Surface Research

setting surface research final exhibition

2012-01-17T20:58:00.000+01:00

installing the book table

alphabet and 9 palimpsests

30 A3 papers with the blog items monthly ordered


alphabet and 9 palimpsests


research output on palimpsest and golden ratio

end of palimpsest year, beginning of creation and destruction year

creation and destruction chapter

c & d chapter and blog items

blog items on 30 A3 papers and book table

curator Alexandra installing the films

opening on Saturday January 15

invitation

2012-01-10T23:49:00.001+01:00

Surface Research Results final exhibition in NIEUW DAKOTA
Ms. Van Riemsdijkweg 41 B, 1033 RC Amsterdam Noord
January 15 - February 19 2012
curated by Alexandra Landré

OPENING: Sunday January 15 2012
16:00 h.

the invention of god

2011-11-09T10:38:00.000+01:00


alpha gorilla and Michelangelo's Mozes

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo
Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian
Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape

summary

2011-05-26T22:50:00.005+02:00

Nine palimpsest drawings were the first output of my Research Residency at the Rietveld Academie, and are made during September 2009 - December 2009. In January 2010 these nine Palimpsest drawings are used as research material for a lecture for a PhD in the arts symposium in The Hague in February 2010.

This is the first chapter of my Surface Research.

After the lecture I had to regenerate the Artistic Research plan. With the idea of being of some importance for the students I organised a workshop "intensive drawing". The workshop worked with the very simple concept about the drawing surface, which is its size. We made drawings after the Golden Ratio and the triangle of Kepler.

Second chapter of my Surface Research.

At the end of the first year of this Artistic Research Residency I made a drawing in advance of the second Research Residency year. Sixteen states of making and destroying and redrawing one drawing are showing the systematically process which I want to use in the second research year.

Third chapter of my Surface Research.

In September 2010 I started the second research year with a creation & destruction project by destroying three canvases. After that four drawings are drawn and destroyed. And finally five photographic self-portraits are destroyed with various techniques.

Fourth chapter of my Surface Research.

After this practical destruction research my research became more theoretical about the subject Idolatry and Iconoclasm. List of literature:

Frans Kellendonk: Idolen. Over het tweede gebod, Meulenhoff Amsterdam 1993

Sven Lütticken: De kunst van het iconoclasme, 2007.

Bruno Latour en Peter Weibel: Iconoclash, Beyond the image wars in science, religion and art, ZKM Karlsruhe 2002

Jan Assmann: Moses the Egyptian, the memory of Egypt in western monotheism, Harvard U.P. Londen 1997

Sigmund Freud: Moses and Monotheism, translated by Katherine Jones, Hogarth Press 1939

Ad Reinhardt: Art as Art, the selected writings of Ad Reinhardt, edited by Barbara Rose, University of California Press L.A. 1975

This literature and a text which is going to be published soon on this blog is the fifth chapter of my Surface Research.

Chapter six is going to be an exhibition in autumn 2011 and will be organised by Alexandra Landré. A publication with texts and images is going to be the seventh and last chapter of my two years of Artistic Research at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Thanks a lot for the opportunity and the hospitality Gerrit !

destructed masterpieces

2011-05-11T14:59:00.003+02:00

Erased de Kooning Drawing, Robert Rauschenberg, 1953

Imagine an exhibition of destructed masterpieces,
starting with Rauschenberg’s “erased De Kooning drawing”.

Than a sliced into ribbons Barnett Newman,
a stabbed Dumas and
a burned Tuymans.

After that a totally perforated by machine gun bullets Kiefer,
a buried Nitsch,
a drowned Baselitz and
a torn into rickety Richter.

A butchered Borremans,
a mutilated Monet,
a punched Polke,
an entropic destructed Duchamp and
a pruned Koons.

opposites

2011-05-10T14:09:00.000+02:00

doing diderot 20 april 2011 luxor live arnhem

2011-04-28T10:38:00.000+02:00

On Wednesday April 20 Richard Sennett (author of "the craftsman") was the key-note lecturer in the Doing Diderot symposium in Arnhem. It was a pity he couldn't be there because he was ill, nevertheless the symposium was interesting.
In the whiskey bar of the Luxor Theatre I presented my research into Idolatry and Iconoclasm.
Next week the text will be translated and is going to be published here on this blog.

Moses / Michelangelo / Freud

2011-04-07T11:09:00.000+02:00

Moses of Michelangelo in S. Pietro in Vincoli, Rome

Drawing of Moses by Sigmund Freud

Moses of Michelangelo in S. Pietro in Vincoli, Rome

selfportrait iconoclasm by cutting out

2011-04-05T13:38:00.003+02:00

idolatry iconoclasm

figurative abstract
pornographic the void

sublime extreme

full empty

many one

something nothing

creation destruction

inferior superior

anarchy utopia

cacophony silence

polychrome monochrome

polytheistic monotheistic

a mess tidy

dirty / polluted pure / clean

muddy clear

complex simple
for many for few

a begin the end

selfportrait iconoclasm by stabbing

2011-03-25T10:47:00.000+01:00

Three stages of a self-portrait stabbed with an awl.
image
picture
statue
figure
representation
portrait
icon
metaphor
diagram
simulacrum
amulet
charm
talisman
fetish
voodoo
potlatch
initiation

selfportrait iconoclasm by sandpapering out

2011-03-23T11:35:00.002+01:00

Another three stages of a self-portrait photo which is destructed with rough grained sandpaper. It is more or less precise executed within the contour of the head. Therefore the background in the photo stays visible as a room. Do we call a photograph figurative? There are photos which are abstract. Figurative images are constructed in stone or with pencil or paint. A photo isn't a construction, often a photo isn't a construction but something captured by chance. Even though a lot of styled photo-models are posing during photo shoots in what is construction of images on a high level, those photos we don't call figurative photography.
Does it matter, figurative or abstract images? Yes, it matters. Abstraction to figuration is superior, abstraction thinks. God had no stature, shape, form, figure nor posture when he spoke to Moses on the mountain Horeb, therefore figurative images are inferior. Plato posits that reality is an idea of the higher unknown. So a figurative image is an idea of an idea and therefore unnecessary and superfluous. For Plato and Yahweh it isn't allowed to play and entertain with figurative images because it distracts from the world of ideas and will lead to idolatry. Figuration is inferior to abstraction, abstraction is superior to figuration.
Still we feel this distinction, in art we work with this distinction.
Malevitsj, Mondrian, Newman and Reinhardt are superior to Magritte, Picasso, Dali and Duchamp.
Magritte, Picasso, Dali and Duchamp are inferior to Malevitsj, Mondrian, Newman and Reinhardt.
Magritte, Picasso, Dali and Duchamp is entertainment for the bored "looking for stories" junkies.
Malevitsj, Mondrian, Newman and Reinhardt is pleasure and delight for the spoiled "longing for emptiness" addicts.

selfportrait iconoclasm by scratching out

2011-03-22T17:44:00.000+01:00

Scratching out the self-portrait with a cutter through scratching the brilliant top layer of the photographic paper.

selfportrait iconoclasm by blacking out

2011-03-22T17:31:00.000+01:00

To recapitulate what was already executed in November last year. From the photos of different stages of the five iconoclastic actions on self-portraits here are three photos of blacking out the first self portrait. A residue of the portrait remains, the portrait became masked. It isn't Voodoo, nor exorcism. It is research, image research.

new office

2011-03-16T12:07:00.000+01:00

The two residents at the Rietveld Academie, Ann Meskens and Henri Jacobs, got a new office in the academy. It isn't big news, but we feel comfortable in our new "kitchen" where we can drink our thee and coffee and eat madeleines.
On Thursday March 3 a presentation of my research into Idolatry and Iconoclasm was given in the Researchgroup Art and Public Space at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.
It is my intention to write a recapitulation of this lecture for this blog and to post it as soon as possible.

moses and monotheism by sigmund freud

2011-02-11T10:16:00.000+01:00

Volz expresses himself still more explicitly. He says : "that the heaven-soaring work of Moses was at first hardly understood and feebly carried out, until during the course of centuries it penetrated more and more into the spirit of the people and at last found kindred souls in the great prophets who continued the work of the lonely Founder."
With this I have come to an end, my sole purpose having been to fit the figure of an Egyptian Moses into the framework of Jewish history. I may now express my conclusion in the shortest formula: To the well-known duality of that history two peoples who fuse together to form one nation, two kingdoms into which this nation divides, two names for the Deity in the source of the Bible we add two new ones : the founding of two new religions, the first one ousted by the second and yet reappearing victorious, two founders of religions, who are both called by the same name Moses and whose personalities we have to separate from each other. And all these dualities are necessary consequences of the first: one section of the people passed through what may properly be termed a traumatic experience which the other was spared.

MOSES AND MONOTHEISM, SIGMUND FREUD
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY KATHERINE JONES
PUBLISHED BY THE HOGARTH PRESS AND THE INSTITUTE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
1939

short story about IDOLATRY in 5 images

2011-01-26T15:25:00.021+01:00

Nicolas Poussin, the golden calf

The best way to make people forget an idolatrous rite is to put another rite in its place.

Enguerand Quarton, piéta

The Christians followed the same principle by building their churches on the ruins of pagan temples and by observing their feasts on the dates of pagan festivals.

Hanri Jacobs, midi / solange, paysage losange

For the same reason, Moses had to institute many dietary and sacrificial prescriptions in order to occupy the terrain held by the Sabians and their idolatrous ways,

Henri Jacobs, quartet

"so that all these rites and cults that they practised for the sake of the idols, they now came to practise in the honor of god."

Henri Jacobs, two drawings of a symbolon

The divine strategy was so successful that the Sabians and their once mighty community fell into oblivion. (Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian)

the idol shop

2011-01-12T22:43:00.000+01:00


Illustration from a Moravian haggadah of 1737, based on the printed Amsterdam haggadah of 1712.

Abraham and the idol shop of his father Terah.

Terah, Abraham's father, was an idol worshipper. One day Terah had to leave the store in which he sold idols. He left Abraham to manage the store in his absence. A man came and wanted to buy an idol. Abraham asked him "How old are you?" And the man responded "Fifty or sixty years old." Abraham then said "Pitiful is the man who is sixty and worships idols that are only one day old." So the man left in embarrassment.
Once came a woman with an offering of fine flour. She said to Abraham "Here, take it and bring it before the idols." Abraham stood up, took a stick, broke all the idols, and put the stick back in the hands of the biggest idol among them. When his father returned he asked "Who did this to them?" Abraham answered "I will not deny you the truth. A woman came with an offering of fine flour and asked me to bring it before them. So I brought it before them and each said "I shall eat first." Then the biggest one stood among them, he took a stick in his hand and broke them all." So Terah said to him "Why do you mock me? Do these idols know anything to speak and move?" And Abraham replied "Won't your ears hear what your mouth speaks?"

Midrash Rabbah, Noah, portion 38, section 13, translated by Shai Lavi

second commandment

2011-01-12T13:31:00.000+01:00

The exhibition "iconoclash, beyond the image wars in science, religion and art" in the "Center for Art and Media" in Karlsruhe from May to August 2002 is about the second commandment: "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the waters below". Bruno Latour proposes the following questions:
Are we sure we have understood it correctly?
Have we not made a long and terrifying mistake about its meaning?
How can we reconcile this request for a totally an-iconic society, religion and science with the fabulous proliferation of images that characterizes our media-filled cultures?
If images are so dangerous, why do we have so many of them?
If they are innocent, why do they trigger so many and such enduring passions?

Why do images trigger so much passion?

2010-12-16T13:01:00.001+01:00

"Freud is perfectly right in insisting on the fact that we are dealing in Egypt with the first counter-religion in the history of humanity. It is here that, for the first time, the distinction has been made (by Akhenaton) that has triggered the hate of those excluded by it. It is since this distinction that hatred exists in the world and the only way to go beyond is to go back to its origins." (Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian)
Bruno Latour : What we propose here in this catalogue "Iconoclash, beyond the image wars in science, religion, and art" is an archeology of hatred and fanatism.
Why ?
Because we are digging for the origin of an absolute - not a relative - distinction between truth and falsity, between a pure world, absolutely emptied of human-made intermediaries and a disgusting world composed of impure but fascinating human-made mediators.
"If only, some say, we could do without any images. How so much better, purer, faster our access to God, to Nature, to Truth, to Science could be." To which other voices answer :
"Alas, we cannot do without images, intermediaries, mediators of all shapes and forms, because this is the only way to access God, Nature, Truth and Science."

("La vérité est image mais il n'y a pas d'image de la vérité." Marie-José Mondzain)

What has happened that has made images the focus of so much passion? To the point that destroying them, erasing them, defacing them, has been taken as the ultimate touchstone to prove the validity of one's faith, of one's science, of one's critical acumen, of one's artistic creativity?

Furthermore, why is it that all those destroyers of images, those "theoclasts" those iconoclasts, those "ideoclasts" have also generated such a fabulous population of new images, fresh icons, rejuvenated mediators: greater flows of media, more powerful ideas, stronger idols?

And what has happened to explain that after every icono-crises infinite care is taken to reassemble the smashed statues, to save the fragments, to protect the debris? As if it was always necessary to apologize for the destruction of so much beauty, so much horror; as if one was suddenly uncertain about the role and cause of destruction that, before, seemed so urgent, so indispensable; as if the destroyer had suddenly realized that something else had been destroyed by mistake, something for which atonement was now overdue.

Why have images attracted so much hatred?
Why do they always return again, no matter how strongly one wants to get rid of them?
How is it possible to go beyond this cycle of fascination, repulsion, destruction, atonement, that is generated by the forbidden-image worship?

(Bruno Latour, Peter Weibel : "Iconoclash, beyond the image wars in science, religion, and art")

books

2010-12-14T21:43:00.000+01:00

Three books to study :

Iconoclash, beyond the image wars in science, religion, and art
Edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel
2002 ZKM, Karlsruhe

Moses the Egyptian
The memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism
Jan Assmann
1997, Harvard University Press

Idols of the Market
Modern Iconoclasm and the Fundamentalist Spectacle
Sven Lütticken
2009, Sternberg Press

Imi Knoebel, 30 stretchers, 1968 - 1969

selfportrait iconoclasm

2010-12-10T14:22:00.000+01:00

Is it possible to commit iconoclasm on a selfportrait?
Yes, it is possible to commit iconoclasm on a photographic portrait of myself.

Images don't cry, nor laugh.
Because of a crises in image representation artists are restless seeking for expressing their selves in not known ways. The crises of image representation is going to help artists in an interesting necessity to destroy figurative images. Figurative images have to destroy abstract pictures.
Iconoclasm is the future !

iconoclasm II

2010-12-09T11:46:00.000+01:00

The idea for a ban on images, how and why is it born?

In the ten commandments, inscripted on two stone tablets which God wrote with his finger and delivered by Moses, it is on a very important second place :

I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;
1 : Do not have any other gods before me.
2 : You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
3 : You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Because images can be powerful and therefore dangerous?
People are simple and scared and therefore they like to worship an image, of a golden calf for example. Is it that bad? God is a jealous god and that is very human quality. He or she or it has no form, god is fire, or light, sound, clouds, thunder and lightning.
Why is that jealous god so afraid of image making?
Abstract or figurative images are they equal from power?
The most powerful images are pornographic images?

"The more power pictures have, the less we seem to know about how they operate"
(Peter Weibel in Iconoclash).
To combat the figurative image, you must first acknowledge, admire and confess the figurative image?
Idolatry and iconoclasm are finally dealing with the pornographic image?
Powerful images in the vast flood of images today are images of what? Of sex, of violence, of war, of death?

Images don't cry...

iconoclasm

2010-11-24T22:08:00.013+01:00

Iconoclasm
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Iconoclasm is the deliberate destruction within a culture of the culture's own religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually for religious or political motives. It is a frequent component of major domestic political or religious changes. It is thus generally distinguished from the destruction by one culture of the images of another, for example by the Spanish in their American conquests. The term does not generally encompass the specific destruction of images of a ruler after his death or overthrow (damnatio memoriae), for example Akhenaten in Ancient Egypt.

People who engage in or support iconoclasm are called iconoclasts, a term that has come to be applied figuratively to any person who breaks or disdains established dogmata or conventions. Conversely, people who revere or venerate religious images are (by iconoclasts) called iconolaters. In a Byzantine context they are known as iconodules, or iconophiles.

Iconoclasm may be carried out by people of a different religion, but is often the result of sectarian disputes between factions of the same religion. The two Byzantine outbreaks during the 8th and 9th centuries were unusual in that the use of images was the main issue in the dispute, rather than a by-product of wider concerns. In Christianity, iconoclasm has generally been motivated by a literal interpretation of the Ten Commandments, which forbid the making and worshipping of "graven images", though the topic of Biblical law in Christianity has always been in dispute.

Five printed self portraits on Epson Premium Glossy photo paper, format A3+ = 32,9 x 48,3 cm.

Printed self portrait on Epson Premium Glossy photo paper format A3+ = 32,9 x 48,3 cm.

Black out of the self portrait with marker and watercolour.

Scratched out self portrait by using a cutter.

Sand papered self portrait.

Stabbed self portrait.

Cut out self portrait.

The remains of the cut out self portrait.

The five printed self portraits after their destructive treatment.

some photo's of the research proces

2010-11-23T22:08:00.007+01:00

A photo of a geometrical ornament in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin was the exemple for the drawings shown here below. The photo is printed on an A3+ format sheet of Epson Premium Glossy photo paper.

The same photo after sandpapering it, after stabbing it and cutting it. A ghost of the image remains.

Four drawings of the Pergamon ornament. Two drawings with pencil on paper and two drawings with watercolours. On 300 grams of Arches paper with a format of 31 x 41 cm.

The same four drawings after, on the top left, erasing it with an eraser.
On the top right the drawing is vanished by sandpapering it.
On the bottom left the watercolour drawing is stabbed with an awl and screwdriver.
On the bottom right the watercolour is cut into pieces.

The destructive actions to photo and drawings is filmed. Soon it will be edited and posted here and on You Tube.

four created drawings to destruct

2010-11-12T13:56:00.002+01:00

Two pencil drawings and two watercolours of the same pattern are almost finished. Within two weeks the destruction of those four drawings is going to happen. It will be documented by filming it.

c & d chapter 1 / three small canvases

2010-11-09T18:00:00.004+01:00

inspirations

2010-10-27T09:39:00.009+02:00

amie dicke

michael landy

bas jan ader

gert jan kocken

robert smithson, on entropy

smart & stupid

2010-10-20T11:16:00.006+02:00

Creation & Destruction =
Apollonian & Dionysian
Good & Bad
Smart & Stupid
Order & Chaos
Civilisation & Barbarism
Love & Hate
Compassion & Aggression
Beauty & Ugliness

first three destructions

2010-10-07T20:21:00.005+02:00

Three small surfaces for paintings (linen on stretchers) from about 30 x 50 cm are mutilated with sandpaper, with a cutter and with an awl. The action, or performance of destroying itself is filmed. Soon, within two weeks, the editing will be done and the film will be shown here.

destructed linen surface

2010-10-05T17:05:00.005+02:00

Destructing a linen surface by stabbing it with an awl.

white & black

2010-10-04T16:05:00.007+02:00

Painting a white sheet of paper with Ivory Black watercolour paint is adding paint which changes the white surface into spotty black. Can it be seen as a destruction of the original white? Or is it a change of a white surface into a black surface? It is difficult to see it as a destructive act, it is transformation in stead of destruction. Because there is no violence or aggression in painting the white surface black?

surface research plan 2010 - 2011 # 6

2010-10-04T14:29:00.005+02:00

The “creation & destruction” research at the Rietveld Academie

How to make the “creation & destruction” artistic research meaningful for students?
I will start by giving a short lecture on the new research project for the coordinators. With their help and in consultation with the departmental teachers I would like to find a small number of students who may be interested in the research question. I hope to find these students by presenting my research subject and the possible research questions to the interested departments. The students who want to participate will not be expected to function as research assistants. The idea is for them to set up an Artistic Research of their own based on the same subject and with a few specific research questions. Holding regular meetings in which experiences or developments are presented to the research group can lead to the exchange of ideas, materials, concepts, new research questions and relevant literature. It might develop into a collaboration of researchers each studying a different section. Each one is researching a part of the complete picture to be formed later.

The students in the research group should be rewarded for their work and findings and this should count towards their overall appraisal. The outcome of artistic research with this subject is unpredictable but the experience of last year’s workshop suggests that a non-committal structure should be avoided. The students’ engagement in the project will be given weight if it is reflected in their assessment. Compiling a booklet and organising an exhibition of the results could also stimulate engagement.
It could also be stimulating for the researchers to have the research project integrated into the academy’s programme by organising a symposium or one-day master class based on the research project subject and the material produced by the research group. Carel Blotkamp and Dario Gamboni who have published on the subject could be invited. Artists like Gert-Jan Kocken, Keiko Sato, Gustav Metzger and Jean-Pierre Raynaud who have worked on this subject could also make interesting contributions. Moreover, writers working with the opposite idea of destruction, who work from a conviction for the progressive and positive purely creational could be invited. And who knows what else the research group might encounter along the way.

blue

2010-10-04T11:40:00.000+02:00

Tromaderians consider anything blue extremely pornographic.

surface research plan 2010 - 2011 # 5

2010-09-24T10:34:00.004+02:00

Research questions:
The destruction of the plain paper is the creation of another, new surface to draw on, how far can the destruction be taken while maintaining a surface which can be ‘refined’ into a drawing?
Is inflicting acts of destruction on plain paper/linen not iconoclasm? Is the destruction of figurative drawings iconoclasm? Can the phenomenon of iconoclasm be executed again and how?
Can the mutilation, and ultimately the destruction, of personally drawn figurative images be carried out with different motives? Motivated by iconoclasm, motivated by fetishism?
Does the destruction of the drawing change its symbolical, financial or emotional value? The patina of destruction?
Creating = destroying? Destroying = creating?
Can you make drawings with the frenzy, vitality, aggression and negativity inherent to (total) destruction rather than with the deliberate, investigative, presuming, expectant and positive inventiveness inherent to creating?
Destruction on surfaces is two dimensional, what is the difference in destructing three dimensional objects?

Creating is exploring, careful, sowing, germinating, allowing to grow, constructive, progressive, allowing to flourish, creative, inventive and positive.

Destroying is vigorous, wishing to overpower, violent, fighting, in a struggle, uncontrolled, provocative, regressive, a trial of strength, wrecking, aggressive and implicates crises, is vandalism and destruction, and ultimately victory or defeat.

The two opposing concepts of creation and destruction are vivid, lively, strong, healthy and full of energy. Their true neutralizer is indifference, impotence, stupidity, laziness, boredom, disinterest and infantility. Is it possible to create and destroy after these seven states of being?

surface research plan 2010 - 2011 # 4

2010-09-23T10:51:00.004+02:00

How will I research this?
For the practical realisation of the “creation & destruction” research I would like to follow a methodical research line in a laboratory. I will work with sheets of 300 grams Arches watercolour paper and with mounted linen with more or less the same dimensions of 30 x 40 cm. Using a long tables where I can place several of these duos, I will apply the different stages and methods of destruction on each original, empty monochrome white paper and linen surface. The destruction can be done using rough sandpaper or an awl, by carving and scraping with a cutter or by working the paper and linen with an ordinary hammer or lump hammer, a stone or a stick. Or by piercing the paper and linen with arrows shot from a bow, with bullets from a gun, pellets from a shotgun … Or by simply tearing it…

Five chronological stages in the practical research process could be as follows.
1: different acts of destruction on plain surfaces with the three types of paper.
2: the same acts of destruction on plain surfaces in order to get treated surfaces for drawing.
3: again treating the plain surfaces in the same way, then drawing on them and again applying the acts of destruction.
4: drawing abstract patterns on the sheets of paper and applying different acts of destruction to them.
5: drawing portraits and/or human figures on the sheets of paper and applying different acts of destruction to them.
The various methodical stages of the research process will be documented using film and photography. The process, including answers to research questions and deliberations made along the way, will be shown on this blog surfaceresearch-hj.blogspot.com.
The research could be given additional depth by allowing a few interested students to execute the same destruction and creation process. This would enable the exchange of ideas, lines of thought and insights to be used for new lines of research.

To film the process seems the most obvious way of documentation. Hence, the first employee will be a camera on a tripod.

surface research plan 2010 - 2011 # 3

2010-09-22T16:54:00.007+02:00

Why do I wish to research this?
Because the stages of development in creating are linked to a strong feeling, an intuitive conviction that says that in order to make you must dare to break.
At an early stage in my visual work, I wanted to perforate the linen or paper surface so that through the surface the other side, the back, the dead side of the surface, the opposite of the sublime was involved and made palpable. This made it necessary to open the closed and smooth front surface by an act of destruction. I did this by using hollow punches, sandpaper, an awl or a sharp knife. It is obvious that creating something means destroying the former, earlier state of the art work. We experience creating as a positive act, it means adding, changing, transforming into a final work that is a success or a failure. Creating, making, producing is progress, it is a positive path of change, adding and evolution. We do not see it as a digressive course of damaging, mutilating and the destruction of the various interim stages of development of an art work.
I do not wish to show the destructive annihilation – this would be a construction – but I wish to execute the destructive action on a surface myself. So that I can see and experience whether the apparent contradiction “creation and destruction” is a contradiction.

It is necessary to find a "holy house", my "sacred cow", to experience destruction.
The emotion of feeling fertile by being creative, by drawing nice drawings I know well enough. Try to be honest, coward.

surface research plan 2010 - 2011 # 2

2010-09-21T20:59:00.016+02:00

What is the objective?
Could the art of destruction ultimately result in the destruction of art? To overcome the act of creating appears most radical and at first glance certainly not something to strive for. However, proposing this as the ultimate consequence clarifies the aim of the study.
This leads to a critical evaluation of my art production and to the fundamental questioning of the reasons that underlie this urge and immediacy for wanting to create.

A / B / C

D / E / F

F / G / H / Z / Z

I / J / K / W / X / Y

L / L / M / T / U / V

N / O / P / Q / R / S

A drawn alphabet, seen as raw material, on the fourth wall of my new studio at the Rietveld Academie. The raw material is for building slogans to advertise my creation & destruction artistic research project.

surface research plan 2010 - 2011 # 1

2010-09-21T13:38:00.002+02:00

What do I want to research?
What meaning do the regressive act of destruction, annihilation and breaking have in the progressive process of creating, constructing and making?
By including destructive acts in the process of creating I would like to study whether the contradiction of “creation and destruction” in reality represents one and the same principle.
Is the desire to destroy one of the conditions needed to create something as yet unknown?

niki de saint phalle

2010-09-10T11:00:00.005+02:00

lucio fontana

2010-09-09T17:58:00.006+02:00

natural paper cutting

2010-09-09T17:51:00.003+02:00

creative destruction

2010-09-08T22:10:00.006+02:00

jean-pierre raynaud

2010-09-08T11:18:00.006+02:00

The French artist Jean-Pierre Raynaud turned to the systematic use of white tiles and covered his own house in La Celle-Saint-Cloud with them. The house was open to the public from 1971 to 1988 and it became a kind of monument.

The hygienic and purist connotations of the material were enriched by Raynaud's realisation of stained glass.

In 1993 the artist had his house demolished...

and presented the debris in 976 surgical containers.
He related the decision to destroy his gesamtkunstwerk to his fear of degradation, his lack of confidence in society for taking care of it after his death, and his feeling that it had reached a state of perfection beyond which every gesture would represent a profanation.
He replied to a question from the architect Jean Nouvel that one had the right to destroy a work of art if it resulted in creating another one.

joseph schumpeter

2010-09-07T17:03:00.005+02:00

The opening up of new markets and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as US Steel illustrate the process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one ... [The process] must be seen in its role in the perennial gale of creative destruction; it cannot be understood on the hypothesis that there is a perennial lull.
Joseph Schumpeter, The Process of Creative Destruction, 1942

thought

2010-09-07T15:37:00.001+02:00

We are driven forward, whipped forward by life in order to act. War and art are the result of it.

arrows

2010-09-07T15:04:00.004+02:00

tools for creation & destruction

2010-08-16T20:32:00.003+02:00

On Tuesday September 7 I am going to continue the Surface Research project at the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. It is going to be a start for a new artistic research chapter about creation and destruction. From September 7 it is possible to read more about it on this blog.

gustav metzger

2010-06-29T11:29:00.003+02:00

Gustav Metzger (1926)

Auto-Destructive Art [1959]

Auto-destructive art is primarily a form of public art for industrial societies.

Self-destructive painting, sculpture and construction is a total unity of idea, site, form, colour, method, and timing of the dis-integrative process.

Auto-destructive art can be created with natural forces, traditional art techniques and technological techniques.

The amplified sound of the auto-destructive process can be an element of the total conception.

The artist may collaborate with scientists, engineers.

Self-destructive art can be machine produced and factory assembled.

Auto-destructive paintings, sculptures and constructions have a life time varying from a few moments to twenty years. When the dis-integrative process is complete the work is to be removed from the site and scrapped.

Manifesto Auto-Destructive Art [1960]

Man in Regent Street is auto-destructive.

Rockets, nuclear weapons, are auto-destructive.

Auto-destructive art.

The drop drop dropping of HH bombs.

Not interested in ruins, (the picturesque)

Auto-destructive art re-enacts the obsession with destruction, the pummelling to which individuals and masses are subjected.

Auto-destructive art mirrors the compulsive perfectionism of arms manufacture - polishing to destruction point.

Auto-destructive art is the transformation of technology into public art. The immense productive capacity, the chaos of capitalism and of Soviet communism, the co-existence of surplus and starvation; the increasing stock-piling of nuclear weapons - more than enough to destroy technological societies; the dis-integrative effect of machinery and of life in vast built-up areas on the person,...

Auto-destructive art is art which contains within itself an agent which automatically leads to its destruction within a period of time not to exceed twenty years. Other forms of auto-destructive art involve manual manipulation. There are forms of auto-destructive art where the artist has a tight control over the nature and timing of the dis-integrative process, and there are other forms where the artist's control is slight.

Materials and techniques used in creating auto-destructive art include: Acid, Adhesives, Ballistics, Canvas, Clay, Combustion, Compression, Concrete, Corrosion, Cybernetics, Drop, Elasticity, Electricity, Electrolysis, Feed-Back, Glass, Heat, Human Energy, Ice, Jet, Light, Load, Mass-production, Metal, Motion Picture, Natural Forces, Nuclear Energy, Paint, Paper, Photography, Plaster, Plastics, Pressure, Radiation, Sand, Solar Energy, Sound, Steam, Stress, Terra-cotta, Vibration, Water, Welding, Wire, Wood.

erased de kooning drawing

2010-06-11T11:12:00.005+02:00

In 1953 Robert Rauschenberg was asking Willem de Kooning (21 years older), whom he regarded as "the most important artist of his time", to let him erase one of his drawings.
In order to use the eraser "as a drawing tool", however, he renounced resorting to one of his own drawings because the erased work "would return to nothing", and decided that he needed a drawing already recognized as art. De Kooning gave him a drawing "important enough for him to miss, and one that was difficult to erase". Rauschenberg needed four weeks of hard work to remove all but a few traces. He hand-lettered the title Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953 on a passe-partout, added his name and the date, and placed the sheet in a gold-leaf frame.
The insistence on the dating and the museum-like labelling and framing further turned it into a monument to the appropriation and outdoing of a stage of art.
Quite recent iconoclasm is this action by Rauschenberg, and an inspiration for the continuation of my surface research project in september.

surface research continuation

2010-06-03T09:56:00.010+02:00

Web-master Rietje from the Rietveld Academie posted the film about drawing and erasing the eighth palimpsest on Vimeo:
Surface Research by Henri Jacobs.
The Surface Research project is probably going to continue next year. Currently I am writing a text about the continuation of the project. Foreseeing a series of drawings on creation and destruction. Systematically executed on three different sorts of paper, and each paper-sort will get it's specific drawing material. Epson photo paper is going to be drawn with ink, 200 grams drawing paper is going to be drawn with pencil and 500 grams watercolour paper is going to be drawn with aquarelle paint. Drawing has to happen to create "value" that can be destroyed.
Soon, when the text about the continuation of the project is ready, it will be posted on this weblog.
I imagine that filming the creation and destruction process will be the best way of documenting this new Surface Research chapter.
A bientôt...

surface research results exhibition # 2

2010-06-01T23:32:00.003+02:00

womb & tomb

2010-05-31T23:08:00.003+02:00

On the top left : Mother Kali,
Hindu goddess from India,
womb and tomb,
she creates and destroys worlds,
female, black, time,
standing on the body of Shiva.
Kali, Tara, Shodashi, Bhuvaneshvari, Bhairavi,
Chhinnamasta, Dhumavati, Bagalamukhi, Matangi, and Kamala.

order & chaos

2010-05-28T12:56:00.002+02:00

Two journal-drawings from July 2008.
The first line drawn on a white sheet of paper damages, attacks and destroys the white paper.
The paper destroyed the tree.
Creating is destroying, bluntly said.
Every construction is damaging the earlier state.
Making and creating is in the same time damaging and destroying. This is a conclusion after one year of Surface Research.

Surface Research Results Exhibition # 2

Monday May 31 2010 / 12:00 - 19:00 h
Tuesday June 1 2010 / 17:00 - 21:00 h
Wednesday June 2 2010 / 12:00 - 19:00 h
Thursday June 3 2010 / 9:00 - 14:00 h

Pavilion Gerrit Rietveld Academie
Fred Roeskestraat 96
1076 ED Amsterdam

exhibition pavilion

2010-05-27T09:59:00.004+02:00

To create exhibition walls for drawings in the Rietveld Pavilion, which is from glass and one brick wall, I made a sketch to build 7 panels in the Pavilion. It is already build, therefore "l'acrochage des oeuvres" is the next step.

Come and see, next week, INVITATION :

Surface Research Results Exhibition # 2

Monday May 31 2010 / 12:00 - 19:00 h
Tuesday June 1 2010 / 17:00 - 21:00 h
Wednesday June 2 2010 / 12:00 - 19:00 h
Thursday June 3 2010 / 9:00 - 14:00 h

Pavilion Gerrit Rietveld Academie
Fred Roeskestraat 96
1076 ED Amsterdam

invitation

2010-05-25T14:44:00.005+02:00

INVITATION
Surface Research Results Exhibition # 2

Monday May 31 2010 / 12:00 - 19:00 h
Tuesday June 1 2010 / 17:00 - 21:00 h
Wednesday June 2 2010 / 12:00 - 19:00 h
Thursday June 3 2010 / 9:00 - 14:00 h

Pavilion Gerrit Rietveld Academie
Fred Roeskestraat 96
1076 ED Amsterdam

Sincerely, Henri Jacobs.

anxiety & anger, ugliness, etcetera

2010-05-20T14:27:00.004+02:00

A quotation from Dario Gamboni's book "the destruction of art, iconoclasm and vandalism since the French revolution":
"(...) the essential link that modern psychologists have tended to establish between destructiveness and creativity has gained in modern art an imprecedented visibility and importance, in direct relation to its "iconoclasm". In the 1930's Picasso emphasized this dramatic change to Christian Zervos on the level of the modus operandum: "Previously, pictures advanced to their end by progression. Each day brought something new. A picture was a sum of additions. With me, a picture is a sum of destructions".

new surface with fertilised soil

2010-05-19T14:06:00.005+02:00

To get grip on the matter of art and destruction I would like to start up a new cycle of palimpsest drawings. The photo shows a drawing on Epson photo paper with the proportions of the golden ratio. The triangle of Kepler is drawn and with a small letter template letters which form words are sown to fertilise the surface.
To do some theoretical study on the subject this afternoon I have to go to the library of the Rijks Academy in Amsterdam. To borrow the book "the destruction of art" by Dario Gamboni.

the destruction of art

2010-05-18T22:33:00.005+02:00

Barnett Newman's "who is afraid..." and "cathedra" both cut up in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam some time ago.
The destruction of art & the art of destruction aren't two sides of the same coin. Trying to evoke the destructive element in creating art is difficult. Creating drawings is a quite positive act and perhaps a positive belief. It can be done with negative feelings like being bored, feeling ugly, stupid, lazy, ill, sad and mad. Working with destruction is a sentiment difficult to make clear. Destruction as part of creating new drawings. Violence and vandalism should be part of the final drawing. Soon I expect to make it clear.

encore trois semaines

2010-05-17T18:15:00.003+02:00

Within three weeks my Surface Research project has had it's first year. Much too short and it passed away like a cigarette in smoke. Fast, pleased with the prospect but finally dissatisfying when the end is near. Why? Because many questions aren't answered, the subject of the destructive element in creating art pieces isn't yet clear to me. The palimpsests and the specific texts used in the palimpsests were a start that dealt with construction and destruction. Precise construction by drawing the texts in grids using a ruler and compasses, well kept in hand destruction by scratching out the texts with a cutter.
After that I made a step backwards by working with specific conditions of a surface which is going to be used for drawings. It was necessary that dimensions had a reason and that is why I worked with the Golden Ratio and the Triangle of Kepler. Again many possibilities in drawings and the destruction of the drawings has been invested.
In the final three weeks I am going to make some new "destructed" drawings to complete the exhibition I am planning for Monday May 31 till Thursday June 3 in the Rietveld pavilion.

Invitation card will be posted soon on this blog.

construction and destruction again

2010-04-22T11:46:00.005+02:00

To destroy, to demolish, to annihilate, to damage is necessary to conquer the despair of being locked up in boring and stupid old problems. Creating drawings or paintings is a fight with yourself against the inner stupidity, laziness and boredom. In the battle of an idea and its materialization something has to be overcome by destroying the well known solutions already used before.
Mondriaan's quote: "I think the destructive element is very much neglected in art" is difficult to understand because his oeuvre looks so logic, solid and form from a steady evolution. But he had to conquer his own figurative work by destroying the figurative image to reach abstraction. And in his abstract paintings he was in a fight with the black lines. Although painters used coloured lines in abstract compositions before, Mondriaan had to go a long route to "destroy" the black lines in his own paintings. By painting again and again inventive compositions with quite radical decisions where to place the lines. It was a long and essential process, or a heavy fight, somewhere in the intuition of the artist to be able to paint coloured lines. He was looking into a deep black darkness, a presumption of possibilities with his visual idiom. But the battle is never won, the feeling to have to destruct the darlings which delivered such good results is manifest.

Drawing and erasing it, leaving traces, the strong notion it isn't the desired effect, so again destruction by scratching the drawing is the best thing to do. It is a well kept in hand battle. Destruction and construction are on a bascule, no running of the rails, no panicking, steered by intuition and belief. A belief without any religion, the belief in a disenchanted world.

destruction & construction summary

2010-04-21T22:28:00.011+02:00

Nine different states of the same drawing, the final state is the first image here above. While drawing today during the workshop we talked about construction and destruction. We tried to understand Piet Mondriaan's quote: "I think the destructive element is very much neglected in art". And that is why we made drawings by drawing a construction that had to be destructed afterwards. Tomorrow I am going to write more about this subject. So see you...

to destruct & to construct

2010-04-20T23:41:00.010+02:00

The drawing which ended yesterday's item about construction & destruction.The eight photo's herewith are from the same drawing. The destruction "evolutes" and finally the drawing has disappeared enough so a new drawing can overwrite the destructed surface.

creation & destruction

2010-04-19T21:23:00.011+02:00

First state of Thursday April 8. Seven states of the same drawing are shown here, because I would like to show creation and destruction. To be continued tomorrow...

On a sheet of paper with proportions of the golden ratio I constructed with diagonals, cross points, horizontal lines, vertical lines and lines drawn with the compasses a web that is very dense.
It is possible to accentuate a pattern in the web, or to draw a composition with the web of guide lines. Foreseeing it is going to be a composition for destruction. By scratching it out with hatch lines all over.
Afterwards I want to try to start a new drawing over the destructed drawing. In one day : construction - destruction & construction again.

According to Piet Mondriaan : "I think the destructive element is very much neglected in art".

Kepler Triangle

2010-04-15T22:16:00.011+02:00

Last Wednesday Jan Andriesse gave me a A4 sheet of paper with the construction of the Triangle of Kepler and the rectangle where the triangle is the half part from. The ratio of the edges of a Kepler triangle are linked to the golden ratio and can be written approximately as 1 : 1.2720196 : 1.6180339. The German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) expressed in the following quotation his deep fascination for the Pythagorean theorem and the golden ratio: "geometry has two great treasures: one is the theorem of Pythagoras, the other the division of a line into mean and extreme ratio. The first we may compare to a mass of gold, the second we may call a precious jewel".

Four photo's of the evolution of the same drawing with the construction of the triangle of Kepler. Next week the drawing will evolve into a more complex drawing. I think it is going to be a first drawing of a series of drawings where the palimpsest principle of drawing and scratching, of creation and destruction, will be practised.

workshop number three

2010-04-15T10:26:00.005+02:00

Yesterday, Wednesday April 14, the third workshop "intensive drawing" was held. Not many participants, but the participants there worked quite intensively with the rectangular grids of the golden ratio. We also worked with the proportions after the triangle of Kepler.
I was glad one of the teachers from the graphic department joined the workshop. I am not sure but a difference between departments where students have to do assignments like the graphic or the textile department and departments without commissions like fine arts, where the student has to explore his or her individuality, it is quite hard for them to work after an assignment. I don't want to generalise and I would like to know it better if students from fine arts, where they have to go deep into themselves, if they are less flexible to work after a system or assignment than students from departments which are more specific and concrete like graphic arts.
Drawing after a system or assignment which is given by someone, it isn't necessary to have ideas while working. You can build up a concentration where you discover the possibilities in the system and new inventions can happen.
You have to start.
Try to define some rules to start with.
Or try to be as precise as possible to visualise the principle idea.
The first and quick result doesn't matter.
Know that it is better to foresee a series of drawings to explore the principle or idea.
And try to get rid of personal taste and prejudices.

Two drawings of Luna Maurer, while drawing she got infected with the "there are so many possibilities microbe".

Two drawings of Rosa Doornenbal, she worked with the proportions construction of the triangle of Kepler. Because she likes the most the triangle, and dislikes the square and circle. Therefore it will be a challenge for Rosa to draw with parts of the circle next time.

visiting Jan Andriesse

2010-04-14T21:27:00.008+02:00

As homage to Piet Mondriaan and to possess a Mondriaan himself the painter Jan Andriesse copied Mondriaans "composition with yellow lines" (1933 / 80 x 80 cm / Haags Gemeentemuseum) as precise as possible. By copying it he studied it and he found some remarkable details about the small painting. The yellow line on the left and the yellow line on top these lines have the same width. If they are continued outside the painting they form a square as is to see in the small drawing on the left bottom corner. Mondriaan said he didn't use mathematical systems to construct his paintings, he worked directly with his intuition on the canvas by drawing with charcoal the compositions he had in mind. It could take weeks and sometimes months to make corrections and the composition was crystallized enough to start with painting colours. For Jan Andriesse it was also the most difficult task to do, mixing the right yellow colour.

Bottom left corner of the photo a small poster of German propaganda : "British planes have no mercy for peaceful citizens, therefore stay at home".

Yesterday I visited Jan in his studio boat on the Amstel river. I had to because he is one of the rare artists who is working with the golden ratio. Yesterday afternoon he explained to me the triangle of Kepler. A triangle Jan Andriesse discovered quite some time ago when he was living in New York. He used to paint on a rectangle with the proportions 1 : 1,25. Slowly the proportions of the rectangle changed in 1 : 1,27. By reading and studying he discovered Kepler and his triangle with the proportions of 1 : 1,272.
Thank you Jan for explaining Kepler's triangle. For explaining Barnet Newman's wide rectangles. For telling many interesting stories about mathematics and philosophy. For the gossip and the one liners : "stay at home, read Baruch..."

The sine wave or sinusoid is a mathematical function that describes a smooth repetitive oscillation. On the photo there are 9 moulds or templates Jan Andriesse made with the sinusoid that represents the decreasing wave of water when it is split by a boat or duck. Jan tried to make paintings with the 9 beautiful templates but he failed again and again. The reason why was explained by Jan by a quote of T. S. Eliot : "by dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good". The 9 templates finally delivers paintings which are simply too beautiful, too boring, too perfect. The human irrational disappeared and therefore the result is dissatisfying.

On the studio wall of Jan Andriesse : a rectangle after the triangle of Kepler, one of the diagonals in the rectangle which is from the same length as the elegant hanging chain bow.
Less is more, stay at home, read Baruch ...

influences & inspirations

2010-04-13T12:39:00.002+02:00

Drowning in possibilities, lost in ambiguities, disorientated, lack of structure, therefore indecision and desperation during drawing something unforeseen.
This drawing is inspired by Mondriaan and Andriesse, I am going to visit Jan Andriesse to know more. Perhaps afterwards it is possible to work systematically with the knowledge for another chapter "surface research".

influences

2010-04-12T21:20:00.003+02:00

Today I continued with the drawing which was posted last Thursday April 8. Different lines can be drawn on the paper through the diagonals. Horizontal and vertical dividing lines are drawn on the crossings of diagonals. By going on a dense pattern of horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines will be created, which is like a mist, the subject or object can appear through this web of lines. The sculpture is in the stone, free it from the prison of the monolith, the drawing is on the paper, make it visible by accentuating or erasing in the web of lines.
While drawing it was wonderful to recognize the possibility to draw a "river down below" after a painting of Jan Andriesse.

Left premature drawing is more or less after a drawing of Karel Martens. The drawing on the right is after the painting "the river down below" of Jan Andriesse.
Probably it is possible to continue with the surface research project by scratching and drawing over it again as done in the palimpsest drawings. The palimpsest here is not a layered text drawing but is working with patterns and directions.
Questions are rising, how strict a method has to be followed? To draw after a system, how far to continue and when do you liberate yourself? Anything goes? Repeatedly going back to the basic question.

surface research summary

2010-04-08T16:08:00.008+02:00

Golden ratio or golden proportion construction drawn with ink on an A4 sheet of paper.

Three exploratory drawings after the golden proportions. Each drawing is drawn on an A4 sheet of paper.

Three drawings about a reduction construction. The square and the two rectangles have the same number of square centimetres = 441 cm2. Sitting, standing and lying formats. To get grip on the surface with specific proportions. By drawing the square and the rectangle diagonals cross points makes it possible to construct the grid with a reduction to the corner were the two diagonals meet.

Three drawings about a construction of a square and the two rectangles with the same number of square centimetres = 441 cm2. Sitting, standing and lying.

After the 9 palimpsest drawings, which is a series on its own, I had to go back to the basic question what a surface is. A specific surface of paper, necessary as subsurface to draw on. Until now I defined 6 properties for the drawing surface :

1. two dimensional
2. size and proportion
3. shape
4. colour
5. materiality
6. texture

The 13 drawings shown here are about the two dimensional surface with a certain size. Different lines can be drawn on the paper through the diagonals. Horizontal and vertical dividing lines are drawn on the crossings of diagonals. By going on a dense pattern of horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines will be created, which is like a mist, the subject or object can appear through this web of lines. The sculpture is in the stone, free it from the prison of the monolith, the drawing is on the paper, make it visible by accentuating or erasing in the web of lines.

workshop for 2 participants

2010-04-01T11:11:00.009+02:00

Yesterday the second workshop was going on in the Pavilion. It was quite a disappointment that only two participants showed up. As organiser I am asking myself if it is that boring to draw after certain rules? Is it that rigid or stupid to draw after a plan which is going about the surface with it's specific properties? Difficult to know when almost everybody who signed in for the workshop stay at home.
How to get the attention of the participants? It isn't sexy to tell them that when boredom is coming up while drawing it is good to continue with the original idea or plan. To tell them it can be quite good to switch off the ego with it's superficial demands. Deny the first emotions of despair, laziness and boredom and conquer yourself. Perhaps than it is possible to get fascinated by the interesting problems which are there while drawing. Try to pay attention to the drawing process, try to remember how decisions are made, try to foresee and to anticipate the possibilities nearby.
So the next workshop I am going to offer free beer, good music and champagne in the afternoon to the participants who want to try to go beyond the first superficial emotions that are the obstacles for starting and continuing with a drawing.
It sounds as a session of psychotherapy...
The photo herewith is a workshop drawing made yesterday by René van Heel. He drew after the specific method of construction to become a rectangle with the proportions of the Golden Ratio.

continuing drawing with golden ratio

2010-03-30T21:25:00.004+02:00

1

2

3

Started to play with the possibilities, three photo's above are showing the changing drawings. Continuing drawing is playing with possibilities already there when the first line is drawn. It is also a fight against boredom and laziness. Tomorrow during the workshop "intensive drawing" after this material about the golden ratio, I am curious how many participants can stay awake.
The best thing to do is to switch of or to eliminate the ego, so drawing itself can go on without sighs. A bit of desperation is the right mood to execute a drawing not foreseen and not existing until now.

the surface and its dimensions

2010-03-29T21:51:00.008+02:00

The surface, I am trying to focus on the surface and its dimensions. For that reason it is nice to be able to use the balanced proportions of the golden ratio. The dimensions of a golden ratio sheet of paper that is locked up in an A4 sheet of paper is quite smaller than an A4. The photo up here shows some A4 sheets of paper, 2 golden ratio sheets of paper and three sit, lie & stand sheets of paper cut to proportions with the same square centimetres. An A4 has the dimensions 29,7 x 21 centimetres, a golden ratio sized sheet of paper cut from an A4 sheet of paper has the dimensions 29,7 x 18,4 centimetres.

To construct the golden ratio rectangle it is necessary to use a square. The square is an integral part of a golden ratio rectangle. Drawing the construction lines already there through connecting edges and continuing drawing from crossing lines is easy, no inspiration or special skills are necessary. The drawing is in the paper like the sculpture is in the stone.

Drawn on Epson Premium Glossy Photo paper with its glossy coating. Playing with the possibilities is started, erasing and scratching into the paper is part of the game. Golden ratio and palimpsest techniques are subject of research, of practical artistic research.

golden ratio

2010-03-25T15:53:00.005+01:00

Next Wednesday, march 31 2010, during the workshop "intensive drawing" I would like to propose that we are going to work with the "golden ratio". To inform what the "golden ratio" means herewith the wikipedia explanation :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio

The drawing above of the rectangle is constructed after the golden ratio, starting with a square of 21 x 21 cm. The drawing is made on a A3 sheet of paper : 42 x 29,7 cm. The golden ratio rectangle on the A3 sheet of paper has the dimensions 34 x 21 cm. I think this is the smallest golden ratio rectangle with natural numbers.
To bore and burn, to stand and fall, to unite and divide.

workshop "intensive drawing"

2010-03-17T17:56:00.011+01:00

Today, wednesday we started with a workshop on drawing. Quite a lot of students from different departments from the Rietveld Academy joined the workshop. From 10:00 a.m. untill 5:00 p.m. we made drawings after the plan of three different sizes of paper with the same amount of square centimetres. Yesterday's post "artistic research in practise" is showing the concept where we worked with today. Herewith some results after a day of concentrated drawing. The names of the participants who made the drawings shown here are going to be blogged later on...

artistic research in practise

2010-03-16T16:48:00.007+01:00

A square drawn with ink on an A4 sheet of paper, a vertical rectangular drawn with ink on an A4 sheet of paper and a horizontal rectangular drawn with ink on an A4 sheet of paper.

The square (sitting), the vertical rectangular (standing) and the horizontal rectangular (lying) are three "mother models" to start an artistic research. The workshop "intensive drawing", which will start tomorrow in the Rietveld Pavilion next to the Rietveld Academy, will work on this issue.
While drawing those three formats on an A4 sheet of paper it is difficult to limit myself to this very simple task. In fact I am longing to start drawing variations with the innumerable possibilities already there in the drawn concept of the divided square and rectangular. Lost in oppositions & drowned in possibilities.
Artistic research could be the systematically investigation of the possibilities. So tomorrow we are going to explore and exploit under strict control the graphical possibilities with the three divided grids.

measurement

2010-03-15T17:53:00.008+01:00

a square surface with the dimensions 21 x 21 cm = 441 cm2
s i t t i n g

a rectangular surface with the dimensions 14,85 x 29,7 cm = 441 cm2
l y i n g

a rectangular surface with the dimensions 29,7 x 14,85 cm = 441 cm2
s t a n d i n g

another 4 states

2010-03-04T15:52:00.006+01:00

Closing this palimpsest by ornamenting the alphabet.

Graphite colouring after Tuerlinckx.

Alphabet after Broodthaers.

Bricks after Magritte and Broodthaers.

palimpsest drawing

2010-03-02T21:11:00.006+01:00

A new attempt to produce, by drawing and erasing, a palimpsest. It isn't very clear what to do and how to continue. The palimpsest chapter was more or less clarified after the lecture in The Hague. Now it is possible to go further and deeper into the concept of palimpsesting. It isn't clear to me why I want to force the concept of making palimpsests into the direction of Belgian artistic heritage with René Magritte, Marcel Broodthaers and Joëlle Tuerlinckx as a small family of artists where I would like to reflect on. Probably by making drawings, writing on this blog and by reading certain books it is going to be clear...

TueBroMag

2010-03-01T23:02:00.004+01:00

Surface Research wants to deal with the idea of space in the works and concepts of Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Marcel Broodthaers and René Magritte. Soon there will be more to see and read on this subject. A chapter on Marcel Boodthaers.

lecture PhDArts

2010-02-09T22:01:00.048+01:00

Last Saturday the 6th of February I had the opportunity to give a lecture at the symposium "the artist as researcher". It was a two-day international conference on artistic research and PhD in visual art and design at the Royal Academy of the Arts (KABK) in The Hague. It was a well visited conference and a lot of discussion was going on the subject how to do a PhD in visual art and what the institution could necessarily ask, a written thesis and an artwork?
Herewith I would like to let see and read my lecture on "surface research". A point of view on the subject is to read in the text, enjoy it...

I am Henri Jacobs, Dutch artist living and working in Brussels, and I was invited to start the first Rietveld Research Residency.
In september 2009 the Gerrit Rietveld Academie initiated a Research Residency. The Rietveld Research Residency (RRR) is a cooperation of the Rietveld Academie and Fonds BKVB to create a research site for mid career artists. They are enabled for a period of 1 to 3 years to do a clearly defined artistic research project, within the framework of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. The artist will work in the Pavilion of the Academy and will report twice a year on the research project. There are also an agreed number of educational projects foreseen.
This Rietveld Research Residency doesn’t foresee in a route during years to study and doing research for a PhD in Art. It is a residency for concentration on a specific aspect of the existing work by the invited artist. It is a possibility to create time to go deeper into theoretical and material details of the oeuvre. In the lee of the art market...

My research project is titled “Surface Research” and the studio is the Rietveld Pavilion. It’s a fish bowl, everybody can watch and observe the Research Resident and that’s why he is more or less an “example artist”. The visibility in the transparent cube shows the process, shows the kitchen and the cooking of the research artist. Not always tasty or nice, but cooking is what happens, under all circumstances. Perhaps it can help seeking and helpless students by showing them it is necessary to sit down and to start. Even “sans idées”, without any concept, theme or subject it can be interesting to take a sheet of paper and a pencil and simply start drawing. That’s already enough.

In this lecture I would like to tell something about my Surface Research project.
The awareness of the specific properties of surfaces made of paper or canvas are already there in an early stage of my work. A surface is two dimensional and has two sides. Surfaces in art mostly have a front side that is visible and a back that is hidden. The front side is sublimated by cosmetics of oil colour which suggests a frozen or petrified world, very different from our dynamic and ever changing world. This idea of the surface is very well understood and visualised by Diego Velasquez in this painting “Las Meninas”. The painting is showing different stories, and the painted gesture by the hand of Velasquez has an almost indifferent kind of arrogance. It is so very well kept in hand and he is exactly knowing how to succeed in brushing the paintmud on the canvas.
BUT, painting the other side, the BACK of the painting, of the mask, of the flat surface, the décor or façade ON the front side, that is done by a genius.

“Las Meninas” is the reason why I started to perforate the linen surface. I would like to show a work that deals with the two sides of a flat surface. In “l’or et l’argent”, shown in De Pont Museum Tilburg in 1996, it is possible to physically enter the painting by opening one of the two doors in the canvas.
When you pass the surface, when you go through the façade or décor, like Alice did by going through the mirror, and close the door in the painting, the spectator would see this image.

The image of a square, of a field of flax. The daylight enters through the two doors and because the canvas stands 20 centimetres from the wall the openings in the surface of plaited strokes of canvas are lit from behind. The doors are painted in silver oil colour and the field is of natural canvas with its specific beautiful colour of flax.

Cultivation and fabrication of flax to linen brings us to agriculture, to farming and gardening, seeding, pruning, weeding, digging, planting, constantly conducting and organising, to cleaning and maintaining the surface of the earth. In a way all these concepts play a role in drawing. To be more specific : in drawing and constructing a palimpsest.
This nice small painting of Abel Grimmer shows how a garden should be maintained.

“The present order is the disorder of the future”
is a citation from Ian Hamilton Finlay, who was also a gardener. He had a garden named Little Sparta which was dedicated to the concept WAR.

A palimpsest is a manuscript page from a scroll or book that has been scraped off and used again. The word “palimpsest” comes through Latin from Greek, palin means “again” and psao means “I scrape”. Palimpsest means therefore scraped clean and used again.

Because parchment, prepared from animal hides, is far more durable than paper or papyrus, most palimpsests known to modern scholars are parchment, which rose in popularity in western Europe after the sixth century. The writing was washed from parchment or vellum using milk and oat bran. With the passing of time, the faint remains of the former writing would reappear enough so that scholars can discern the “underwriting” (called the scriptio inferior) and decipher it.
This is the Archimedes Palimpsest, bought by an anonymous private collector in 1998, at Christie’s in New York. This collector deposited the manuscript at
The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore in order to conserve it, image it, and study it. The book is special because it contains seven texts by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes. Those texts and diagrams of Archimedes were discovered under layers of text and painted miniatures in a prayer book.

The landscape, the surface of our earth and world is also a palimpsest.
This wall, with a door and window perforation, build in museum Jan Cunen in Oss is decorated with a satellite photo of Oss and surroundings. The curling of the river Maas is a clear black line and an amazing graphic sign. Even from a distance it’s possible to reconstruct the old bedding of the river. In earlier days the river curled much more. But end 19th century shorter tracks were digged so the river could stream much faster to the Northsea and didn’t flood the low lands nearby.

After two months I painted a short text of Ludwig Wittgenstein on the satellite photo. It is a clear text about our longing for knowledge by making theories but finally it is impossible to understand the world in its essence.

“Imagine the world as a white surface with black dots here and there... One can put a net with square meshes over the surface. The net makes it possible to describe the dots. It’s a grid within the dots are related to one another. Only in the net the relations exist, not in the white surface. You can put different nets over the surface, with a coarse-mesh, a fine-mesh, triangular-mesh or circular mesh-work. Those nets are our theories of the world. They arrange the world so we can describe it. But they reveal nothing.”

Another two months later I painted a quotation of Lieven de Cauter on Wittgenstein’s text. This text is an excerpt from his essay “the permanent disaster”, and it reads like a poem.

“The ongoing explosion of world population, technological acceleration, global warming, the hole in the ozone layer, the melting ice cap, rising sea levels, the depletion of non-renewable resources, deforestation, the accelerated decline of biodiversity, the humanitarian disaster scenarios such as drinking water shortages in many places, the growing
inequality, the polarization of society under the pressures of neoliberal globalization, the growth of the fourth world, the continuing proliferation of AIDS, the uncontrollable growth of mega cities in the poorest regions of the world, the breakthrough of the criminal economy and organized crime, the powerlessness of the state, the disintegration of the welfare state, migration, xenophobia and fundamentalism, terrorism, protracted wars - all these themes can be difficult understood otherwise than as a catastrophic scenario”.

Another example of a palimpsest in a landscape is illustrated by these photos of Fort Douaumont near Verdun in France.
The two photos on top show the Fortification when it was first finished in January 1916.
The photo on the bottom left is taken in October 1916 after the first battle of Verdun. And on the bottom right in the summer of 1917, after the second battle of Verdun. There are still some very slight traces visible of the original pentagon.
It is maybe a different way of looking at the topic of the palimpsest. But I would like to compare the making of palimpsests with the human writing in the ever changing landscapes. Specifically with landscapes that changed due to enormous violence. Passchendale and Ypres in Belgium, Verdun and Douaumont in the north - east of France during the First World War. Villages, houses, farms, churches, buildings, roads, railways were totally destroyed, as in entropy, done in a short time and with tons of explosives, the surface of the earth was rewritten. What remained were traces, holes and craters of what once were three dimensional buildings.

The previous item was about First World War palimpsesting.
Next slides are about the Second World War, in fact the short time after the Second World War when Germany was a NO GO area, where American and British secret services where hunting after the technological secrets of the German rockets V1 to V4 and the super secret V0000.
It is a long excerpt of text from the book Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. He describes the surface of a desk of secret agent Tyrone Slothrop.

But first I have to tell you what you see :
In late summer of 2002 the old farm Speelhoven near Aarschot in the region of Leuven, Belgium, held it’s annual September exhibition, for which I made 9 drawings, 5 drawings with patterns and 4 palimpsest drawings. Next to a small path the 9 drawings were laid on the ground and covered with a plate of glass. For six weeks the drawings defied sun and rain, day and night, dew, insects and small animals. And men...

This slide shows the text, designed with ink on 300 grams of watercolourpaper after 6 weeks lying on the soil. Slowly the paper was getting absorbed by the soil.
When I read this text of Thomas Pynchon for the first time, about things lying on top of and through one another, I was surprised by the beauty of the list of different sort of things. It is a miniature märklin - landscape after bombing. It’s quite a long text but a citation of a few sentences will give an idea of the beauty of the text describing the demolished and destroyed soil of a landscape :

“Tantivy’s desk is neat, Slothrop’s is a godaweful mess. It hasn’t been cleaned down to the original wood surface since 1942. Things have fallen roughly into layers, over a base of bureaucratic smegma that sifts steadily to the bottom, made up of millions of tiny red and brown curls of rubber eraser, pencil shavings, dried tea or coffee stains, traces of sugar and Household Milk, much cigarette ash, very fine black debris picked and flung from typewriter ribbons, decomposing library paste, broken aspirins ground to powder. Than comes a scatter of paperclips, Zippo flints, rubber bands, staples, cigarette butts and crumpled packs, stray matches, pins, nubs of pens, stubs of pencils of all colors including the hard-to-get heliotrope and raw umber, wooden coffee spoons, Thayer’s Slippery Elm Throat Lozenges sent by Slothrop’s mother, Nalline, all the way from Massachusetts, bits of tape, string, chalk... Above that a layer of forgotten memoranda, empty buff ration books, phone numbers, unanswered letters, tattered sheets of carbon paper, the scribbled ukulele chords to a dozen of songs including “Johnny Doughboy Found a Rose in Ireland” ...

In September 2003 I teached drawing here in this academy for several months.
To be honest, it is a difficult job to get the students inspired and to get them acting instead of sitting down in despair. One of the tasks I tried to sell was : try to be a camera and sketch it down on paper. At least once a day try to capture something that amazed you, that you’ve seen or thought and try to draw it. In a quick drawing, and not to big.
In December 2003 I decided to do this myself, after being locked up for quite some time in complex and time-consuming big watercolours, I really needed to liberate myself. So I started to draw Journal Drawings, drawings on a sheet of paper with dimensions 24 by 32 centimetres, and to draw in at most one day something seen, thought or heard. And it could be any- and everything, without tracking an archive of images I wanted to explore myself as a bank or database of images.
In this Journal drawing number 208, December 19th, 2005, I started to draw the first layer of text by asking myself, after having made 207 Journal drawings already, why I wanted to draw Journal drawings as often as possible.
Putting the question on paper delivers quite a lot of cursing and evokes despair. A conclusion at the end is more or less that it is the TUNE that counts the most. The TUNE and the SOUND in which Journal drawings are drawn...

On top of that first “WHY DRAWING JOURNAL DRAWINGS” text, I constructed a text in a grid of wave-lines. This drawing is titled : “palimpsest number two”. But when two texts are written on each other it doesn’t mean it is a real palimpsest. It is a multi layered text drawing but without any scratching or damaging of the first text. The same with the satellite photo of Oss and the two painted quotations of Wittgenstein and De Cauter. It wasn’t a palimpsest at all, it was a multi layered painting of texts on a blown up satellite photo.
One aspect of a palimpsest is clearly there, after the second layer of text it is quite difficult to read the one or the other text. If you want to read the texts instead of looking at the drawing you have to decipher it.

This lecture is about the Surface.
Research of, in, on and about the Surface. By making palimpsests as a leading principle.
As said before : in the dark middle ages parchment or papyrus was that rare that writers had to reuse the surfaces that had already been written upon. So the original text was carefully scratched away and a new text was written on it while turning the page 90°. The traces left behind makes it possible to reconstruct those earlier texts.
So making or constructing a palimpsest, which has to be done on a flat two dimensional surface, means that destruction is an important part of the research project.
To recapitulate :
to draw and to erase the drawing.
to draw is to create, is construction.
to erase is demolition, is destruction.
To erase is to scratch away, wipe out, is different ways of making the constructed drawing less visible and more invisible.
Creation and demolition on a two dimensional surface.
Often I am lost in contrasts and even more often in opposites...

This is the first Surface Research drawing made last September as a Rietveld Research Resident. It is a drawing on an A4 format sheet of Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper and it’s drawn with black ink. Using a ruler, a Rotring technical drawing pen and compasses as tools.
It is a constructed drawing, drawn with straight efficient lines. Rather drawn by a constructor or architect than an artist.

On a new sheet of A4 Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper the Surface Research title is drawn and than scraped out. It isn’t a palimpsest yet, because it is just a single layer. But a first erasing, scratching and vanishing took place.
To scratch, to erase, to delete, to wipe out, to undo, to damage, to destroy.
Construction and destruction.
Creation and demolition aren’t real opposites, in fact the one implies the other. The one exists because of its opposite.

This drawing of September 30th, 2009 is Palimpsest number one. Here are drawn two layers of words. The first layer is the title Surface Research and is scratched out. A new text is written on it, a quote of Marquis de Sade.
“In actions of mankind we recognize rather than moral or criminal acts the irresistible natural laws of creation and destruction.”

The quote of marquis De Sade is scratched away. Two layers of text and construction grids are scratched away but are still visible by the traces left behind.

What you need to start drawing :
a table & chair
a sheet of paper
pen or pencil
ruler, to be sure of yourself
a pair of compasses, to be unsure of yourself
a notebook, to make notes, or to write words, texts, or to draw droedels
some heating in the winter and some food and water in the summer
longing for simplicity to find the way to simplicity.

Architects consider palimpsests as a ghost, an image of what once was. Whenever spaces are shuffled, rebuilt, or remodelled, shadows remain. Tarred roof-lines remain on the sides of a building long after the neighbouring structure has been demolished; removed stairs leave a mark where the painted wall surface stopped. Dust lines remain from a relocated appliance. Palimpsests can inform us of the realities of the built past. It is like in archaeology, the educated reader can decipher the remains or traces and make a reconstruction.

By scratching the texts from the surface the sheet of paper becomes a little field, a small vegetable garden where the soil has been dug. Anyway it isn’t a battlefield, it’s too neatly arranged. These palimpsests are like small vegetable gardens in between the seasons with some force fields of text citations.

Do you need an idea to start drawing or painting? Nice question without satisfactory answer. Therefore... Perhaps the answer can be: “no, you don’t need an idea to start drawing or painting”. For sure you don’t need a big or huge idea, already a small, tiny, little and simple idea can be enough. For instance about the materials so close to the draughtsman, like the sheet of white paper. The difficult part is not to get an idea but to continue with a simple idea into the depths of the unknown, in opposite of getting bored already after ten minutes. To continue with a simple idea means you have to explore it by making variations and fail as much as possible.

After showing the slide of the scratched drawing in perspective, which looks like a landscape in bird-eye view, I would like to compare and visualise the palimpsest with the development of a city through time. To show the impact of men and time.
This is a map of Brussels in 1740. Almost two-hundred and seventy years ago Brussels was well surrounded by defensive walls and moats.

Through time mankind used and reused his surroundings by constant change and transformation.
Jumping between the two maps it is possible to discover more leftovers and residues of time, but it also shows the enormous transformation of the city over time. The two maps are showing that under the city there is still a clear trace of the original footprint. By building and demolishing roads, railways, houses, churches, offices and so on, in fact we are drawing and scratching on the surface of our grounds.
In a constant and everlasting transformation, we have to, we can’t do anything else.
Without change there is no life.
Life is change and transformation, death is standstill.

A palimpsest with three layers of text. The upper layer is a citation from Emile Cioran.

“Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later he will regret not having left it intact”

Cioran’s quote is written on the erased quote, the scriptio inferior, of De Sade:

“In actions of mankind we recognize rather than moral or criminal acts the irresistible natural laws of creation and destruction”.

Written on the scratched title of this research project “Surface Research”.

After showing the maps of Brussels the quote of Emile Cioran is quite special.
Here his short text is already scratched out, but nevertheless it sounds like a severe warning :

“Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later he will regret not having left it intact”

I don’t know how the text continuous, but we will regret not having left intact that “universe created for indifference and stagnation”. Is that why the environmental problems of our time listed in the poem by Lieven de Cauter quoted before have an almost apocalyptic dimension?
Each time needs its own apocalyptic vision?

Surface means it’s flat, it’s 2 dimensional. It hasn’t any depth. A sheet of paper has no depth. An illusion of depth on a sheet of paper has no real depth, no surface to dig in. Same with a canvas, a stretched canvas has no depth, it is a two dimensional surface and has two sides. It is a façade, like walls in buildings.
A film projection on a screen is 2 dimensional. A light-source projects the depth, the illusion, the narrative, which opens possible wide horizons but stays flat.
Do we want to get beyond the surface? Beyond the boundary of the 2 dimensional? Do we want to get beyond the veil?
Like in Plato’s cave we want to escape from the boring and already too long known reality with its same old wisdoms. And like Alice we want to enter a world which is strange, unknown and spooky, almost a nightmare, and that is even better than boring daily life.

But Fine Arts are the extra, the surplus, the useless and the unnecessary. They don’t force, impose, ask and will not necessarily convince you for a message. At least, good art has no message. That is why it is interesting. Because it is open, empty and free. As a viewer you can bring it to life with your own intellectual power.

A new layer of text, a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche is drawn on the scratched texts of Emile Cioran and Marquis De Sade. Would they agree on being in good company? The force field in the A4 sheet of Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper through the 3 different texts is becoming more interesting. Nietzsche’s text is a quotation from his book Ecce Homo :

(...) “to be far beyond terror and pity and to be the eternal lust of becoming itself - that lust which also involves the lust of destruction.”

It is written on the scratched text of Cioran :

“Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later he will regret not having left it intact”.

Written on the scratched-out quote of De Sade :

“In actions of mankind we recognize rather than moral or criminal acts the irresistible natural laws of creation and destruction”.

Written on the erased title of this research project “Surface Research”.

I have a great desire to be free, so that means that I am captured and imprisoned.
I have a great desire to comprehend, so that means I do not understand the least of it.
I have a great desire for simplicity and clarity, so that means that I am suffering from complexity and chaos.

To Draw is to leave traces on the surface of the paper. No necessity of having an idea. To Draw and To Erase. To erase the yet drawn also leaves traces. To Draw and To Erase. To succeed and to fail. Failure is more important, or better: is more interesting, when you fail there is more to do. You can go on. You don’t know yet. You’re trying to figure out, searching, thinking, wondering. Drawing and failing is like thinking. While drawing concentration works best.

This slide with a detail of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Palimpsest seen just before, shows the damaged flat surface of the paper, which in certain light looks like porcelain.

Often making or creating things, objects, goods, articles of art or design is to add material. Creating is adding stuff on and to itself, on surfaces or mixing it into sculptures, so it’s possible to assemble it and to build or construct pieces to a whole. The opposite, which is destruction and finally “death”, is so very interesting eventhough we don’t like it, we ignore it, we don’t want to deal with it,we try to forget it.

De Cauter depicts a catastrophic scenario, Wittgenstein lets us know that we can’t understand the whole. Sade is telling that natural laws reign over cultural laws. Cioran is warning for the pay - back time soon. Nietzsche talks of our animal behaviour of lust to create and lust to destruct.
Yes, the opposite of creation is an important part of creating itself.
So that is why in the Surface Research project the scratching is the main subject of research. Which is a destructive and violent act. Well steered and kept in hand, but the surface is damaged. It is necessary to become clear about the fascination for those concepts as “destruction”, “damaging”, “tearing down”, “catastrophe”, “violence” & “death”.
These irresistible natural laws of destruction and creation. To create something new is to kill all earlier darlings which delivered satisfactory results. It is more than forgetting or getting over those earlier results, they really have to be totally torn down.
Transformation could be the word for this process.

To create is an urge, a bit different from defecation because it is more intelectual instead of animal, but with almost the same urge.
To create is a kind of instinct, a necessity that happens in the whole body and not only in the brain.
Perhaps creation happens after years of Pavlov Conditioning, or it happens because I am addicted to it, but it is happening in a foggy urge. In a certain mood where unknown and unforeseen things can happen. Curiosity for the unknown is an important motivation.

To create from ideas is quite evident, but an idea is in fact a prison, a superficial prison. To have an idea is already too articulated, it’s working with something which already is known.
If you want to go deeper, lower, more profoundly into the unknown it’s better to be empty, to be blank, to be without any idea.
Inventions happen in unknown areas or soil. So get rid of ideas, look into the gaping maw of emptiness, where some despair reigns. Then it’s going to become interesting, desperation with concentration are the state of being in which an idea-less invention can happen.
After having drawn several palimpsests, which is done according to a written plan, it is necessary to reach the border of the principal idea. It’s necessary that irrationality can take over the rational idea, to make it absurd for instance, or to make the idea irrelevant. So playing with it can begin, in an ironical or perhaps cynical way. You can laugh with it, destroy the original plan, quit the principal concept. And perhaps it’s possible to colonise unknown grounds.

This slide and the one before are showing two drawings in a small series with the word “catastrophe” in the title. The titles are telling you that these are studies after details of small or big catastrophes. For instance this drawing’s title is “Etudes de détails de catastrophes”. It is Journaldrawing number 287 from 10 November 2006, drawn with watercolour and ink on heavy cotton paper.

It is quite important that several quotes are about catastrophic or apocalyptic subjects.
The final reason we live is because we die... I am sorry for the simplistic evidence.
Palimpsest drawing number 8 is a plan I wanted to execute. The decision was to keep the parts of the letters which consists of parts of a circle. The result in fact doesn’t matter, if the drawing is beautiful or ugly, good or bad or boring instead of interesting doesn’t mean that much. The illusion of space by the rewritten black lines with white ink, the remains of words, sentences, texts with ominous content that is now forming it’s own composition by accident...
This drawing shows the residues after erasing the texts of Sade, Cioran and Nietzsche.

Starting with a plan, with a decision such as wanting to draw a grid. Longing to draw a grid which is already the thousandth grid drawn by me. Choosing a text which has to fit in the grid, and afterwards wanting to erase the texts by scratching it. It is part of an overall plan, of an intention, of decisions made beforehand. It are premises and by working with those premises I can leave them, I can free myself from the boundaries created by myself because I don’t have any idea nor theme to work with.
Empty as a bottle can be. Creating conditions that can deliver unforeseen results.

Here you see a detail from the drawing where the Nietzsche citation has been white-out with white ink. At the end this palimpsest is no more than the residues of circle parts from the different layers with texts.

Palimpsest number 9 :

“Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It’s very tiny - very tiny, content”.

An old evergreen quote by Willem de Kooning. This drawing isn’t a palimpsest but a drawing with five layers of text. De Koonings text contribution to the drawing, which covers the other 3 texts about the exhausting existence of mankind, perhaps neutralises the heavy weight of them.
The captured texts may seem quite negative or depressive, violent and aggressive, cruel or without any hope. But I don’t agree with that, the texts of Sade, Cioran and Nietzsche are trying to look beyond individuality and ego. The texts are written by them after long observation of mankind and the own ego as a human being. So I think the texts are quite realistic about the human behaviour. The three philosophers are trying to deal with destruction, demolition, transformation, aggression, violence, dying and death.

Almost all art is trying to freeze fluid moments into static or repetitive media, which is in a way freezing or petrifying the dynamics of life and time, so all art is dealing with death.

As I am nearing the end of this lecture I would like to pose a question :
“what makes somebody start drawing?”.
Is it because there is a slide, a dia-positive of an image, in the head? And the drawer projects it with an inner light through the lenses of the eyes on paper? So the hand can follow the projected lines, the contours of the enclosed areas, that remain the necessary white reservoirs of clean paper? Is drawing giving birth to an idea, is it executing a plan?

The first drawing ever could it have been a single line drawn with charcoal? Or was it the print of a hand covered with mud? Or the negative of that hand by using a spray of mud over the hand on a stone surface.

So, was it a single line of charcoal, the print of a hand, the left over of a hand?

Or could the first drawing be made by five fingertips dipped in mud to draw five short lines...
I suppose there wasn’t any idea or plan. The acting person didn’t foresee what she was doing, perhaps she was surprised or even enchanted.
As in Stanley Kubrick’s film “2001 a space odyssey” monkeys where surprised while playing to discover that a bone could be a weapon to hit with and from then civilisation was born.

The Surface Research project, which is till sofar working systematically on palimpsest drawings, started as a plan to execute. A plan, an idea, a concept or a theme are starting points on the path of creating a work of art.
Artistic Research can help with learning and knowing more about that first plan or idea. Can help to know better what it is about or what already has been done. Because you have to start working on that first idea, plan, theme or concept to which the knowledge built up by Artistic Research is added, it is a risk that the first tiny glimpse of a work dries up.
In fact the artist locks him- or herself up in too much knowledge.

Some stupidity and naivety is necessary.

Ideas, plans, concepts, themes and research are locking up, but starting to work with them has to make it possible to go beyond them. Because the artist has to reach into unknown soil of pure intuition, the artist has to colonise areas and grounds not yet visited. The artist must want to show the unseen and unknown.
That is why creation is such an animal like urge, and drawing is such direct, impulsive and quick medium. The most excellent medium because it is so simple.
Artistic Research is all right for concentration and contemplation on the work already there. In that way it is more a kind of archaeology, of looking back and trying to make a reconstruction.
But pure creation is different and doesn’t necessarily need Artistic Research.

When is there the need to create, the need to draw, intuition rings a bell and the best thing to do is to pick up a pencil and put the point of it on paper. Artistic Research is like the academic way of drawing after nature where the artist is totally locked up, imprisoned in techniques and educated laws of how to look and how to draw. Captured in KNOWLEDGE.
But creation is like the intuitive way of how William Blake drew. The real artist has to go beyond all existing borders put up by plans, ideas, concepts, themes, research and knowledge.

She or he has to try to pass them by and leave them behind. To be able to colonise future soil, not seen and not known before. To arrive beyond the veil of the ideas. Creation is happening in the colony known as “l’au delà”. Artistic Research doesn’t play a role over there.

Every construction tends to chaos.
Every order tends to disorder.
Without maintenance entropy is doing it’s work. All our constructions of necessities and redundancies are trying to find their most comfortable position which is lying on the ground as horizontal as possible. All the materials used don’t want to try to continue standing right up, they are looking forward to lie down and to be as horizontal as possible. They want to find the way to the least resistance, by lying as flat as can be. Entropy is the lust of losing content.

Enfin we all will be freed from our suffering, even the hedonists.

Artist at work.
Artist at research work.
Artist at work research.
Artist work at research.
Artist research at work.
Research artist at work.
Research work at artist.
Research at work artist.
Research at artist work.
Work research at artist.
Work artist at research.
Work at research artist.
Work at artist research.
At research artist work.
At artist research work.
At work research artist.
At work, artist !

Thank you for your attention.

surface research results exhibition

2010-01-28T13:32:00.008+01:00

On the seventh of January, three weeks ago, there was a first exhibition in the Rietveld Pavilion which was titled : surface research results exhibition. Nine small drawings on epson A4 premium glossy phote paper where exhibited. And it was possible to watch the 10 minutes video on whiting out a text and drawing a new text over it in ink. It isn't that much after 4 months of research residency at the Rietveld Academy. Because I meet a lot of interesting students and tutors, quite some time is spend with talking on subjects, ideas and plans. Also reading and writing for this blog is part of the research. Concentration and deep insight into drawing and the adventures while drawing are achieved. Within a few weeks, after having done a lecture in The Hague next week, it is possible to continue with drawing drawings. It's necessary to foresee time for drawing, otherwise all time is spend with visits, talks, social traffic and business. And because the Rietveld Research Resident is an example artist, an artist whom shows how to cook art in a transparent fish-bowl studio, it is a privilege to lock myself up in the pavilion and start making drawings again. I am looking forward to restart the actual drawing chapter.

to erase

2010-01-11T21:29:00.003+01:00

to scratch
erase
delete
wipe out
undo
damage
destroy
and
to hoover a drawing

palimpsest wall

2010-01-06T10:11:00.012+01:00

In 2001 in museum Jan Cunen in Oss (nl) I had the opportunity to build a wall in the baroque interior of the museum. A wall perforated by a window and door opening. A satellite photo from Oss and surroundings was glued on the wall. The river Maas is the black curling line in the top of the photo.

After two months a quotation from Ludwig Wittgenstein was painted on the satellite photo.
"Imagine the world as a white surface with black dots here and there... One can put a net with square meshes over the surface. The net makes it possible to describe the dots. It's a grid within the dots are related to one another. Only in the net the relations exist, not in the white surface. You can put different nets over the surface, with a coarse-mesh, a fine-mesh, triangular-mesh or circular mesh-work. Those nets are our theories of the world. They arrange the world so we can describe it. But they reveal nothing."

Again after two months on the citation from Wittgenstein a quote from Lieven de Cauter was painted. This text is a excerpt from his essay "the permanent disaster", and it reads like a poem.

"The ongoing explosion of world population, technological acceleration, global warming, the hole in the ozone layer, the melting ice cap, rising sea levels, the depletion of non-renewable resources, deforestation, the accelerated decline of biodiversity, the humanitarian disaster scenarios such as drinking water shortages in many places (aggravated by the privatization of the water), the growing inequality, the polarization of society under the pressures of neoliberal globalization, the growth of the fourth world, the continuing proliferation of AIDS, the uncontrollable growth of mega cities in the poorest regions of the world, the breakthrough of the criminal economy and organized crime, the powerlessness of the state, the disintegration of the welfare state, migration, xenophobia and fundamentalism, terrorism, protracted wars - all these themes can be difficult understood otherwise than as a catastrophic scenario".

The palimpsest wall is in fact not a real palimpsest, early layers weren't scratched out. It is an accumulation of texts on each other without wiping out the earlier text. So that is why in the Surface Research project the scratching out is the main subject of research. Which is a destructive and violent act. Well steered and kept in hand, but the surface is damaged. It is necessary to become clear about the fascination for those concepts as "destruction", "damaging", "tearing down" & "death". Those irresistible natural laws of destruction and creation. To create something new is to kill all earlier darlings which delivered satisfactory results. It is more than forgetting or getting over those earlier results, it can be a lust to destruct those earlier results.

It sounds heavy, it isn't that worse...

profundity

2010-01-04T17:04:00.003+01:00

To create after ideas is quite simplistic, an idea is a prison, a superficial prison. To have an idea is already too articulated, it's working with something which already exists. If you want to go deeper, lower, more profound into the unknown it's better to be empty, to be blank, to be without any idea. Inventions happen in unknown area's or soil. So get rid of ideas, look into the gaping maw of emptiness, where some despair reigns. Than it's going to become interesting, desperation with concentration are the state of being to let happen an idea-less invention.

H a p p y N e w Y e a r

invitation

2009-12-18T11:56:00.004+01:00

advertisement Surface Research Results

2009-12-16T09:26:00.004+01:00

After 28 days of Surface Research at the Rietveld Academy it's a opportunity to show the results in a small, tiny exhibition. So, in the new year 2010 on the seventh of January the works are exhibited in the pavilion from 12:30 till 21:00 hours. Be welcome, the researcher is going to be there, to dialogue about the drawings.
Cordialement, Henri Jacobs.

repetition

2009-12-14T21:11:00.004+01:00

civilisation

2009-12-10T14:04:00.002+01:00

résumé

2009-12-09T17:04:00.011+01:00

9. Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It's very tiny - very tiny, content. (Willem de Kooning)

8. Residues after erasing the texts of Sade, Cioran and Nietzsche.

7. To be far beyond terror and pity and to be the eternal lust of becoming itself - that lust which also involves the lust of destruction. (Friedrich Nietzsche)

6. After scratching the texts of Sade and Cioran.

5. Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later he will regret not having left it intact. (Emile Cioran)

4. After scratching the text of Sade.

3. In actions of mankind we recognize rather than moral or criminal acts the irresistible natural laws of creation and destruction. (Marquis de Sade)

2. Scratched title.

1. Title.

a plan & an idea

2009-12-08T10:45:00.004+01:00

A question : "what makes somebody starting drawing?". Is it because there is a slide, a dia-positive of an image, in the head? And the drawer projects it with an inner light through the lenses of the eyes on paper? So the hand can follow the projected lines, the contours of the enclosed area's, to remain the necessary white reservoirs of clean paper? Is drawing giving birth to an idea or is it executing a plan? Both, it isn't or - or, it's and - and.
The first drawing ever could it have been a single line drawn with charcoal? Or was it the print of a hand covered with mud? Or the negative of that hand by using a spray of mud over the hand on a stone surface. So, was it a single line of charcoal, the print of a hand, the left over of a hand? Or could the first drawing been made by five fingertips dipped in mud to draw five short lines...
I suppose there wasn't any idea or plan. The acting person didn't foresee what she was doing, perhaps she was surprised. As in Stanley Kubrick's film "2001 a space odyssey" monkey's where surprised while playing to discover a bone could be a weapon to hit with (civilisation was born). So, being surprised and amazed by making traces by hand. From than drawing is going to develop fast, draughtsmen discover and develop to draw after imitation of reality by drawing animals. Drawing is mimesis, imitation, a scheme, a depict or treat in a mannered and non realistic style.
The question was the difference between plan & idea, in order to start drawing.
PLAN : an intention or decision about what one is going to do.
IDEA : a concept, mental impression, opinion, a belief or a feeling that something is probable or possible.
The surface research project which is trying to work systematically on palimpsest drawings started not as an idea but started as a plan to execute. Perhaps a little, small idea is in it, some content that can be interpret. But that content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It's tiny -, very tiny, content.

first film

2009-12-07T15:40:00.007+01:00

(note : perhaps you have to press the space bar to start the film)

This first video film, of about 10 minutes, on erasing and drawing a text wants to show the making of a layered palimpsest. The text which is going to be white-out is a quote from Cioran : "Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later he will regret not having left it intact". A new layer of text is going to be constructed on the erased Cioran quote : (...) to be far beyond terror and pity and to be the eternal lust of becoming itself - that lust which also involves the lust of destruction. This Nietzsche citation is also going to be white-out. At the end this palimpsest keeps over the residues of circle parts from the different letters.
Filming drawing and making a montage which is not to tedious is "autre chose" than drawing itself. Even though drawing is a slow process, filming it can show the act itself in a efficient and not too boring way. Perhaps it is a adequate manner to research drawing. Soon I am going to film drawing with a subject that is not so neatly constructed as these palimpsests. I want to try to evoke in the most simple way what drawing can be. I want to evoke how the simple act of drawing is working.

residues of a multi layered palimpsest

2009-11-25T22:29:00.006+01:00

Three stages of the same palimpsest drawing. It is a plan to execute, the decision was to keep the parts of the letters which consists of parts of a circle. The result doesn't matter, if the drawing is beautiful, nice, good or interesting doesn't mean that much. The illusion of space by the rewritten black lines with white ink, the remains of words, sentences, texts with (heavy) content that is now forming it's own composition by accident...
Starting with a plan, with a decision such as wanting to draw a grid. Longing to draw a grid which is already the thousandth grid drawn by me. Choosing a text which has to fit in the grid, and afterwards wanting to erase the texts by scratching it. It is part of a all over plan, of an intention, of decisions made on forehand. It are conditions and by working with those conditions you can leave them, I can free myself from the boundaries created by myself because I don't have any idea nor theme to work with. Empty as a bottle. Creating conditions that can deliver unforeseen results.

2009-11-25T15:37:00.006+01:00

Rietveld Research Residency: the attached logo of my Surface Research project on Rietveld's pavilion . To promote or make visible through this blog to the students and tutors of the academy what that freak is doing all the time is his cube of glass. As a fish in the water of a fish bowl the researcher HJ is drawing and concentrating... Now I am filming the drawing process, trying to get closer to the act of what drawing is or how it happens. To compose the shots in a interesting way makes the film hopefully not too boring. For me it is quite exiting, but I am too close to the subject to make a judgement if it's interesting or not. Soon I hope to show a first version of filming drawing on this blog.

autumn

2009-11-24T22:59:00.002+01:00

Rietveld's pavilion at 5:00 PM.

residue of a double layered palimpsest

2009-11-24T22:21:00.003+01:00

In the drawing the text is erased not by scratching like it should be done in a proper palimpsest. But wiped out with white ink. There's left a residue of the circle parts of the words. Trying to go further with three "heavy" texts, to hide them in a drawing which is ornamental and decorative.

lust, becoming & destruction

2009-11-12T16:18:00.006+01:00

A new layer of text, a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche is drawn on the scratched texts of Emile Cioran and Marquis De Sade. Should they agree of being in good company? The forcefield in the A4 sheet of Epson photo paper through the 3 different texts is becoming more interesting. Nietzsche's text is a quote found in his book Ecce Homo : (...) to be far beyond terror and pity and to be the eternal lust of becoming itself - that lust which also involves the lust of destruction. It is written on the scratched text of Cioran : "Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later he will regret not having left it intact". Written on the scratched-out quote of De Sade: "In actions of mankind we recognize rather than moral or criminal acts the irresistible natural laws of creation and destruction". Written on the title of this research project "Surface Research".

The detail shows the damaged flat surface of the paper, which in certain light fall looks like porcelain. Questions, what questions are coming up? To compare the palimpsest drawing with the surface of battlefields of World War I what are the similarities and differences? Often making or creating things, objects, goods, articles of art or design is to add material. Creating is adding stuff on itself, on surfaces or mixing it, so it's possible to assemble it and to build or construct pieces for a whole. The opposite is so very interesting because we ignore it, we forget it, we don't want to deal with it.
Bon, this evening I want to read the essay "a walk for a walk's sake" by Norman Bryson, perhaps tomorrow I can be clear how to continue.

landscape & palimpsest

2009-11-11T10:48:00.007+01:00

Fort Douaumont, near Verdun in France, in January 1916.

Fort Douaumont, near Verdun in France, in October 1916.

Fort Douaumont, near Verdun in France, in 1917. After total destruction.

Fort Douaumont, near Verdun in France, seen on ground level after the total destruction.
The violent destruction during wartime changes the surface of the landscape as if it was scratched like the palimpsests are showing here before. After a heavily attack troops were digging themselves new trenches and so rewrote new lines in the surface of the soil.

It is quite a different way of looking at the topic of the palimpsest. But I would like to compare the making of palimpsests with the human writing in the ever changing landscapes. Most special with the landscapes whom changed under enormous violence. Passchendale and Ypres in Belgium, Verdun and Douaumont in north - east of France during the first world war 1914 - 1918. Villages, houses, farms, churches, buildings were totally destroyed, as in entropy, done in a short time and with tons of explosives, the surface of the earth was rewritten. What remained were traces, holes and craters of what once were 3 dimensional buildings.
Is the quote of De Sade: "In actions of mankind we recognize rather than moral or criminal acts the irresistible natural laws of creation and destruction" and looking at the photo's of the demolished landscapes changing the perspective how to deal with civilisation, culture or creation? I don't know, difficult question, stupid answer, far away topic. Perhaps in future drawings traces and residues sneak in of the digging and damaging in the surface-soil.

artist at work

2009-10-29T22:01:00.004+01:00

Artist at work.
Artist at research work.
Artist at work research.
Artist work at research.
Artist research at work.
Research artist at work.
Research work at artist.
Research at work artist.
Research at artist work.
Work research at artist.
Work artist at research.
Work at research artist.
Work at artist research.
At research artist work.
At artist research work.
At work research artist.

surface 04

2009-10-29T09:51:00.006+01:00

Surface means it's flat, it's two / 2 / dimensional. It hasn't any depth. A sheet of paper has no depth. An illusion of depth on a sheet of paper has no real depth, no surface to dig in. Same with a canvas, a stretched canvas has no depth, is a two dimensional surface and has two sides. It is a façade, like walls in buildings. The stretched canvas, the painting, is mostly hanging on a wall, it even can be a wall.
A film projection on a screen is 2 dimensional. A light-source projects the depth, the illusion, the narrative. Which opens possible wide horizons but it stays flat. We want to get beyond the surface? Beyond the boundary of the 2 dimensional? We want to get beyond the veil? Like in Plato's cave we want to escape from the boring and already to long known same old wisdoms.
I draw and scratch the drawing, it is making a relief, it is constructing a relief. Do we understand anything of the phenomenon surface? A thing so simple as a sheet of A4 paper. Is there anything to understand? Such a sheet with a format of 21 by 29,7 centimetres, white as snow, plane, smooth, 2 dimensional. Without depth, without bottom, nor sur - face, with two sides, often named front and backside. Carrier of messages of our mind. Boring or enchanting?
We, mankind, we are surface bound. It seems we live in space but are we? In a thin layer of air we have to behave ourselves, we have to survive. Dimensional seen it is almost nothing, it is as flat as the bas-relief palimpsests I am making.
Scratching in the surface to go through that first layer. Like digging a hole. But the illusion carriers in art aren't soil to dig in. It are surfaces with two sides like a coin, two opposite sides from the one and same object and never can reach. If it's perforated, if you go through the surface by making a hole you arrive in emptiness. Or going under the surface, by swimming deep in the water or by being dead and buried in the ground than we decompose and dissolve. Finally to be freed from perceiving.
But mostly we are living on the surface and we are working with surfaces. We are surface, we are superficial.

flatland II

2009-10-28T14:23:00.006+01:00

"In such a country, you will perceive at once that it is impossible that there should be anything of what you call a "solid" kind; but I dare say you will suppose that we could at least distinguish by sight the Triangles, Squares, and other figures, moving about as I have described them. On the contrary, we could see nothing of the kind, not at least so as to distinguish one figure from another. Nothing was visible, nor could be visible, to us, except Straight Lines; and the necessity of this I will speedily demonstrate.

Place a penny on the middle of one of your tables in Space; and leaning over it, look down upon it. It will appear a circle."

"But now, drawing back to the edge of the table, gradually lower your eye (thus bringing yourself more and more into the condition of the inhabitants of Flatland), and you will find the penny becoming more and more oval to your view, and at last when you have placed your eye exactly on the edge of the table (so that you are, as it were, actually a Flatlander) the penny will then have ceased to appear oval at all, and will have become, so far as you can see, a straight line.

The same thing would happen if you were to treat in the same way a Triangle, or a Square, or any other figure cut out from pasteboard. As soon as you look at it with your eye on the edge of the table, you will find that it ceases to appear to you as a figure, and that it becomes in appearance a straight line. Take for example an equilateral Triangle--who represents with us a Tradesman of the respectable class. Figure 1 represents the Tradesman as you would see him while you were bending over him from above; figures 2 and 3 represent the Tradesman, as you would see him if your eye were close to the level, or all but on the level of the table; and if your eye were quite on the level of the table (and that is how we see him in Flatland) you would see nothing but a straight line.

When I was in Spaceland I heard that your sailors have very similar experiences while they traverse your seas and discern some distant island or coast lying on the horizon. The far-off land may have bays, forelands, angles in and out to any number and extent; yet at a distance you see none of these (unless indeed your sun shines bright upon them revealing the projections and retirements by means of light and shade), nothing but a grey unbroken line upon the water.

Well, that is just what we see when one of our triangular or other acquaintances comes towards us in Flatland. As there is neither sun with us, nor any light of such a kind as to make shadows, we have none of the helps to the sight that you have in Spaceland. If our friend comes closer to us we see his line becomes larger; if he leaves us it becomes smaller; but still he looks like a straight line; be he a Triangle, Square, Pentagon, Hexagon, Circle, what you will-- a straight Line he looks and nothing else.

You may perhaps ask how under these disadvantagous circumstances we are able to distinguish our friends from one another: but the answer to this very natural question will be more fitly and easily given when I come to describe the inhabitants of Flatland. For the present let me defer this subject, and say a word or two about the climate and houses in our country."

Flatland : a romance of many dimensions
by Edwin A. Abbott
1884