LISELOTT JOHNSSON

Presenting two videos conveying two versions of a sunset experienced at Baie des Anges in Nice. The names are PEBBLES and SEA VIEW (each 1’ 14s). While making these, I was asking myself what “reality” is and what different mediums may mean to the artist and the viewer.

A few quick notes on Painting and Video…

These two videos were created to respond to each other as two views of the same experience. The videos attempt to speak about different overlaying realities, reality as seen by the human eye, reality through the means of painting, reality as seen by a digital recording device (iPhone) or a software program, and the reality of a person’s emotions and thoughts. These are all taking place simultaneously. 

The SEA VIEW is also a video about painting; I believe that the practice of painting (and other handmade art forms) is very important right now because of the experience it provides the painter him/herself. For the painter, a painting can hold many different realities simultaneously. Below, find a few thoughts on painting that came to my mind as I was making these videos.

-   As a painting is made, it provides an instant trace of the human hand and serves as a tactile proof of existence in real-time and space. Every painting carries a personal story and memory to the person who made it. It is a form of a recording of a person’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences conveyed through gesture, line, and color by means of very simple tools and materials. Therefore, a very open, affordable, and egalitarian medium accessible to most people.

-   While viewers often tend to compare paintings with photographs, for the painter, it is rather an experience that unfolds through time. So, in that sense, it might be appropriate to compare painting to video, a medium that also may hold memories unfolding over time.

-   In contemporary life, Painting (and other “handmade” art forms) can act as a counterbalance to the virtual world. It may serve as the dialectic opposite to the virtual and digitized reality.

-   For viewers who are not painters or familiar with the painterly process, video medium can be very alluring and may convey stories and different realities in a more convincing and direct way than a painting itself. However, the production of a digital video requires a camera, a computer, knowledge of software, etc. The artist is dependent on technology, and the artist’s voice is mediated through technology. Video is a medium made through technology to be viewed through the means of a technical device; a screen or a projector. It is a medium that indirectly perpetuates and accentuates our civilisation’s dependence on technology.

-   When a painter looks at a painting, he/she looks at the structure, composition, brush strokes, the materials, the reflections, the color compositions, etc. He/she also thinks of the process of making it. This is a world of its own that is less accessible to the general public unless explained by other means such as language, film, or immersive environments.

-   A painting can only be appreciated fully in person and through time. No technical device is necessary to experience it. To view a painting is an intimate experience and ought to be valued as such. Because of this, paintings should not be treated as objects of “mass consumption.” In my opinion, it isn’t possible to fully experience a painting in a group or in a crowded environment. Also, a photograph of a painting cannot, by any means, replace the experience of the painting itself.

-   On the web, paintings are presented, but the images are digital photographs of paintings, not the paintings themselves. The web is, therefore, a celebration of photography above and beyond any other medium. The photographs act as substitutes of the real objects, and only part of the story is therefore conveyed. Many times, the wrong story is conveyed. Paintings and art that don’t translate easily into photography will suffer from this.  

-   A painting is an object that remains rather unchanged through time. The painting can carry a monetary exchange value; therefore, the cultural value of a painting is often confused with its monetary value. The market and the art world participants (artists, galleries, curators) benefit from upholding this vision. In my opinion, the cultural value of a painting, as noted above, is not related to the monetary value.

-   If an artist strives to create immersive experiences as a means to engage a wider public in art, a good gesture would be to make viewers paint their own paintings. In this way, the viewer will be personally engaged in the process of making art, and as a result, will acquire a different understanding and appreciation for the painting medium and art in general. 

written in preparation for the installation LA POETIQUE DES LAVOIRS held in three wash basins in the village of Saorge in 2013.

NARCISSUS HUBLOT EST2013 ECHO SYSTEME TURBO

VIDAGE

Rêvez, rêvez de moi !... Sans vous, belles fontaines,

IMPERMEABILISER

Ma beauté, ma douleur, me seraient incertaines.

ANTI-FROISSAGE

Je chercherais en vain ce que j'ai de plus cher,

BASKETS

Sa tendresse confuse étonnerait ma chair,

LAINE

Et mes tristes regards, ignorants de mes charmes,

DEPART PAUSE

À d'autres que moi-même. Adresseraient leurs larmes...

ESSORAGE

Vous attendiez, peut-être, un visage sans pleurs,

AIR CHAUD

Vous calmes, vous toujours de feuilles et de fleurs,

SYNTHETIQUES DELICATS

Et de l'incorruptible altitude hantées,

RINCAGE CONDUITS

Ô Nymphes !... Mais docile aux pentes enchantées

90°

Qui me firent vers vous d'invincibles chemins,

1200

Souffrez ce beau reflet des désordres humains !

RAJOUT DE LINGE

Heureux vos corps fondus, Eaux planes et profondes !

MARCHE EXPRESS

Tout texte en majuscules: machine à laver générique

Tout texte en minuscule: Fragments du Narcisse, Written by Paul Valéry

NARCISSUS SHORT

(short version installed as vinyl lettering at Fontana de Medge)

VIDAGE

Rêvez, rêvez de moi!…Sans vous, belles fontaines,

IMPERMEABILISER

Ma beauté, ma douleur, me seraient incertaines.

ANTI-FROISSAGE

Dites, ne suis-je pas celui que vous croyez…

RINÇAGE CONDUITS

Souffrez ce beau reflet des désordres humains !

RAJOUT DE LINGE

Heureux vos corps fondus, Eaux planes et profondes !

AUTRES OPTIONS

Profondeur, profondeur, songes qui me voyez,

LAINE

O semblable!...Et pourtant plus parfait que moi-même,

OPHELIA WHIRLPOOL ULTRA WITH SENSE LIVE TECHNOLOGY

SUPER DELICAT

There's rosemary,

SENSING

that's for remembrance.

WARM HIGH SPIN

Pray you, love, remember.

QUICK DRY

And there's pansies, that's for thoughts.

HOLD DOOR OPEN

There's fennel for you, and columbines.

TOUCH UP

There's rue for you, and here's some for me.

ALL COLD RINSES

We may call it herb of grace o' Sundays.

HEAVY DUTY

Oh, you must wear your rue with a difference.

MORE LESS DAMP

There's a daisy. I would give you some violets,

TIMING

but they withered all when my father died.

DOOR LOCKED

They say he made a good end.

HOLD THREE SECONDS

OPHELIA 1598 HPP HAMLET PLUS PRO :

SOIE ET VOLAGE

Voici du romarin

JEANS

c'est comme souvenir:

VIDAGE EXPRESS 15 MIN

de grâce, amour, souvenez-vous;

RAJOUT DE LINGE

et voici des pensées, en guise de pensées.

EXPRESS TACHES

Voici pour vous du fenouil et des ancolies.

SYNTHETIQUES

Voilà de la rue pour vous, et en voici un peu pour moi;

COTON AVEC PRELAVAGE

nous pouvons bien toutes deux l'appeler herbe de grâce,

REPASSAGE RAPIDE

mais elle doit avoir à votre main un autre sens qu'à la mienne...

SPORT INTENSIF

Voici une pâquerette. Je vous aurais bien donné des violettes,

ECO TIME

mais elles se sont toutes fanées, quand mon père est mort...

DEPART PAUSE LAINE

on dit qu'il a fait une bonne fin.

PAUSE 3h

Tout texte en majuscules: machine à laver générique

Tout texte en minuscule: Ophélia in Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5, written by William Shakespeare, 1598

NEVER ENDING SPINCYCLE

(text based on a compilation of washing machine texts)

Hot

Warm

Cold

High

Medium

Low

On

Off

Spin Speed

End of Cycle Signal

Hold 3 seconds

Lock/Unlock

Control

Wash temp

All cold rinses

Start

Press and Hold

Pause/ Cancel

Door locked

High

Medium

Low

Extra Low

Air Only

Temp Adjust

More Dry

Normal

Less Dry

Dryness

Autocycles

On

Off

End of Cycle Signal

Sensing

Wet

Damp

Cool Down

Cycle Complete

Wrinkle Shield

Power

Auto

Dry

Damp

Super Delicate

Delicate

Casual

Normal

Heavy Duty

Touch Up

Quick Dry

Timed Dry

Timing

Add a garment

Wash

Rinse

Spin

Cycle Complete

HOT
LOW
END
ALL

AIR
DRY
OFF

WET
ADD

HOT AIR

DRY OFF

WET END

ADD ALL

LOW

WARM
HIGH
SPIN
HOLD
WASH
TEMP
DOOR
LOCK
HOLD
ONLY
MORE
LESS
DAMP
COOL
AUTO
DAMP
DUTY
WASH

WARM HIGH SPIN

HOLD DOOR OPEN

COOL WASH DUTY

AUTO LOCK ONLY

MORE LESS DAMP

Charge

Dosage

Court

Hydro Plus

Séchage doux

Autres Options

Taches

Autre programmes

Air chaud

Repassage rapide

Défroissage

Vidange

Essorage

Rinçage Conduits

Coton

Synthétique

Jeans

Laine

Express

Chemises

Automatic

Séchage

Séchage Délicat

Défroiss. Vapeur

Nett. Cuve

Imperméabiliser

Chemises/ Chemisières

Express 15 min

Arrêt

Vidage

Coton

Coton éco

Synthétiques

Mix

Délicat

Soie

Laine

Rinçage Essorage

Rajout de linge

Départ Pause

Programmes Quotidiens

Coton avec prélavage

Coton blanc

Coton

Coton couleurs

Synthétiques

Synthétiques délicats

Spéciaux

Laine

Soie et voilage

Jeans

Express

Sport

Sport intensif

Sport léger

Baskets

On Off

Eco time

90°

90°

60°

40°

60°

40°

6 kg

400

500

600

700

800

1000

1200

3h

6h

9h

12h

marche

pause

Quote by Andrew Joron in Flowing Uphill

"I think there is an obvious and not at all unlikely similarity between language and water: water is like language, language is like water. Both are seemingly transparent, ubiquitous, and necessary to sustain our life.

And of course the underlying meaning of water is that it is very nearly meaningless: tasteless, odorless, shapeless, its properties are very hard to nail down. Very like the shapelessness, the actual meaningless of language considered as a whole. For the sum total of all possible statements in language is not one big meaningful statement, but a meaningless multiplicity of statements. So, in considering what water really is, what language really is, we are suddenly closer than we might wish to the primeval chaos.

The Deluge drawings attempt to do the impossible, to capture and convey all of the effects of nonlinear motion by means of line drawings—that is, to represent that which is inherently fleeting by that which is inherently fixed. Leonardo’s Deluge drawings come close to abstract expressionism in their violent registration of water in a state of crisis.

And like the visual arts, poetic language also has undergone an evolution that brings it closer to the chaos patterns that Leonardo first observed in the movement and the self-entanglement of water. Once poetic language was released from the constraint of having to tell the stories of gods and kings and later, of having to express individual and social identity, it began to discover—or rediscover—its sources in the mysterious movement of language itself, in the manifestation of a meaning in words that goes somehow beyond words. In the modernist and the postmodernist poem, language is finally manifested as a self-exceeding system, and to explain what I mean by this, I’m going to resort, very much in the spirit of Leonardo, to the properties of water.

Now, self-exceeding systems are those systems that are capable of pushing themselves into a new state of being. A simple system, such as a clock or a pendulum, is not capable of such transformation; only complex, nonlinear systems are. Water and language are both classic examples of complex systems, and as such they have many properties in common—properties that, for me, relate directly to poetic attempts to say the unsayable.

In poetic language, meaning overflows or exceeds its own condition, and a saying of the unsayable takes place."

https://www.poetryfoundation.o...

Quote by Arthir Sze in On Poetry and Water

In China, water is one of the five elements and symbolizes yin, the primeval female principle. In the I Ching, or Book of Changes, the trigram for water is a set of stacked lines composed of a broken line at the bottom, a solid line, then a broken line. It is generated through a divination process that incorporates chance. In this cosmology, water is not an assemblage but, rather, a force—“Water flows to what is wet.” The water trigram helps to highlight that everything is in motion, and that each moment is unique.

If water is beginningless beginning and endless end, if water has no shape of its own but can take any shape, it has infinite possibility.

Texts provided by Poetry Foundation, link to text no longer available

Leonardo Da Vinci, A Deluge, 1517-18, black chalk on paper

https://www.rct.uk/collection/...

Quotes from Gaston Bachelard, Eau et les Rêves

...sous les images superficielles de l’eau, une série d’images de plus en plus profonde, de plus en plus tenaces…Il reconnaitra dans l’eau dans la substance de l’eau, un type d’intimité…l’eau est aussi un type de destin…l’eau est vraiment l’élément transitoire. L’être voue à l’eau est un être en vertige. Il meurt à chaque minute, sans cesses quelque chose de sa substance s’écroule. La mort quotidienne est la mort de l’eau. L’eau coule toujours, l'eau tombe toujours, elle finit toujours par sa mort horizontale…La peine de l’eau est infini.

Je retrouve toujours la même mélancolie devant les eaux dormantes, une mélancolie très spéciale qui a la couleur d’une mare dans un foret humide, une mélancolie sans oppression, songeuse, lente, calme.

Une goutte d’eau puissante suffit pour créer un monde et pour dissoudre la nuit.

…une eau qui va du printemps a l’hiver et qui reflète aisément, passivement, légèrement, toutes les saisons.

La dialectique de l’eau

Le complexe de Caron et Le complexe d’Ophélie

Caractère presque toujours féminin

L’eau et la pureté

L’eau et la violence

Le langage des eaux est une réalité poétique directe

Elle a un corps, une âme, une voix,…une réalité poétique complète

« Les évènements les plus riches arrivent en nous bien avant que l’âme s’en aperçoive. Et, quand nous commençons a ouvrir les yeux sur le visible, déjà nous etions depuis longtemps adhérents à l’invisible. » D’Annunzio, Contemplation de la Mori

…l’eau sert à naturaliser notre image, à rendre un peu d’innocence et de naturel a l’orgueil de notre intime contemplation….

Le miroir de la fontaine est donc l’occasion d’une imagination ouverte. Le reflet un peu vague, un peu pali, suggère une idéalisation. Devant l’eau qui réfléchit son image son image, Narcisse sent que sa beauté continue…Le miroir de verre…donne un image trop stable.

…Narcisse va donc a la fontaine secrète, au fond des bois. La seulement, il sent qu’il est naturellement double ; il tend les bras, il plonge les mains vers sa propre image, il parle à sa propre image, il parle à sa propre voix. Echo n’est pas une nymphe lointaine.

Près de la fontaine prend ainsi naissance un narcissisme idéalisant… »Je suis tel que je m’aime. »

Cette fraicheur qu’on éprouve en se lavant les mains au ruisseau s’étend, s’empare de la nature entière.

La fraicheur imprègne le printemps par ses eaux ruisselantes ; elle valorise toute la saison du renouveau.

Complexe de Nausicaa…nymphes

L’eau évoque la nudité naturelle.

Le cygne, en littérature est un ersatz de la femme nue.

Contempler l’eau, c’est s’écouler, c’est de dissoudre, c’est mourir.

L’eau en sa jeune limpidité est un ciel renverse ou les astres prennent une vie nouvelle.

Ainsi l’eau, par ses reflets, double le monde, double les choses.

Le passe de notre amé est une eau profonde.

Alors la nuit est substance comme l’eau est substance. La substance nocturne va se mêler intimement à la substance liquide. Le monde d’air va donner ses ombres au ruisseau….L’eau est une substance qui boit ; elle avale l’ombre comme un noir sirop .

L’eau est ainsi une invitation à mourir ; elle est une invitation à une mort spéciale qui nous permet de rejoindre un des refuges matériels élémentaires.

« Partir, c’est mourir un peu. »

L’eau est l’élément de la mort jeune et belle, de la mort fleurie, et, dans les drames de la vie et de la littérature, elle est l’élément de la mort sans orgueil ni vengeance, du suicide masochiste. L’eau est le symbole profond, organique de la femme qui ne sait que pleurer ses peines et dont les yeux sont si facilement noyées de larmes.

La mer est maternelle, l‘eau est un lait prodigieux

L’eau nous porte. L’eau nous berce. L’eau nous endort. L’eau nous rend notre mère.

L’eau nous invite aux voyages imaginaires.

Continuité matérielle de l’eau et le ciel…l’eau porte

L’eau le matériau pure par excellence.

C’est parce que l’eau a une puissance intime, qu’elle peut purifier l’être intime .

L’union du sensible et du sensuel vient soutenir une valeur morale…Elles ont marque la jeunesse de notre esprit. Elles sont nécessairement une réserve de jeunesse.

Les mythes de la naissance, l’eau dans sa puissance maternelle

La parole de l’eau

Nous n’hésitons pas donc pas a donner à plein sens a l’expression qui dit la qualité d’une poésie fluide et animée, d’une poésie coulée de source.

Leonardo da Vinci, A deluge, pen and black ink on paper

https://artsandculture.google....

RUBBER-BAND WORK-OUT

warm up

3 crunches

6 pushups

9 squats

20 knee high running

strap band around something at medium height

face the rubber bands pull back and squat each leg at a time

back towards the rubber-bands, take step forward and punch both arms at the same time

put strap under feet walk right (15 steps) pull out straight right leg 5 times

repeat to the other side

squat using the bands and stretch out overhead

3 crunches

6 pushups

9 squats

20 knee high running

strap band around something at medium height

face the rubber bands pull back and squat each leg at a time

back towards the rubber bands, wing flap both arms towards the center

stand on rubber band, do curls

stand on rubber band, extend one arm at a time do back of arm muscle with arm overhead bending back

crunches, attach band to door behind, do sit-ups

on all four, fit handle on foot, hold rubber band with two hands against floor, stretch leg back and up

hold rubber band with hand, flap bent leg (diagonally across from hand)

repeat on other leg

put strap under feet walk right (15 steps) pull out straight right leg 5 times

repeat to the other side

band crunch

repeat as needed

Besides continuing developing my painterly skills and my understanding of pictorial space, part of me finds a need to start classifying or make some sense of the work I've produced for the past six months. Also, while I would like to keep my process completely unpredictable, open, and based on intuition, I would like to find a way to present my research and all the information that I have gathered. When one employs an intuitive process that isn't goal-oriented or censored, one ends up with an impressive amount of work and information. I think the reason for this is that when one works towards a "goal," this actually reduces the output, meaning it takes away the "flow."

Today, I started to count what I've produced in my studio during the past six months:

- 345 drawings and paintings in various mediums

- seven sculptures in wood, cardboard, and paper

- various displays and installations of my artwork in my studio

- eight small sketchbooks with notes and drawings

- 3,200 iPhone photographs (featuring my process in the studio, daily walks)

-926 videos (studio process, daily walks, videos of Instagram feed), a few edited to short videos placed on social media

- daily posts on FB and Instagram

- daily reading of critical articles in the NY Times, le Monde and various art magazines (on average two-three articles per day)

- several hundreds of pages of printouts of artworks by other artists

- daily reading of academic articles

So, it feels a little overwhelming. I now think that the time has come to start looking at these different things I've produced and start thinking of what they represent. I'd enjoy presenting my research into the meaning of Painting in a more cohesive format that can be shared with others. At the moment, I'm thinking of using my artistic output (paintings, photos, videos) in three ways simultaneously, inserted as images into a video, compiled into a book, and used as materials for collage paintings or sculptures.

To not feel overwhelmed and discouraged, my mind turned to Carl von Linné, the botanist who invented the two-name system, binomial nomenclature, which gave a generic and specific epithet (genus and species) to organisms. During his lifetime, he named and organized over 14,000 plants. (His work interests me also because the naming of plants coincided with an increase in the transportation and dispersion of plants across the globe fueled by colonization, a subject I touched upon in my Plantes Voyageuses exhibition in 2014.)

I did a little search and found an article written by James Prosek in the New York Times that traced Carl von Linné's journey in Lapland in northern Sweden. I thought it was well written, and it made my mind travel. I hope you will enjoy it. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

Once we put a name on something, as Linnaeus did compulsively, we've identified ourselves as the observer and the named thing as the observed — a barrier is placed between, lines are drawn. If I am observing, it suggests that I am separate from nature, but in some of my best and most memorable moments, I am part of it, when a certain amount of the knowing is shed. Such a moment happened on the vast lake in Lapland as we watched a thousand shades of day flirt on the horizon with darkness in colors beyond names and perhaps even beyond language. "
James Prosek, "A Botanist in Swedish Lapland"

By observing, describing and naming the artworks I've made,  I will create a distance between myself and the intuitive process, however, by naming I also recognize the existence and unique qualities of these intuitive artworks. 

"To name a thing is to acknowledge its existence as separate from everything else that has a name; to confer upon it the dignity of autonomy while at the same time affirming its belonging with the rest of the namable world; to transform its strangeness into familiarity, which is the root of empathy. To name is to pay attention; to name is to love. Parents name their babies as a first nonbiological marker of individuality amid the human lot; lovers give each other private nicknames that sanctify their intimacy; it is only when we began naming domesticated animals that they stopped being animals and became pets. "
Maria Popova, "How Naming Confers Dignity Upon Life and Gives Meaning to Existence"

Popova, Maria, "How Naming Confers Dignity Upon Life and Gives Meaning to Existance," Brainpickings.org

https://www.brainpickings.org/

Prosek, James, "A Botanist in Lapland," NY Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

Many of you have followed the artistic process that I have shared on social media during the past six months. Besides investigating what meaning painting has for me personally, and for society as a whole, my research has examined the creative process itself. I have aimed to pursue a studio practice that is open and fluid without set boundaries – where the continuity and linearity of the artistic process is continuously called into question, so to eliminate the urge to strive for a final goal.

I've allowed my process to be completely open, permitting it to change almost daily as I responded to what I saw, read, or experienced in both the real and virtual world. By applying various rules, I've challenged myself to keep the process going. I've also been fortunate to engage with artists, art historians, and other persons in various forms of dialogues relating to art. This has stimulated me to delve deeper. Further, I've resisted my urge to classify and censor my artistic output. Social media has served as both a recording device and as a means of keeping my process in a continuous destabilizing state of flux. My aim for this was to mirror, in my artistic practice, what is actually happening in the real world and to question my own habits and preconceived ideas. Through the means of art, painting, and intuition, I sought to explore hidden parts of myself. It is true that painting, because of its fluidity, may be one of the best ways to explore intuition and the subconscious of the mind. Already, after six months, I have a better understanding of my own feelings as they relate to painting and my art-making process in general.

However, when an art process relies solely on intuition and feelings, it feels very destabilizing. There are days when the process itself makes me feel "dizzy" or "disoriented" due to the lack of structure and boundaries. One also feels very exposed and vulnerable as if there is nothing there but a feeling of emptiness. It almost touches on the sublime, meaning infinitely beautiful, but at the same time, terrifying. After engaging in this for months, I feel more and more at ease; however, it still feels like a balancing act. Apparently, these feelings are familiar to artists exploring this type of creative output.

Below are a couple of quotes from an essay written by Theresa Hardman called 'Understanding Creative Intuition:'

The collective unconscious specifically is, according to Jung, the source of intuition and instinct. In his theory of the collective unconscious, Jung describes it as a fluid, sympathetic, 'boundless expanse,

a place of unprecedented uncertainty, with apparently no inside and no outside, no above and no below, no here and no there, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad. It is the world of water, where all life floats in suspension; where the realm of the sympathetic nervous system, the soul of everything living, begins; where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me.

According to Jung, the unconscious (both personal and collective) is therefore synonymous with ego loss, in that the unconscious eliminates boundaries between the 'I' and the rest of the world. He states that the creative person is somehow able to connect unconscious knowledge with conscious ideas, which often results in a creative product or action. Creative intuition is a communication between the conscious mind and the collective unconscious, which suggests possibilities inherent in a subject or situation.This recalls Heidegger's concept of Being, which is an openness to the world through one's state of mind. It involves self-abandonment – an emptiness of mind, not seeking, but listening, waiting and reflecting. In his essay, 'The Origin of the Work of Art', Heidegger writes that in this state of mind 'the artist remains inconsequential as compared with the work, almost like a passageway that destroys itself in the creative process for the work to emerge'. By adopting a passive and receptive state of mind, ordinary, habitual ways of thinking are annihilated, and the artists may be open to the poetic moment. In another essay 'The thinker as poet', he claims: 'We never come to thoughts. They come to us. That is the proper hour of discourse.' Heidegger describes the artist as 'one who truly knows what is', in other words, a person deeply aware of every passing moment of Being and completely open to its possibilities. A Buddhist concept related to this is sunyata, which can be described as the living void, the passing concreteness of experience, which is continually opening to us. It is understood as non-anthropocentric in that, in this void, the individual self loses its separateness and merges with reality beyond itself.

Theresa Hardman, 'Understanding Creative Intuition' is available for download here:

https://www.academia.edu/21445...

-Top: Aurelie Nemours, Carré d'Angle, 26/45, 1985/1991

-Middle: The Beach of Nice

-Claude Viallat, 1968/005, 1968

A blue and white stretched umbrella embraces the sunset. A paper with prints of squares in different formations faces the viewer behind protective glass in a museum. A white fabric covered with a repetitive pattern of identical amorphous shapes is draped along a wall like wallpaper sliding silently by the visitor. All of these installations share common denominators of simple geometric patterns on white backgrounds. What differs? Which one would you pick? I’ll pick the one with the best view.

Hanging loosely from laundry lines, this early work by Nice artist Noël Dolla named Structure étendoir from 1967, speaks about the elements of painting and sculpture. Small cloths in different sizes and patterns hang from clotheslines supported by a suspended wooden frame. Like many other artists of the soon to be movement of Support/Surfaces, Dolla questions if painting is more than a stretched and supported piece of cloth and wood stretchers? Can painting become sculpture and have depth? Can art be part of daily life? Structure étendoir brings forth an association with laundry, it is a work that evokes the local character of the streets of Nice. Still today, city dwellers hang their laundry outside of their windows. This brings me to think that the back streets of Nice are actually where the art is and not in the museum. 

Further, it seems to me that this piece brings up the importance of gender in art. In 1967, it was certainly provocative for a male artist to equal painting to laundry especially as women historically had performed this chore. At the time, the work of women artist was rarely displayed in galleries; however, fresh laundry was on public display in the streets of Nice. The avant-garde art movements located in Nice, loosely grouped under the name of École de Nice, included remarkably few female artists. However, the female form was a recurrent motif and inspiration for many of these male artists. So, I wonder if a woman had presented this work would it have had the same effect? In any case, Dolla choses to use laundry, what women do, as a muse rather than what women look like draped on an exotic chair.

In comparison, occupying similar conceptual territory, French artist Daniel Buren installed six years later, in October 1973, a site specific work called Within and Beyond the Frame at John Weber Gallery in New York. Here, Buren displays eighteen vertically striped panels stretched on lines, top and bottom, from the inside of the gallery to the other side of the street. Nine panels placed on the inside and nine on the outside. Being dependent on the support of the building walls, its meaning is generated by its New York urban context. It could be seen as a critique of the enclosed and dominant art market in New York.

Buren's Within and Beyond the Frame feels tight, structured and militant. Maybe it is after all more closely associated with advertising banners and flags than laundry. In comparison Dolla's loosely held Structure étendoir, displays a warmth and visual poetry closely associated with the beauty of daily life. I can't help but feel that when a clothesline becomes the gallery, there are no longer any limits for the painter. The artist is free.

White laundry overlooking an art opening at gallery Espace à Vendre in Nice. 

Traduction en français

Librement suspendu sur des cordes à linge, cette œuvre de l’année 1967 par l’artiste niçois Noël Dolla, nommée Structure étendoir, parle des éléments de la peinture et de la sculpture. De petites toiles de tailles et motifs variables sont suspendues sur un cadre en bois. Comme beaucoup d’autres artistes du mouvement Support/ Surfaces, qui serait bientôt formé, Dolla se demande si la peinture pourrait comporter plus qu’une toile tendue supportée par des châssis en bois ? L’art peut-il participer au quotidien ?

Structure étendoir montre clairement une association avec le linge. C’est une œuvre qui évoque le caractère local des rues de Nice. Encore aujourd’hui, les citadins suspendent leur linge sur le rebord de leurs fenêtres. Ceci m’incite à croire que c’est dans les ruelles que l’art existe et non pas au musée.

En outre, il me semble que cette pièce aborde l’importance du genre en art. En 1967, c’était certainement provocant pour un artiste homme d’égaler la peinture avec du linge. Notamment car selon la tradition c’était les femmes qui faisaient cette corvée. À l’époque, le travail des femmes artistes était rarement exposé dans les galeries, cependant, le linge était présenté au public dans les rues de Nice. Les mouvements avant-gardes de Nice, vaguement regroupés sous le nom de l’École de Nice, comptaient très peu de femmes artistes parmis les membres. Pourtant, la forme féminine était un motif récurrent et servait d’inspiration pour un grand nombre de ces artistes hommes. En conséquence, je me demande si une femme avait présenté ce travail aurait-il eu le même effet ? En tous cas, Dolla choisit d’employer le linge, ce que les femmes produisent, comme muse plutôt que l’apparence des femmes drapées sur une chaise exotique.

En comparaison, occupant un domaine conceptuel similaire, l’artiste français Daniel Buren a installé, en Octobre 1973, une œuvre in situ nommée Within and Beyond the Frame à John Weber Gallery à New York. Ici, Buren déploie dix-huit panneaux à rayures verticaux tendus par des fils en haut et en bas, depuis l’intérieur de la galerie jusqu’à l’autre côté de la rue. Neuf panneaux à l’intérieur et neuf panneaux à l’extérieur. Dépendant du support des murs et du lieu, sa signification est produite par le contexte urbain de New York. Il peut être considéré comme une critique de l’enfermement et la domination du marché de l’art de New York.

L’œuvre Within and Beyond the Frame donne l’impression d’être raide, structurée et militante. Peut-être qu’après tout cette œuvre est plus proche des bannières de publicité ou des drapeaux que du linge. En comparaison, l’œuvre Structure étendoir de Dolla semble librement tenue et montre une chaleur et une poésie visuelle associées avec la beauté du quotidien. Je ne peux pas m’empêcher de penser qu’une fois une corde à linge devient la galerie, il n’y a plus de limites pour le peintre. L’artiste est libre.

In my site-specific work, I examine the multi-layered poetic relationship between changeable materials, like water, light and plants, to geometry, architecture, place, history and memory. My installations search to uncovered the cultural and poetic significance of public architectural spaces consigned to oblivion that served a vital function in the past. Usually these spaces had a utilitarian but also a social purpose. The spaces where I have exhibited include sources of water (washbasins and fountains) and sources of knowledge (monasteries and libraries). I gravitate to architectural spaces and buildings where the quality of the architecture allows a dialogue to take place between the design of the building and the installed work. 

By integrating painting with architectural space, I negate a fixed view of the work. This condition invites the viewers to trespass their habitual thinking and to dissolve preconceived ideas of what art is suppose to be; what an artist is supposed to do; or what function a space is suppose to serve.  

The formal foundation of all my work lays in color, geometry, and the expanded field of painting. From this base the work develops and changes to adapt to specific projects, constraints or locations. Most of my work is first contemplated in writing and thereafter planned through a series of sketches and architectural drawings. The selection of the materials and color palette is an important and integral part of the planning process. I often use materials that are not considered traditional art materials, which forces me to continuously develop new techniques. As I start working with the materials, intuition takes over the creative process. I enjoy having a dialogue with the materials that I use and enjoy being surprised and challenged by unexpected results. 

Pluralistic in a formal and spatial sense, my work addresses different techniques and materials while oscillating from site-specificity to nomadic practice, with the objective being flexibility and openness. 

Donald Judd once said, “Confusion is simply confusion and clarity is fundamental to art”. In the vein of pensiero debole, I would like to reverse this statement by suggesting that clarity is simply clearness, and confusion is fundamental to art. My work is not intentionally structured to confuse the viewer, but my creative process is circular argument rather than a linear one.