golden ratio

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"

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

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

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

Closing this palimpsest by ornamenting the alphabet.



Graphite colouring after Tuerlinckx.



Alphabet after Broodthaers.



Bricks after Magritte and Broodthaers.

palimpsest drawing

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

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

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...

surface research results exhibition

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

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

palimpsest wall

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

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