Photography’s Everyday Life and the Ends of Abstraction

Art critic and scholar Lane Relyea’s essay, Photography’s Everyday Life and the Ends of Abstraction talks about the German artist and photographer Wolfgang Tillmans’s abstractions.

My initial response was to ask what kind of abstraction is this, and then to wonder is it a new form of abstraction, or abstraction using different materials? Clement Greenberg discussed abstraction with formalist concerns, and was interested in converting illusionistic space into an optical one. Greenberg thought abstraction was connected to what had gone before and thus wasn’t a major shift in opposition to the representational, but rather on a continuum.

‘the difference was primarily a matter of space rather than the absence of recognizable images, since abstract paintings do not depict the kind of space occupied by our bodies and other things in the world’

(Colpitt p.164)

So could Greenberg accept recognisable space, as long as it was flat? Looking at Tillmans’s abstractions they do depict the same space as our bodies occupy, so maybe then they are aligned more with Theodore Adorno’s theories of social abstraction, who questioned the loss of individuality through mainstream culture

‘the official culture’s pretense of individualism... necessarily increases in proportion to the liquidation of the individual.’

(Foster p. 19)

I think Tillmans’s abstractions are long shot views and thus give the distance and feel of abstraction, they remain open allowing them to bring something forward, the opportunity and possibility to recognise and access them is available to the viewer.

Bibliography
Colpitt, Frances. Abstract Art in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Foster, Hal. Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics. Seattle, Washington: Bay Press, 1985.
Relyea, Lane. "Photography's Everyday Life and the Ends of Abstraction." Wolfgang Tillmans. Ed. Amy Teschner and Kamilah Foreman. Conneticut, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. p. 90 - 141.

Unimaginable Happenings: Material Movements in the Plane of Composition

This essay is from the book Deleuze and Contemporary Art which looks at Deleuzian philosophy through the eyes of artists, art critics and theorists, this particular essay is by Barbara Bolt, an Australian artist and author.

The essay (broken into three parts) looks at the Deleuzian idea of a plane of composition and what that means (for Bolt). Then how the plane of materiality invades the plane of composition, which leads into how an image emerges into a different reality, that of sensation. Bolt believes that this produces something more true to life, that by undoing ‘the image’ you come upon something closer to presence and truth.

I chose this particular essay as an attempt to understand Deleuzian ideas at a more grass roots level and in particular from a painter’s point of view. I think this both helped and hindered my understanding of Deleuze. In particular, what I think is useful is the notion of co- emergence and how this is beautifully described by another artists quote within the text from Matisse;

‘There is an impelling proportion of tones that may lead me to change the shape of a figure or to transform my composition. Until I have achieved this proportion in all the parts of a composition I strive towards it and keep on working. Then a moment comes when all the parts have found their definite relationships, and from then on it would be impossible for me to add a stroke to my picture without having to repaint it entirely.’

Although Bolt is using this passage to show the artist throwing a net over chaos to find balance, it also talks of the process of emergence and helps describe the openness of working, while not knowing what the outcome will be until it is arrived upon and simultaneously risking destruction. Roland Barthes talks about this idea in relation to Cy Twombly’s work;

‘The essence of an object has some relation with its destruction: not necessarily what remains after it has been used up, but what is thrown away as being of no use.’

I think Twombly (like Bolt) tries to show materials in their raw state, as materials alone without the weight of meaning associated with them, the elements being, the scratch, the stain and the energy being thrown into space. The ‘surplus’ of these elements emerges into something just revealing itself, forming into a particular quality unique to that particular set of circumstances. This quality and unique internal rationale is for me why some paintings seem alive and interesting.

Bibliography

Barthes, Roland. The Responsibility of Forms. Trans. Richard Howell. London, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1986.
Bolt, Barbara. Unimaginable Happenings: Material Movements in the Plane of Composition. Bolt, Barbara. Deluze and Contemporary Art. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010. p. 266 - 285.

Vibrant Matter; a Political Ecology of Things

Jane Bennett is professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at John Hopkins University.

This article from the book Vibrant Matter; a Political Ecology of Things implores us to consider our relationship to our surroundings, and in particular, the matter and stuff that surrounds us. Bennett tries to dislodge the binaries of organic/inorganic, human/animal and life/matter and questions these oppositions and replaces them with the idea that what we have previously considered inert stuff to be in fact as Bruno latour would call ‘co actants’ in the world. That humans and matter are all elements in the world, all with innumerable possibilities, readings and encounters.

Bennett’s idea isn’t new in that Marcel Merleau-Ponty believed:

‘My body is made of the same flesh as the world...and moreover...this flesh of my body is shared by the world.’

Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology charted the element of being in the world of embodied experience, which Bennett also is doing in order for us to see our surroundings in a new way. Bennett’s aim is to draw our attention to sustainability and the environment.

I am interested in this slowing down of vision and experience to the point of ‘being present’ or being in the ‘now’. I think our body, through movement and experience, gives us a grip on such things as nature, survival, seasons and time.

Bibliography
Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter; a Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press, 2010.
Levin, David Michael. The Body's Recollection of Being: Phenomenological Psychology an the Deconstruction of Nihilism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.