Zoë
Shulman
Professor Aaron Van
Dyke
Senior Project: Fine
Arts
11 April 2013
Position
Paper: Postmodern Tectonics
My
work employs painting, drawing, printmaking, live art and performance to
explore subjectivity within an ever-changing world. This work ranges from deconstructed landscapes, to
multiples, to time-based abstraction.
I am interested in drawing attention to and confusing a viewer’s
awareness of their own body’s movements within different spaces. To achieve these aesthetics, I combine
unconventional materials and techniques to activate unique surface qualities
that emphasize the viewer’s physical relation to the work and enhance its
overall illusion of movement. By carving and sanding on wood panel,
applying polyurethane, plaster, quartz powder and living material (such as
grass) I create materiality and contrast within a painting’s surface.
Using geometric
forms, ranging from concentric squares to complex fractals, I compose formal
painting elements into ordered and chaotic measures of time and rhythm. By contrasting layers of illusion,
flatness, dimension and physicality, I create optical tensions within the
viewer’s perspective that enhance these rhythms. As a result, the viewer may experience recognition,
confusion, order and a chance to decipher space, yet be overwhelmed by
flatness.
The
idea to use geometry in my work was inspired by my Fall 2011 semester in
Ballyvaughan, Ireland, where I observed erratic weather creating dramatic ecological
contrasts within the landscape. Turbulent
transitions of rain, wind, hail and mist perpetuated the mystery of immense
stone hills, vast green pastures and churning seas. Experiencing these chaotic contrasts allowed me to see
variety within sameness and ultimately understand the complexity of change. I began to see nature as a dialectical
whole in which a relationship of order and chaos was occurring throughout the
micro and macro that could not be defined by a static summation of parts. In order to conceptualize, quantify and
expresses a visual relationship between contrasting proportions, I turned to
geometry as a metaphorical language for measuring nature.
My studies of
linear and complexity theory lead me to take great inspiration from academics
René
Descartes, Michel Foucault, Benoît Mandelbrot, Elizabeth Grosz
and Michel Serres. Engaged in
their various philosophies, I gleaned conceptual content from subjects like
linear perspective, maps, dialectics, panoptic vision, order and chaos, Fibonacci
sequences, surface roughness and fractal dimensions, architectural spaces,
territory and nonlinear spatiotemporal paradigms. Invigorated by a new cocktail of ideas, I began to identify
with the difficult duality of modern linearity and postmodern complexity that
currently exists within art and design discourse.
In
today’s postmodern world, where context and inter-subjectivity have created a
multifaceted understanding of art, the methods for constructing meaning are
seemingly infinite. With the
breakdown of canonical thinking, I began to wonder: what are the dialectics
that have defined painting today?
With regard to art history, how have the politics of painting adapted
out of the formalist authority of modernism? To address these questions within my work, I investigated themes
such as subject/object relationships, dimensional multiplicity, contradiction and
presenting painting outside the context of the wall.
In
my excavations of art history, I found several sources from which my themes
have been addressed in painting. From
the caves of Lascaux to the frescos of church interiors, painting has had a
rich history of existing within different spatial contexts. During the reign of American modernity,
the rise of the neo-avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s provoked painters to
react against the draconian politics of modern formalism. With the birth of Robert Rauschenberg’s
Combines, painting and sculpture
shared the same domain and gave found objects new meaning within the context of
the painting (“Robert Rauschenberg”).
Concurrently, painting was relatable to outside contexts and no longer an
individual object restricted to the spatiotemporal boundaries of the frame. By questioning the authority of the “flat”
painting presented on the wall, the neo-avant-garde brought about a sea change
toward the legitimacy of multimedia methods. In tracking this trajectory, I found great conceptual and
aesthetic inspiration from the careers of Richard Diebenkorn, Sean Scully and
Frank Stella:
Although
Richard Diebenkorn harkens to modern formalist methods, our processes share an
interest in observing nature to inform the contrasts that create complexity within
painting. When Diebenkorn began to
paint the Ocean Park series in1967, he
worked from aerial views of landscapes (Bancroft 22). In A View of Ocean
Park, Diebenkorn describes his experience of surveying the land:
The
earth’s skin itself had a ‘presence’ – I mean, it was all like a flat design –
and everything was usually in the form of an irregular grid... Wherever there was agriculture going on
you could see process – ghosts of former tilled fields, patches of land being
eroded. I also saw large areas
where the fields were all planted in the same way for the same crop yet showed
unlimited visual variety. (23)
Diebenkorn’s
ability to identify a macrocosm of change within a distant and seemingly
inanimate landscape alludes to the compression of spatiotemporal elements in
his compositions. Further, the
perspectival shift of presenting aerial landscapes in a vertical format on the
wall creates an illusionistic vertigo that confuses figure-ground relationships
and weaves a space of perpetual flux.
Like a ribcage, the geometry structures the “breathing” within the
compositions, relating contrasts at various junctures of time throughout the
layers of the painting (Landauer 43).
The consequent nonlinearity of these compositions creates the optical
tension of spatiotemporal contrasts that make the work mobile and complex. Ultimately, the richness of these
movements in the Ocean Park paintings
inspired me to imagine journeys through pathways and overlapping territories
that produce a sense of change.
Sean
Scully’s paintings also employ geometry and contrasting surface qualities to construct
unique spatiotemporal experiences.
His striped compositions of the early 1980s fuse canvases together to
form harmonious relationships through painterly and architectonic contrasts. In Flesh
(see fig. 1), the wedged interlocking of horizontal and vertical stripes
creates an incongruous buttressing that grinds against the uneven surfaces of
the canvases, adding disjointed movements throughout its illusionistic and
literal spaces. Further, the various
physical depths of the canvases cast moody shadows that contradict the
figure-ground relationships between color contrasts and emphasize a sense of
compression within the overall form. Despite its heaviness, Flesh
frees the viewer to consider the composition from different angles by decentralizing
the focal point and breaking down the frame via its sculptural surface and
perimeter (Cooke 50). This ongoing
exchange between the viewer’s subjectivity and fragmented canvases speaks to
the many perspectives from which pieces can be disassembled from a complex
whole. By using the painting’s
sculptural dimension to engage the viewer, Scully has allowed his work to
relate outside of its own context and exist in a state of perpetual change (50). The measures of formal elements are
thus under constant scrutiny, allowing various aspects of the same form to
emerge at different times. Altogether,
these unpredictable paintings break down the context of formal elements,
allowing for a simultaneous construction and deconstruction of the whole.
Frank Stella’s career from the late 1980s to present
day has focused on meditating the spaces of painting, sculpture and
architecture. Severinda (see fig. 2) is the foremost example of Stella’s spatial
eloquence. The towering waveform
is neither painting nor sculpture; rather, it remains in a state of constant
flux within architectural space.
As the viewer surveys the waveform’s surface of patchwork grids and
colorful shapes, the illusionistic and sculptural spaces shift in and out of
contrast at various moments within the form. Regarding a surface design he created for a BMW art car,
Stella said:
The idea for mine was that it’s from a drawing on
graph paper. The graph paper is
what it is, a graph, but when it’s morphed over the car’s forms it becomes
interesting, and adapting the drawing to the racing car’s forms is
interesting. Theoretically, it’s
like painting on a shaped canvas. (“Frank Stella”)
By wrapping illusion around form, Stella creates a
stretching and pulling throughout Severinda’s
flowing curves that changes the space depending on the viewer’s perspective. Observed from straighter areas, the surface
remains stable, but as the viewer approaches the sides of curves, the form
reveals itself from beneath the distorted illusion. Compelled by the curious schism of architectural space, the
viewer proceeds to the view Severinda’s
other half of flowing illusions and forms. Because Severinda
can never be seen in its entirety, the viewer’s bodily movements and perspective
are actively engaged in what is perceived and experienced. This bodily engagement of fitting time
and space together into an unstable whole inspired me to think about how our
limited subjectivity could be used as a means of making art that exists as part
of our complex, ever-changing world.
In
light of all my inspirations, the ultimate motivation for my final project was
to use postmodern philosophy as a means to expand formalist methods and promote
inter-subjective relationships through art. As an American, I have been invested in trying to understand
what it means to live freely as an individual, yet fairly as a pluralistic community. With the advent of postmodern politics,
our society is gradually becoming more aware of the need to keep an open-ended discourse
that is not fixed to universal truths. During our last presidential election, the effects of
draconian policies caused frequent and divisive contrasts within the American
political landscape. The heat and
friction surrounding the debates on economic policy, civil rights and national
identity caused a great cultural uplift in which marginalized communities rose
to the surface and fought against the established hierarchy for equality.
Being a part of America’s changing landscape lead me to question the
relationship between contrast, hierarchy and subjectivity.
Thus,
I created Postmodern Tectonics (see
fig. 3). The five and a half
square foot arrangement of over one hundred twenty small wood panels forms the
substructures of a sculptural and illusionistic Cartesian grid. By carving various levels into the surface,
I formed an overarching fractal that spans out from the center of the
arrangement like a shockwave. Using
layers of paint to glean an illusionistic space from the individual panels
allowed me to construct the metaphor of a bottom to top hierarchy in which the
whole is subordinate to its parts.
In order to add an illusory tension that communicated a shifting
hierarchy, I contradicted the literal space of each panel by exploiting the
paint’s fiery color contrasts within their sculpted surface. By placing the panels face up on the
floor and activating the surrounding architectural space, I increased the
dimensionality of the surface and created a topographical movement within the
composition. As viewers walk
around the arrangement and change perspectives, the rigid Cartesian map becomes
an aerial landscape in which the fractal’s emergent complexity bends various
micro/macro levels of relief into shape-shifting territories.
In
conclusion, my journey has taught me that all law is fallible out of context
and that my way of understanding things is to question authority by working
dialectically against assumptions.
I see art as a living document that must reflect the changes within our complex
world. I believe using geometry to
give artful form to my concepts can provide the community with the empathetic
experiences necessary to inform the zeitgeist of our era.
Appendix
Figure 1. Sean Scully, Flesh, oil on canvas, 1985
Figure 2. Frank Stella, Severinda, mixed media on fiberglass, 1995
Figure 3. Zoë Shulman, Postmodern Tectonics, acrylic on wood
panels, 2013
Works
Cited
Bancroft, Sarah. “A
View of Ocean Park.” Richard Diebenkorn:
The Ocean Park Series.
Ed.
Karen Jacobson. Newport Beach: Orange County Museum of Art, 2011. 15-37. Print.
Cooke, Lynne. “Sean
Scully: Taking a Stand, Taking Up a Stance.” Sean Scully: Twenty
Years, 1976-1995.
Ed. Ned Rifkin. New York: Thames and Hudson, Inc., 1995. 47-55. Print.
“Frank Stella.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation,
Inc., 2001. Web. 11 Apr. 2013.
Landauer, Susan. “Significant
Space in Diebenkorn’s Ocean Parks.” Richard
Diebenkorn: The Ocean Park
Series. Ed. Karen Jacobson. Newport Beach: Orange
County Museum of Art, 2011. 38-55. Print.
“Robert Rauschenberg.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation,
Inc., 2001. Web. 4 Apr.
2013.
Scully, Sean. Flesh. 1985. Collection of Tom and
Charlotte Newby.
Stella, Frank. Severinda. 1995. Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York.
