Third Space:
Where Oriental Persian Calligraphy and Western Abstract Painting Meet
Michael Greaves and Dr Behnam Soltani
Third Space: Where Oriental Persian Calligraphy and Western Abstract Painting Meet. Michael Greaves and Dr Behnam Soltani First Edition Š 2019 The Authors Š 2019 Images, the Authors Reproduction without permission prohibited All rights reserved Printed in New Zealand: Dunedin Print Bound in New Zeland: David Steadman @ DUTYBOUND Design and Type Setting: Michael Greaves Cover image: Michael Greaves, Kopenhagener, Untitltled, acrylic on Arches, 21x29.7cm, Berlin, 2019 and Dr Behnam Soltani, Space, ink on paper, variable dimension, 2019. Back cover image: Michael Greaves, Kopenhagener, Untitltled, acrylic on Arches, 21x29.7cm, Berlin, 2019. ISBN 978-0-908846-53-5
The burden of a head and thoughts and memory… 4
“There were times when I did nothing more than describe the room we were sitting in, using the same methods I developed during our walks I would pick out an object and begin to talk about it, the pattern on the bedspread, the bureau in the corner, the framed street map of Paris that hung on the wall beside the window. To the extent that Effing could follow what I was saying, these inventories seemed to give him profound pleasure. With so much falling away from him now, the immediate physical presence of things stood at the edge of his consciousness as a kind of paradise, an unobtainable realm of ordinary miracles. The Tactile, the visible, the perceptual field that surrounds all life. By putting these things into words for him, I gave Effing the chance to experience them again, as if merely to take one’s place in the world of things was a good beyond all others. In some sense I worked harder for him in that room than I ever worked before, concentrating on the minutest details and materials, wools and cottons the silvers and pewters, wood grains and plaster swirls, delving into each crevice enumerating each colour and shape, exploring the microscopic geometries of what ever there was to see.”1 Paul Auster Moon Palace. I first encountered this work as an undergraduate student in my first year of study. I would slip the knot of familial after dinners to escape to a local café in
the evening, sit in the back at the oval emerald table, drinking coffee, and read. These words, Auster’s words, were a treasure to me then. I was still developing my resonances with the world. Sure I understood the words he used, but I did not really comprehend the text, as in draw memory, relationship or gravity from them. Being from a small town, not really being exposed to the kinds of word images or pictures of the kind Auster was evoking, I made them up. Whether or not I made up the correctness of what was his intention did not worry me, I felt like Effing’s character engrossed in the projected tactile, visible and perceptual. I re-read Moon Palace last month…all of these things returned, and it seems remiss of me if I did not include the experience here. Following Effing and his twisted narrative of the cave, the fortune and his broken life as a painter reminded me most of the promise of a materiality and space that painting still offers, that is both at hand and in some transitional place, that an audience is needed to unveil. Collaborator in this project Dr Behnam Soltani writes. “Space plays a major role in the creation of a calligraphy work. It is not only the written text and the combination of the letters and the words that are important but it is also the space around the text and how the text is situated within that space, that is salient. To produce an effective piece of calligraphic work, the practitioner is required to understand the space, the synergy between the words and their combinations and the effects they produce, the semantics of the text, and how the text generally sits within that particular space.” It is as if the calligrapher needs to understand the nuances and tempo of language, the senses and the kind of vehicle that will best present these. Similarities can be found
in the space concerns of a western painter and an eastern calligrapher, these similarities in parallel offer a possible synergy in understanding the proposal of experience in each form. Soltani describes this interaction. My first experience with the calligraphic pen goes back to when I was a third grader. My eldest brother had an interest
in calligraphy and he practiced it for fun. He provided me with a few bamboo pens when he found me interested in this art. Ever since, I have been practising calligraphy and the temptation never seems to have stopped for me. The production of calligraphy is the manifestation of the visual, cognitive, aesthetic, gustatory, and olfactory senses among others. By writing, the calligrapher creates a space that represents his aesthetic understanding of the universe. Anytime a calligrapher writes, he or she shows his / her innermost feelings including happiness, sadness, heaviness, lightness, complexity, and simplicity among others. The capability of a calligrapher in showing a harmonic visual space impacts the quality of his or her work and makes that work unique. The audience of the art work will also connect to the work uniquely depending on their own innermost feelings. As soon as they could connect to the spatiovisual features of the work, they find themselves intertwined with the art work. In this situation, the audience establish an ontological relationship with the words and characters and identify with the art work, become mesmerized in the beauty of it or even develop a sense of belonging to the work. Looking through a spatial lens, calligraphy is indeed a space that enables one to transcend the constraints of the everyday life. It is a place that enables one to capture the transient moments of life by bringing its sequence to a pause. The calligrapher, then provides everyone with the opportunity to reflect on life experiences and reassures the audience that referring back to the art work and recreating unique art spaces is a possibility.� When visiting Behnam in Auckland earlier this year we spoke more of the confluence of values of space in each of the works we were making, and I had the opportunity to use the Qalam Ney, or bamboo quill that is used as a pen in the process of making the calligraphic mark. Tools are important. I recounted my experience some months later when making the paintings for this project in Berlin, Germany. I pick up the Qalam Ney for the first time, feeling at once how the nimbleness of the object will take my hand in a new and unforeseen direction, making a mark that is both a memory and a fresh thing. I notice also that something shifts.This shift can be qualified as a shift in space, an understanding of purpose, and a surrender
to what I can only best describe as a transition to an elsewhere. The Qalam Ney, (Bamboo pen) specific to Persian calligraphy is an object that inhabits its own space, it has an intention to its every movement. Past moments of its use remain on the drawing tip, as a stain of ink. Its tip has a certainty of cut, a precision that asks the user to respect its touch, and be a part of the intention of use. The objectivity of the Qalam Ney, and that of its index, the line extended from its trace. They are a relational catch that is at the heart of the practise. Behnam and I have had many conversations around this imprint, and its importance in both an eastern and western context, and it is in these conversations that this experience of the tool is grounded. How the object that makes the mark and the mark itself has a relative connection in terms of space and the activation of that space. In the movement of the pen it requires an understanding of the user’s space in motion, and in the mark that the pen makes, it is how the once clean sheet of paper now presents, with this mark. Both are now intentional and in play. What it is‌It is foreign to me, it has a history, a context and a place that is unique to it, but it is also familiar. The familiarity for me derives from the familiarity of painting and how space is activated upon the touch of the charged instrument, this is noticed in all mark making. There is a method, a way of working the length to first form the shape and then to alter it, to add to it in order to differentiate the letter form. It, to me, has a limited application, if thought about as a method for representing a visual object of the world and is very different from the painted moment I am used to. When I use the brush and its many different application methods I feel that there are less rules or specifics that are internalised to the instrument. What is foregrounded here is the inclusivity of the action and of the outcome.The line and the space that the line inhabits. This is a cogent apparatus of the process of both, this, the Persian calligraphy, and the act of painting that has been our initial connection in research unfold.
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Behnam and I have agreed to embark on a project of exploration and understanding to the nascent connections between such engagements. Originally posited as a question and response action in the coconstruction of a collection of works in conversation, the research has taken a slight pivot to encapsulate the delivery mechanism of the project, housed within these pages of the book you are now reading. Held within the bounds of the following pages is the manifestation of a collegial space where the considerations of the concurrent histories of both mediums collide and seem altogether not to dissimilar in the anticipation of communication and of special interaction. My interaction here aims at judging the distance between the object and the thing so interwoven in the projection of visual matter, specifically in the act of painting, for Behnam concurrently there is an interest in a relationship akin, of the line and the space, the movement of the tool and the activation of the space around the line. The basis of this research is a consideration of the rules that bind both methods of making, their similarity and their conversation.
Michael Greaves
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“Let us imagine the unimaginable, the gesture of the first imager. He proceeds neither at random nor according to a project. His hand advances into a void, hollowed out at the very instant, which separates him from himself instead of prolonging his being in his act. But this separation is the act of his being, or his birth. Here he is outside of himself even before having been his own self, before having been a self… For the first time he touches the wall not a support, nor as obstacle or something to lean on, but as a place, if one can touch a place. Only a place in which to let something of its interrupted being, of its estrangement, come about.The rock wall makes itself merely spacious: the event of dimension and of the line, of the setting aside and isolation of a zone that is neither a territory of life nor a region of the universe, but a spacing in which to let come – coming from nowhere and turned toward nowhere – all the presence of the world.”2 Jean-LucNancy
Auster, Paul. Moon Palace. London: Faber and Faber, 1989. Nancy, Jean-Luc. in Melville, Stephen. Painting: Ontology and Experience. in Contemporary Painting in Context. eds. Petersen, Anne Ring., Mikkel Bogh, Hans Dam Christensen, and Peter Nørgaard. Larsen. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, 2013.
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Image titles and translations.
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Dr Behnam Soltani, Working Calligraphy, ink on found paper, variable dimension, 2019. Michael Greaves, Kopenhagener, Untitltled, acrylic on Arches, 21x29.7cm, Berlin, 2019.
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Michael Greaves, Kopenhagener,Tjmni, acrylic on Arches, 21x29.7cm, Berlin, 2019. Dr Behnam Soltani.,This shall pass, ink on paper, variable dimension, 2019.
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Michael Greaves, Kopenhagener, Untitltled, acrylic on Arches, 21x29.7cm, Berlin, 2019. Dr Behnam Soltani, by Persian poet, Rumi-Lyrics in English, ink on paper, variable dimension, 2019. I was dead I came alive I was tears I became laughter all because of love when it arrived my temporal life from then on changed to eternal love said to me you are not crazy enough you don’t fit this house I went and became crazy, crazy enough to be in chains love said you are not intoxicated enough you don’t fit the group I went and got drunk, drunk enough to overflow with light-headedness love said you are still too clever filled with imagination and skepticism I went and became gullible and in fright pulled away from it all love said you are a candle attracting everyone gathering everyone around you I am no more a candle spreading light I gather no more crowds and like smoke I am all scattered now love said you are a teacher you are a head and for everyone you are a leader I am no more not a teacher not a leader just a servant to your wishes love said you already have your own wings I will not give you more feathers.
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Dr Behnam Soltani, Listen to the reed (the ney) how it is complaining! ink on paper, variable dimension, 2019. Michael Greaves, Kopenhagener, Dongle Transfer Little Gb, acrylic on Arches, 21x29.7cm, Berlin, 2019. Michael Greaves, Kopenhagener 31a Berlin, acrylic on Arches, 21x29.7cm, Berlin, 2019. Dr Behnam Soltani, ink on found paper, variable dimension, 2019. Mountains in the distance Are cold Hands In the alley and bed Seek the intimate presence of your hands Without the whisper of your fingers The world Is void of any greetings. Persian Poet Ahmad Shamlou (Translation Dr Behnam Soltani)
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Michael Greaves, Kopenhagener, Untitltled, acrylic on Arches, 21x29.7cm, Berlin, 2019. Dr Behnam Soltani, Space, ink on paper, variable dimension, 2019.
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Dr Behnam Soltani, I don’t know who you were. I don’t know who you are, ink on paper, variable dimension, 2019. Michael Greaves, Kopenhagener, Untitltled, acrylic on Arches, 21x29.7cm, Berlin, 2019.
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Acknowledgements We wish to thank and acknowledge Otago Polytechnic, Te Kura Matitini ki Otago for the support and funding to make this collection of works possible. We also wish to thank and acknowledge the continued support of the Dunedin School of Art and its endeavours which aim to extend, foster and build relationships across so many different cultural, economic and ideaological bounds. Without such support the richness, diversity and difference we observe in multimodal practices and research would be lost.
Third Space: Where Oriental Persian Calligraphy and Western Abstract Painting Meet. Michael Greaves and Dr Behnam Soltani First Edition ISBN 978-0-908846-53-5