hinting at the relationship between the actual gallery setting and the artwork. Consequently allowing the viewer to question and consider the tripartite division of science, craft and art.

Piece 2:
90cm x 90cm.

A formal sculptural work with three iron- oxide resin casts of rollers used in a make-shift conveyor belt system. The belt, created with stretch polyester fabric, has industrial images printed on the fabric so to create a more literal link to the initial inspiration.

Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernest: The Bride Shared

Notes from 'Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernest: The Bride Shared', David Hopkins

(London: Clarendon Press, 1998)

Marcel Duchamp, 'Etant donnés', 1946-66.

Language was ambiguous – ‘technical problems’
Cite ‘technical matters’ as the genesis of his work, not ideas
The ‘sliding scale’ of meanings along the vocational line of artist-artisan-engineer
Industrial aesthetics debate in German- early 1910s.
‘Looking’ in the aesthetic sense, then, meant looking with assistance from literary associations, looking for purely visual pleasure. The addition of ‘the book’, words, text and the process of consulting took the artwork even farther from the beaux-arts realm of the merely ‘retinal’ which Duchamp was in the midst of abandoning

Modern debate concerning the overlapping functions of artist, craftsman and engineer
Conception of his great ‘work’ with its many ‘new technical problems’

In French there is an old expression, la patte, meaning the artist’s touch, his personal style, his ‘paw’.- Calvin Tomkins, ‘The Bride and the Bachelors: Five Masters of the Avant Garde (NY: Penguin Books, 1976) pp. 24
Duchamp equated the artist’s ‘hand’ with the sensual appeal of richly applied paint; and that, in turn, was related to the animal side of human nature and opposed to the artist’s intellectual capacities

Not sought out the mechanical or industrial forms for their intrinsic (i.e. functional) meaning, nor as social commentary on industrialisation, but, rather, for their ruptual value as non-traditional forms within a fine arts context
Incorporated the mechanical into the anthropomorphic for precisely that disruptive (i.e., avant-garde purpose)

Demonstrate the ‘free hand’ or the ‘paw’ of the painter, which Duchamp so abhorred, and the mechanical aspects did not suffice to cover it up- the ‘visceral’ aspect of the bride
Continue to inset machine into flesh at the level of pictorial narrative- ‘mechanically’ painted
‘very precise technique’ of mechanical drawing as ‘a renunciation of all aesthetics’

Art is an outlet towards regions which are not ruled by time and space
Mechanical drawing […- up[held] no taste, since it is outside all pictorial convention
Expressed ‘the most sublime notions of artists- a means of communication and a practical instrument used by the worker-artist and the artisan
Drawing that limited the appearance of things to the naked eye and drawing that revealed the truth of things behind the surfaces of appearance; that is to say, there was perspective drawing and mechanical drawing. Each kept a relation to the object.
The blueprint for production, the working drawing for the commodity. The language base was hardly neutral; it cheerfully ratified the means and ends of industrial production

Striving towards accuracy and precision, no more handwork
Distinct from the mechanical idiom preferred by the avant-garde- new method of mechanical expression
Back to a completely dry drawing, a dry conception of art
The prioritisation of function over appearance- a preference for the language of industry, work and craftsmanship to that of the fine arts
Thus new ‘works’ appeared- all involved with ideas of craftsmanship, new materials, new techniques, new art forms
Moved farther along the line from art to craft
Sewing thread was stitched onto the canvas and a leather label printed with gold letters- ‘Broyeuse de chocolate, 1914’ was glued to the surface
Additions and the matte finish of the paint coupled with the simple design to suggest an object of hand-crafted leather which has somehow been flattened onto the two-dimensional picture place

Several kinds of artisanal endeavours are referenced, particularly those that incorporate sewing and leather working, for example, shoe-making, upholstering and bookbinding.
Sewing thread, paint, canvas, leather labels and gold letters
Chance and measurement became the tools with which the fine artist/craftsman proposed to repair the flawed system of high art
‘cast […] a pataphysical doubt on the concept of a straight line as being the shortest route from one point to another’
Measurement of the boundaries of ‘art’ had as its standard a curved ‘ruler’; one metre was changed from a straight line to a curved line without losing its identity
Alter the fundamental geometry of its definition without entirely disrupting its potential for being recognised as art
Simultaneously were and were not fine art
Materials which had been associated with a modern, industrial aesthetic since the middle of the nineteenth century

Time element- eight years- devoting an extended period to the execution of a work of art, was another technique for shifting the focus away from fine arts towards craft
Large Glass- incorporated most of the handicraft techniques
Painstakingly handcrafted nature and the length of time- on its conception and construction
After Duchamp ‘incompleted’ it

Psychology of the relationships between the viewer, object and environment was paralleled in Duchamp’s interest in exhibition design, window display and the complex viewer/object/environment relationships of Etant Donnes

Frederick Kiesler, ‘Contemporary art applied to the store and its display’ (NY: Bretano’s, 1930) pp. 67-8.- ‘He concerns himself no longer, as did the potter, the goldsmith, the weaver, with the materialisation of his drawing; the machine has freed him from this task and does it more exactly, quickly, cheaply, and as beautifully
-union is far from subversive- Kiesler envisions the artist/ craftsman happily benefiting from machine production
Its technique, its materiality and structural foundation

‘Incompleted’ the Large Glass work- stage set for Capek’s R.U.R, produced in Berlin in 1923- designed a huge montage, compiled from the most diverse apparatuses and machine parts (megaphone, seismograph, tanager device, iris diaphragm, light bulb)- some real, some painted.- could produce light and sound as well as project film and create optical illusions with mirrors

Presented technology as a threat culminating in the ultimately sinister discovery of robots
Representation of the mechanical world was full of admiration for a technology that functioned with precision, fully in agreement with the technical aesthetic subscribed to by almost all avant-garde artists of the twenties

Negative look at the industrial age, particularly at that intersection of the mechanical and the human
Duchamp’s Bride and her Bachelors are gasoline-driven, fully-lubricated, piston-fired motors, but they also are erotically charged, love-torn, questing beings- desires are eternally unfulfilled, that all their sparks and gases and rods and cylinders never ignite a roaring engine is one of the most effective statements of an anti-Positivist, anti-functionalist, anti-machine aesthetic ever conceived.
The anthromorphic and the mechanical merge in ways that hardly provide pictorial reassurance about the future of an industrialised society
Smoothly painted, hard surfaces and tightly-coiled springs suggest mechanical models- shapes and predominantly biomorphic and the allusions noticeable sexual
Unquestioningly the assignment of positive cultural values to mechanical forms and processes
Shun of optimistic faith in modern technological progress […] and their belief that through their purified language they were offering a kind of blueprint for the designed utopia of the future
Primitivist myth (freedom, spontaneity, instinctiveness and ritualistic fantasy) and a sense of responsibility to its own time
Elderfield- Duchamp’s machine work exemplified ‘clothing primitivist obsessions in modern dress’
Centuries-old handicrafts as well as the most modern machine technologies
Relevance for commerce and industry
Not its determination to fuse art and industry- makes the gap more stark

Denunciation of many of the techniques, materials and themes ordinarily associated with ‘fine’ arts constituted an outrageous and powerful gesture of defiance
If Duchamp had wanted to put art ‘once again at the service of the mind’ he also wanted to ‘discredit science’
Deny the value of industrial progress than to depict pure sexuality and passion in mechanical forms that are not capable of consummating their desires
Deconstruction of the modernist myth of the artist as specialist through the enactment of the role of bricoleur


Duchamp forced to admit that he had been an artist all along, felt obliged to paint and sculpt it ‘back into the world’- and into art.
Symbolism persists but in a sense the movement has been from the world of veiled allusions and ‘imaginary solutions’ to a realm that relates, albeit at several removes, to the world of Surrealism
Retains its mystery, perhaps because the symbolism is so blatant that in a sense it cancels itself out

Vestigial yet obsessive presence, half phallus, half machine.
Obviously abstracted and symbolised to a high degree

The bride has been brought down to earth with a band, but the Bachelors have been reduced or compressed into a gas lamp, now truly fired with the bridal gas, symbol of desire and tumescent excitement. The liquid, the water, appears to have symbolic attributes that are both male and female; the pond is deep and still, the waterfall restless and incessantly active in its downward thrust- intense physicality

The strong linear element which results in a greater fluidity of form, the feeling of transparency and the austerity of the colour harmonies in what is basically a range of earth colours, browns and sienas

Art in Context: Marcel Duchamp

'Art in Context: - The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even and Etant Donnes'

John Golding (London: Penguin Press, 1973)

Duchamp carefully created The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, working on the piece from 1915 to 1923. He executed the work on two panes of glass with materials such as lead foil, fuse wire, and dust. It combines chance procedures, plotted perspective studies, and laborious craftsmanship.

Does not flaunt its mechanical-technological nature
Large Glass revealed its mechanical associations, Etant Donnes conceals its own- ever ‘an orchid in the land of technology’

Close connection with the materials and processes normally associated with handicrafts
Observe painstaking and minute adjustments in Duchamp’s production of his last piece- as demonstrated in the Approximation Demontable.
There is also the manual, handmade quality of Etant Donnes- executed every step of the construction, placed every nut and bolt, brick and piece of wood

Emphasis on spatial relationships within the assemblage also suggests a continuation of Duchamp’s interest in (quasi-) scientific investigations of the fourth dimension
Art, machine, craft, science- Etant Donnes is all four, ironically incorporation their differences as well as their similarities, hinting provocatively at historical relationships while flaunting its own uniqueness within Duchamp’s oeuvre and the history of art, raising endless speculations about authenticity vs. reproducibility and the artist as specialist vs. the artist as bricoleur.
The questioning of traditional values associated with the artist’s ‘hand’, i.e. notions of authenticity and originality, seems to be reversed by Etant Donnes.
Apparent non-reproducibility, its observance of the established forms of originality and ritual constitute what Walter Benjamin called the ‘aura’ of the authentic work of art.
Utilised a compositional technique with strong mechanical and geometrical associations, which he termed ‘elementary parallelism’ and described as ‘linear elements following each other like parallels and distorting the object’.
Newfound interest in the mechanical, attached even more intimately to human aspects
An element of conflict
Earlier works had represented single figures or figures clearly not in conflict

Bride and her Bachelors in a drawing entitled, La Mariee mis a nu par ces celebrataires’- clearly three entities and the threat of conflict is unmistakeable; the Bride stands in the centre menaced by a Bachelor on each side armed with sharp, knife-like weapons.
Hostility he felt towards the artists he had trusted to understand and value his aesthetic risk-taking
Verbal images of abandonment, exhaustion and divorce
Duchamp was not just abandoning his association with Cubism but painting itself
Large-size work- all sorts of new technical problems to be worked out
Notions of ‘occupation’ and ‘technical problems’ were clearly associated- shifting his orientation from that of artist toward that of craftsman.

Tripartite division of sciences, arts and crafts dating back to the sixteenth century
Toward a particularly non-French construction of the artisanal function- pose as a bricoleur rather than a specialist

Deliberate reorientation of his work from painting to craft
Enormous industrial expositions- artistic milieu in Germany was divided by the artisan/engineer question

The collective e semantics that functionalism found in the immanent aesthetics of the machine. Artisans became intellectualised, and for them this was a social elevation: they became conceivers more than makes, equals of engineers more than of workers. But this elevation took place to the detriment of the ‘human’ and individualist values that had been part of their production before division of labour had set in. In moving closer to the engineer, the artisan moved away from the artist. [….] In moving away from the artist the artist at the level of making, of craftsmanship, the artisan moved closer to the artist at the level of creation, of authorship’ –Pictorial Nominalism, pg. 56, de Duve