REFERENCE: FUNCTIONS, FIELD AND NOISE - ENGLISH
FUNCTIONS,
FIELDS AND NOISE
First
published in CIRCO M.R.T.Coop (Madrid), 2004.
When I paint:
I look at my canvas and I
space it out right. I think, “Well, over here in this corner it looks like it
sort of belongs,” and so I say, “Oh yes, that’s where it belongs, all right.”
So I look at it again and I say, “The space in that corner there needs a little
blue,” and so I put my blue up there and then, then I look over there and it
looks blue over there so I take my brush and I move it over there and I make it
blue over there, too. And then it needs to be more spaced, so I take my little
blue brush and I blue it over there, and then I take my green brush and I put
my green brush on it and I green it there, and then I walk back and I look at
it and see if it’s spaced right. And then –sometimes it’s not spaced right– I
take my colors and I put another little green over there and then if it’s
spaced right I leave it alone. (1)
Warhol
lies, as usual, yet, as usual, there is a reason behind his lies. It is the
desire for everything to be light, harmless. However, decisions have to be made
–terrifying ones– and he is aware of it. The hand is the feared monster that
drags into a territory that is too close, sanguine. The hand is the doodle, the
arabesque,(2) the unconscious in
direct contact with the paper, barely passing through conscience. It is the
eroticism of the pencil brushing the white surface, our telephone drawings, the
expressive, neurotic, inevitable gesture
that is unique to each individual, to each culture. The hand makes art and life
become the same thing,(3) calligraphy(4) and ornament, both expression and what
is expressed at once, the graffiti. (5)
It is the show, the celebration of the creative moment, the performance if
there is an audience; the artistic instant is created at the very moment of its
conception. The tape recorder on the table makes everyone behave differently;
the performance has begun but without a script because the script is written by
everyone simultaneously. There is no longer a difference between theory and
practice, since theory and action are the same thing: “when we think, we act”
and “when we act, we think”. The huge canvas and the magnificent open space of
the loft are one.(6) Having the limits between life and art been dissolved, the
only thing that remains is the fact. (7)
Author, topic, message… all vanish when the fact is perceived, autonomous, the
message being the fact itself. (8) A kind of positivism where all that matters
is what already exists, without time/place to summon anything else. We react to
what is there; we do not own what pre-existed, as it was there before us; we
collide against a premise. The problem is not that of a white surface since it
never was empty but rather crossed by infinite vectors. The problem is the
opposite. (9) Its complexity has increased and now the hand, on its own, is
useless.
The
contrary to the hand is distance. The less it belongs to us, the less of a
problem, and, fortunately, there are many distancing methods. Multiplication,
for instance, makes the painter facing a series be further away from the object-painting. (10) Moreover, as the
object is multiplied with slight variations, its representation is finally
replaced with a mental image of the object itself. (11) Abstraction is also a
form of disappearance, by replacing formal material with its content, or its
vehicle;(12) facts that eventually become tangible but whose final intention/result
is not such plasticity. (13) Abstraction
makes it possible to conceive the object not as an object but as the temporary
synthesis of a cyclical dialogue between matters and shapes. As some
contemporary sculptors believe, ideas are reformulated from shapes, and
vice-versa, in a process that is a continuum. (14) For some architects, the
process is similar. They translate the determinants into shapes and, as shapes,
make them find their place at last. (15) If a drawing is an action in time, it
must have a speed associated to it. Attacking with several speeds
simultaneously is another form of distance. The expressive dynamic may be
depersonalized by a drawing that is exhibited stolidly yet stands out by
chance, by some dose of actionism. (16) Slowness versus accurate
speed,(17) rhythms that complement each other because the former displays
without getting stained while the latter hesitates and makes mistakes, coming
full circle and starting again. (18)
This
combination of approaches provides clues. What initially came up as a way of
avoiding closeness is also project material since creating shapes is as much as
creating the procedures that produce said shapes. (19) It is possible to face a
canvas of endless dimensions if one’s pockets are stuffed with a catalogue of
precooked stylistic figures, or a painting
section. (20) To develop a system of rules does not imply postponing
indefinitely the making of decisions regarding the shape. Quite the opposite:
it means intertwining them with each of those steps towards shaping. Success
lies on the fact that the steps taken, always subjective, are minor ones, hence
more controlled and perhaps less in a void. The documents resulting from any
process could be understood to be not linearly concatenated, as if following a
path to achieve a goal. On the contrary, they are arranged in space forming a
complex function. (21) A mind map. Isolated meanings are now far less
interesting than the framework of relationships between units. Drafting the
argument turns out to be more equivocal than a cartography of relationships
between elements. (22) Contents vanish, or are less visible, in favor of their
bonds because said contents are, furthermore, in motion and feeding each other
back.
In
painting, complex functions are effective. If the same graphic rules are
applied across the entire surface of the canvas, systematic patterns can be
obtained, their shaping resulting in endless particular cases of one same
matrix. (23) Likewise, in architecture, the procedure creates documents that
can later be understood exclusively in graphic terms. Conflict detection, gap
record, possible exits… everything can undertake a graphic mode provided that
the tool is sufficiently operational. If appropriately translated, reality may
be expressed in conventional architectural terms, amongst others. The most
figurative aspect of geometry is momentarily replaced with a much more abstract
world, less predictable. The world of the graphic game,(24) whose rules are the
project itself. Thus it is possible to interact simultaneously at different
levels and moments, making the diagram(25)
the ideal graphic resource given that the complex function –the project– is in
motion.
Regardless
of the elements to be combined, we can always reduce them to discrete color
elements in painting. Pixels or brushstrokes,(26) the element resulting from
discretizing the painted reality has a scale and, consequently, a degree of
abstraction, yet also a “shape”, though limited. Regardless of the surface, we
can always re-describe it as a field, subject to one or more parameters of color/texture/shine…
But, what if functional elements are intended to be elements of one’s own
reality rather than units of representation? In this case, the problem of
re-description is still the same but, of course, of a reality made up of
heterogeneous elements,(27) a series of non-subordinate systems. (28) However,
map overlays(29) require that information be assimilated rather than only
accumulated. Doesn’t the fragmentation of reality need to be subsequently
re-integrated? (30)
Not
necessarily. The effort that synthetic cubism(31) once made to fuse together
the parts, the framings, the moments, thanks to the ruse of phenomenal
transparency, becomes less necessary from the moment that not only said
materialization is one of the infinite possible, but also because the number of
layers has become exponential. Even if the encounter between elements is
solved, the perception of this synthesis is still ambiguous. (32) In other
words, the system of overlapping fields, that could eventually be understood,
may be operational but too conclusive. Hence, the shape of a changing solution
is sought.
Juxtaposition.
The legacy of the computer is the assembly framework that makes it possible to
combine various layers without giving preference to some over others. (33) In painting,
levels as different as the free-hand expressive and the mechanical expressive
can coexist with functioning strata,(34) or their omnipresent meanings. (35) In
construction, it is needless to name the number of levels from which the
building is described. The instantaneous resolution/non-resolution is a
function of time; the apparent lack of coordination may remain unsolved unless
it returns to the level of reality, a reality of vibrant units, where there are
no longer conditions that guarantee permanent equilibrium but that are rather
designed to live in instability. This might be the mode of noises. (36)
NOTES.
1.
Warhol, A. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again).
New York: Harvest Books, 1975, p. 149.
2.
According to Juan Navarro “we like to rediscover the touch of the hand in
everything that is created…”
3.
In the so-called “action painting” and abstract expressionism, the
“production moment” is, at the same time, a vital moment of maximum intensity,
whereby the work of art receives, inevitably, all the emotional burden of the
hand that, in other cases, is diluted.
4.
The “cross-outs”, “underlines” and “ticks” in Cy Twombly are, as such, the
trace of the thought at the very moment it is being painted.
5.
In J.M. Basquiat, the work of art, placed in a new context, consolidates a form
of expression whose origin lies in artistic “graffiti”. For Basquiat, painting
the eye of a face is equivalent to the caricature of the eye or the word “eye”
on the face itself.
6.
The freedom of action allowed by the loft –in words of I. Ábalos “the large
number of deprogrammed cubic meters”– equals that of the large canvas that is
painted there.
7.
In J. Johns, painting is beyond the message or the idea: “a message is what we
cannot avoid saying, not what we had intended to say…”
8.
According to T. Osterwold: “…the term pop art could be replaced with factualists…”
9.
In A. Siza, for instance, the paper is always full, and in it “an incomplete
series of overlays” […] “entwine”, as written by W. Curtis.
10.
The reaction before the first of a series of three, painted at the same time,
is obtained from a more distanced position, since the mind has gone blank for a
moment after the vision of the previous painting.
11.
The best example of series as evidence that things “are only approximately
themselves” (José Ortega y Gasset) can be found in Warhol.
12.
It is Juan Navarro’s sound board.
13.
May this description be taken as a definition of “conceptual art” where
technique eventually ceases to be the protagonist since author and spectator no
longer face each other at the very moment of maximum visibility.
14.
In J. Beuys, sculpture begins with the <molding> of the idea, that is,
using its physical “ties” to turn the problem into a problem of the sculpture
itself, and reformulate the ideas from its different shapes.
15.
Thus, we understand many of E. Miralles’ materialization processes where
problems are rapidly expressed in terms of shape in order to establish a
dialogue, already from the shape.
16.
In Rauschenberg, the previous layout of photomontages, like a pre-collage on
the canvas, is the necessary premise for the subsequent action to make sense.
17.
E. Guigon has written the following about Saura: “…to reach the slowness longed
for and the accurate speed […] the vertigo and the convalescence of the good
choice…”
18.
This is the case of Saura whose <attack> mode could be understood as an
unknown number of iterations: shade, structure, development of the structure,
…and shade. Alfonso Fraile, in whose work we can also identify two speeds,
calls the high speed <punishments>.
19.
Duchamp paves the way for “thinking” the experiment before its <shaping>.
20.
We could create a typical painting section in Saura or Pollock. The procedure
serves as a stretcher for the “free” brushstroke.
21.
This function will have reached the expected complexity insofar as it will have
become a process that is more or less chaotic, in other words, a process that
will finally reach autonomy with respect to its initial conditions.
22.
Here lies the contradiction: the original document prior to this text is a map
of relationships between reasonings/examples that allows as many layouts as one
may attempt, yet its materialization needs to be linear.
23.
From a technical point of view, this way of behaving has always existed.
However, only recently have we found evidence of this conscious procedure in
painting, in some aspects of L. Gordillo’s work and, later, in J. Uslé.
24.
A game is defined by the behavioural rules of functional elements or the
<buttons> that integrate it. In painting, we have recently witnessed the
emergence of works of art that have this visual intervention of the spectator
and, with this aim, the painting is full of elements that he can use.
25.
As written by F. Soriano, the diagram is the minimum of all the possible
graphic elements.
26.
Goya’s “Half-sunken dog” is a first example where the object starts to dissolve
in brushstrokes that will finally make him disappear. What matters is that the
painted sky is made up of the same basic action units as the object-dog, with
slight variations. The dog-brushstrokes are brushed just like the
context-brushstrokes.
27.
Over the last decade, there are countless examples in painting that illustrate
Foucault’s heterotopy, where we can find, all at the same time, heterogeneities
in the texture, the scale, the degree of abstraction: A. Lacalle, F. Koons…
28.
Like in Semper’s woven wall, there is a coordination/non-subordination between
the different threads of the constructed reality.
29.
The map that re-describes a complex reality will require a synthesis parameter
of many others, or the overlapping of various simple maps.
30.
We can interpret reality as a sum of partial interpretations on the basis of
conventional parameters (temperature, distance, strength…) or on the basis of
invented empirical parameters (intimacy, transparency, uncertainty…).
31.
In Le Corbusier’s best picturesque composition, we find resolved the
encounter of elements belonging to the two worlds “academicism” and
“picturesque” or, in words of G. Deleuze, “striated” space and “smooth” space.
32.
The dalliance, the close-up, the pause, the framing, the detail, the search of
a color over another…, make the perception of the painting something unique.
33.
Since Pop art, it is easy to assimilate that different styles can reach
equivalent values in one same painting. Rauschenberg, for instance, mixes black
and white serigraphy with the brushstroke of abstract expressionism.
34.
Icons, call-outs, buttons,…, there is an entire iconography associated to the
world of information technologies that is related to all that is “user
friendly”.
35.
Things always mean something…, in Jasper Johns there is a deliberate ambiguity
which highlights the almost compulsory coexistence of the plastic fact and its
meaning.
36. In L. Gordillo, dissonant elements
travel together without a solution of continuity. Finally, the layers can be
juxtaposed instead of superimposed.