thought

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

arrows

tools for creation & destruction

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

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.

surface research continuation

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

womb & tomb

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

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

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

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

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".