Ever since I saw that Joc painted a black rectangle (with the heat sensitive paint) onto a card I could not stop thinking about Malevic, especially his 'black square' and also 'white on white'.
http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/04/b2003/hm4_1_30.html
The black square is seen as one of the most radical pieces of work ever made by an artist. Produced 1915, two years before the russian revolution, it abandoned all figurative painting and reduced everything to form. Art in Russia played a key role in its revolution, it was not a way of documenting but should inspire of what should come. Kandisnsky abandoned figurative painting and became the first abstract painter ever. Malevich reduced everything to be found into a black square, it was almost unthinkable at that stage. His paintings became conceptual because he wanted to step away from materiality. Even though they are conceptual it strikes me how much feeling and intuition is behind them.
Whenever he had an important exhibition or was trying to do something new he would return to paint a black square. To me this relates to the echo that John James talks about in the interview. The repetition trigers echoes. The world is connected by dreams, I read in a book. To me there is also connection between echoes and dreams. The echoes and repetition trigger ideas and dreams of what is to come.
Katka was interviewing a slovakian artist, Vladimir Havrila about Malevich and I thought it was quite interesting. The translation is not great as I did most in google but I think yoll get the gist.
KM: Avant-garde artists who directly talk about are those who were clearly defined in the style was very formal anchor. But what about those who worked or intuitive art slide towards greater sensitization such as Malevich? How can you deal with things between heaven and earth? It is art for you something more than a game?
VH: As a kid I enjoyed playing in the sand. I took a bucket, filled with sand and I pricapil him to the ground. Then just enough to pick up a bucket in front of me was an amazing building. It was a pleasure! Do nothing and make money. I would like to make a few more times and I believe that I do not succeed this year in the playground. Even the Malevičova White on white, and it Filková white on white is something like a bucket. When you put the white on white, immediately between heaven and earth. I encourage everyone to try. And do not just practice yoga.
I like this explanation of white on white. By painting white on white you find yourself in a state between heaven and earth. Malevic was also influenced by cosmos. He was also a big fan of collaboration, which is hardly surprising in the political time he lived in. He often made triptychs, apparently in russia triptychs are a symbol for collaboration (maybe a nice thing for us to know).
Recently we have always been doing everything together, even using the paintbrush together.
Perhaps a different concept or approach can also lead us to keep our individuality whilst putting together something that becomes one, outside of ourselves. This is not possible in performance because you are either together or not. But the objects and sculptures that one makes can gain a life of one's own, or live beyond us. And I miss that aspect in our work sometimes.
Here is also a link to a great documentary about Russia, it's art and how it became what it is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch_yJYola90&feature=related
Listening back to the ICA conversation it seems to me it hides a message, it asks for a response, a double echo. Our very private debate which we had started on the blog finally left us and became public dialogue. It is this constant echo that travels back and forth and leaves traces. The speakers have given us other thoughts and now we need to echo them. We are also in between stages, in a gap, a black square.
I remember Joc being so fascinated by that film about magic, the illusionst or the prestige., I think it may have been both. This idea a magician devoting his whole life to one magic trick. And eventually that trick being passed down a generation, there is something quite beautiful in that. I see this a bit in artists too and their major artwork, and one could make up a theory that artworks are a form of magic passed down generations whilst being transformed in the process, which comes back to the echo too.
Malevic was influenced by Cezanne. What was Cezannes obsession with the gap would become Malevic's black square, could become Cage's silence etc. This made me look at the history of black painting or artists using black, there does seem to be a connection. Even to the theme of choice and the unknown. Look at Goyas blac paintings, 'portraying intense, haunting themes, reflective of both his fear of insanity and by then, his bleak outlook on humanity' . Interestingly they were produced with the intention never to be shown in public, black paintings kept in their own shadows.
Goya's black paintings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_paintings
More artists which used black: Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Frank Stella, Ad Rheinhardt.
Interesting about Franz Kline:
For most of Kline's [mature and representative] work, however, as the phrase goes, "spontaneity is practiced". He would prepare many draft sketches – notably, commonly on refuse telephone book pages – before going to make his "spontaneous" work.
I thought this method of 'spontaneous' work is relevant to us.
The invisible exhibition at the Hayward was also interesting because it was all about the themes of the absent. I didn't think too much of it as an exhibition because it was almost trying to simplify and throw together all the different works around this theme, somehow it doesn't work. But it was a porthole to artists who have touched on similar subjects as we are doing. As serious as all the concepts were, there was also a lightness to the exhibition, humour, perhaps that is the one thing I did enjoy about seeing it.
And something that is good to keep in mind I think, humour and the search for magic are survival mechanisms.
These are all random thoughts but I think they all relate somehow, especially to the echo but also to the question of the self, what it is, and how the ideas behind it are passed down in different periods of time, reoccurring, alternating and changing at the same time.
