Hepworth and the 'primal'

Using primitive or platonic shapes

There was a program about Barbara Hepworth on television last week (The Culture Show on BBC), and I have been thinking about it since. It included some black and white footage of Hepworth at work, and audio of Hepworth speaking about herself, her practice, and art in general. I did not see the full show as I had to go out on a previously engaged bike ride. Unfortunately I can not find the show online, but here is another interview by Hepworth:

Perhaps it was a fair sacrifice--giving up the TV program for riding the bike in fresh air--one Hepworth might make herself, considering she was interested in the nature and landscape. She also used a word akin to  primitive, primary, primordial, primal, or eternal on the show. I can't be sure which word it was anymore... I am thinking about the primary shapes myself: the circle, triangle, square. I do like them. Plus I find it amazing just how many painters and draftsmen/women are turning to the primitives as a subject. I enjoy their work as well. But a bee buzzes somewhere...

The question of existence,
The question of existence as an artist,
The question of existence of an artwork made by the artist,

Is there an eternal, spiritual, primal, abstract, concentrated answer to these questions? One can 'feel' these questions, and proceed to 'think' of them. To feel their answer in a primary form, a platonic form, a form smoothened or neutralized... I am not sure... Can it be so neutral/ clarified? It isn't the actual form giving that I am uncertain about, it is the clarified form.

John Berger has a lovely essay on Brancusi and his forms in the book 'The Shape of a Pocket' [121-7]. In describing a blind person's reactions when holding Brancusi's 'Sculpture for the Blind,' Berger imagines them asking, "Is this thing I'm holding a container or a core?" Berger says that when carving Brancusi "wanted to go back, eliminating all imperfections, all wear and tear, to the growing point of the first Creation, to the pure idea as it takes on form. Platonic once more." Berger feels when the sculptor succeeded when he created a core. But Berger brings up the question that Brancusi might himself have felt, i.e. how long can one keep pursuing the platonic?

Constantin Brancusi Sculpture for the Blind
ca. 1920 Veined Marble

Hepworth's interviews brought up the word 'primal.' And that brings up for me the search for meaning... it troubles me, or perhaps it calls me... It calls me because I know that question. It troubles me because firstly because the word 'primitive' etc seems to have a colonial ring to it. And also I am realizing that a platonic shape can not exist in reality, it may only seem to exist in representation. And as no perfection is possible... 'perfection' of form is imperfect. [Imperfection as texture or pattern... that is an interesting idea.] Maybe I feel that tool marks on an imagined platonic form are a ruse, not a testimony to a human spirit that is reaching towards that which is perfect. The form really must be imperfect, more unique. Of course it all depends on the point of view, and what carries an urgency on a person to person, situation to situation basis. I need to see and read a bit more about Hepworth to see what she was after. Maybe it will help me figure out the same for me.

Barbara Hepworth, Two Forms in Echelon,
Bronze, 1961

Barbara Hepworth, Doves (Group),
Parian marble, 1927 (BH 3), Manchester City Art Gallery

Indian Art Summit 2011

Raqs Media Collective, Experimenter India

Aji V.N., Mirchandi + Steinruecke

The Indian Art Summit in Delhi took place last week with 84 galleries participating from 20 countries... whew! My mother and I attended the last one. Wish I had bought something then as a keepsake--a print or a small drawing (was probably too expensive anyway)--but the  experience had been so overwhelming. I generally have a hard time taking so much art in at one go (same problem with enormous museums). I guess most people visit the exhibition every day, covering it bit by bit.

Here are a few reviews of the exhibition: Metropolis M, Rekha Rodwittiya, Indian Art News, and By All means Necessary. The pictures are from Metropolis M's Review.

	Jitish Kallat, Chemould Prescott Road

Jitish Kallat, Chemould Prescott Road

	Krishna Murari, Gallery Alternatives

Krishna Murari, Gallery Alternatives

	Bani Abidi, Experimenter India

Bani Abidi, Experimenter India

Subodh Gupta, Nature Morte

grad friends

Writing a bit each day is wonderful. I actually am remembering where I left my art practice. Sounds strange... but I tend to terrible forgetfulness, especially with all the geographical shifts.

I have been thinking very much of my four graduate school colleagues. They are all wonderful artists. Here is an image of the project called Smile Generator by Peter Goff who went to Malawi in 2009 on a Fulbright Grant. He has a talk today on the project: good luck to him! From what I gather in the writing, the Smile Generator was a goat. I am smiling. The other image of the sculpture is from our graduate show at the Weatherspoon. Peter always has a delicate line somewhere...

Peter Goff, Smile Generator (Eating), 2009

Peter Goff, chew-drive-comb, 2008

I think of Katie's drawings and painting all the time nowadays. She had such a light touch, and in my memory she spent her entire graduate career taming the ephemerality of space in her work--well taming it enough so she could catch an image of it, but the space it seems (inside and outside a body) will always be wild and intimate at the same time. I wanted to post her drawings too, but can't get a link to them...

Katie Claibourne, 2008 (can't find title)

Katie Claibourne, Self Portrait, 2007, oil on paper, 12 x15

Jeff has a new body of work since graduate school as well. His sculptures are an amalgamation of memory and material. Even though Jeff and I probably had vastly different childhoods, there is something about his work that makes me nostalgic for  my toys and fantasies from when I was little. I always wanted his sculpture the 'Rider' (pictured below) for myself. I wish I wasn't always moving all over, so I could carry and keep my friends' work with me. Soon perhaps...

Jeff Bell, Recent Work (Divide) (2010) wood, fabric.

Jeff Bell, Rogue Series (Rider) (2007) steel, paint.

Kelly's work just is. I remember how she even stuck feathers and sequence on her painting once--it was like a painted party! Very intelligent, honest, and colorful. Kelly's studio was right next to mine and whenever I would step in Kelly was of on some other adventure in space and form, sometimes a large painting sometimes little tiny ones. Latest from her blog post, she was gathering text into her paintings.

Kelly Queener, 2010, (can't find the title)

Kelly Queener, 2010, (can't find the title)

Have to exchange and collect my friends works soon!

drawing dec 2010

Drawings arranged as a triptych, each is 5"x6.75"

I try to do little collages and drawings when i get time between writing. I wish I had more time to devote to making art. I'll be there soon.

art and tarkovsky

Stumbled on this video of Tarkovsky all over again when I was searching for a clip of his film Nostalghia (1983). I had started watching the film last year and couldn't continue. Tarkovsky is my favorite film maker, but this last year I have not returned to him. His silences had become loud. In the first sequence in Nostalghia I felt as if all his characters were not just acting, but acting for me specifically, that they would stop acting if I turned the movie off--sort of like the dilemma of the book that will loose its print once it is shut: who can say? I feel like watching the film once again today, but it sits far away in my old room.

Art as a tool to come closer to spiritual enlightenment: it is beautiful and lofty this thought by Tarkovsky. I agree with it, yet move to turn the volume down. Tarkovsky should laugh... (edit) but there is such a comfort in hie seriousness to the artist in me.