FOUNTAIN ZINE by Emily Godden

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FOUNTAIN.

ART ZINE.

PROPERTY OF: FOUNTAIN LIBRARIES

FOUNTAIN. FOUNTAIN. Welcome to the very first issue of FOUNTAIN ART ZINE full of nutritional modern and contemporary art goodness! FOUNTAIN ART ZINE is written and designed by Emily Goddenâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;if you wish to get in contact please do at: fountainzine@gmail.com. For now, enjoy the first tasty serving of FOUNTAIN.

WELCOME WELCOME

SOL LEWITT—THE ARCHITECT OF CONCEPTUALISM

DAMIEN HIRST—SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

IS SPATIALISM REALLY ART?

ARTE POVERA– WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH

FROM READYMADE TO UNMADE—DUCHAMP TO EMIN

CONTENTS. ART ZINE.

Two Open Modular cubes,1972, by Sol LeWitt

LeWitt’s series of cubes enables the viewer to make judgemental and objective interpretations to in some form fill the cubes with their own work. The notion that art is an exploration is rendered redundant as LeWitt challenges preconceptions of what art is by desiring the cubes to be viewed as objects. The material worth of the piece in theory is low, to ensure that the value of the idea is viewed as high. It is as if LeWitt manipulates the visual language of art to create a conceptual grammar that continually hints at ambiguity amid LeWitt’s creation of blank space. The static aluminium beams act almost as frames in which to house the viewer’s creations and highlight the typical nature of conceptualism, in that the form plays a secondary role to the idea. From a structuralist point of view the materials and form of the artwork are paramount, however LeWitt uses no set ‘language’ in fact he created his own syntax producing instructions for anyone to create their own cubes, and almost continue his work. Which could be viewed as a reaction to the over-commercialisation of art, as LeWitt has in effect made his work accessible to all- in an almost democratic fashion. Here LeWitt has disrupted a process whereby social status is defined by ownership of an artwork as it freely available for spectator’s to recreate.

SOL LEWITT—THE ARCHITECT OF CONCEPTUALISM

WORKS OF ART ARE

ALWAYS REDUCTIONS OF WHAT THEY REPRESENT

“

CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS

In my opinion LeWitt uses conceptualist minimal art in order to transport deep confound ideas that are accessible because the idea is an illusion. It is possible that the theory from Claude-Levi Strauss, that; works of art are always reductions of what they represent is applicable to the physical form of the work of Sol LeWitt but not to the process and purpose of his work. It could be viewed that LeWitt’s work has a ‘dialogue’ exchanged with spectator’s to highlight how art for conceptualists is a vehicle to transport ideas. The balance and rigidity of LeWitt’s use of line creates a sense of contrast and balance between the form and the idea behind the work. Furthermore the simulacra of the messages behind the work of LeWitt don’t make statements they asks questions that are driven often by an innocuous visual narrative to be decoded by the spectator. The process of de-coding then offers the spectator the chance to encode their own input to the piece, to add to the uniqueness of LeWitt’s work. The spectator’s response is considered to be of high importance in conceptualist work, but if the spectator is naïve to the conceptual form there is always the chance that there will be a definitive lack of a sentiment displayed towards the work. LeWitt expressed his ideas through a visual language formed through a series of lines and geometrical shapes. The raw almost industrial feel of the work could be representative of LeWitt expressing bluntly that art is industrial, fuelled by materialism and driven economically. LeWitt’s apparent obsession with the cube form is perhaps an expression for a desire for rigidity and universality, that perhaps money should be less of a determining factor in the value of art. The cubes therefore almost act as a metaphor for consumption, and act as a reminder that architectural forms are artistic. However it is widely believed that there are necessary and sufficient conditions for a piece to count as art, meaning that technically LeWitt could be suggesting that through conceptualism art can be just an idea. LeWitt’s work could be viewed as a paradoxical illusion in which the spectator is asked not just to look, but to think, observe, and ultimately judge. LeWitt’s calculative form is so conceptual that he was inspired by the work of architects to allow his assistants to realise his ideas into physical entities, this form of working practice has since been adopted by notable artists such as Damien Hirst and Jenny Holzer.

CONCEPTUALISM

“

For over two decades Hirst’s spot paintings have invaded popular culture. The flat spots in household gloss are painted by hand yet there is a machinist quality to each painting. The quantity created is unremitting; it is as though the spots have become an advert for Hirst, releasing a few new variations every so often as if to remind us of his continued dominance. Each spot painting has equal pictorial content, equal depth, equal well - everything. Yet each painting is different. Each painting exudes colour, perhaps this is Hirst’s breakthrough, a dart away from macabre cow corpses and death into muted pastel painted spots. The paintings are part of what appears to be an endless series, is Hirst hinting at immortality? Isolated pigments of colour the spots are suspended in white space (or off-white in some cases) each equidistant apart from the next, each supposedly in a different colour. Perhaps the spots are just a series of isolated victims, pills perhaps. Each spot has the appeal of a new drug to pop along with a glass of water to wash away everyday aches and pains.

DAMIEN HIRST— SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

If stared at for long enough the paintings become conducive, triggering the mind to form patterns, to widen and shrink the gaps between the spots. It suddenly seems believable that perhaps the spots are drugs, something for the viewer to get high off. There’s no doubt that Hirst’s spot paintings are a visual feast of colour, a substance exuding allure. So should Hirst’s spot paintings be legal? They certainly seem to fill some of the criteria of an illegal substance, and the spots do seem reminiscent of ecstasy pills. Illegal substances are; ·

Usually controversial (Hirst is that for sure)

· Normally expensive (Certainly, the most a spot painting has sold for to date is £1.4 million) · Difficult to obtain (Although available to anyone with deep enough pockets to foot the bill) · Made secretly (Hirst has a team of assistants who work under the cover of one of Hirst’s multiple studios) Hirst created around 25 spot paintings himself before employing assistants, to aid with the process of communicating his conceptual messages. The first breakthrough came in 1986 when whilst studying for a BA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, Hirst painted spots onto a board. The spots are like a language, interacting with viewers there seems to be no need for symbolism or hidden messages. But as more spot paintings roll off the Hirst production line to feed the cravings of an audience awaiting its next fix there is a bold emptiness and sterile essence to the paintings. The production by now must have become so routine that should Hirst stop production, there will be widespread withdrawal symptoms felt by consumers around the world. Perhaps there is a more simple answer to why Hirst’s spot paintings are so popular. There seems to be no narrative nor any overarching metaphor, the paintings are just an endless series of circles. Produced to experiment and to enjoy, but most of all to produce over and over again to fit into a world filled by advertisements and driven by the media. Hirst is not a name, it’s a brand. Simple really.

CONTEMPORARY

Spot painting, 1986 Image: Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates

The spot paintings look as though a bag of skittles has been thrown on a canvas and then meticulously arranged in some random yet ordered fashion. With each painting titled after a drug or chemical it could be deduced that the spots are representative of something greater. Perhaps the dots are a door to deeper thought and deeper meaning. Or put simply, are they drugs in disguise?

Lucio Fontana at work

Firstly what is Spatialism? It was a movement established by Italian artist Lucio Fontana who criticised conventional Western painting of the time by leaving the canvas blank and exposed. Established in the years following the Second World War, Fontana abandoned a reliance upon a medium to construct a piece, and instead sought about de-constructing the canvas. There is no illusion in Spatialism the depth created is real, tangible and physical. There is a sense that the processes involved in the creation of work/ideas are just as important if not more so than the final product. Here parallels can be drawn to later movements in art such as Conceptualism which has been labelled the ideas movement. Parallels can be also drawn to Expressionism (abstract) as there is a strong emphasis on the physicality of the construction of the piece, as for example a burst of emotion is condensed and released by Fontana in a single pre-meditated swipe of the knife through the canvas in pieces such as, Spatial Concept, ‘Waiting’. Parallels from Spatialism can be drawn with the Futurist desire to capture movement and work with gestures, as the negative space created by the cuts in the canvas encapsulate Fontana’s expression. (One of Lucio Fontana’s key influences was Futurist artist Umberto Boccioni.

IS SPATIALISM REALLY ART?

Waiting, 1960 by Lucio

Spatial Concept, 1959 by Lucio Fontana

Fontana

There is a type of exchange and dialogue with Fontana’s mark making, which could be viewed as reductive, as the precise incisions and puncture marks in the canvas could be viewed as spontaneous, or even random outlets of emotion. This could be interpreted as inorganic and feel almost savage, however it is a piece of work that has involved Fontana combining expression and creativity to create a visual outcome. Surrounded by new technological developments, a significant proportion of Fontana’s work could be viewed as purely investigative. These investigations or experiments were later labelled from 1947 onwards as Concetti spaziali (Spatial Concepts) and highlight the possibility that art is about exploration and is an opportunity for us all to be introspective. As art that is beautiful and aesthetically pleasing it’s very much an individual opinion as to whether Fontana’s work fulfils this element. However the piece ‘Waiting’, 1960 is a thought provoking currently resting in situ at the Tate Modern, London. But just because its in a gallery hung on a dense white wall with beech flooring doesn’t necessarily mean its art. We shouldn’t take a curator’s opinion that something in a gallery is art. In my opinion art could be as loosely defined as something which presents an idea, message, emotion etc. visually. How exactly the piece is presented visually shouldn’t necessarily affect whether or not a piece is art. The traditional hierarchy of painting being at the top of the chain in art shouldn’t mean that because something is painted that it is immediately better than something that is for example drawn. Art is both objective and subjective but ultimately art has the power to be both unique and equal. Art is what you make of it and it “enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” (Thomas Merton) If you both believe and feel Spatialism to be art, then it is art because; “Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.” In a democratic society we have the right to voice to choose for ourselves, but not to categorise for others.

SPATIALISM

How is Spatialism art?

Arte Povera lasted from around 1962-1972, translated the name means poor or impoverished art and was a term coined by Italian art critic Germano Celant. Arte Povera alludes to Conceptualism in that the idea and message which in the case of Arte Povera is often an ethical message is of more significance that the final piece. Arte Povera isn’t poor art in a sense that e.g. it is poorly constructed, more that the work or materials used to create the work are worthless. Materials such as newspaper and soil were popular because of their natural credentials, but ultimately they were cheap if not worthless. Arte Povera was perhaps fuelled by the economic collapse of the late 60s amidst an impoverished post-war Italy. Germano Celant hoped that Arte Povera would undermine materialism and highlight the idea that art is not a product to be sold and marketed or exploited. Most pieces were ephemeral as they were essentially made out of rubbish and weren’t so much created to last but more to make a statement. This perhaps could be a further link with nature to highlight the cycle of life and bring a sense of physical grounding to the art.

ARTE POVERA– WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH

Arte Povera was a radical movement that spanned across different media and genres, many contemporary artists have a lot to thank Arte Povera for as nowadays it appears commonplace for everyday materials to be in a gallery. A key example of this would be Tracey Emin’s infamous tent titled “Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963 – 1995”.

Arte Povera moved beyond Minimalism and instead used everyday objects and arguably ‘Readymades’ to highlight the ethics behind the work whilst still create an aesthetic visual piece. The interdisciplinary approach taken to the work is perhaps a nod to Bauhaus, which is further exemplified by the notion that as an artist you worked with what you had around you. Which is exactly what the key Arte Povera artists; Michelangelo Pistoletto, Giuseppe Penone and Marisa Merz did.

Arte Povera is a modern art movement like no other, primarily concerned with using natural materials Art Povera negates technology and new materials in favour of a more natural approach. The Futurists engagement with modernity and industrialization may have transfused through time however Arte Povera remained as an alternative that attempted to connect the viewer with nature in a different manor to the rolling pastoral landscapes of painters such as John Constable. There is an attempt to slow the spectators thought processes down and engage with the work and not zip past it in a mechanized manor that seems to be a common trait of the average gallery visitor today. Amid the current economic downturn it feels inevitable that Arte Povera will make a dominant return and in the words of Richard Flood and Frances Morris the exhibition curators of the Tate Modern’s “Zero to infinity” Arte Povera exhibition; “To revisit Arte Povera at its moment of genesis is thus to explore the history of the present and the beginning of now.”

ARTE POVERA

Lacking physical or formalistic restraints a lot of work produced involved juxtapositions, for example in piece “Venus of the rags” by Michelangelo Pistoletto, classical and contemporary imagery was combined and thus juxtaposed. However Arte Povera’s primary aim is to engage the viewer/spectator in the link between the work of art and the processes involved in the construction. A translucent theme that spans Arte Povera is that a sense of mimesis is generated through the imitation and continual references to nature.

Fountain, 1917, Marcel Duchamp

My Bed, 1998, Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin’s art engages the spectator in a painful narrative about Emin’s own sentiment for the past, her stylistically expressionistic and confessional style has propelled her as well-known figure in contemporary art. Equal to Emin, Marcel Duchamp is just as well known for being a controversial figure in the art world who equally embedded his ideas into the revolutionary ready-mades. A work of art normally behaves as a statement – and we accept this statement to be what it says. However in the case of Duchamp’s work – it is less of a statement and more of a proposition, asking more questions than it answers. Duchamp offered his piece Fountain to the 1917 exhibition of the society of independent artists in New York. This ready-made was a urinal placed on its back, placed on a plinth and then signed R Mutt. By placing the urinal on a plinth was a way of Duchamp ticking another box as to what was generally accepted as art. By literally physically elevating the urinal Duchamp was proposing that an object from the world outside art could in-fact be art. Altering the context/meaning of the object Duchamp changed how the urinal was represented. Modernism highlighted industrialization’s ideals, and represented the effects of mass media and advertisement, what Duchamp was doing was using the output of industrialization to question what should/ could be art. Duchamp was open to philosophical and linguistic ideas about art and has been referred to as a conceptualist, however Duchamp didn’t perceive his work to be readymade. In light of the thought that paint is made like the urinal (Fountain) on an industrial level- it sets about the notion of paintings in part being readymade (unless the paint is made by the artist).

FROM READYMADE TO UNMADE—DUCHAMP TO EMIN

Arguably there is less of a visual aesthetic to be appreciated within the readymade, however consider this; how many people can say that they have seen a traditional piece of art say e.g. a Renaissance painting as often as they have seen urinal, broom or bicycle wheel? Because in today’s visual culture mass produced items such as a bicycle wheel are encountered far more often than e.g. a Renaissance painting the impact of the aesthetic of the bicycle wheel has lessened as we have become desensitized to it. It could be perceived that Duchamp was merely trying to illustrate the inherent hidden aesthetic of fruits of industrialisation. By attempting to elevate them to art status, Duchamp may have been trying to draw our attention to them, and thus change how the objects are perceived to alter our appreciation for them. Without industrialization there may have never been such a thing as a readymade, so there is a lot to thank industrialization for. Today the ready-made has resulted in many artists appropriating and quoting the work of not just preceding artists, but from commercialised mass visual culture and media. The readymade seems to have been transformed from an accessible object, to something where the context of the object has been changed so that it is self-referential piece that encapsulates an artist’s; ideas, emotions and thoughts. For example the work of Tracey Emin is deeply self-referential, and explores intimate details of her private life, that are broadcast in a very public manner. Surrounded in detritus such as empty vodka bottles My Bed is a personal piece based upon readymades. The context of e.g. the vodka bottle has been transformed from a generic mass produced bottle, to a unique one which holds a narrative special to Emin. It appears as though Emin has constructed the piece in a contemplative manour, where she has allowed herself to step back and review her own life situation. Engulfed overnight in a sea of controversy (much like Fountain, Duchamp).

Emin’s work could either be interpreted as almost a stream of consciousness and outpouring of emotion – or it could be read as a heavily premeditated re-telling of the narrative that is her life, using the materials around her. My Bed is a time capsule, framing a period of time – which placed in the typical white space gallery places the bed in a new setting out of its typical context emphasises the expressive nature of the piece. It is less of a statement like the work of Duchamp and more of a cry for possibly help. You don’t need to read about Emin to glance at her life story – her art is her autobiography.

READY-MADES

Emin literally aired her dirty laundry in public – and this isn’t something to be sniffed at, I can’t imagine that everyone’s bed is a neat perfect object in whatever form it may be. Could you imagine Da Vinci’s bed being a succinct piece of high art, or even Damien Hirst’s covered in a spot painted duvet cover (no doubt you could probably buy one)? Emin revealed deep details of her personal life in a form that was best suited to what she wanted to achieve. It wouldn’t have been possible for Emin to have created such as powerful piece if for example My Bed was an oil painting laboured over for many months. The impact of My Bed is best captured in its literal form of it being Emin’s real bed for a period of time.