ARCmedia: Gorky Paper Composite

Some photos from our review.

ARCmedia: Project 2, Line (Digital)

The second component of our reading (and remaking) of the Gorky painting was to make a plan and section of the paper model using only straight lines, in a way that both represents the model, but also expresses its underlying logic or generative process.

My drawings ended up comprising a fairly legible expression of the model, but came together as a result of quite the same process: by first inscribing a grid, establishing nodes, and literally pulling the lines together at those points, thus rendering the deformed surface. I've presented that distorted field over the original datum in both plan and section. I've also tried to document where the manipulated grid seems to disappear, as a secondary expression of that distortion

It was suggested to me at our review to take sections at every gridline (in a given direction) and overlay that information to better capture the surface distortion in section or elevation.

ARCmedia: Project 1 Final Iteration

This is what I presented yesterday for our review in ARCmedia. I think I was able to draw out the effect that I had been aiming for, using the same techniques at different scales to render a more dramatic manipulation of the surface than I had gotten in the previous iteration.



With this version, I was struck by the impact of the datum lines that were established, primarily by the corner condition/edge condition (the frame) and secondarily by the grid, an extension of the defining order of the frame. By offering a datum (or data) against which the eye can compare surface manipulations, that disturbance becomes more clearly articulated. The attention, then, is drawn to where those pleats are made, and the way those moves relate to a reading of the painting. This relationship is particularly interesting, because in this case, the datum itself is disrupted by the pulling and pinching of paper.



The unmanipulated grid. You can see where I've made opposing scores and folds, which allow for the pleats to alternate in direction, the only way the material can accommodate multiple vertical pleats.

Our next task is to draw our paper models, in plan and section with only straight lines. Using line type, weight, density, orientation (etc), we are to use orthographic projection to illustrate conditions in the model (expounding again upon the relationship between making and seeing).

ARCmedia: Project 1 Iteration

For this iteration, I applied a grid with a dual resolution which relates to concentrations of value in the painting, with the resolution higher (pixels smaller) where value is greater/darker.



This seems to work pretty well for how I've chosen to manipulate the sheet. Based on the Gorky's gestural strokes (the secondary action in his process, after stretching the canvas), I've marked out where those lines cross intersections on the regulating grid, where I will place a pleat. This technique produces a textural abstraction of the gesture, but it also manipulates the surrounding field so that the "wash" arises out of the "line."



I'm really pleased with where this is going, but I still need to sort out some details, like the direction of the scoring and folding and how those correspond to the pleats. To a certain extent, which side the scoring is applied determines the direction of the fold. So then there needs to be a decision made about the direction of the pleats, or maybe a decision about a logic that produces a pleat direction.

Also, I'd really like to push this further, making the pleats more dramatic. This seems to be a matter of wrestling with the paper, but I think I need to experiment more with fasteners. I don't seem to be getting much tension out of the sewn pleats, but they do hold better than staples. However, I think these issues might be alleviated once the scoring and folding is adjusted to accommodate more extreme gathers.

The final model is due Tuesday, so I should be able to make these changes in the next iteration.

The Box Fold

More complex than you'd think.

ARCmedia: Project 1 Studies

Trying to find a balance between variability and control.

Where originally I was thinking about some series of actions to produce a model of Gorky's painting (or at least my chosen section), I'm finding that establishing some overall order to the composition is helpful in making that plane more plastic, more prone to more "gestural" manipulation.





What I've done here is fold a conventional grid (in both directions) so that I had a more plastic surface to manipulate. In translating those initial "gestures," I located the control points on those curves, and pleating the paper (in short, vertical pleats) at those points. So, an abstraction of Gorky's original gesture comes out through that texture. Further, the secondary effect of the pleats manipulates the folded surface in a way that his   washes of color fill the spaces between the initial linework. Thus, the next step in the process actually arises out of the first.





Next step: produce a full-scale material iteration based on this model

ARCmedia: Project 1 (Surface)

The introductory exercise in ARCmedia asked students to consider Abstract Expressionism: both the products of this modern “movement” and the criticism thereof, specifically the divergent writing of Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg. The project was presented to us as an exercise situated somewhere between making and seeing, as the two critics have undertaken those modes (as action and abstraction). Taking a section from Arshile Gorky’s One Year the Milkweed, we are to produce a “faithful” reimagining of the painting by cutting, scoring and folding a single 22'' x 30'' sheet of Arches.



In respect to Greenberg, I’d like to prescribe, as he does, the essential limiting conditions of the pictorial: the flatness of the picture plane (the canvas) and the spatial limitations of its supports (the frame). Considering Gorky’s painting as a physical object, upon which this field of gestures and colors is applied (because it is not, in actuality, a purely two-dimensional object: “the first mark made on a canvas destroys its literal and utter flatness”)

In my sculptural replication, I want to emphasize the physical corner of the frame, where my section is taken.  By folding a portion of the Arches sheet under on the bottom and right sides, the whole sheet becomes elevated from that corner, a flat plane projected from its supports. This way, I can work into the space behind the “canvas,” destroying its flatness in both directions.



Given Rosenberg’s somewhat contrary writing on the “movement” of abstract expressionist painting, particularly of Jackson Pollock, I wanted to consider the gesture, and its product, the brushstroke. Gorky had a way of working, similar to Masson, in which he made a series of gestural drawings (in black), and then washed them with fields of color. In manipulating my paper, I want to first “render” these marks, so that what was preliminary for Gorky will also comprise my initial actions.



From there I’d like to translate his washes as secondary fields of texture, concentrating and diffusing textural strategies where there is more and less value, respectively.



As a final action, I will reduce the work I’ve produced by cutting vertical openings, as Gorky’s drips (of turpentine? water?) to undo his own marks. In all, this approach is grounded in a replication of process: from stretching the canvas, marking it, illuminating it, and then reducing that work.



I realize, in making such a piece, I negate both the essential flatness of the pictorial, according to Greenberg, and also the singularity of the act of painting, as described by Rosenberg. However, through this exercise, those ideals and the modes of art as both/either optical vocation and/or experience might become entwined, thus elucidating some clearer understanding of abstraction and expression, process and outcome.

Dewey writes in his seminal Art as Experience about this collapsing of perception and gesture, on behalf of the artist: “Because perception of relationship between what is done and what is undergone constitutes the work of intelligence, and because the artist is controlled in the process of his work by his grasp of the connection between what he has already done and what he is to do next, the idea that the artist does not think as intently and penetratingly as a scientific inquirer is absurd.” And further: “A painter must consciously undergo the effect of his every brush stroke or he will not be aware of what he is doing and where his work is going. Moreover, he has to see each particular connection of doing and undergoing in relation to the whole that he desires to produce.”

This brings to mind the process of painter Franz Kline, in which he extended this perception/action mode of painting by first creating a small gesture (act), projecting it onto a large scale format and tracing (perceive/plan), and filling in his line work with broader, gestural strokes (act).



Here are some of the things I'm considering while developing this project:

• How to program this sequence into a single plan, to be marked out on a full sheet of paper.
• Establish a (varied?) gridded field (an extension of the limitations of the frame), which might be manipulated more or less “organically”
• Go through the discussed sequence as a first past, and determine where cuts need to be made beforehand in the next edition.
• How to allow for mutations of the surface and unexpected bends or folds.
• How to reconcile the organic and the planned.
• How to maintain a balance between abstraction and replication.