surface research plan 2010 - 2011 # 5

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?

surface research plan 2010 - 2011 # 4

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…

surface research plan 2010 - 2011 # 3

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.

surface research plan 2010 - 2011 # 2

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.

surface research plan 2010 - 2011 # 1

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

lucio fontana

natural paper cutting

creative destruction

jean-pierre raynaud

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

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

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

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