Rothko on Speed-Dial: Explorations of the Metaphysical Spatiality, Aura, and Mechanical Reproduction of Architecture

<p>This research explores the relationship between architectural space and the abstract expressionist art of Mark Rothko. Rothko’s large format, post-1950’s paintings employing his signature ‘color-field’ style instigated much discourse relating the works to ideas of spatiality: particularly those of atmosphere, emotional intensity, and the abstract presentation of space. This thesis begins with the observation that there is a certain ‘authenticity’ lacking in reproductions of Rothko’s art, where the full effect of the ‘original’ is lost or betrayed in the process of its reproduction. From this premise within art, it finds an analogical relationship between architecture and its reproduction, particularly in photographed space and in the conventions of architectural representation. In both these cases, the full effect of the ‘space’ they describe (their ‘original’) is argued to be in some way lost. To explore this analogy, this thesis firstly develops a relationship between the artist and space: that ‘within’ the artwork, and that between this art and physical spaces (the artist’s studios and spaces of exhibition). Secondly, this thesis develops a shift of the artist’s spatial thinking toward architecture, with particular reference to Walter Benjamin’s concept of the ‘Aura’ of the original work of art. As read through his essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction [1936], the Aura is interpreted as the essential ‘authenticity’ of the Original work that is lost within the act of reproduction. The argument concerning Rothko and spatiality is therefore furthered through specifically focussed readings of how this Aura might manifest metaphysically (i.e. experientially, as opposed to physically), through a parallel discussion of Rothko’s art and several ‘thematically’ related architectural case studies. In doing so, it explores the way Auratic architectural experiences can be invoked within the perception of an embodied presence. In both the applied aspect of this research by design thesis, and in its conclusion, there is a relationship highlighted between architectural convention (as reproduction), abstraction, and the immediacy, authenticity or Aura of a spatial encounter. It is concluded that from this singular study of an abstract painter, architects can learn something of the direct exchange or translation between the users of architecture and the transcendental realm of the ideas of architecture or space.</p>

Rothko on Speed-Dial: Explorations of the Metaphysical Spatiality, Aura, and Mechanical Reproduction of Architecture

<p>This research explores the relationship between architectural space and the abstract expressionist art of Mark Rothko. Rothko’s large format, post-1950’s paintings employing his signature ‘color-field’ style instigated much discourse relating the works to ideas of spatiality: particularly those of atmosphere, emotional intensity, and the abstract presentation of space. This thesis begins with the observation that there is a certain ‘authenticity’ lacking in reproductions of Rothko’s art, where the full effect of the ‘original’ is lost or betrayed in the process of its reproduction. From this premise within art, it finds an analogical relationship between architecture and its reproduction, particularly in photographed space and in the conventions of architectural representation. In both these cases, the full effect of the ‘space’ they describe (their ‘original’) is argued to be in some way lost. To explore this analogy, this thesis firstly develops a relationship between the artist and space: that ‘within’ the artwork, and that between this art and physical spaces (the artist’s studios and spaces of exhibition). Secondly, this thesis develops a shift of the artist’s spatial thinking toward architecture, with particular reference to Walter Benjamin’s concept of the ‘Aura’ of the original work of art. As read through his essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction [1936], the Aura is interpreted as the essential ‘authenticity’ of the Original work that is lost within the act of reproduction. The argument concerning Rothko and spatiality is therefore furthered through specifically focussed readings of how this Aura might manifest metaphysically (i.e. experientially, as opposed to physically), through a parallel discussion of Rothko’s art and several ‘thematically’ related architectural case studies. In doing so, it explores the way Auratic architectural experiences can be invoked within the perception of an embodied presence. In both the applied aspect of this research by design thesis, and in its conclusion, there is a relationship highlighted between architectural convention (as reproduction), abstraction, and the immediacy, authenticity or Aura of a spatial encounter. It is concluded that from this singular study of an abstract painter, architects can learn something of the direct exchange or translation between the users of architecture and the transcendental realm of the ideas of architecture or space.</p>

The problem of the spontaneity of children’s creativity in the context of the pedagogical views of the abstract expressionist Mark Rothko

The research is studies the spontaneity and expressiveness of children’s art and is based on the views of Mark Rothko. The pedagogical methods of the abstract expressionist, aimed at preserving the immediacy of the pictorial expression, are relevant and applicable today. The study offers a methodology for the development of color perception and color abilities of the preschool child, which fits into the context of Rothko’s pedagogical views.

The dance of the hand: Len Lye’s direct films

Len Lye’s animation has a special relationship with physical materials and the body because of the ways he drew and scratched his images directly onto film. This article considers what is unusual about his aesthetic, with its emphasis on kinaesthetic styles of viewing and on ‘physical empathy’. Tracking Lye’s film work from the 1930s through the 1950s, it draws connections with the body-oriented aspects of abstract expressionist art. It also relates the films to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ‘embodied’ approach to phenomenology. Today Lye’s films need to be digitized, and that transfer raises interesting questions about the differences between analogue and digital aesthetics. What happens when his films move from the ‘black box’ of the cinema to the ‘white cube’ of the gallery or museum where they are digitally presented? The article also considers Lye’s kinetic sculpture as another body-oriented form of animation, in which the motor replaces the projector. His sculpture again raises questions about mixing the analogue with the digital.

The Modern Cyclops

The period from the eighteenth century till today has witnessed the most innovative explorations of Cyclopean myths since antiquity. Indeed, in visual art, reimaginings of the Cyclopes have arguably been more innovative over the past two-and-a-half centuries than at any time in the past, including antiquity. So far as literary retellings are concerned, the case for the parity of the modern with the ancient—let alone the case for the superiority of the modern—is more difficult to sustain. Nevertheless, some major modern writers have magnificently reappropriated the figure of the Cyclops, and the variety of modern literary takes on these myths is startling. Showing how all this is so is the project of this final chapter. Earlier literary examples include Raspe (on Baron Munchausen), Vico, and Victor Hugo (treated in particular detail); their contemporaries in visual art include James Barry, Flaxman, the Romantics Füssli and Böcklin, and the Symbolists Moreau and Redon. Closer to today, modern artists such as Paolozzi, Oppenheim, and the Abstract Expressionist Baziotes receive attention. In literature, a range of significant figures is discussed, not least Joyce and Ellison. Also covered are developments in cinema, where, even if it can be hard to claim aesthetic quality for many of the screen Cyclopes who appear, their role in forming popular consciousness can hardly be doubted.

MULTIFRACTAL STRUCTURE IN SAND DRAWINGS

The construction of an abstract expressionist artwork is driven by chaotic mechanisms that sculpt multifractal characteristics. Jackson Pollock’s paintings, for example, arise due to the random process of depositing drops and jets of paint on a canvas. However, most of the paintings and drawings try to recreate with fidelity common forms, natural landscapes, and the human figure. Accordingly, in the context of the formation of statistically self-similar objects, a question persists: will it be possible to find some vestige of multifractal structure in drawings or paintings whose elaboration process tries to avoid chaos? In this work, we scrutinize into several artistic drawings in sand to answer this intriguing question. These pieces of art are elaborated using craters, furrows, and sand piles; and some of them are inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. We prove that the sand drawings analyzed here are multifractal objects. This finding suggests that a piece of visual art, which may initially appear ordered, contains many components distributed at different degrees of self-similarity that substantially increase the structural complexity.

Indigenous Destinies

Gerald Vizenor displays his playful wit and provocative theorizing of Indigenous creativity in Native Provenance (2019), a collection of essays adapted from material that appeared in other forms between 2004 and 2019. He uses familiar concepts (survivance, transmotion, gossip theory) to drive discussions of familiar topics (World War I veterans from White Earth, the White Earth constitution, Indigenous abstract expressionist painters). Devoted readers of Vizenor will appreciate but also wonder about the persistence in his work over many decades of certain topics and critical emphases. A decreased interest in crossbloods as trickster figures represents one of the most significant shifts in emphasis from the middle to the later part of Vizenor’s career. Louis Owens admired Vizenor’s work on crossbloods, and he lived an experience fundamental to his view of the world that he called, similarly, “mixedblood.” Yet, as many of the contributors to Louis Owens: Writing Land and Legacy (2019) demonstrate, Owens consistently recognized distinct Native and non-Native worlds in his scholarship and drew upon tribal nation-specific beliefs and practices in his novels. His characters often struggled to understand their connection to Indigenous histories, communities, and families, all of which Owens valued, even when they remained inaccessible, either to him or his characters.

Vladimir Mayakovsky and Frank O’Hara: a Reappraisal

The “New York School” refers to a group of poets and painters, mostly of the Abstract Expressionist movement, who congregated in New York in the first two decades following the end of the Second World War. They constitute a coterie that has been characterized as America’s “last avant-garde”. Among its most prominent members was Frank O’Hara (1926–1966). Like other members of the New York School of poets, he was strongly influenced by the French and Russian avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century. He was particularly drawn to the works of Vladimir Mayakovsky, whose persona and poetry are frequently referenced in his own oeuvre. The present study seeks to establish the origins of O’Hara’s interest in the Russian poet, the sources he consulted in familiarizing himself with Mayakovsky’s work, and the trajectory of references to Mayakovsky that documents how his avant-garde aesthetic both accommodates and distances itself from that of his Russian forebear.

"The Theatricality of the Emulsion!"

This article reexamines the career of Roger Jacoby (1945–1985), an abstract painter and gay liberation activist who became renowned for processing film in his darkened bathtub and for films that featured his partner, Ondine, the Andy Warhol Superstar. Through a consideration of film shorts made in the 1970s and 1980s, the article argues that Jacoby’s principal innovation was the exploration of hand-processing, which resulted in films that resembled abstract expressionist paintings in motion. Additionally, it considers hand-processing as an overlooked, albeit powerful, vehicle for expressing non-normative sexuality in American avant-garde film. It situates Jacoby alongside gay filmmakers Kenneth Anger, Gregory Markopoulos, and Jack Smith, and considers how hand-processed media can generate a “corporealized” spectator and disrupt patterns of filmic illusionism and heterosexist protocols of sexual/gender representation.