Stuart Brownlee – 512319 Drawing 2 Investigating drawing Critical Review

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How does the concept of deconstruction influence my drawing practice?

Introduction

What does it mean to deconstruct something? There are several ways of interpreting the

meaning. From the language of critical and semiotic analysis to the practical taking apart of

something to find out more about it – how it is constructed and for what reason. The

purpose of this essay is to explore what this means to my drawing practice.

My enquiry into drawing has taken me from understanding more traditional representational

styles to seeking out work that explores and pushes the boundaries of what drawing can be

by using materials in new and innovative ways; in ways that can combine aspects of

drawing, painting, sculpture, photography and installation.

First associated with philosophical and literary criticism, the notion of ‘deconstruction’ also

became influential in thinking about works of art. If there is not a single meaning to be found

in a work of art, but rather a profusion of possible interpretations, this suggests, as

reputedly stated by the American artist Frank Stella, that “what you see is what you see.”

(Heartney, 2013: 67)

While acknowledging the politically driven movement and brutalist theories of

“Destructivism” manifestos of the 1960’s in this taking apart, change and movement, and in

the thinking and influence of philosophers such as Frank Derrida, I am more interested in

the process, materials and interpretation of the concept of “deconstruction” as an artistic

action.

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Chapter one

To deconstruct is to take apart. Works of literature, music and works of art are put together

in a seemingly structured way. So are machines and buildings; inanimate and animate

objects, from pencil to the hand.

From Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘deconstructed’ anatomical drawings to Caravaggio’s exploration

of visual illusion, we arrive in this century with Angela de la Cruz’s broken paintings.

What is made anew today by an artist will be seen, analysed, understood and enjoyed (or

otherwise) by a viewer tomorrow. In both cases an element of deconstruction is likely to

have taken place. For the artist (the maker) initial ideas will have been tried out, discarded

or refined and even in the eventual making have undergone a process of change. For the

viewer, getting to grips with what is in sight will be influenced by imagined and known

information about the artist, their techniques and their own personal predilections and

emotions.

The meaning or intention of the artist may well have evolved in the making, just as the

meaning, as perceived by the viewer may well have changed in the acts of looking and

thinking about what is seen.

The concept and practice of ‘deconstruction’ offers a way of looking and thinking that

embraces an open logic in considering the meaning of something other than it must be

‘either/or’. If there is no ‘single meaning’ in what is observed, then our approach to thinking

about art (in its making and in its viewing) ought to encompass ‘both this/and that’.

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In other words, as a visual theory ‘deconstruction’ encourages us to consider (to analyse,

examine and separate) the composition of what is being communicated in order to arrive at

an understanding, or understandings, of what was intended and what is being received.

With regards to drawing and painting this requires an exploration of “the relations among

line, form and shades of meaning”. (Brunette & Wills (eds.), 1994: 3)

Initial research for this Critical Review led me to focus in on actions that express a breaking

down of something into its separate parts so that its meaning can be understood. And from

deconstruction can come construction of something new.

My experiments with drawing machines in Part Three of the course culminated with a

computer generated automated drawing that, for me, demonstrates this transition from

taking apart to creating anew:

https://vimeo.com/277137546 [1min37sec]

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Chapter two

The early work of the American artist Frank Stella made use of geometric lines and shapes

in a minimalist manner that marked him as a ‘devotee of formalist flatness’. (Heartney,

2013: 84) By the late 1970’s, however, he had expanded his work to question the traditional

shape of the canvas, producing more three-dimensional pieces, such as his 1982 painting

Zeitweg V (4.75X 2nd version) :

Stella, F. (1982) Zeitweg V (4.75X 2nd version) [Mixed media on etched magnesium] In:

(Godfrey, 2014: 45)

Moving on from his earlier influences of the Cubist grid system, Stella began to push the

boundaries of the shapes of his abstract canvases to include V and U shapes. He was

inspired by how he saw the handling of space in Baroque painting and in particular

Caravaggio’s ability to push the painting plane outwards towards the viewer, creating an

illusion of space. He built on this idea of deconstructing space in his abstract paintings,

making more use of three-dimensional, sculptural surfaces as his painting ‘working space’.

(Heartney, 2013: 84)

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In La colomba ladra Stella’s manipulation of space moves the eye away from the

traditional centre of the canvas and the use of perspective to organise depth of field and

provide a sense of a third-dimension on a two-dimensional plane. (Brunette & Wills (eds.),

1994: 171)

Stella, F. (1987) La colomba ladra (#11,3D-3X) [Paint on aluminum] In: (Heartney, 2013:

83)

What we see in Stella’s work is a ‘soft’ form of deconstruction - dismantling, examining and

separating the picture plane.

In a 2000 interview with Frank Stella at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Frank

Stella: creating canvases in new shapes [Available at:

https://www.sfmoma.org/watch/frank-stella-creating-canvases-in-new-shapes/ Accessed: 4

September 2018], the artist stated that rather than producing a painting full of gestures he

began to see the painting itself as the gesture. To this end, he believed that as an artist you

should ‘make what you want to paint on’:

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Screen shot from Creating canvases in new shapes.

Making use of leftover cut-out patterns from preliminary work on previous pieces he was at

one and the same time recycling ‘traces’ of past efforts to construct new invented canvas

shapes. (Brunette & Wills, eds.,1994: 182)

This continual seeking after new modes of expression in his painting led him to experiment

further with his ‘working spaces’, eventually creating something akin to a hybrid form of

painting and sculpture. [Available at: https://deyoung.famsf.org/frank-stella-retrospective,

Accessed: 4 September 2018]

As a contrast, the British sculptor and installation artist Cornelia Parker takes a ‘harder’

approach to deconstructing in her 1991 installation ‘Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded

View’. Here we see the fragments of a blown apart garden shed as if suspended in the

process of destruction, demolition or erasure – frozen in time, while seeming to propel itself

with charged energy into the gallery:

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“‘To deconstruct’ something suggests that the act of taking something apart can be the first

step toward understanding something anew.” (Richards, 2008: 22)

The Spanish artist Angela de la Cruz embraces broken paintings, building layers of paint

onto canvases, only to finally deconstruct them as an object rather than as a painting as

such. Smashed stretchers and ripped canvases make “… deconstruction a process that

occurs both literally and figuratively. ‘The moment I cut through a canvas … I cut through

the grandiosity of painting’” (Rosengarten, 2010: 4)

Her 1999 sculptural painting ‘Ready to Wear (Red)’ lifts aside the canvas to reveal the

skeleton of the stretcher:

De la Cruz, A. (1999) Ready to Wear (Red). [Oil on canvas]. In: (Schwabsky, 2002: 66)

Parker, C. (1991) Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View. [Wood, metal, plastic, ceramic, paper, textile and wire]. Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/parker-cold-dark-matter-an-exploded-view-t06949 [Accessed: 23 April 2018].

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Her 2006 solo exhibition After was nominated for the 2010 Turner Prize, and her piece

‘Clutter’, from 2003, is thrown on the floor with disassembled frame and crumpled canvas

that might have been a painting, but now is more like a sculptural landscape:

De la Cruz, A. (2003) Clutter. [Oil on canvas]. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/turner-prize-2010/turner-prize-2010-artists-angela-de-la-cruz [Accessed: 1 May 2019]

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Chapter three

Experimenting with mark making in a way that breaks down and takes apart (deconstructs)

the seen and observed world in order to understand better what makes it what it is and

perhaps construct/reconstruct a new version of it is an inspiration in my own drawing

practice.

This idea of exploring new conceptions of space in visual art is an exciting motive to

pursue, playing around with differing forms of picture plane – flat (framed or unframed);

expanded beyond the traditional rectangular, square or oval shape; or pushing into three-

dimensional space that enfolds the viewer.

Frank Stella’s inspiration on my own work is recognising his pictorial inventiveness – one

that “often risks nonsense, or kitsch, even silliness, is exhilarating but also unsettling; it’s

the story of someone marching to his own beat come hell or high water.” (Salle, 2016: 165)

In the same essay, David Salle observed of Stella’s work in the 1970’s and 80’s that he was

“essentially exploding painting, then reconstituting it as an industrial, Space Age product.”

(Salle, 2016: 167)

An article by Benjamin Murphy entitled “Violence & Cornelia Parker” in After Nyne

magazine observes “Ultimately, Cornelia Parker is an artist who does violent acts upon

beautiful objects, or she makes beautiful works from violent objects.”

And in “Crushed, Crumpled, Transformed: the work of Angela de la Cruz” Ruth

Rosengarten posits that “With such processes of violent dismantling, de la Cruz lays bare

the facticity of the materials she uses (wood stretcher of a certain thickness, cotton duck of

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a certain grain and variety, slick oil paint with its rich, turpsy smell and its historical

baggage).”

These three artists inspire me, not particularly for any signs of apparent violence or

aggression in their work, but rather because of the thinking going on behind the acts of

deconstructing, re-interpreting and re-configuring.

Other artists who have inspired and influenced me in my enquiry into drawing include:

• the sampling, mixing and re-contextualising influences of Australian artist Gordon

Bennett’s appropriation art:

• the vibrancy of John Bunker’s mixed media collages:

• Canadian artist and photographer Todd McLellan’s deconstruction art, dissembling

objects and creating intriguing snapshot-in-time images:

Bunker, J. (2014) Ram Raider (Fugitive). [Mixed media collage] Available at: http://www.foldgallery.com/artist/john-bunker/ [Accessed: 24 January 2019]

Bennett, G. (2001) Notes to Basquiat (Jackson Pollock and his other). [Synthetic polymer on canvas] Available at: https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/gordonbennett/education/04.html [Accessed: 21 May 2018]

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• the imaginary, abstract-like and apparently insignificant and desolate aerial

landscapes of Carol Rhodes:

My own experience of investigating drawing in this course has developed to making use of

found objects, man-made and natural materials, from compositions on the flat to more

structural three-dimensional extensions into space.

For my Parallel Project I chose four separate laminate flooring panels as my working space.

They can be re-configured (deconstructed and constructed) to form different surfaces and

spaces. The recto of my drawing surface is a mixed-media aerial view of my house and

grounds, inspired by the environmental interactions in Part 4 of the course:

McLellan, T. (n.d.) from his Things Fall Apart series. Available at: https://www.toddmclellan.com/thingscomeapar [Accessed: 21 May 2018]

Rhodes, C. (1998) Service Station. [Oil on board] Available at: https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/51092/service-station [Accessed: 17 October 2018]

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The verso is a geometric drawing in coloured ink of the shapes of the four panels in

different overlaid patterns:

The two drawings can be displayed standing up or set flat on a surface. The panels can be

connected after sliding them into place by elastic and/or using spring clamps over the joins.

My ‘working space’ for these drawings has been made using found material and is my

formative exploration of “the relations among line, form and shades of meaning”. (Brunette

& Wills (eds.), 1994: 3)

https://vimeo.com/330066078 [1min34sec]

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Conclusion

How the artist deals with visualised story telling on the ‘working space’ is enticing.

According to Frank Stella, an artist ought to have “a spherical sense of spatial containment

and engagement” so that the pictorial space is presented in such a way “as to include both

viewer and maker each with his own space intact”. (Stella, 1986: 9-10)

Cornelia Parker’s sense of the dramatic and Angela de la Cruz’s energetic disregard for the

niceties of a perfect picture plane have inspired me to become bolder. In my artistic

practice, this translates as learning to have a real sense of what is being observed,

examining and interpreting the seeing with the aim of exploring how best to represent in a

pictorial space what it is that captures my imagination, and hopefully that of potential

viewers.

The story starts with an observation, a visualisation, which may gradually formalise into an

idea. This idea needs time to mature. There are times when sketching out visually the

thought process involved is necessary, but not always. Sometimes it is just best to ‘go for it’

(it is after all the maker’s decision to make) and eventually, the idea is robust enough to

begin to put flesh to its manifestation - selection of material, media and application

techniques.

Deconstruction, for my drawing practice, is no dry theory. It is embodied in practical efforts

and actions to re-imagine what is seen and understood by going beyond the traditional

framed picture plane.

[2164 words] 2 May 2019