It’s funny how memory works, once you start to
remember something, another related thing just pops into your mind. This
reminiscence lark is opening out some long dead synapses. The still life
situation was used in several other ways, in fact as I write even more are
falling into place, so perhaps I’ll have to edit some out for now.
Once the initial drawing colour and 3D introductions
were over we would usually move into a diagnostic period. This didn’t mean
doing one week of graphics, then a week of 3D, then fashion etc., which we
referred to as the carrousel system, it was a period where we set projects and
the way students answered these would hopefully diagnose whether or not they
were designers, 2D thinkers, problem solvers, pattern makers etc. This particular still life project was
designed as one of these diagnostic projects. It would have therefore been
something that would last for somewhere between five and ten days.
The Cubist still life
Cubism was still regarded on the foundation course as
a vitally important ingredient of twentieth century looking and thinking, an
understanding of simultaneity being at the core of this. We wanted to get over
to students that although the world was composed of lots of fragmented bits of
information, what good art or design could do was take in these fragments and
digest them, then regurgitate the synthesized parts as new wholes. These new
wholes would of course have to contain and make use of the life energy
of the original experiences. Certain approaches to Cubism were seen as ways to
grasp this, collage was another way in… this dam memory stuff, it keeps
throwing in more and more information, at this rate this will turn into some
Borges infinity.
A still life would be set up on a board, this could be
for instance things from the kitchen; kettle, pots and pans, bread knife,
spatula, whisk, cheese grater, mugs etc. This was placed on a table in the
middle of a circle of easels. Small composition thumbnail drawings are then
done by students in their sketchbooks and then they start working directly from
the still life. They are to focus on measurement and placement and can only use
line. After an hour or so the situation is rotated by 45o, they keep
drawing using the same sightlines across the room that were set up in the first
moments of the drawing. This new set of relationships of course starts to
obscure the first drawing, students are told if something makes it too hard to
‘see’ what you are drawing, remove it and replace it with what is arriving. The
situation is turned again and again, until all 360o have been
explored.
The next stage was to take the table away and put the
still life on the floor. Students were asked to draw their easels in close and
to draw the situation again looking down on the objects.
The emphasis was on observation and reducing the
information down to line and this could take all day. At the end of the day as
always the crit. took place. The emphasis of the crit. was on how different
energies and rhythms were captured within these dense drawings of lines and new
shapes discovered within the matrix were pointed to, some picked out by simply
rubbing out some of the charcoal lines with fingers. My job would be to explain
how these new forms held within them memories of different times and changing
relationships. The important issue was that we were starting to look for
‘significant form’, form that implied a ‘compacted’ relationship with previous
experiences. The handle of a jug seen from the side might be partly rubbed out
and now joined to the edge of a spatula seen from above, this new form a
composite carrying information from the observer’s changing perceptual
experience as well as being a synergetic form containing iconic visual elements
from both objects.
The second day was spent working back into the
drawings. We would stop at regular intervals so that differences in selection
could be pointed to. Some students would maintain a flickering blend of open
and closed forms, never actually nailing anything down. Others would be
starting to identify new forms and would start isolating these and pulling them
out by sharpening certain edges, some would be working all over the image,
others starting to create more 3D forms. As the day went on, tracing paper
would be given out and those wanting to pull out certain sections could so and
then rework into these. Student numbers were low enough then to be able to
spend quite some time with each one asking questions as to how they read the
work, what they were interested in and we could explain how certain approaches
might mean that they were naturally a certain type of artist/designer. (Looking
back I’m not so sure how accurate these diagnostic sessions were, but the
theory behind them seemed to stand up at the time).
Gradually some students might start to introduce
colour, others might start to make 3D models from information selected and by
the end of day three, lots of sketchbook work was being done as ideas were now
been tested out and variations tried.
By day four it was time to push these ideas further,
some of the best that I can remember went into wood and metal, one student in
particular making a series of objects where the lines from drawings alternated
between becoming edges made by the joining of solid wooden planes at angles to
each other and at other times joining lines between the solids made by using
bent metal rod; blocked masses and linear dynamics working in and out of each
other. Another student used the forms to create wooden inlays within objects
made to look like cubist furniture, so that at one moment you saw simple
pattern and at another you were made aware of where the drawn form came from.
In effect recreating the dynamics of looking and placing them back into a new
3D form. Pushing the images into these other areas is what the second week was
for. By the end of the two weeks, some students had produced a series of
paintings, others were still exploring drawing, some were developing shape and
pattern variations and there were always those who found themselves drawn to
Ted’s workshop. (Ted Winter was the course technician, he was always to be
found in the wood workshop on the top floor of the Vernon Street building and
he was a law unto himself)
The final afternoon would be the diagnostic crit. Did
whatever had been made live up to the expectation of the brief? Were the forms
found good or significant ones? Did they create good synergy and if so why? The
last thing was of course to leave students with a sense of possibility. Working
like this you could be a good…. The problem with this was that the most capable
students could actually do anything and this could muddy the waters as far as
the diagnostic element went.
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