Todd Bartel Drawing Over Ovid: Garden Studies 1+1=3 As a collage artist, I am dependent upon, and indebted to printed matter. I cut up what most people would read in order to juxtapose images, surfaces and texts, in affect, to shape material into a new configuration or to suggest an alternative connotation. I have always been interested in what happens to ordinary things and images when they are put next to other images or objects. Juxtaposition begets transformation. Two things seen together become three things. Collage is the ideal process for this associative activity and it is the basis for all I do as an image-maker. Cut and Paste The significance of the inception of collage in the field of fine art has not been underestimated: it unequivocally and pervasively spurred modern artists to transform the face and the practice of making art. The revolution of papier collé 1 infiltrated our culture as an aesthetic of fractured, ceaseless combination. With today’s burgeoning computer technologies, when we talk about “cut and paste,” we are referring to a digital facsimile of the original process. It is important to remember this is a new sense of the basic terms of collage which has been borrowed from the now traditional and much celebrated process. What is surprising by our willingness to accept this ethereal usage of a tactile process—what might be called a surrogate use of collage—is just how often this phrase and the practice it signifies is used today. In the immediate years that followed Picasso and Braque’s exploits with pasted paper, the activity of cutting and pasting almost exclusively involved paper. Prior to the modern art era and the invention of collage as a tool of painting, to refer to “cuttings” or “cuts” pointed toward other traditions: woodcuts, or the practice of Grangerizing—usually cut from manuscripts.2 Now, inserting a surrogate image—not necessarily made by the artist—in our own age of mechanical reproduction (see Walter Benjamin) is so prevalent and commonplace a practice, we hardly even pay attention to this radical Dianne Waldman, Collage, Assemblage, and the Found Object, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, NY, 1992, p. 8. 2 William Voelkle and Roger Wieck, The Bernard H. Breslauer Collection of Manuscript Illuminations, exhibition catalog, The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, NY, 1992-93, p. 14 1
form of imaging. The advent of pasted paper became an engine for seeing;3 collectively having accepted the “machine,” we now see differently than a hundred years ago. The word collage, like the process, has evolved and expanded, too. It has become far more elastic than the roots of its original definition. For example, my colleague Michael Oatman refers to installation practices as “Maximum Collage.” And, with the addition of appropriation to collage’s arsenal of methodology, these recent collage strategies have permanently altered the original sense of the traditional term. Collage is not merely pasted paper; it has become boundless and has come to mean: pasting anything. Moreover, neither paste nor paper is necessary any more; the collage format, broadly applied, is about balancing any set of disparate bits, parts and fragments. A dedicated collage artist for the past two decades, I eagerly anticipate—and plan for—the fast approaching centennial of the art historically ackowledged birth of this process. Glue Due to its short, but intense history, collage is not bound by a formal, visual process. The process has quickly evolved with postmodern concerns. The potential for things to be held together is not limited to physical connection. It involves conceptual, associative, emotional, historical and memorial links that bind things fast. Binders are dependant on source material and thus have to shift, change and adjust, depending on availability, creative aspirations and the overall context of the artist in their own time and environment. A Personal Test Since 1989, I have put my collage practice through a test of dependancy upon found materials and printed matter. I sought to suspend my usage of paper and create without the use of physical collage techniques, yet maintain my eclecticism and the semblance of the collage format. I continued to use book pages as a ground, but painted everything else, only adding background college elements once in a while (a ground of negative sticker remains, for example). I found myself appropriating much of my imagery. After fifteen years, I have recently begun a new body of collages, which build off the Garden Studies. 3
Florian Rodari, Collage: Pasted, Cut and Torn Papers, Skira and Rizzoli, New York, NY, 1988, p. 31.
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Drawing Over Ovid’s Metamorphosis During this period of collage suspension, I began to draw on the pages of Ovid’s Metamorphosis and have since endeavored to work on each page. Many of the pieces bear the record of dozens of drawing sessions over the course of more than a decade, while others have received far fewer layers. With each drawing session, a severe change has come. The act of drawing over text, or over citing, has allowed for unexpected coincidence as well as conscious connection. The first portion of Ovid’s poem “The Creation of the World” describes chaos as it existed before organization. With this in mind, I maintained a spontaneous approach to the initial layers of drawing; the text was not read or considered during this stage of the work. Planned connections in this series occur with the images that are juxtaposed and not within the text, suggesting perhaps chaos is not entirely gravitated toward order, connecting Ovid’s text to contemporary thought. Virtually every work I have created since 1983 has had two common elements: collage format and landscape imagery. Despite the prevalence, I only became consciously aware of this coupling about eight years ago, just about the time in which the Garden Studies had developed to the point where I was willing to exhibit them. Since then, I have endeavored to explore: what, if any, connection exists between landscape and collage, and, how does Ovid’s book contribute to this relationship? Garden Studies The Garden Study series is, in the spirit of Alexander Von Humboldt’s pioneering work, an effort to credit the forces which have shaped our world. However, whereas Humboldt sought to explore the last horizons of the globe in an effort to make an “inventory of the world,” 4 I have endeavored to credit the development of human consciousness and bring that to bear on those who have cataloged global territory. The Garden Study series is part of my ongoing investigation of creation mythology, natural history, cosmogony, the history of landscape painting and the relevance of land depiction in contemporary culture. This series compliments a larger series of assemblage sculptures entitled “Terra Reverentia.” Hacking Paintings of land scenery are called landscapes. The root of the word 4
Jean Clair, “Humboldt to Hubble,” Cosmos: From Romanticism to Avant-garde, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Prestel Verlag, New York, NY, 1999, p. 21 Bartel 101
is apt for this practice: lendh - open land, heath, prairie; skep - to cut, scrape, to hack, form, creation: shape. Aspects of this root definition deal with nature, creativity, change and alteration—“creation,” “shape,” “form” etc.—but overlook the simple act of viewing or encountering natural vista and scenery. Apparently we are compelled to transform what we traverse. Fable In a primordial garden, three trees—oak, birch and pine—were struck by lightning and felled. The pine tree and birch tree landed in a small pond and rotted. The oak landed upon hard ground and smoldered into ash. A traveler came along and noted that the detritus had formed a skein on the surface of the water. He scooped some of this material out of the viscous liquid and laid it on a rock, where it dried in the sun and became paper. Pleased with this discovery, the traveler made two more pieces. The traveler then noticed the nearby oaken charcoal remains and with a particularly soft piece, scratched a rendering of the horizon and pond onto the paper. Satisfied with his creation he posted the drawing on the stump of the oak tree and left it there. He decided to share his invention with the world and left to go and tell others the secret of trees; and thus he became the first artist and teacher. Another traveler came to the pond and discovered the drawing of the land in front of him. He was delighted by the novelty of the depiction, but he did not like the view, so he cut down three trees and made the first landscape. He took the second piece of paper and drew the new scene. Satisfied, he placed his drawing on the birch stump and left the vista in its new state. He too shared his invention and he eventually became the first architect. A third traveler arrived shortly after and found both drawings. He puzzled over the two differing views until he noticed the landscaped trees. Interested, he took the third piece of paper and drew the newly felled trees without any horizon. His hand wavered as he drew and the traveler liked the feeling of the serpentine and scratchy marks as they appeared on the paper. And so, he played with this effect and invented the first abstract drawing. Satisfied, he placed his rendering on the pine tree stump where, unbeknownst to him, it rested on some tree sap and became stuck fast. He paused to consider the order of the drawings created by the first two travelers, along with his own and decided to remove the drawing of the pond—the world’s first drawing. Now, only the drawing of the landscape and his drawing of the abstract felled trees were left on the stumps. He had made the first exhibition 102 Hunger Mountain
and was delighted. He liked seeing the two drawings together, each more or less resembling the world in front of him. He walked away with the first drawing, which he kept for himself, and he laughed as he walked, thinking, “Really, they are both abstract.” He showed everyone the “first drawing of a landscape” which had the marvelous effect of inspiring others to make drawings and to see more art; he later became the first museum director. Not much time passed before a fourth traveler happened upon this show. Curious, he experimented with the pulp in the pond and eventually fashioned a large piece of paper. Invigorated by his reinvention of paper, he set out to create something of his own. He wanted to make a drawing, but he wasn’t interested in the scene before him and so he decided to draw a scene he recalled. After working for a short time, he realized his drawing needed something, but he wasn’t sure what, so he looked at the other two drawings for inspiration. Both drawings had things about them he wanted for his own work: a horizon in one, odd but reminiscent marks—that for some reason, reminded him of logs—in the other. He picked them up to examine them closely, but as he lifted the drawing resting on the pine tree, it accidentally tore into three pieces because the center of the drawing had been glued to the stump. He quickly separated a fragment from the dead tree and affixed it to his own drawing, carefully distributing the sappy ooze, so as to thoroughly paste it to his large paper. He drew around the addition and even on top of it. The first collage came into existence in this way. The addition of the premade image was exactly what he was looking for: a picture of logs—which reminded him of the home he was about to build—resting on a picturesque landscape. Satisfied, the traveler decided his house would be in the very spot on which he stood. He made many more pages, drawings and collages, all of which he hung on the walls of his home, which became the first installation, or, as he liked to think of it, a distended collage. One day, while he was making more collages, a visitor happened by and she marveled at the installation of drawings and collages on the interior of his house. She noticed the way the house was made and said, “I like the way you make images of the land with the materials that come from the landscape. And, I like how what you cut from one outfits the other.” The visitor, realizing she had invented conceptual art, devised a plan to deliver the content of all she had experienced and she left the garden. She kept this discovery to herself, locked tightly in her mind and since then, the world has never been the same.
Montpelier, Vermont, August 2004
Ovid The Creation of the World* Of bodies chang’d to various forms, I sing… Deduc’d from Nature’s birth, to Caesar’s times. Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball, And Heav’n’s high canopy, that covers all, One was the face of Nature; if a face: Rather a rude and indigested mass: A lifeless lump, unfashion’d, and unfram’d, Of jarring seeds; and justly Chaos nam’d. No sun was lighted up, the world to view; No moon did yet her blunted horns renew: Nor yet was Earth suspended in the sky, Nor pois’d, did on her own foundations lye: Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown; But earth, and air, and water, were in one. Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable, And water’s dark abyss unnavigable. No certain form on any was imprest; All were confus’d, and each disturb’d the rest. For hot and cold were in one body fixt; And soft with hard, and light with heavy mixt.
*excerpted from Metamorphosis 104 Hunger Mountain
Garden Study (Big Bang), 1999 - 2001 Ink, shoe polish, gesso, clay, plaka varnish and watercolor on two pages from Ovid’s Metamorphosis 7 1/4” x 5 3/4”
Garden Study (Volcan Beginnings), 2002 Ink, tempera, Yes glue wash, and watercolor on two pages from Ovid’s Metamorphosis 7 1/4” x 5 3/4”
Garden Study (Paradise for Nomads), 1999 Ink, gesso, acrylic, tempera and watercolor on two pages from Ovid’s Metamorphosis 7 1/4” x 5 3/4”, Collection of Bill Tobin, photo credit: John Hill
Garden Study (Path), 1998 Ink, gesso and watercolor on two pages from Ovid’s Metamorphosis 7 1/4” x 5 3/4”, Collection of Bo and Simone Joseph, photo credit: John Hill
Garden Study (Early Maps), 1999 Ink, gesso, watercolor and negative sticker remnants on two pages from Ovid’s Metamorphosis 5 3/4” x 7 1/4”, Collection of John and Letitia Carter, photo credit: John Hill
Garden Study (Distillation), 1999 Ink, gesso, watercolor, tempera, with glue wash, and negative sticker remnants on two pages from Ovid’s Metamorphosis 7 1/4” x 5 3/4”, Collection of Pfizer Inc., photo credit: John Hill
Garden Study (Frontier), 2000 Ink, gesso, negative sticker remnants, carbon transfer, acrylic, and watercolor on two pages from Ovid’s Metamorphosis 5 3/4” x 7 1/4”, Collection of Jennifer Vorbach
Garden Study (Letterbox View), 1999 - 2001 Ink, gesso, clay, wood glue, gouache and watercolor on two pages from Ovid’s Metamorphosis 7 1/4” x 5 3/4”, Collection of Michael Oatman