Painting as an exploratory layered drawing for an architectural surface in a library
a shadow or an eidolen, an image without substance
Drawing Traces : Metaphysics/Atmospheric Cosmogonies
THE MYTH:
PLINY THE ELDER : NATURAL HISTORY,translation H. Rackham 1952. BOOK 35
Origins of Painting ( XXXV,5).
The question as to the origin of the art of painting is uncertain and it does not belong to the plan of this work. The Egyptians declare that it was invented among themselves six thousand years ago before it passed over into Greece-which is clearly an idle assertion. As to the Greeks, some of them say it was discovered at Sicyon, others in Corinth, but all agree that it began with tracing an outline round a man s shadow and consequently that pictures were originally done in this way, but the second stage when a more elaborate method had been invented was done in a single colour and called monochrome, a method still in use at the present day.
Plastic art. Early stages. Butades and others. (XXXV ,43 ).
Enough and more has now been said about painting. It may be suitable to append to these remarks something about the plastic art. It was through the service of that same earth that modelling portraits from clay was first invented by Butades, a potter of Sicyon, at Corinth He did this owing to his daughter, who was in love with a young man ; and she, when he was going abroad, drew in outline on the wall the shadow of his face thrown by a lamp. Her father pressed clay on this and made a relief, which he hardened by exposure to fire with the rest of his pottery ; and it is said that this likeness was preserved in the Shrine of the Nymphs until the destruction of Corinth by Mummius.
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES: BOOKS:
Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire (Boston :Beacon Press, 1964).
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (Reading: Vintage,2000).
Roland Barthes, Mythologies ( Reading: Vintage,2000).
Georges Bataille, Eroticism (London: Marion Boyars Publishers, 2006).
Eduardo Cadava, Words of Light (New Jersey: Princetown University Press, 1997).
Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium (London: Jonathan Cape, 1992).
Tony Cragg, In And Out of Material {Manchester: Cornerhouse Publications,2006).
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (London: Routledge, 1994).
Ernst Gombrich, Shadows, The Depiction of Cast Shadows in Western Art (London: National Gallery Publications, 1995).
Antony Gormley, Drawings (London: The British Museum Press, 2002).
Tania Kovats, The Drawing Book (London: Black Dog Publishing,2007).
Amelia Opie, The Father and Daughter (Peterborough: Broadview Press,2003).
Pliny, Natural History Books 33-35 trans H. Rackham, (London: Harvard University Press,2003).
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968).
Victor 1. Stoichita, A Short History of The Shadow ( London: Reaktion, 1997).
Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986).
Rose Temkin, Thinking is Form: The Drawings of Joseph Beuys (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993).
Tracey Warr, The Artists Body ( London: Phaidon Press,2000).
OUTPOST Studio/Cyanotype Process Painting
EXHIBITION CATALOGUES:
Anthony Bond, Body (New South Wales: The Art Gallery of NewSouthWales,1997).
Michael Craig-Martin, Drawing the Line(London South Bank Centre, 1995).
Jacques Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind, The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins (Chicago: Chicago Press, 1993).
Avis Newman, The Stage of Drawing, Gesture and Act (London: The Tate Drawing Centre, 2003 ).
Giuseppe Penone, The Eroded Steps (Halifax. Henry Moore Sculpture Trust, 1989).
The South Bank Centre, The Body of Drawing, Drawings by Sculptors (London: The South Bank Centre, 1993).
Michaela Unterdorfer, In Search of The Perfect Lover (Baden-Baden: Staatliche Kunsthalle,2003).
JACQUES DERRIDA THE SCEPTICISM OF DRAWING:
Jacques Derrida in 1993 wrote an extensive text to accompany an exhibition of paintings from the Louvre. This text titled Memoirs of the Blind, The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins contains within it some particular references to “Pliny’s Origins of Painting." Together with the aid of illustrations of paintings on this theme, he examines and interrogates their philosophical and historical qualities.
Derrida makes particular mention and emphasis of the “state of blindness” in his analysis of the Butades myth. In particular the notion of “scepticism” which is at the very heart of drawing. This notion of the “difference between believing and seeing”1, and what he remarks as “believing one sees and seeing between” evokes the emergence of a “glimpse” caught in a state in which “doubt ever becomes a system“2. There is a moment of delay between the gaze with its vigilance and attention, and what one reflects upon seeing. These actions will conspire to create the moment of conclusion. So by keeping the thing in sight it is being constantly examined but not reflected on, until the point when the gaze is averted to the drawing .It is a this instant, withdrawn from the sight of the object, that a “blindness” forces the recollection (the moment of conclusion to emerge) to which the drawn mark is visual evidence of that moment Derrida makes the observation that representations substitute memory for perception and that blindness is a constant withdrawal into memory. Derrida is of the view that drawings, paintings are “representations drawn most often from an exemplary narrative." This myth of Butades with its “exemplary narrative” relates directly to the absence or invisibility of (being in) the drawing process whilst in the presence of the object, that the very act of drawing withdrawals and blinds its participant. Butades daughter is “blinded” in the acts of both love and the act of drawing. Through these conditions it can be seen that Butades daughter is blind to the vision of her lover and in drawing around his projection she is forced to recollect and reflect to produce a conclusion of that action by the simple gesture and act of an inscription drawn aided by a flickering silhouette.
Derrida uses the example of the painting by J. B. Suvee “Butades or the Origin of Drawing 1791” or as it is referred in English as “The Daughter of Butades Drawing the Shadow of Her Lover ” to illustrate that it was “as if one drew only on the condition of not seeing.” The drawing in effect becomes a “declaration of love destined for or suited to the invisibility of the other.”3 Derrida comments that the origin of drawing may have become born from the desire to create some sort of surrogate mark which originates “from seeing the other withdrawn from sight.“4 The important observation Derrida continues to make is that the daughter in “following the traits of a shadow or a silhouette” who is in effect drawing on a blindness which will through recollection, initiates a sense with which she is in effect “already loves in nostalgia.”5
Derrida dwells on the very nature of drawing moving away from “the origin of drawing” to “the thought of drawing” he comments that the thought of a drawing has a “certain pensive pose, a memory of the trait that speculates, as in a dream, about its own possibility.”6 It is as if the potency of drawings is a projected development that occurs as Derrida states “on the brink of blindness.” This notion of the “trait” (a feature to a line, stroke, or mark) a visible presence that accompanies the lines odyssey, a sense of presence that can witness something of the invisible in the visible is touched upon. ’’Merleau-Ponty’s The Visible and the Invisible is cited by Derrida as having already made “Indications” in this respect Derrida footnote from The Visible and the Invisible seems to sum up something of the invisibility and presence of the trait acting on a drawing. This extract taken from the “working notes” section of the book it reads” One has to understand that it is visibility itself that involves a non visibility.”7
Distilled from the salient points of Derrida’s extensive interrogation Memoirs of the Blind seems to acknowledge the fact that “whether Butades daughter follows the tracts of a shadow or a silhouette or even if she draws on the surface of a wall or in a veil.”8 the resultant inscription in any event “inaugurates an act of blindness.” Derrida’s revelation is that “perception belongs to recollection.” Butades daughter’s act is in blindness, as if she was drawing a declaration of love that simultaneously that also contains her anticipation of a loss, and as a result, a nostalgia that is reflected upon before it is actually perceived.
1 . Jacques Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind, The Self Portrait and Other Ruins (Chicago: Chicago Press, 1993),page 1.
2 .Ibid., page 1.
3 .Ibid., page 49.
4 .Ibid., page 49.
5 .Ibid., page 51.
6 .Ibid., page 3.
7 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968),257.
8 Jacques Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind, page 51.
VICTOR I. STOICHITA PLINY’S MYTH:
V. I. Stoichita in his book “A Short History of the Shadow" has analysed “Pliny’s Butades myth,” he makes the point in his introduction “that it is of unquestionable significance that the birth of Western artistic representation was in the negative,1” and that it emerged as such from the projection of the body marking it’s very presence by a projection, a shadow or an eidolen, an image without substance. Butades daughter therefore attempts to capture this intangible immaterial, the double of the one through whom she anticipates her impending loss.
Stoichita has noted that “Pliny” returns to the myth twice, first to discus the origins of painting and then further on to the production of sculpture. Stoichita elaborates further that Pliny claims that “the Greeks discovered painting, not by looking at Egyptian works of art but by observing the human shadow.” Pliny quotes” but all agree that it began with tracing an outline round a man’s shadow. “Stoichita connects Pliny correspondence as being a “three part theory” in which he Pliny uses early Greek painting, Egyptian painting, and the shadow.
Stoichita makes the connection that “Plinys approach can be placed at the crossroads of history and artistic mythology.2” Pliny uses a fable as a myth of origin to interpret the historical existence of early Egyptian painting The evolution of painting from this “early shadow stage” is then replaced by the advancement of a mono-chrome painting which was then later replaced by relief and shading now becomes a means of expression not just a support to give a sense of form to an outline.
1 Victor I. Stoichita, A Short History of the Shadow (London: Reaktion, 1997), page 7.
2 . Ibid., page 14.
The Daughter of Butades : Visual Art Winchester. 2008
My research centred on various situations that owe their inspiration to Pliny’s simple concise statement in his Natural History on the “origins of painting and the plastic arts.” My initial reason for selecting this particular mythical tale is its sense of performance through the simple act of drawing. It records the daughter of Butades and her lover, collaborating to produce an intimate trace of her gesture and his presence.
This performative action is at the heart of contemporary art practice. In some respects this trace is done with a form of blindness as commented upon by Derrida. This blindness of drawing and the blindness of love seem to stimulate the idea of a myth within a myth, one blind to the other. The notion that she is in the act of drawing in the anticipation of loss; and simultaneously she is sensing a nostalgic moment. This all transpires whilst her lover is still present.
Andrey Tarkovsky manages to suffuse these values into his work. These “poetics” are derived from the enduring sensibilities of mythical language. They allow things of wonder to attach themselves to the everyday. Italo Calvino’s comment “with myths, one should not be in a hurry,” seems at odds with our culture of speed and its overabundance of events and information.
But ironically this “supermodemity” with its non-places that induce a sort of solitary individuality might actually grant access to a mythical language centred by the very anonymity of these transitional sites. It is into these non-places that Butades daughter cites her act and gesture of an artist. The residue and vestige of what remains is her commenting actions, not some attempt at pictorial representation.
The inscription or mark which through an authenticity of an artist becomes captured by the place, it becomes marooned, vacated, at a standstill, time passes through somewhat stalled. This trace of authenticity of the contemporary artist becomes an absence marked, a passage and a dimension of possibilities.
The contemporary artist is already using a language of material residues, and past events from which new languages will evolve.
Myth must be the lightest historical residue there is; perhaps that is why it can survive on the barest of traces.
White Noise
Nocturnes of Silence
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