Flesh Of The Sensible: Painting, Shamanism, Perception & Phenomenology by Duncan Hopkins

FLESH OF THE SENSIBLE Painting, Shamanism, Perception & Phenomenology

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4 5

6 7 8 9

INTRODUCTION PATHS

Shamanism The First Paintings and Perspective Developing Techniques

4 6 8

WOODS

Realpolitik Meanings of ‘Landscape’ Representation Symbolism

HEADS

Processes of Perception

BODIES

Phenomenological Interpretations Embodied In Painting 1. Embodied in the Pictorial Plane 2. Embodied in Action

SHAPES

“The Books” Shaped Canvas

SPACES

1. Studio 2. Display

Appendix: Visual documentation of researched artists Bibliography

14 15

21 21 23

Duncan Hopkins

MA Fine Art: Contemporary Practice MFA 106: Extended Essay / July 2011 1

Dedicated to Amanda, for her constant love, support and patience ...

1 INTRODUCTION

“In primordial perception, Merleau-Ponty writes, subject and object, noesis and noema, are blurred to the point of disappearing into one sole “intentional fabric,” namely, the “flesh of the sensible.” Rather than claiming that the body extracts the emotional essence of things, we should instead speak of a single reverberation out of which perception, gesture, painting, and speaking emerge”.1 This essay explores the relationship between my painting, shamanism, perception and p henomenology. I have always made pictures, and used my imagination. In the mid 1980s as a teenager, I felt a tangible sense of mystery when seeing paintings in galleries. I wanted to make those. To be a painter seemed like a truth. Adult life brought different realities - odd jobs, travel, family, part-time painting and graphic design. This MA has been a return and true absorption into painting. This essay charts the motivation, practice, research and philosophical influences through the year, with particular focus on meanings of the detached and embodied.

THE BOOK OF TWO WAYS AS ONE Oil on canvas / 50 x 100 x 4 cm each (50 x 50 x 4 cm) / 10.2010

1 Ted Toadvine, Singing The World In A New Key: Merleau-Ponty and The Ontology Of Sense in Janus Head, 7(2), 273-283 (New York: Trivium Publications, 2004), p. 279.

2 PATHS

The early paintings I did at the start of the course were landscapes, often of roads or paths. This reflected being at the start of a creative journey; living in the central Cornish countryside for the first time; and walking country lanes in Winter. Sometimes, when I am unsure what to paint, I walk1 with no defined destination, through this landscape of woodlands, smallholdings, mining ruins, history, and ‘edgelands’2 - small scrapyards and old landfill sites. I follow predetermined paths and ‘desire’ paths.3 I allow the experience to become meditative.4 This is, in a sense, an attempt to have a two-way responsive interaction with the energetic environment. This becomes a significant reference point for perception of identity. This connection is a primary stimulus for painting. My art is an ‘expression’ of that meeting point.

FOGOU Oil on canvas / 50 x 50 x 4 cm / 10.2010

How does this attempt at connection manifest? How does it act as a foundation for embodiment?5 What formal and aesthetic artistic methods have I used to convey this connection?

1 “Walking ... also engages a different experience that is not the making of a picture, or the observation of a view, but an everyday experience that may not have to do with art.” Ed. by Rachael Ziady DeLue and James Elkins, Landscape Theory: The Art Seminar Volume 6 (London: Routledge, 2008), p. 149. 2 Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts, Edgelands: Journeys Into England’s True Wilderness (Jonathan Cape, 2011) 3 “Desire paths are lines of footfall worn into the ground, tracks of use. They are frowned upon in our national parkland, where they are seen as scars and deviations.” - Farley and Roberts, p. 34. 4 “The idea of Zen is to catch life as it flows. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about Zen. I raise my hand; I take a book from the other side of this desk; ... I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighbouring woods: in all these I am practising Zen, I am living Zen. No wordy discussion is necessary, nor any explanation. I do not know why - and there is no need of explaining, but when the sun rises the whole world dances with joy, and everybody’s heart is filled with bliss. If Zen is at all conceivable, it must be taken hold of here.” D.T.Suzuki. An Introduction To Zen (Rider, 1969), p. 75. 5 “Rather than to the world-subject conjunction, sense would be more accurately attributed to the meeting point of world and life. All life carries with it an evaluative projecting into the world. ... Life values and chooses; it throws a world up before itself and is therefore already intentionally engaged rather than merely causally connected. Life and sense go hand in hand”. - Toadvine, p. 276.

Shamanism For me, this connection is sensory, v isual, emotional, and it echoes my interest in shamanic practice. Shamanism is “our oldest surviving expression of human spirituality. It is rooted in the belief that all that exists has a spirit or soul. Shamanism explores inner realities, opening the doors of perception by altering the experiences of the body”.6 We can be aware of our existence within two simultaneous landscapes - the conscious, daily solidity, and the deepest swells of the Unconscious.7 Therefore, an intrinsic connecting may be accompanied by sensations of fear, awe, the uncanny, excitement, Haida Shamans, Alaska, early 20th Century ecstasy,8 the sublime, ‘energy’ and ‘urgency’9. Carl Jung calls it “the experience of a collective archetype”. Mercia Eliade defines this as “sacred”.10 These words can be provocative but the numinous has “increasingly become embraced by humanist, secular and scientific views of the world”.11 ‘Numinous’ can be defined as “the non-rational mystery behind religion” or “an alteration of consciousness involving an experience of spiritual power, but one which passes through the personal unconscious”.12 The shaman13 enters these meeting points where forms of consciousness intersect, and interacts through body, trance and sensory awareness.14 The shaman can also, through the human construction of reality, overlay the physical landscape with mental mapping. “The landscape becomes sedimented with the shaman’s mythogenic projections. In some instances, this mental mapping will remain as an imaginative construct ... or, the sedimentation of myth ... may be expressed by building monuments”.15 6 Chris Trwoga, Shamanism and Sacred Landscapes (Glastonbury: The Speaking Tree, 2006), p. 4. 7 Trwoga, p. 9. 8 “The shaman, lord of the three realms of sky, earth and the underworld, is an individual endowed with the ability to enter profound trance states, a “technician of ecstasy” - Joan Halifax, Ph.D, Shamanic Voices: A Survey of Visionary Narratives (Arkana, 1979) 9 Junga Yoon, Spirituality in Contemporary Art: The Idea of the Numinous, (London: Zidane Press, 2010), pp. 26-28. 10 “The feeling of terror before the sacred, before the awe-inspiring mystery (mysterium tremendum); the majesty (majestas) that emanates an overwhelming superiority of power; religious fear before the fascinating mystery (mysterium fascinans)”. - Yoon, p. 27. 11 Yoon,. p. 28 12 Yoon,. p. 26 13 “Every real shaman has to feel an illumination in his body, in the inside of his head or in his brain, something that gleams like fire, that gives him the power to see with closed eyes in the darkness, into the hidden things or into the future, or into the secrets of another man.” - Arctic Shaman Kund Rasmusen, Across Arctic America (G.P.Putnam & Sons, 1927), in Trwoga, p. 9. 14 “Understandings of shamanism and ASC [altered states of consciousness] are shifting from their mischaracterization as atavistic and delusional to a recognition of their central role in the evolution of human consciousness. Shamanism was the first human institution that systematized this integration, and its potentials and processes still have important implications for humans. These potentials provided the basis for the evolution of synthetic symbolic awareness in early evolutionary periods of modern Homo sapiens, providing a basis for human development in the mythological systems representing self, mind, other, and consciousness. This is exemplified in the soul journey and in guardian spirits, which constitute forms of self-objectification and role taking that expand human sociocognitive and intrapsychic dynamics. Similar processes are found in the classic shamanic motif of death and rebirth, which represents the development of self through the symbolic death of the old self to permit the emergence and integration of a higher-order self.”Michael Winkelman, Shamanism: the neural ecology of consciousness and healing, (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000), p.xiii 15 Trwoga, p. 59.

The First Paintings and Perspective These paintings began to convey these layered states, but they were constructed from a visual perception rather than a sense of the immersive. They were informed by established formalities of visual thinking, materials and mark-making. Most of the work used a conventional perspective, originating from skenographic Greece to Iraq16 to Italy; from the eye to the camera to the hand. I was representing how the human eye and the camera perceives. The Renaissance artist used this strict geometrical mapping of space, and insisted that “the artist’s work should be as close to nature as possible”.17 Maurice Merleu-Ponty writes about Renaissance perspectival techniques - “... the painters knew from experience that no technique of perspective is an exact solution and that there is no projection of the existing world which respects it in all aspects and deserves to become the fundamental law of painting”.18 20th Century Modernism broke down this Renaissance domination and offered radical alternatives for seeing and representation.19

ROAD / Digitally manipulated photograph / 10.2010

Through crits, I was challenged to change my methods of perspective. I was still unclear of my own visual language in a contemporary context, and was open to change. These dark blue paintings, referencing source photographs and memory, begin to deconstruct traditional perspective. They were influenced by Minimalism and system painting. The content / subject division breaks down; there is a slow re-emergence from the unconscious depths.

16 Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (Latinized: Alhazen) (965 - c.1040), Kitab al-Manazir (Book of Optics) 17 Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), De Pictura (On Painting), (1435) 18 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind (1964), in biolinguagem.com <http://www.biolinguagem.com/biolinguagem_antropologia/ merleauponty_1964_eyeandmind.pdf> [accessed 15th May 2011] (p. 10.) 19 “Cubism ‘shattered the image of an objective world and put an end to the pictorial reign of the solid’ and Surrealism ‘involved the break-up, under the influence of Freud and Jung, of the univocal, rationally self-conscious subject’” Michael Newman, ‘Revising Modernism, Representing Postmodernism: Critical Discourses Of The Visual Arts’, in Postmodernism: ICA Documents, ed. by Lisa Appignanesi, (London: Free Association Books, 1989), pp. 95-154 (p. 105.)

All It Is and All It Becomes series Oil on canvas / 10 - 11.2010 7

Developing Techniques It was suggested that I explored paint’s materiality and loosen up the painterly application. Instead of artwork being clearly defined by subject, the subject should become part of the objectivity of the painting. The art should have ‘medium specifity’; it should be “rendered ‘pure’ by being confined to the effects specific to its own medium”.20 This was a new way of thinking for me. Key to this decision was the initial sketch for this painting:

TRANSITORY Oil on canvas / 76 x 152.5 x 4 cm / 17-18.10.2010

The image was based on a collage of two found photographs from the internet, of oil burning during the Deepwater Oil disaster (2010), and a mysterious ‘cyclone’ off the coast of Iraq:

Clement Greenberg, Modernist Painting (1966), in Newman, p. 106.

I planned to replicate the collage and pixelation, but once the painting process began the materiality, patience and limitations of my skill influenced the outcomes:

Accepting thin washes and runs of oil and turps during the early stages of the piece became significant in my attempts to change habits of work. This was intrinsically linked to drawing, action, gesture, confidence, and the fluctuations of control when using paint.21

21 “But different aspects or types of fluidness coming together: a kind of expansion and multiplicity of fluidness - what’s the word for that? Well, “constellation” might be one possibility”. - Andrew Lambirth, Ken Kiff (London: Thames & Hudson, 2001), p. 68.

3 WOODS

The paths lead into the woods.1 I began a series of drawings and paintings about woods near home: Drawing was not a regular discipline for me. I rarely used sketchbooks. Thumbnails of ideas, from my graphic design training - making out roughs as ideas for designs. There was a gap between sketches and painted work. By drawing regularly, I can selectively take time to analyse forms and feel things. I start to learn about mark-making, about rapidity and gesture, how the links between the drawing and the paintings strengthen. Somewhere along the line, I begin to realize how drawing correlates to writing in terms of gestural signature. “Drawing allows a hotline to the nervous system, an immediacy not compounded by complex materials and layering”.2 I found the winter woods attractive; the grey, quiet, dull-lit secrecies so unlike the tourist trail. I photographed and drew on location, embodied in the woods. I painted in the studio. The paintings explored representation, symbolism, methods of drawing, and paint application. I used an overhead projector and photos for parts of the image3, therefore the results are still detached from the experience.

WOOD Oil on mdf / 90 x 60 cm / 01.2011

1 “But of all the metaphors in the ‘life-is-a-journey’ suite, perhaps the most interesting is ‘path’: ‘this is my chosen path’, ‘the path to righteousness’, ‘pathfinders’. As a rule, nobody talks about a spiritual journey as a highway or cruise. If you are going to get spiritual, you really need a path to walk, preferably through trees to add a brooding atmosphere. Where would yours be? ... Well, our spiritual path would be a track worn down by dog-walkers and schoolkids, on the outskirts of a north-west English conurbation.” Farley and Roberts, p. 33. 2 Virginia Verran, ‘Artists Talking’, Artists Newsletter (2011) <http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/artists_stories/single/925162> [accessed 25th February 2011] 3 “The word ‘image’ is in bad repute because we have thoughtlessly believed that a drawing was a tracing, a copy, a second thing, and that the mental image was such a drawing, belonging among our private bric-a-brac. But if in fact it is nothing of the kind, then neither the drawing nor the painting belongs to the in-itself any more than the image does”. Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind, p. 4.

50.262684, -5.169214 Watercolour & pastel on paper / 51 x 74 cm / 30.12.2010

Source photographs (triptychs) / 08.01.2011 11

ESCAPE TO THE COUNTRY Oil on canvas / 120 x 100 x 2 cm / 01 - 02.2011

Here. The paint loosens; scale extends. Confidence strengthens. The collage process, outline projected figure on an uninscribed place. There is still a dichotomy between the representative and the painterly, uncertainty between the defined and the gestural.4 Lack of decisiveness in direction.5 Lessons are learned about accepting the rapid mark which contains as much information as a laboured rendition. Colour is rich and evocative.

4 “Mimesis operates on the principle of metaphorical similarity based on perceptual resemblance, providing a representation of the relationship between the self and the external world through movement. Mimetic expression is based on inputs of self-representation and episodic memory, encompassing and preceding the episodic memory system. The inherently cross-modal nature of mimetic representation and its ability to move across sensory and somatic modalities provided the basis for a uniquely human but prelinguistic level of symbolization and culture. Mimesis has properties that preceded speech and are necessary for it.” - Winkelman, p. 45. 5 “It is valuable to remember here that the French word sens and the German Sinn signify not only “meaning” but also “direction.” To ask whether nature has a sense, therefore, is also to ask whether it has a direction, a telos.” - (telos - a purpose, goal or end.) Toadvine, p. 274.

Realpolitik I have used conventional perspective in ‘Escape To The Country’, but this is important. The figure is central to perception and uncertainty within the image. This phenomenological statement by Merleau-Ponty describes the importance of the figure - “Space is not... a network of relations between objects such as would be seen by a third party, w itnessing my vision, or by a geometer looking over it and reconstructing it from the outside. It is, rather, a space reckoned starting from me as the null point or degree zero of spatiality. I do not see it according to its exterior envelope; I live it from the inside; I am immersed in it.”6 Our physical perceptive senses expound spatial-temporal reasoning. Phenomenology is a significant philosophical discourse which attempts to describe and promote this perceived embodied nature of sensual awareness between human and ‘external’ consciousness forms.7 In contrast, Michel Foucault, who wrote much about the ‘primacy of vision’, and was originally influenced by the phenomenological “celebration of embodied vision”, eventually condemned it as “transcendental narcissism”.8 For him, the Enlightenment “assumed an observing eye capable of seeing the visible tables, but from a position outside of them”. This detached visual primacy could become dangerous, as in the authority / spectator ‘theatrical representation of pain’ (public executions); and which remains in our society (streaming news, disaster, CCTV, horror films). This found ultimate form in the Panopticon (prison design by Jeremy Bentham) - the “machinery that assures dissymmetry, disequilibrium, difference. Consequently, it does not matter who exercises power. Any individual, taken almost at random, can operate the machine”. The implications are disturbing, yet distinctly real. Foucault continues, “our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance ... We are neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine”. Everywhere is “penetrated by the benevolently sadistic gaze of a diffuse and anonymous power”.9 This is an observation of a Big (Brother) society, somewhere on the horizon line. Or on all sides. Incidentally at the time of producing these works, in January 2011, the english ‘Coalition’ Government was planning to privatize much of the UK woodland. The woods I drew in are bound by fencing. It is difficult to separate ideology from the landscape. “On the other hand, landscape is not only ideology: it moves and shapes each one of us”.10 After public criticism, and a campaign and petition by The Woodland Trust11, the plans were temporarily shelved in February 2011. 6 Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind, p. 12. 7 “Describing the radical creation of sense, the founding of a new world of meaning, proves more difficult precisely because it cannot be set off against the background of an existing world or norm. Like the founding of the world described by primal religions, such a radical creation requires the revelation of a fixed point, a central axis that orients all future developments”. Toadvine, p. 277. 8 Martin Jay, ‘In The Empire Of The Gaze: Foucault And The Denigration Of Vision In 20th Century French Thought’, in Appignanesi, p. 54. 9 Jay, pp. 68-70. 10 “Landscape is always about shaping. Not just directly, with hands, tools, and machines, but through law, public policy, the investing and withholding of capital, and other actions undertaken thousands of miles away. The processes that shape landscape operate at different scales of time and space: from the ephemeral to the enduring, from the local to the national. So I would return to ideology. It is important to understand that landscape is shaped by ideology, by policy”. - DeLue and Elkins, p. 93. 11 The Woodland Trust <http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk> [accessed 6th March 2011]

Meanings of ‘Landscape’ Representation There is a responsibility by the artist to consider the meaning or message, if any, within a piece of work.12 It is obvious that people, place, objects, events, activity and time are connected within a landscape. The word ‘landscape’ has become generic, almost throwaway and vague, but it has roots in the Danish landskab, German landschaft, and Old English landscipe. The association with landscape as artistic representation originates from Dutch painting (landskip). ‘Land’ means both a place and people living there. ‘Skabe’ and ‘schaffen’ mean ‘to shape’; suffixes ‘-skab’ and ‘-schaft’, as in the English ‘-ship’, also mean association, partnership.13 Visual representation of landscape can usually be classified by one or more of these definitions: 1. Landscape as a spiritual and aesthetic response to nature. This is found significantly from the 19th century onward, in Romanticism14, the Picturesque15 and ideas of the Sublime. Before that, landscape was often used as a visual backdrop for human / mythical drama. 2. Social and historical shaping of place over time, through work, land ownership, class, religion, settlement, occupation or war. 3. ‘Landscape is a product of natural forces, the proper object of natural science or natural philosophy, perhaps altered by human intervention, but still understood ecologically’. 4. ‘Landscape as a viewed object, something built out of representations of space and time’.16 My approach to painting touches on all these 4 definitions, and my shamanic influence interacts with them. It is a complex issue, when trying to portray a visual and sensual connection with an environment. Sometimes a painting can be a celebration of place. But there is a danger with romanticising, and by identifying culturally with a landscape / myth, that nationalist ideology becomes a dominant influence, creating idealised representation or propaganda.17 This is perhaps found distilled in many High Street galleries that display hundreds of generic painted views (undermining the radical avant-garde18), or in tourism’s promotional material.19

12 “When formerly I painted the raised fist and the red flag, I thought to represent unequivocal symbols in the interest of the labor movement and these pictures were understood. Today, I no longer direct myself to a clearly defined audience - this relates to the involvement of the structure of class society - and I no longer ask in relation to my work: “For whom?” But: “What comes out of me?” Jorg Huber, ‘Interview with Jorg Immendorf’ (1983), in Theories and documents of contemporary art: a sourcebook of artists’ writings, ed. by Kristine Stiles and Peter Howard Selz (University of California Press, 1996), p. 256. 13 DeLue and Elkins, p. 54. 14 “... an autonomous ‘life-world’, a minority culture opposed to the levelling and technologizing effects of bourgeois modernity. The logic of the latter was both exemplified and negated by Symbolist art which was at once progressive (a negation of tradition in, for example vers libre), autonomous (in that art was to pursue its own aims and not those of positivist science or the means-end rationality of society) and synthetic (synesthesia to express a state of the soul; the Wagnerian ideal of the total work of art; and, by extension the aesthetic as a model for the whole of life, which was to have consequences for utopian modernism”. - Newman, p. 98. 15 “Nature is rarely capable of creating the perfect composition” - William Gilpin, Essay On Prints (1768) 16 DeLue and Elkins, pp. 88-96. 17 “‘Nostalgia’, as Tuymans says, ‘is horrific’, and, as a counter to its pernicious, debilitating and destructive energies, he quotes a line from Robert Wilson: ‘A tree is best measured when it is down.’” Michael Archer, ‘Luc Tuymans: Behind The Mask’, in Apocalypse: Beauty and Horror In Contemporary Art, ed. by Rosemary Amos (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2000), p. 73. 18 Newman, p. 100. 19 “...the imaginative creation of new identities, often drawing upon landscape images such as the oak tree, in shaping the territorial and political structures such as the nation state, in which capitalist production has been obliged to operate for much of the past two centuries” Denis E. Cosgrove, ‘Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape’, in DeLue and Elkins, pp. 17-42. (p. 29.)

Symbolism The symbol is “...the best possible expression for a complex fact not clearly apprehended by consciousness”.20 The trees in this painting could be read symbolically. Jung describes the tree as representative of psychic growth, which “cannot be brought about by a conscious effort of will power”. It is a “slow, powerful, involuntary growth” fulfilling a “definite pattern”.21 My growth continued by working on this painting. The tree has deep roots in the Unconscious, reflecting early histories and the cross-cultural biospherical co-dependence upon oxygen, fruits, wood, shelter, fire and medicine. It is found around the world in the imaginative life of cultures. Shamanic cosmologies often utilize the ‘World Tree’, which the shaman uses for travelling through “levels of existence”.22 The roots are in the ‘Lower World’. We inhabit the ‘Middle World’. Its branches are in the ‘Upper World’. This three tier structure has geometric cohesion. The worlds are linked by the central vertical Axis Mundi (trunk). Other axis symbols can include ladders, stairs, rivers or a mountain. These are “conceptualizations of consciousness”.23

Yggdrasil, the World Ash (Norse) - 19th C illustration A Lapland shaman’s drum, and diagram of drum art, shows the Axis Mundi uniting the 3 worlds.

Kabbalah (Judaic) World Trees24

20 Carl Jung (1954), in ‘Images, Meanings and Connections: Essays in Memory of Susan R. Bach’, ed. by Ralph Goldstein (Daimon, 1999), p. 158. 21 Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols (London: Picador, 1978), p. 161. 22 “This Axis passes upwards and downwards through ‘holes’ in the cosmic vault which lead to the upper and lower worlds, and it is through these that the shaman is able to pass from one level of existence to another, and back again”. Nevill Drury, The Elements of Shamanism (Element Books, 1989), pp. 24-25. 23 Winkelman, p. 11. 24 Image Source (Left) - http://www.diagnosis2012.co.uk/ast.htm [accessed 11th July 2011] Image Source (Middle) - http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Yggdrasil [accessed 11th July 2011] Image Source (Right) - http://www.dailymason.com/tag/tree-of-life/ [accessed 11th July 2011]

4 HEADS

As light relief, I began painting heads. Initially they began as physical, psychological and humorous representations of identity.1

HEAD OF A DICTATOR (1) Oil on canvas / 70 x 40 x 2 cm / 12.2010

1 “Conciliatory meditation - beginning with the contemplation of the smallest toe. On the horizon, in the most distant fog, one always sees faces. Under the blanket, something is shivering and trembling, behind the curtain, someone is laughing. You see in my eyes nature’s altar, the carnal sacrifice, remains of food in the cesspool-pan, emanations from the bedsheets, blossoms on stumps and on roots, oriental light on the pearly teeth of the belles, cartilage, negative forms, shadow stains and wax drops. Marching up of the epileptics, orchestrations of the bloated, warted, gruel-like, and jellyfish creatures, limbs and interlaced erectile tissue.” George Baselitz, “Pandemonic Manifesto 1, 2d Version” (1961), in Stiles and Selz, p. 248.

Processes of Perception I was working with the idea that consciousness was rooted in the brain; and that visual perception - information from the eyes to the brain - was key to awareness. This was a form of ‘Passive Perception’ developed by Rene Descartes back in 1641.2 Understanding of cognition, previously “considered as a “mental process” only domain”, has changed. Further research has shown me that ‘active perception’, where there is “no distinction between input, action, motor response, efferent output” and “perfect symmetry between organism and environment”3 resembles much more closely ideas of embodiment found in phenomenology and shamanism. “The tight coupling between the neural system and the body–environment system is called embodiment”.4 Active perception is used in the research fields of neuroscience, cognitive science and robotics.

Active Perception - “updating of visual field according to position: how multiple positions help geometry (depth etc)” Jun Tani 5

2 Rene Descartes, ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’ (1641), in Modern Philosophy, ed. by Dr. Daniel Kern, <http://kernsphilosophypage.com/Modern/ModernPhilosophyReadings1.doc> [accessed 9th july 2011] 3 George Kampis, Active Perception: Self-motion, Performative Action, and the Episodic Brain (2003), <http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~g-kampis/ActiveP/Active_Perception.html> [accessed 14th October 2010] 4 Luc Berthouze and Yasuo Kuniyoshi, ‘Neural learning of embodied interaction dynamics’ (Neural Networks 11 (1998) 1259–1276), in Kampis [accessed 14th October 2010] 5 Images: Kampis, Text: Jun Tani <http://www.bdc.brain.riken.jp/~tani/publications.htm>, in Kampis [accessed 9th july 2011]

5 BODIES

The figurative work developed, became whole bodies, which were gradually incorporated into pictorial 足environments and landscapes.

LIT BY A DARK STAR Acrylic on watercolour paper / 112 x 76 cm / 27.04.2011 18

During March and April I felt little connection with the work I was producing, and was feeling consumed by an approaching event horizon. Some underlying themes that lurked in my work (‘New World Order’, post-apocalyptic possibilities, Foucault’s “diffuse and anonymous power”) were beginning to drain me. This was becoming Shadow work.1 The shamanic journey often involves acute experiences.2 The trick is the transmutation and healing of these energies; but “gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you”.3 I began to practice meditation again. I use a technique called ‘journeying’, which is an active visualisation and inner-sensory experience. “The journey differs from a dream because the individual is able to direct the journey and because he or she learns unexpected things. For instance in a dream, running like a deer you may experience speed. But in a journey you will feel how the muscles of the deer’s legs feel as it runs.”4 The meditator enters symbolic landscapes where “the geography is not bound by rules of gravity but the rules of energy”.5 The experience is interactive, and work can be done (including treating illness, resolving problems, sensing places as energy).6 ‘Otherworldly’ figures or animals may present themselves - the traveller may undergo shape-shifting, taking on an animal’s form. This opens up a whole area of debate about the nature of these events, which I cannot undertake. It is relevant to my painting for several reasons: 1. The active and embodied nature of awareness in the meditation process, and its affect on the external world. The mythogenic projections onto the landscape and that layering process within the visuals of my paintings. 2. The representation of figures, not as direct physical replications, but as energetic, part-animal, ‘mythical’ or costumed beings. These could be illustrative examples of transformative appearance ( or ‘sacred theatre’, which can verge into Performance.7 ).

1 “The shadow is not the whole of the unconscious personality. It represents unknown or little known attributes and qualities of the ego ... the shadow can also consist of collective factors that stem from a source outside the individual’s life.” These attributes may include egotism, fantasy, rage, transgression and “values that are difficult to integrate into one’s life” Jung, p. 47. 2 “To walk unharmed in the Realms of the Unconscious is not easy. It is, for some, the path to madness. The unwary risk psychic destruction.” - Trwoga, p. 7. 3 “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” - Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146’ (1886) in memorable-quotes.com <http://www.memorable-quotes.com/friedrich+nietzsche,a497.html> [accessed 24th June 2011] 4 Lauren Torres, ‘The Shamanic Journey’ in Shaman Links (2008) <http://www.shamanlinks.net/Journey.htm> [accessed 12th July 2011] 5 Torres [accessed 12th July 2011] 6 “Shamanistic healing practices achieve this integration by physically stimulating systematic brain-wave-discharge patterns that activate affects, memories, attachments, and other psychodynamic processes of the paleomammalian brain. This activation forces normally unconscious or preconscious primary information-processing functions and outputs to be integrated into the operations of the frontal cortex. This integrates implicit understandings, socioemotional dynamics, repressed memories, unresolved conflicts, intuitions, and nonverbal visual, mimetic, and presentational - knowledge into self-conscious awareness.” Winkelman, p.xiii. 7 Elements of performance, ‘sacred theatre’ and mythical transformation through masks and costume are bought into conscious play by performance artists, such as Joseph Beuys, Marcus Coates, Carolyn Ryder Cooley and Zierle & Carter.

Phenomenological Interpretations I take the word ‘embodied’ to mean integrated, a part-of, a lack of separation between this and that. These spaces where ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ realities coincide can be conceived shamanically, artistically or phenomenologically - “once a body-world relationship is recognized, there is a ramification of my body and a ramification of the world and a correspondence between its inside and my outside, between my inside and its outside”.8 This becomes the subject and the object represented by Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological noesis and noema - “...these roughly correspond to the two poles of intentional consciousness: the thinking and the thought. In this case noesis is the -ing, and noema is the object that is in that thinking, i.e. the thought. The noesis is the thinking that bestows sense upon an object”.9 Merleau-Ponty developed the phenomenological concepts of the “flesh” and the “Invisible” to describe this interweaving - “... the invisible is the product of both an ambiguous precognitive and apperceptual communication between the body and its world-horizon and a world forever replete with occluded ‘other’ spaces”.10 This implies that my perceptive vision cannot take into account other influential coexistent visual fields.11 The visible and invisible are integrated and equally effective. Perception is not purely visual, but bodily, of flesh. “Where do my boundaries as a human being begin and end? Not with my skin, as we typically assume, given the constant process of interaction between my body and the physical world around me both at macro- and microscopic levels ... the content of my consciousness is inextricably interlaced with the sensory input I continuously receive from the whole of the world as it meets my eyes, ears, nostrils and skin”.12 I was not aware of Phenomenology before I began the course, and I am slowly beginning to understand its thesis and intention. It is relevant to painting, because I am interacting with a place, an idea or an object and re-interpreting it through paint or drawing. There is an interdependence between my activity, gestures, decision processes, the materiality and behaviour of media, surface, the subject (whether predetermined or evolving), and unseen phenomena.13

8 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (Studies in Phenomenology and Existental Philosophy), (USA: Northwestern University Press, 1969), p. 136. 9 Jonathanziemba, ‘Idealism, Noesis/Noema, and Goodbye to Husserl’ in erlebnis.wordpress.com (October 4th 2007) <http://erlebnis.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/idealism-noesisnoema-and-goodbye-to-husserl/> [accessed 18th May 2011] 10 Dr. Jeremy Weate, Merleau-Ponty’s Invisible Man (2000) < http://www.bakareweate.com/texts/Merleau-Ponty%27s%20Invisible%20Man.pdf> [accessed 14th October 2010] (p. 4.) 11 “My visual field is therefore in part an occlusion of other visual fields, a visibility achieved by way of a horizon that is for the most part hidden. Reversibility, or the possibility of being elsewhere, is therefore a possibility virtual to each experience: the finitude of even an ek-static conception of embodiment entails that it cannot be achieved in fact.” - Weate, p. 3. 12 Toadvine, p. 278. 13 “I put it in the center of the canvas because there was no reason to put it on the side. So I thought I might as well stick to the idea that it’s got two eyes, a nose and mouth and neck. I got to the anatomy and I felt myself almost getting flustered. I really never could get hold of it. It almost petered out. I never could complete it and when I think of it now, it wasn’t such a bright idea. But I don’t think artists have particularly bright ideas. Matisse’s Woman in a Red Blouse - what an idea that is! Or the Cubists - when you think about it now, it is so silly to look at an object from many angles. Constructivism - open, not closed. It’s very silly. It’s good that they got those ideas because it was enough to make some of them great artists”. - Willem De Kooning, ‘Content Is A Glimpse: Interview with David Sylvester (1963)’, in Stiles and Selz, p. 197.

Embodied In Painting There are variants in the meaning of ‘embodied’ in my painting: 1. Embodied in the Pictorial Plane It can apply to the way that the figure or object, which is the subject of the painting, becomes part of the pictorial surface and integrates with the environmental setting within that surface.14

MOVEMENT BEYOND A DARK STAR Oil on wood / 90 x 60 x 1 cm / 05 - 06.2011

Here, loosely applied washes of paint, which quickly absorb into the unprimed MDF, define the figure with kestrel head. The figure is emerging from a dark background which it seems to be part of. Its form is defined by light (chiaroscuro). 14 “Nature, and so the world of the beautiful, comes to us in a series of appearances or subjective phenomena, as possibilities that one consciousness has to mould the physically given into perceptible images. The sum of these operative possibilities of consciousness forms the object of aesthetic and artistic experience.” Mihai Pastragus, ‘Phenomenological Aesthetics And The Contemporary Arts’, in Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research Volume LIII: The Reincarnating Mind, or the Ontopoietic Outburst in Creative Virtualities, ed. by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998), pp. 251-269. (p. 252.)

DESCENDANT Acrylic & graphite on wood / 61 x 51.5 cm (70 x 61 x 3cm framed) / 07.2011

Here, the paint is very loose, rapidly applied, put on and wiped off. There is a build up of texture and merging planes of colour, shadow and light. The painting was turned upside down towards the end of its making, and this physicality of treatment makes the work partially ‘embodied’. It is the lack of clear defining outlines and the blending between different visual elements, the integration of inverted figure and environment, that ‘completes’ the approach. 22

2. Embodied in Action The second variant is defined by my bodily and conscious involvement in making the picture, which becomes a formal embodiment.

WOODLAND SHADOW DRAWING 2 Acrylic on watercolour paper / 76 x 112 cm / 10.04.2011

These drawings were made on location in the woods. My initial plan was to draw some views en plein air. It was a sunny day. When I lay the paper on the ground, I was fascinated by the shadows across the paper, and began to trace them. This holly bush became the most complex. I used very watered-down acrylic, and began drawing the outlines of leaves and branches. The ‘solidity’ of shadow was replaced by a linear mark-making. It took 20 minutes. In that time the shadows moved, and in certain places the same outline would become duplicated. Therefore the image became a time-based document, and an implementation of my involvement with that space. The marks became calligraphic, less about defining the objects and more about the 3D nature of place, with my existence, action and gesture at that point in space and time essential.

SOUL RETRIEVAL Oil & sand on canvas / 45 x 200 x 4 cm / 05.2011

I collected source material at Wheal Maid mines in central Cornwall. I photographed, sketched and 足collected soil from the area. These sources influenced the colour palette and composition.

Wheal Maid valley, Gwennap, Cornwall 24

I worked on the painting in the studio, rapidly. Most of the paint was applied and blended by hand. Sand and soil was mixed into the thicker paint to create texture. Scratches and lines were made with brush handles and fingernails,15 and thinner washes were applied several days later. There are symbolic elements and the perspective has been disrupted; there are several viewpoints.

WORK IN PROGRESS / 05.2011

‘Soul Retrieval’ is a shamanic term. It is believed that the soul can be fragmented through trauma, accident or be ‘stolen’; symptoms can include disassociation or depression. The shaman-healer, travelling dimensionally, can retrieve fragmented parts of the soul and return them. This can be beneficial in many ways.16 It could be described as a form of re-embodiment. It was through this painting that I began to feel a real connection again with painting - the production and the product. Another significant change with this piece is the use of a shaped canvas.

15 “Drawing can be blown up, taken apart, given to another person to execute, put into a computer, redrawn... It can be pushed ‘like an infinite machine’, turned into 3 dimensions. It is just information, ‘a bunch of marks’.” - Matthew Ritchie, Structures and Contemporary Art, Art21 Season 3 (2005) <http://www.pbs.org/art21/series/seasonthree/structures.html> [accessed 20th October 2010] [on Video] 16 Torres, ‘Soul Retrieval’ <http://www.shamanlinks.net/Soul_Retrieval.htm> [accessed 12th July 2011]

6 SHAPES

Questioning the tradition of single images, and bored of making rectangular paintings, I began to join pictures together and make shaped canvases. “The Books” These are diptychs, two paintings joined as one. I put the images together as a way to resolve diverse stylistic tendencies, and to generate questions about image relationships and narrative. I want to disrupt the fields of perspective, to complicate the viewing e xperience. Calling these works ‘The Books...’ was inspired by Anselm Kiefer’s lead books fixed to canvases. For Kiefer, books are “a container and transmitter” which communicate “... the codifying of laws and languages, the formulation and circulation of theories of creation, the rise of religious and nation-state, and the scientific.”1 Powerful forms of incitement and knowledge are embodied within such objects.

THE BOOK OF INSTITUTIONAL ARRAY, JOBCENTRE, THE NATURE OF FASCISM Oil & charcoal dust on canvas / 60 x 100 x 2 cm / 04.2011

Ed: by M. Auping, Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth (London: Prestel, 2005), p. 50.

There is an obvious correlation with book design. ‘The Books...’ is also an ongoing response to the closure of Public Libraries, and the digitisation of texts. Personally, I enjoy the physicality of books, paper, flicking through pages. These paintings cannot be handled in that way, but function symbolically.2

THE BOOK OF THE PATHLESS, A PERSON WITH A VISIBLE AURA STANDS IN THE WOODS (Sideview) / Oil on canvas / 40 x 80 x 4 cm / 10.2010 + 03.2011

2 “This generation of artists are too busy taking in an ever-wider array of influences to worry about how to make it all correspond to any hierarchical and theoretical thought that would merely close options down and deaden desire. This would, in my estimation, be illustrative of the gulf between theory and experience. This is not to say that artists working in any medium can escape having a vision for their work, or for that matter serious, informed, critical thought - without that, creativity comes to a halt - but this is a situation free of worry in terms of sources and a million miles away from what Harold Bloom romantically called the ‘anxiety of influence’. ... Uniqueness may now be privileged in the connections that can be made, rather than as a paradigm that eulogises the isolated genius and the authentic gesture”. Simon Wallis, ‘Well-connected: Hybrids, Philip Guston and Kraftwerk’, in Critical perspectives on contemporary painting: hybridity, hegemony, historicism, ed. by Jonathan P. Harris (UK: Liverpool University Press, 2004), pp. 247-268. (pp. 253-254.)

Shaped Canvas A rectangle could be a window. Shapes become sculptural - “... shaping a painting often activates the space around it. By introducing irregular contours, the intermingling of the object with the environment becomes a possibility.”3 This generates a different perceptual and relational experience for the ‘viewer’. Shapes playing with ideas, flexing peripheral vision. Something is suggested - what may have been a form within the pictorial plane of a rectangle becomes the defining framework for an image. I have to place an image within that framework. I have been using images that do not necessarily embrace the apparent geometry of the shape, but which “... can create self-contained iconic structures that perhaps embody conflicting information and elements, but are simultaneously single, self-contained perceptual models of seeing the world in another way.”4

PLACES THAT WE CAN INHABIT Oil on canvas / 120 x 80 x 4 cm shaped / 04.2011

3 Zachary Sachs, ‘Shaped Paintings: Milton Glaser Design Study Center, Visual Arts Museum, New York, 1979’, Container List, (21st January 2011) <http://containerlist.glaserarchives.org/index.php?id=152> [accessed 10th July 2011] 4 “... the understanding of the significance of an artwork being contained in the relationship and the interaction between what is denoted on the surface of the structure (ie. canvas, wood or paper), and what is ‘seen’ in the figure field, can create self-contained iconic structures that perhaps embody conflicting information and elements, but are simultaneously single, self-contained perceptual models of seeing the world in another way.” Virginia Hodgkinson, Conventions of Pictorialism (Iconic Imagery, Perceived Space and the Picture Plane) Deconstructed and Reconstructed as Alternative Models of Perception, Embodied in Paintings and Drawings (Australia: Deakin University, 1993) <http://www.deakin.edu.au/dro/eserv/DU:30023345/hodgkinson-conventionsofpictorialism-1993.pdf> [accessed 10th July 2011]

This shape, made of 3 canvas parts, was inspired by the Wheal Maid mining area. The landscape 足informed the geometric structure, but I am also referencing the Axis Mundi.

Quick collage of location, and ideas for structure / composition - 25.05.2011

Sketches for shape

Construction

Prepared canvas with superimposed perspective and horizon lines 181 x 105 x 4 cm (gaps 6cm) 29

DEER TONGUE Oil on canvas / 80 x 360 x 4cm (80 x 170 x 4 cm each shaped canvas) / 05.2011

I notice movement in the peripheral range. Then the stag arrives, the fired aroused impulse to cover the primary surfaces with fingers, with paint, the loose language of pigmentation. Some event, some exchange of words and touch between people, driven through the insistent tick of daytime to burst across the canvases. Green. Red. Compliment me if you will. The titanium words, beyond legible and eligible - this is the sound of a deer talking, birds communicating, windrush across the leaves, broken wood breaking, me bringing the word back to the pictogram, text back to the sounds, the breath back to the body. This is the point of things meeting.

7 SPACES

1. Studio

The studio is an intersection of materials and action; a laboratory of colour and chaos. My hermetic haven. My physical e mbodiment, a bone-ache need meeting with the fabric and board. The flexibility of paint, turps and linseed oil; brushed, splashed, dripped, smeared. Applying with hands; finger-painting. Drawing from drawing, memory, insight, photographs. Making things up. Control and chance are governed by an innate sense of structure which could be called aesthetic. Momentary sensations of fear, excitement, urgency. Add; remove; overpaint; scrap and scrape; re-evaluate. These marks become my language. Signs, symbols, fields and energies of form. Transforming work. Turning over names. Towards that moment when there’s nothing else to do. Sensing potential for work yet to be done. 31

2. Display What happens to paintings when they are finished? It can be speculative and competitive to try to be part of an exhibition or to get work shown. Sometimes a gallery or competition may select work.1 The exhibition ‘Infinity Landscapes’ was a self-funded group show. Often paintings remain stockpiled. On show, the paintings are out of my control, open to and dependant on public observation, criticism and opinion. Feedback can help me to understand how people respond to my art. I can see whether it connects thematically, stylistically or in other ways.2 This can give me insight into developing the work. When a painting is displayed it becomes a structural object which contains significant 2D visual information across its pictorial surface. This raises questions about the idea “that the retinal response is the only channel of communication in art, and the notion that objects are discrete entities”.3 Exhibition spaces allow paintings to become the focus. Silent, this limited sensual interaction, this lingering spatial stillness. Pictures embedded, wait. A network of association - single pieces or collective narratives. This energetic environment is a meeting point for the artist’s manifest vision, and the ‘viewer’ who becomes part of that space. Does the ‘viewer’ take on the detached Foucault gaze to understand the work? Does the ‘viewer’ then connect to the work only by “extracting the emotional essence”?4 How does the ‘viewer’ sense embodiment with paintings? Ideally, each image contains in and of itself a certain visual or physical stimulus. An effective painting becomes a circuit, a matrix of allusion which generates “a single reverberation”5 with the visitor creating an essential connection. It is this age-old power of images that can exist within each delimited edge, each definitive frame.6 Some people will glance at a picture, pass by, move on. Some people take time and understand in their own ways.

1 “As art galleries and museums absorbed business practice and searched for larger and more diverse audiences, their character changed. ... These changes were part of the opening up of the art enclave to the processes of commodity display. Two of the trends ... push in opposite directions: accessibility and more standard forms of commodification towards at least partial mergence with commercial culture; academic professionalization of art towards autonomy and elite discourse. The contradiction is mitigated through the action of the state, because the very purpose of professionalism, at least in the museum, has been effective public communication”. Julian Stallabrass, Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 99. 2 Roland Barthes’ “Death of The Author” (1977) allowed painting to become “the site of an ideologically regressive phantasma of authenticity”. - Newman, p.115 3 Ed. by John Hutchinson, Antony Gormley (London: Phaidon, 2000), p. 122. 4 Toadvine, p. 279. 5 Toadvine, p. 279. 6 “... the image incarnates what it represents; visible identity entails invisible identity. Art therefore is essentially a material means of reaching and demonstrating spiritual forces and even of introducing them into the world of the senses ... It serves to establish a connection between the two realities which split man in two, the physical reality which his body perceives and the immaterial reality in which his soul resides. Through art, he gives to the one the appearances of the other; he associates them and blends them”. Ed: by Rene Huyghe, Larousse Encyclopedia Of Prehistoric & Ancient Art (Hamlyn, 1957), p. 76.

Infinity Landscapes: Contemporary Art Show - 15-20 June 2011 Daniell Room, The Poly, Falmouth, Cornwall / Artists - Duncan Hopkins, Marthe Ine Ludvigsen, Hannah Ward, Natalie Bent

Infinity Landscapes: Contemporary Art Show - 15-20 June 2011 Private View 15.06.2011

8 Appendix: Visual documentation of researched artists

Robert Ryman: “Points, 1963” Oil on aluminium (http://www.rbge.org.uk/)

Ad Reinhardt: Abstract Painting no. 4 Oil on linen 60 1/8 x 60 1/4 in. (152.6 x 152.9 cm.), 1961 (http://whitney.org/Collection/AdReinhardt)

John Martin: The Great Day of His Wrath Oil on canvas / 196.5x303.2cm, 1851-1853 (http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue8/apocalypsenow.htm)

Cecily Brown: Teenage Wildlife Oil on linen 203 x 229 cm, 2003 (http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/aipe/cecily_brown.htm)

Adrian Ghenie: It could be anywhere oil on canvas - 81 x 120 cm, 2008 Image © the artist. Courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium

Clare Woods: Cemetary Bends Enamel & oil on aluminium, 259 x 366 cm, 2009 (http://www.contemporaryartsociety.org/become-a-member/ artist-member/clare-woods/1081#) 34

Jonathan Meese: DR. Scarlettier Baby’s Mumin 210 x 140 x 4.10 cm, 2008 (http://www.kopenhagen.dk/interviews/interviews/interviews_2008/interview_jonathan_meese_at_bo_bjerggaard/)

Piero Della Francesca: Duke Frederico de Montefeltro & His Spouse Battista Sforza Oil on panel, each 47 x 33cm, 1466 (“Art: The History of Western Art”, p.139, Herbert Press London (2007))

Rebecca Campbell: Lucky Charm oil on canvas, 18 “ x 18”, 2009 (http://www.rebeccacampbell.net)

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Portrait of Van de Velde (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Ludwig_Kirchner)

Jasper Joffe: Don’t Look At Us Oil on canvas, 2007 (http://www.contemporaryartsociety.org/become-a-member/ artist-member/jasper-joffe/871)

Berlinde De Bruyckere: Into One-Another I To P.P.P. Wax, 2010 (http://artobserved.com/2011/03/page/2/) 35

Francis Bacon: Figure in a Landscape Oil on canvas / 1448 x 1283 mm, 1945 (http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid= 999999961&workid=672&searchid=10033)

Hughie Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Donoghue: Night Sleeper Oil on linen, 206 x 305 cm, 2008 (http://www.jameshymanfineart.com/pages/artistsingle/4583/all/hughie_o%27donoghue-night_sleeper.html)

Albert Oehlen: Piece Oil on canvas 280 x 340 cm, 2003 (http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/aipe/albert_oehlen.htm)

Marlene Dumas: Feathered Stola Oil on canvas 100 x 56 cm, 2000 (http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/aipe/marlene_dumas.htm)

Marcus Coates: Journey to the Lower World Dual Channel Digital Video, 30 min, 2004 (http://www.workplacegallery.co.uk/artists/_Marcus%20 Coates,11/)

Daniel Richter: Punktum Oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 1/4 in, 2003 (http://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/25/work_1052.htm) 36

Thomas Hirschhorn: Superficial Engagement 2006 Installation, mixed media, dimensions vary Gladstone Gallery, New York (http://artcritical.com/DavidCohen/SUN126.htm)

Karel Appel: Nude Oil on canvas, 160 x 130cm, 1963 (http://www.karelappelfoundation.com)

Anselm Kiefer: The Book, 1979-1985 (http://www.class.uh.edu/classes/WOST6394_Scheper/ Syllabus.html)

Trevor Bell: Breaker 2, 2006 (http://www.artcornwall.org/interview%20trevor%20bell.htm)

Robert Mangold: Red Frame, Yellow Eclipse Acrylic & black pencil on canvas, 134 x 200 cm, 1988 (http://www.barbaramathesgallery.com/artists/ robert-mangold/)

Sarah Dwyer: Buckshee Oil on linen, 185 x 204 cm, 2009 (http://www.contemporaryartsociety.org/become-a-member/ artist-member/sarah-dwyer/562#) 37

9 Bibliography

Archer, Michael, ‘Luc Tuymans: Behind The Mask’, in Apocalypse: Beauty and Horror In Contemporary Art, ed. by Amos, Rosemary (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2000), p. 73. Auping, M., ed. by, Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth (London: Prestel, 2005) Baselitz, George, “Pandemonic Manifesto 1, 2d Version”, (1961), in Theories and documents of contemporary art: a sourcebook of artists’ writings, ed. by Kristine Stiles and Peter Howard Selz (USA: University of California Press, 1996), p. 248. Berthouze, Luc and Kuniyoshi, Yasuo, ‘Neural learning of embodied interaction dynamics’ (Neural Networks 11 (1998) 1259–1276), in Kampis, George, Active Perception: Self-motion, Performative Action, and the Episodic Brain (2003) <http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~g-kampis/ActiveP/Active_Perception.html> [accessed 14th October 2010] De Kooning, Willem, ‘Content Is A Glimpse: Interview with David Sylvester (1963)’, in Theories and documents of contemporary art: a sourcebook of artists’ writings, ed. by Kristine Stiles and Peter Howard Selz (USA: University of California Press, 1996), p. 197. DeLue, Rachael Ziady and Elkins, James, ed. by, Landscape Theory: The Art Seminar Volume 6 (London: Routledge, 2008) Descartes, Rene, ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’ (1641), in Modern Philosophy, ed. by Kern, Dr. Daniel <http://kernsphilosophypage.com/Modern/ModernPhilosophyReadings1.doc> [accessed 9th july 2011] Drury, Nevill, The Elements of Shamanism (Element Books, 1989) Farley, Paul and Roberts, Michael Symmons, Edgelands: Journeys Into England’s True Wilderness (Jonathan Cape, 2011) Gilpin, William, An Essay On Prints (1768), in ‘An_essay_on_prints.pdf’ (Public Domain) [accessed 26th October 2010] Goldstein, Ralph, ed. by, Images, Meanings and Connections: Essays in Memory of Susan R. Bach (Daimon, 1999) Greenberg, Clement, ‘Modernist Painting’ (1966), in Newman, Michael, ‘Revising Modernism, Representing Postmodernism: Critical Discourses Of The Visual Arts’, in Postmodernism: ICA Documents, ed. by Appignanesi, Lisa (London: Free Association Books, 1989), pp. 95-154. (p. 106.) Halifax, Joan, Ph.D, Shamanic Voices: A Survey of Visionary Narratives (Arkana, 1979) Hodgkinson, Virginia, Conventions of Pictorialism (Iconic Imagery, Perceived Space and the Picture Plane) Deconstructed and Reconstructed as Alternative Models of Perception, Embodied in Paintings and Drawings (Australia: Deakin University, 1993) <http://www.deakin.edu.au/dro/eserv/DU:30023345/hodgkinson-conventionsofpictorialism-1993.pdf> [accessed 10th July 2011] Huber, Jorg, ‘Interview with Jorg Immendorf’ (1983), in Theories and documents of contemporary art: a sourcebook of artists’ writings, ed. by Kristine Stiles and Peter Howard Selz (University of California Press, 1996), p. 256. Hutchinson, John, ed. by, Antony Gormley (London: Phaidon, 2000) Huyghe, Rene, ed. by, Larousse Encyclopedia Of Prehistoric & Ancient Art (Hamlyn, 1957) Jay, Martin, ‘In The Empire Of The Gaze: Foucault And The Denigration Of Vision In 20th Century French Thought’, in Postmodernism: ICA Documents, ed. by Appignanesi, Lisa (London: Free Association Books, 1989), pp. 49-74. Jonathanziemba, ‘Idealism, Noesis/Noema, and Goodbye to Husserl’ in erlebnis.wordpress.com (October 4th 2007) <http://erlebnis.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/idealism-noesisnoema-and-goodbye-to-husserl/> [accessed 18th May 2011] Jung, Carl, Man and His Symbols (London: Picador, 1978) Kampis, George, Active Perception: Self-motion, Performative Action, and the Episodic Brain (2003), <http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~g-kampis/ActiveP/Active_Perception.html> [accessed 14th October 2010] Lambirth, Andrew, Ken Kiff (London: Thames & Hudson, 2001) Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, ‘Eye and Mind’ (1964), in biolinguagem.com <http://www.biolinguagem.com/biolinguagem_antropologia/merleauponty_1964_eyeandmind.pdf> [accessed 15th May 2011]

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, The Visible and the Invisible (Studies in Phenomenology and Existental Philosophy), (USA: Northwestern University Press, 1969) Newman, Michael, ‘Revising Modernism, Representing Postmodernism: Critical Discourses Of The Visual Arts’, in Postmodernism: ICA Documents, ed. by Appignanesi, Lisa (London: Free Association Books, 1989), pp. 95-154. Nietzsche, Friedrich, ‘Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146’ (1886) in memorable-quotes.com <http://www.memorable-quotes.com/friedrich+nietzsche,a497.html> [accessed 24th June 2011] Pastragus, Mihai, ‘Phenomenological Aesthetics And The Contemporary Arts’, in Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research Volume LIII: The Reincarnating Mind, or the Ontopoietic Outburst in Creative Virtualities, ed. by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998), pp. 251-269. Rasmusen, Kund, ‘Across Arctic America’ (G.P.Putnam & Sons, 1927), in Trwoga, Chris, Shamanism and Sacred Landscapes (Glastonbury: The Speaking Tree, 2006), p. 9. Ritchie, Matthew, Structures and Contemporary Art, Art21 Season 3 (2005) <http://www.pbs.org/art21/series/seasonthree/structures.html> [accessed 20th October 2010] [on Video] Sachs, Zachary, ‘Shaped Paintings: Milton Glaser Design Study Center, Visual Arts Museum, New York, 1979’, Container List, (21st January 2011) <http://containerlist.glaserarchives.org/index.php?id=152> [accessed 10th July 2011] Stallabrass, Julian, Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2004) Suzuki. D.T., An Introduction To Zen (Rider, 1969) Tani, Jun <http://www.bdc.brain.riken.jp/~tani/publications.htm>, in Kampis, George, Active Perception: Self-motion, Performative Action, and the Episodic Brain (2003) <http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~g-kampis/ActiveP/Active_Perception.html> [accessed 9th july 2011] Toadvine, Ted, Singing The World In A New Key: Merleau-Ponty and The Ontology Of Sense, in Janus Head, 7(2), 273-283 (New York: Trivium Publications, 2004) Torres, Lauren, Shaman Links (2008) <http://www.shamanlinks.net/> [accessed 12th July 2011] Trwoga, Chris, Shamanism and Sacred Landscapes (Glastonbury: The Speaking Tree, 2006) Verran, Virginia, ‘Artists Talking’, Artists Newsletter (2011) <http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/artists_stories/single/925162> [accessed 25th February 2011] Wallis, Simon, ‘Well-connected: Hybrids, Philip Guston and Kraftwerk’, in Critical perspectives on contemporary painting: hybridity, hegemony, historicism, ed. by Jonathan P. Harris (UK: Liverpool University Press, 2004), pp. 247-268. Weate, Dr. Jeremy, Merleau-Ponty’s Invisible Man (2000) < http://www.bakareweate.com/texts/Merleau-Ponty%27s%20Invisible%20Man.pdf> [accessed 14th October 2010] Winkelman, Michael, Shamanism: the neural ecology of consciousness and healing (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000) Woodland Trust, The <http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk> [accessed 6th March 2011] Yoon, Junga, Spirituality in Contemporary Art: The Idea of the Numinous, (London: Zidane Press, 2010)

Duncan Hopkins, Carharrack, Cornwall. July 2011

www.duncanhopkins.net : info@duncanhopkins.net : All artwork & text ÂŠ D.J.Hopkins, unless otherwise stated. 40