inspirations

amie dicke



michael landy



bas jan ader



gert jan kocken



robert smithson, on entropy

gustav metzger

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

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.

the destruction of art

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.

construction and destruction again

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.

visiting Jan Andriesse

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

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".

civilisation

ideas

Do you need an idea to start drawing or painting? Nice question, stupid 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. About for instance 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 half an hour. To continue with a simple idea means you have to explore it by making variations and failure as much as possible.
Emile Cioran (1911 - 1995): "What to do? Where to go? Do nothing and go nowhere, easy enough".

Ian Hamilton Finlay

Four palimpsest drawings and a book about Ian Hamilton Finlay. An important and inspiring artist, lived in his garden Little Sparta near Edinburgh and handling the difficult subject of war.
The text in the book shown here is : the present order is the disorder of the future / Saint - Just.
Visit the Little Sparta website :
www.littlesparta.co.uk
Visit the website with the graphic work of Finlay :
www.ianhamiltonfinlay.com