Lygia Clark and the Body

LYGIA CLARK

AND THE BODY

We do everything so automatically that we have forgotten the poignancy of smell, of physical anguish, of tactile sensations of all kinds.

Lygia Clark

The trajectory of the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark (1920-1988) led to important shifts in the contemporary arts. Her work got further and further away from the limitations of frames and bi-dimensionality and brought the human experience as indispensable.

Clark starts her career later in life, with painting. She is part of the group called “Front�, together with other Brazilian artists. They make abstract, geometrical, non-figurative art, as we can see in the paintings made by Lygia – but homogeneity between the participants is not a requirement, respecting their individuality as artists.

Plan in modulated surfaces n.5, 1957

A separation between two groups of artists from the concrete movement starts to become clear. The one Clark is a part of can no longer relate to, as alleged, the excessive rationalization, instead of sensitivity, that is taking over the concretism in Brazil. So, the Neoconcrete group is created.

The series of Creatures makes evident the relatively quick transition in her work from the bi-dimensionality of her paintings to a tri-dimensional art. Also here begins the important shift from the classical roles of artist as creator and spectator as receptor, to the notion of art not existing without the action of the “spectator” (which cannot even be called that, anymore), and vice-versa.

Inspired by Clark’s work and the difficulty of categorizing what she made, the Brazilian poet and critic of art Ferreira Gullar, that had also been part of the foundation of the Neoconcretism, comes up with the concept of non-object. Non-object does not mean that something is not an object, but that this is a special category of object, one not with a practical use, but that is completely based in sensory experience, as Clark’s Creatures: not sculptures, nor functional objects.

Pocket Creature, 1966 Opposite Creature II, 1962

The participation of the public is increased in one of Clark’s most important works, Walking (1964), which is based on the cutting of a strip. This denounces the alienation that exists in the arts, according to Neoconcretists. The strip that Clark uses in Walking and in other works such as The Inside And The Outside (1963), which is the cover of this essay, is called a Mobius strip.

This type of strip had been used before by concretist artist Max Bill – but to create static sculptures. Clark’s work has the same starting point but I’d say it teases with Bill’s concretist work by highlighting the aspects of the concrete movement that she criticizes.

The artist is not presenting an object anymore, but proposing an experience – and that also explores with the always so complex and controversial notions of space and time. Through the active and unpredictable participation of the public, there is an acknowledgement of one’s power of choice and action. It is the age-old practice that many times is not conscious, of discovering what we are, by experiencing what we are not, and placing ourselves in unusual positions.

Walking, 1962 Tripartite Unity, Max Bill, 1949

Now, Clark’s work completely focuses on the body. On The I And The You (1968), the two participants put on clothes full of layers and zippers, some that open to pockets with materials such as foam, and others that give access directly to the other person’s skin.

The experience is that, simultaneously, they touch each other and play around with the discoveries that happen through the clothes.

The outfit includes a mask so that the participants cannot see anything, appealing much more to the tactile sensations.

Another work, The House Is The Body: Labyrinth (1968), creates a route through a series of spaces created with tissues and plastic, similar to tents, that each represent a stage of the reproductive process: penetration, ovulation, germination and expulsion as a return to the maternal body.

The different materials and objects – or, as seen previously, non-objects – stimulate the senses as well as in The I And The You, and this becomes Clark’s signature work from this point on.

The I and the You, 1968 The House Is the Body: Labyrinth, 1968

Clark also starts, with The House Is The Body, to not only work in space, but with space; not only be in space but be space.

This has everything to do with the work that another standout Brazilian artist, Helio Oiticica, is realizing at around the same time. Oiticica was part of the creation of the Neoconcrete movement, together with Clark. As hers, his career goes from bi-dimensional, to three-dimensional, to sensory experience. The Parangoles (1964) are made of tissues, to be investigated and worn, and are in fact used by a samba school for a Brazilian carnival. In 1967, one year before Clark’s The House Is The Body, Oiticica creates the installation Tropicalia, that takes up a whole room, full of experiences with colors, tissues, prints, plants and materials. Soon after, the title of this work becomes the name of a very important movement in Brazil that means to strengthen and create a cultural identity that is particular to the country.

Tropicalia, 1967 Parangoles, 1964 Helio Oiticica

When researching, it is possible to find Clark’s work among body art. There is, however, a difference between body art that is performed by Marina Abramovic, for example – who became well-known in the internet, making it to outside the field.

Abramovic herself, as others who work with body art, participates to the performances, and, most of the times, the public is also invited in. Clark, on the other hand, takes no part, only makes the propositions.

The two artists come closer, however, in approaching the questions of tactile sensations. Touching is a two-way experience: when we touch something else, we not only feel the external element – be it a person or a thing – but we feel ourselves feeling them.

The touching during the artistic experience in Clark’s The I And The You and in Abramovic’s Imponderabilia (1977) brings to the surface many questions. Of power, gender, sex, sexism, intimacy and the awkwardness that we feel towards the other, even when this person is someone close to us, and even when it is ourselves.

Imponderabilia, Marina Abramovic, 1977

Clark’s art, Abramovic’s art, and body art in general are a form of denouncement of the denaturalization of the human body, not only someone else’s, but also our own. This process is far from new, and even though it varies according to of place and time, it is strongly related to the pressure put by beauty standards, especially towards women, which is a subject as contemporary as ever. How this denaturalization is so assimilated, at least in the context to which I can refer to, is a tool that maintains the idea of body as a something and not someone.

The search for a work that brings art to the routine, to the common life, that not only brings people closer to it but depends and is fully based on it, took Clark more and more away from the concept of art itself. It is no wonder that the exposition of her 40-year career’s work in the Musem of Modern Art (MoMA) – New York, 2014 – was called “The Abandonment of Art”.

The work with the “non-objects”, objects that would have no practical use but the sensory experiences that they cause, start to actually have a use in psychoanalytic therapy led by Clark herself until the end of her life.

Rocks, fruits, tissues, plastic, foam, metals, paper, all these and much more are elements of the Relational Objects (1980), that seek to bring relief and self-knowledge through tactile stimulations.

Relational Objects, 1980

The desensitization, the automatic response, maybe Clark was realizing it or maybe she did not see it coming but the fact is that this is our current reality. The abundance of information, the velocity in which everything occurs, the carelessness with which we face and process all of this, as said in Clark’s quote in the beginning of this essay, makes her ideas still so fitting.

The path she took with her career pulled her away from habitual limitations and closer to human beings being human. Even though she called herself a non-artist, maybe this goes just as with the non-objects: it does not necessarily mean a denial, but a way to express something of a different kind. Her legacy is an art that becomes art only through action, presence, and feeling.

The Abandonment of Art, 2014

DOMINIQUE MONTICELLI STORIA DELL’ARTE CONTEMPORANEA POLITECNICO DI MILANO, 2017