Experiment #6 . Body @ Measurement

Relative measurement of My Little Pony

DaVinci's Vitruvian Man 1490

Hindu measurement for sculptural symmetrical forms of gods

Russian Icon make use of very specific measurement that symmetrically repeats throughout compositions. This provides not only symbolic meaning, 

but uniformity and balance overall

Experiment #6 : 
Body as Measurement

Drawings that make use of one's physicality as a way of perceiving and framing the world

Our experiences with the world take on meaning because of the way our bodies experience the world. Our experiences become the material out of which we make art.

Measure some aspect of your body.
Use that quantity and method of quantifying your body as inspirational motivation for a drawing.

The relationship between concept and form and use of materials should be reflective in your drawing solution. 

Tony Craigg profile drawing

Carolee Schneemann, Up To and Including Her Limits—Blue, 1973

Question: Did you develop a way to effectively/successfully materialize (make physical and visual) your particular measure of your body? Is the relationship between the “thing” you made and your concept (the way you measured your body) effective? 

Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman ALCHETRON

Bruce Nauman From Mouth to Hand 1967

Kiki Smith . contemporary artist

Janine Antoni - negative body image

PART A:

Find three different works of art (2D, 3D, video) that use body measurement as a way of drawing the final form
The "measurement" may be of the artist's own body, or someone else's
The 3 artists must be 2 contemporary, 1 prior of the 20th century
Place the images with full details in your sketch book
Prepare a short introduction of the works to the class explaining i) the idea of body measurement as motivation to establish concept and ii) how effective the concept is embedded into the visual outcome

PART B:

Draw the contour of your body onto Kraft paper

Measure it - inches or metric

Select the one area you wish to focus on as the motivation for Experiment #6

PART C:

Your final experiment uses one measurement as the device / tool / line length / unit to complete your drawing

Media is open and can be 2D - 3D - 4D (no audio alone)

The self is insistent. 

Remember your measurement need not be what you think of as physical. An interesting measurement would be the trace that you leave behind in a given space, or how wide does your mouth open? How long does your tongue stretch?

Or, the distance of Janine Antoni's eyelashes opening and closing, as in Butterfly Kisses above.

Use that quantity and method of quantifying your body as inspirational motivation for a drawing.

Your work should effectively exhibit the measurement in the finished drawing.

The relationship between concept and form and use of materials should be reflective in your drawing solution. 

Question: 

i. Did you develop a way to effectively/successfully materialize by making physical/visual your particular measure of your body? 

ii. Is the relationship between the “thing” you made and your concept (the way you measured your body) effective? 

iii. Make sure you make thorough notations of how you feel the work is operating for your audience.

iv. Take effective notes of how your work was perceived by your audience.

v. Write a six paragraph project statement from the information you gleaned from critique about your work. Hand in the day following the critique.

vi. Create a PPT that shows both the image sketches of your experiment, your textual notes, the outside artist you researched and how their work effectively serves as inspiration to yours

NOTE:: Both your PPT and hardcopy of your Project Statement is due the day following the class critique.

STUDENT WORK

Measurement of 2" repeated, the length of the student's ear

Experiment #1 . Article on Drawing + Drawing on an Article

Experiment #1 : On Drawing : An article on drawing promotes drawing on an article

Read the article on Richard Long's drawings and what they can be

Read Sol LeWitt's Sentences on Conceptual Art

Definition of drawing  = 

“The making of marks with meaning” . Robert Kaupelis, renowned drawing professor at NYU 
OR:
a mark-making process used to produce a line - based composition on a ground.
Examples:
1. In figure drawing Jennifer made charcoal drawings on paper. The mark- making medium was vine charcoal; her ground, also known as the substrate, was white drawing paper.

2. In Richard Long’s drawing above, made as he walked for 11 days between the west and east coasts of England, his mark-making medium was his body and the ground on which he drew (left a record of his movement and observed/selected found marks) was the earth. 

EXPERIMENT RULES

Part 1: Read the article from The Guardian on Richard Long

Richard Long > The Guardian and the TATE

Richard Long Walking a Line in Peru 1972

Part 2: Write a one page essay about what drawing is for you and what it can be. 

Richard Long Five Stones

Part 3: In this next step of the project you are to use the article as the ground for a drawing that is inspired by the article. 

• Scan, photocopy,  photograph the article > create some sort of physical artifact of the article.
•        You must use the whole physical article by what ever reproductive means you choose. 
•  The article does not have to remain in tact. 
• You can use any media you choose. 
• You can use mechanical and reproductive means. 
• Completed work may be any size. 
• You should come prepared to “install” your drawing so that it is well presented prior to critique.

Richard Long drawing

On Drawing critique day

   Warhol Diamond Dust Shoes 1980 serigraph

Ideas generating concepts from the TATE article for your own drawings 

1.

He walked back and forth, until the flattened grass caught the light such that it was "visible as a line". Then he photographed the line in black and white, and went home.

2.

A creature's "foil" is the track it leaves on grass or other surfaces, such as shale, snow, sand, forest floor. From the late 1960s onwards, Long experimented with foil works.

3.

The audacity of Long's early work lay in freeing sculpture from the constraints of scale. 

4.

Long's other innovation was to make his work not only in the landscape, but of the landscape. Not land art, exactly - he's always resisted that label (as he has resisted any associations with the romantic walking tradition of Rousseau, Wordsworth, Thoreau).

5.

Long's legs are his stylus, his feet the nib with which he inscribes his traces on the world. Walking becomes an act of inscription, and his work is a reminder that our verb "to write" originally referred to a kind of incisive track-making.

6.

We don't intuitively imagine the foot to be an expressive or perceptive body part. It feels more of a prosthesis, there to carry us about, rather than to interpret or organise the world for us. 

7.

Long's feet see the world for him. But they also, less conceptually, bear him and launch him.

8.

"My work has become a simple metaphor for life. A figure walking down his road, making his mark. I am content with the vocabulary of universal and common means; walking, placing, stones, sticks, water, circles, lines, days, nights, roads."

9.

Samuel Beckett - who, like Long, found much to meditate on and much to laugh at in the act of walking; and who, like Long, loved country lanes and bicycles, pebbles and circles - once observed that it is impossible to walk in a straight line, because of the curvature of the earth. There's a great deal of Long in that remark. 

SA 302. STUDENT remarks:

"When thinking about drawing, I immediately think about art as a whole; the different mediums and techniques. I have always connected with the emotion and the paper, with the people I have met, with my teachers, and I finally was able to connect with myself...Drawing has become something more to me than just lines on paper...it connects me to what is important to me in my life.  By drawing, learning, and creating it did save me in a way. So not only is drawing a connection of lines to create a bigger picture, it's a connection of lines in people's lives that link us together.  What drawing means to me is life; whether it's the life of an art work, or the life of the artist."

"To me drawing is a form or expression, just as most forms of art are perceived. Drawing specifically can be anything if your imagination is flexible enough. Sol LeWitt once expressed “conceptual artist are mystics rather than rationalists.” I believe this shows the artist's ability to grasp ideas deep within a creative mind or ideal to create a piece that challenges that of conventional art. 

Joseph Beuys once said “thinking is sculpture” and this means a lot when expressing your mark because it creates a sense of freedom where there are no wrong answers, and creative expression can take place. Similarly “formal art is essentially rational” says Sol LeWitt. This can also mean that in understanding drawing that anything can take place and to embrace more nontraditional art forms and to take irrational risks."

"What is Drawing?

According to Webster's dictionary, drawing is defined as “the art or technique of representing an object or outlining a figure, plan, or sketch by means of lines”. This of course is usually the first thing many people think of when it comes to drawing, I was and still am one of them. Yet, after really contemplating the word drawing and looking through various definitions, I’ve come to find that it's meaning isn’t art specific, it engulfs a lot of different positions. Drawing isn’t just about the line one puts on the paper, it’s about what you take from that line. 

Sol LeWitt once said, “When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who could be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations”. I think the same thing goes for the word drawing, drawing has always been seen as this one method used in the making of art and that’s not all it entails.  Another definition of drawing is to take something from something else, “I am drawing a bucket of water from the well." So, I have come to the conclusion that its more significant what one gets out of a piece of artwork, than what they can do to it. What if someone was to hang a piece of blank white paper on a wall in a gallery and call it a work of art, now the artist of course did not physically draw anything on this piece of paper, but that doesn't mean that nothing can be drawn from it. A lot of people may look at this piece of paper and see nothing, but others would look and draw many things from it. 

Sol LeWitt also said, “Perception is subjective," and I think especially regarding this example, that really is true. Everyone draws differently, some understand and can take away more meanings than others. A blank piece of white paper may not be a drawing in of itself, but it definitely allows for the act of drawing to take place."

Student works

Experiment #5 . Exquisite Corpse Round Robin

Experiment #5

Exquisite corpse, also known as exquisite cadaver (from the original French term cadavre exquis) or rotating corpse, is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. 

Mixed media collages that are informed by Dadaist principles of chance and randomness, and the power of 'Fortune'

Dry point etchings from the Exquisite Corpse prints. Collection - TATE Collection, London

Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g. "The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun", as in "The green duck sweetly sang the dreadful dirge") 

Or by being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed.

The name is derived from a phrase that resulted when Surrealists first played the game, "Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau." ("The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine.") 

André Breton writes that the game developed at the residence of friends in an old house at 54 rue du Chateau (no longer existing).

Exquisite Corpse video

In the beginning were Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Prevert, Benjamin Peret, Pierre Reverdy and Andre Breton.  Others include Max Morise, Joan Miro, Man Ray, Simone Collinet, Tristan Tzara, Georges Hugnet, Rene Char.  Even Henry Miller often partook of the game to pass time in French cafés during the 1930s.

Source: org/?title=Exquisite_corpse

PART A

1. Found parts generated drawings
2. Cut out a number of images from found forms
3. Snip them apart
4. Choose 7 parts
5. Glue 6 into sketchbook 
6. With the 7th put onto postcard substrate
7. Use each as the bases for an Exquisite Corpse drawing (medium = open) scale ( 5" x 7")
8. Mail the 7th to 

Professor Jen Pepper

Cazenovia College

22 Sullivan Street

Cazenovia NY 13035

(I will provide you with a stamp for your Mail Art work)

Joseph Cornell (1903 - 1972 US)

Joseph Cornell was an American artist and sculptor, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage. Influenced by the Surrealists, he was also an avant-garde experimental filmmaker.

assemblages

Joseph Cornell, the artist

Joseph Cornell : Worlds in a Box by Mark Stokes 43:00

Jane Hammond

Jane Hammond

Project Guidelines

1. Make 5 exquisite corpse drawings from found collage material - think about composition onto the negative substrate

2. MAIL ART exhibition:

Make 1 exquisite corpse collage on supplied postcard and send to me at my campus box # (with message and first name only)

3. Fold a piece of paper into 4 equal horizontal parts. In collaborative groups of four, complete an exquisite corpse collage 

4. Collaborative class media project

provided 6' x 4' canvas

Cut out "figures" from #3 and arrange on provided canvas and draw -- let your imaginations run wild!

Student Work