It is “a beauty that comes from order found, not order given, as if its permanent harmony existed precariously in a transient and unpredictable world.”
Joshua Taylor quoted by John Yau in A New Context for the “Matter Paintings” of Antoni Tàpies
Richard Serra, speaking of his work and working process, has been quoted as saying “I began to wonder how I could use paint merely as material, as an industrial found object; I did not want to use it to make something else, to create an illusion” [i] As both sculptor and painter, who has worked intimately with many materials, Serra can well understand the evocative power of material presence in his work, and yet how elusive this condition may be to achieve. It is a quality common to both architecture and painting, the reality of material and its role in the presence of the artifact. Yet both can equally succumb to illusion, the illusion of the narrative or a theorized positioning, which can subvert or disavow the material consequences of the form in favour of another agenda. Agendas often based on an intellectualization of the content of the painting, or the building, by the author with or without reference to the culture in which they act or the material in with which they make.
Though not mutually exclusive there remains a tension between the desire for material presence and the creation of illusion, a tension regarding order perhaps and the control of meaning. Joshua Taylor, as quoted by John Yau, speaks of a precariousness based on order found rather than order given in relation to material paintings, alluding perhaps to a compelling sense of fragility in relation to the world. A condition, one could argue, of imprecision rather than precision, of openness rather than control, which could influence the emotive power of a material artifact. It is perhaps then a relinquishing of control as it relates to processes as well as the abandoning of influence over final interpretations, that could create a quality of transient fragility which places the reading of the artifact beyond the simplicity of the narrative.
This tension has historical lineage among both the artists as well as architects of the modern period who struggled to relieve themselves of the constraints of style or, more specifically in the case of painters, an abandoning of the narrative. Mark Rothko once said of this “There was never any question in plastic art, in poetry, in music of representing anything. It is a matter of making something beautiful, moving or dramatic – this is by no means the same thing”.[ii] The evolution in Rothko’s work in particular is telling of a desire to achieve a reciprocal relationship between the painting and the viewer, a desire to absolve himself of explicit narrative in search of the power of evocation — in search of intimacy and timelessness.
There is a sympathy at play between Mark Rothko’s ambitions and the potential of material presence in works of art and by extension, architecture. His struggle against the controlling vision of the narrative was manifest through the several phases of his work, from the surrealistic imagery of mythologies which hinted at a belief in commonly held primeval passions through the increasing abstractions of the large multiform paintings which were to solidify his desire to draw the viewer into his paintings in both a physical and emotional level. But it was the final murals that began to hint at the power of material presence as significant in the creation of meaning. The sheer scale of the work, its manifest denial to explain itself and the amorphous quality of colour values and relationships succeed in generating what Rothko describes as an intimacy and humanity, to engender emotions within his viewers rather than intellectual thought or understanding. As Rothko explains of his work “painting is not about experience. It is an experience”.[iii]
This form of material presence, for Rothko, was the evocation of something more primal and therefore universally accessible. Whereas the narrative based work is in some sense un-transferable because it has been intellectualized. At best it results in a directional experience, from painting to viewer, rather than a mutual exchange. It was more than simple scale or intense ambiguity that engendered this openness however, for the very nature of how paint was used by Rothko had its influence on the illusive reading and associations stimulated by the work as well. As Ellsworth Kelly once said, the “paint application is also crucial … with Rothko, you feel the way he caresses the canvas”.[iv] This intimate handling of the material, the sense of presence of the maker in the artifact, has considerable consequence on the evocative power of the work and perhaps, by association, its emotional accessibility.
Accepting and working with the material properties brings then this other issue to bear, that of process, as the adept working of a material can speak eloquently to properties of the material as well as its history of making. Experiencing the work of Pierre Soulages, a contemporary French painter, has been likened by one critic as being “confronted with the inner eloquence of paint”.[v] Although consistent in eschewing any figurative reference in his work from the start Soulages began his career using variations in paint colours and fields, exploiting the surface tone of the canvas in the process, to achieve his studies in light. It was during this period of his work that Soulages notes he became aware that the tracery of the brushwork itself was contributing to the tonal variation he was attempting to achieve; “I noticed I was giving it different values by means of the traces. So I went one stage further and started doing paintings with nothing but the same black paint. And the result was quite different, because it was the substance, the texture – by means of contrasting reliefs and the brushstrokes — which gave this single black colour its tonal values”.[vi] The final reading of these paintings subtly shift in relation to a viewers position drawing them into a more intimate and reciprocal relationship based simply on the traces of brushstrokes. Soulages goes on to describe the relevance of the material properties in this process; “If you use an emulsion paint, such as a resin-based emulsion, the surface contracts once the water has evaporated. Oil, on the other hand, sets, just like cement, and keeps all traces absolutely intact”.[vii] Thus the evocative power of these paintings is dependent both on a precise use of process and a knowledge of material characteristics in rendering the final image, an image as elusive as it is compelling.
Yet Serra actually works beyond the precise understanding and manipulation of materials by extending his argument to the manifestation of chance in the process of making. As Serra describes of his recent Line Drawings; “The drawings are created using a stylus on the reverse side of the paper that is laid over a pool of melted paintstick. No direct drawing is done on the front of the paper. I don't see the drawing I am making until the paper is pulled off the floor and turned over … I have used various means over the years to avoid known solutions. In this series of line drawings the process is more important to me than analyzing and placing a line in relation to other lines”. [viii] His argument for the introduction of the incidental or contingent is seemingly a pursuit of the unknown, something that would place the final image beyond the limits of his conscious imagination. This approach stands in contrast to the work of either Soulages or Rothko both of whom retain control of the process in pursuit of a precise rendering of an equivocal image. Serra’s work achieves a different form of resonance with process-based traces, one which embraces the apparent potency of imprecision. The argument for chance or contingency seems an attempt to remove the last vestige of intellectualization from the work in an effort to broaden the possibilities of what can be read from the final image.
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| Fig. 1: Table Nue |
Dubuffet often used this image of a table in his paintings, his table in fact, but painted in an ambiguous fashion. The viewer is thus enabled, through the very indefiniteness of the image, to impress upon it his own thoughts, as Dubuffet describes to us "any place in this world is peopled by a swarm of facts, and not only those which belong to the life of the [table] itself, but also, mixing with them, others which inhabit the thought of man, and which he impresses on the table by looking at it".[xi] Dubuffet was not exploring the materiality of paint for its own sake; neither was he attempting to evoke any quality of this material in his use of it. But through an intimate knowledge of its properties, particularly the speed with which it dries and how its acceleration has consequences on the final surface of the image, he was able to find a means to evoke the tenuous realities he felt were caught at the edge of ambiguity.
This preoccupation with the exploitation of the accidental, based both on material properties as well as the process of painting is suggestive. The power of art has been described as lying in its ability to produce empathy in the viewer, or, in other words the enabling of emotional projection. John Yau, in discussing what he describes as ‘matter paintings’, suggests that “art that does not acknowledge time, contingency, and incompleteness, is a fantasy”.[xii] A suggestive idea as it gives voice to the realities of process rarely acknowledged in art or architecture. It is perhaps this attitude that informs the pursuits of artists such as Soulages, Serra or Dubuffet. That the traces left by process are an embodiment of time, while the imprecisions reflect contingency. The power these embodiments have on the final image, of incompleteness, allow the imagination of the viewer access into the work through acceptance of the lack of finality or conclusion in opposition to the seeming conclusiveness more often pursued in art and architecture.
Yet a painter’s immediate relationship to the material and process means they are, to some degree, compelled to fabricate the element of chance. A position, which, despite its success in creating indeterminate images, undermines the objective to eliminate their own authorship. Rauschenberg, despite his interest in material, dismissed the manufacture of the accidental in such a controlled process, saying “you can’t use chance in painting without turning out an intellectual piece. You can use it in time, because then you can change time".[xiii] It is this element of time, as well as the nature of the process, which enables architects to more sympathetically appropriate this element of chance into their work. For the truth is architects do not, as a rule, make but rather speculate about making and leave the act of making to others. In architecture chance is not a choice but an unavoidable reality due to the process of translation in the hands of others.
Yet the value of this erratic in the making of architecture is rarely valued by its authors. Indeed the more typical attitude is one of control, despite the obvious falseness in the position, as control is as much an illusion in architecture as chance may be in painting. Yet the desire to control persists not simply in the making of space but in the handling of material to achieve precisely predetermined results, which accept nothing of the random or the indeterminate in the final artifact. Ando is an obvious reference here, known for his meticulous work in concrete. Precise concrete work to be sure, yet concrete detailed and executed to ensure a surface which embodies little of the character of either the material or the process. In effect reducing it to the service of the narrative again, albeit often sophisticated and thoughtful, such as Ando’s careful rendering of light, yet singular in the objective to entertain a prescribed reading.
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| Fig. 2: La Tourette |
Yet Le Corbusier is more typically known for his lack of interest in the material nature of his architecture attaching importance, as Stanislaus von Moos tells us “to the concept of the architectonic plan, as opposed to the particular conditions of its material realization”.[xiv] Stanislaus further elaborates that “his indifference to the finish and detailed formation of an individual building reflects a mild contempt for the natural materials glorified by many of his fellow protagonists”.[xv] Certainly this is the attitude one comes to understand from Le Corbusier if taken at his word. His expressed interest in the tectonic quality of building never related to expressive potential but rather to the liberation provided in the exploration of space, form and light. From his earliest words on the subject, in an essay on the decorative arts, Le Corbusier appeals to the law of Ripolin — of white wash — to rid space and form of its clutter and irrational decoration in hopes of attaining a healthier environment, or, as Corbusier himself says; the elimination of the equivocal.[xvi] This attitude to the making of space is clearly seen in his earliest works such as the Villa Roche. Regardless of the materials or means of construction, which often took the form of concrete frame infilled with rough blockwork, the works are consistently rendered to exclude any display of structure, tectonic logic or material presence. Le Corbusier insisted that to exploit the tectonic nature of building as an expressive tool was a naive position as architecture was a plastic art, one focused on the unity of the idea rather than the minutiae of its making.
Much has been made of Le Corbusier's apparent shift away from this position from the 30s onward — that the work began to deviate into a more poetic use of both traditional and new materials in his architectural compositions. Both Stanislaus as well as Christopher Green, in his essay ‘Architect as Artist’, have made interesting correlations between the painting and architecture as it relates to this transformation process. Le Corbusier himself was explicit enough about the importance of his painting to his thinking within the realm of architecture, understanding the two as sympathetic studies. But as Green suggests “when he [Le Corbusier] called his art the ‘secret’ of his architecture it was not about formal analogies, but about the activities of making art and designing buildings … it was about processes and a very creative engagement with things understood in a very particular way”.[xvii] This may be the critical relationship to examine — the relationship between paint as material and the appreciation of building as material artifact, the relationship between the act of painting and the act of building. For it may be the architect’s very distance from the process that leads to the common treatment of material as an instrument of graphic effect in the service of other agendas rather than an expression of material consequence. While as a painter Le Corbusier perhaps developed, through his intimate engagement with the material and process of painting, an increasing regard for material expression in his building work as a embodiment of process. And perhaps most critically, to an understanding of the importance of chance as a co-author of the form and ultimate reading of the artifact.
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| Fig. 3: Le Cheminee |
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| Fig. 4 Guitare Verticale [left] and detail [right] |
Subsequent paintings of the early twenties hold to this format of deliberate planning and careful control, not simply of the image but of the material itself. Paintings from 1920, such as the Nature Morte en Violin Rouge and Guitare Verticale, exhibit similarities in both composition and material consequence. Although clearly evolutions in terms of painting, branching out from the earlier representational work to more experimentation with composition, the paint as material artefact remains limited in the role it plays to the simple arrangement of colour and indication of depth. Even the brushwork is carefully excluded from contributing to the image [Fig 4].
This attitude toward the muteness of the material persists through the twenties, even the late twenties when, as Green notes, there is a fundamental re-assessment of imagery reflected in the paintings, a focus on the natural and irregular in form, as well as the experimentation with composition. But while 'irregular' imagery had been appearing in his paintings since the late 20s and even into the early 30s the paint remains mute. Or, at best, beginning to deviate from the clarity of edge condition between fields of colour so obvious in his earliest works. It is only later that the appreciation of the irregular within the context of the material itself becomes evident, from images such as La Pecheuse d'Huitres of 1935. We can see here not simply the play of form, colour or composition but an experimentation with deformation of paint surface for compositional effect [Fig 5]. An obvious departure from the predisposition to control all accident and chance with careful preplanning to a position where the process of painting, the application in thickness, addition of texture, the ambiguity of edge, as well as the subsequent mutation of the material through scarring begin to inform the final composition.
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| Fig. 5: La Pecheuse d'Huitres [left] and detail [right] |
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| Fig. 6: Divinte Baroque 1943 |
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| Fig. 7: La Tourette, Chapel |
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| Fig. 8: La Tourette - two elevation details |
Thus the party walls at the balconies of the Unite, though in truth blockwork with only a casting of cement on their surface, deviate from the regular planar surface apparently intended due to unexpected deformation in the formwork on the first pour resulting in an irregular marking on their surface. Rather than reject the work on inspection, Le Corbusier is said to have insisted on the continued use of the damaged formwork throughout the project.[xxi] This is a more telling testament to a reconsideration of the accidental than even the boardformed concrete work at the base as it manifests a conviction regarding the relevance, and promise, of the unpredictable consequences of process in the making of the project.
This increasing appreciation of the spontaneous and the irrational in both his art and architecture appears mutually dependent. There was an interest in the act of making…not in precision with material properties or expression but in traces of process. Like Soulages’ traces, like Dubuffet’s vigorous imaginings, it appears that Le Corbusier was touched by the idea of the hand of man leaving its imprint, its imperfect tracery on the perfect idea — as a measure of time, contingency, incompleteness.
Endnotes
[i] Alfred Pacquement, Interview in Richard Serra, Writings Interviews, Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994, pp158
[ii] Jacob Baal-Teshuva, Mark Rothko: Pictures as Drama, Germany: Taschen, 2003, pp. 26
[iii] Baal-Teshuva, op. cit., pp. 57
[iv] Baal-Teshuva, op. cit., pp. 47
[v] Michael Peppiatt, An Interview with Pierre Soulages with Michaël Peppiatt, Art International, n°3-4, Lugano, 1980, http://www.pierre-soulages.com/pages/psecrits/peppiattUS.html, accessed 28 August 2004
[vi] Peppiatt, op.cit.
[vii] Peppiatt, op.cit.
[viii] Richard Serra, Line Drawings, New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2002
[ix] Jean Dubuffet, Landscaped Tables, Landscapes of the Mind, Stones of Philosophy, in Peter Selz, The Work of Jean Dubuffet, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1962, pp. 63
[x] Peter Selz, Jean Dubuffet: The Recent Work, The Work of Jean Dubuffet, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1962, pp.163
[xi] Jean Dubuffet, op. cit., pp. 72
[xii] John Yau, A New Context for the “Matter Paintings” of Antoni Tàpies, www.seacex.com/documentos/tapies_06_contexto.pdf, 28 August 2004
[xiii] Barbara Rose, An Interview with Robert Rauschenberg, New York: Vintage Books, 1987, pp. 64, as quoted in Peter Gena, Cage & Rauschenberg: Purposeful Purposelessness Meets Found Order, 1992, www.artic.edu/2pgena/cageMCA.html, accessed 26 August 2004
[xiv] Stanislaus von Moos, Le Corbusier as Painter, Oppositions, No. 19, Winter Spring 1980, pp.101
[xv] von Moos, op. cit., pp. 101
[xvi] Le Corbusier, Argument, The Decorative Art of Today, translated by James Dunnett, London: The Architectural Press, 1987, pp. xxvi
[xvii] Christopher Green, The Architect as Artist, in Raeburn and Wilson [ed.], Le Corbusier: Architect of the Century, London: Arts Council of Britain, 1987, pp.111
[xviii] Maurice Besset, Le Corbusier, London: The Architectural Press, reprint 1987, pp. 94
[xix] Le Corbusier, L’Unite d’Habitation at Marseilles, Le Corbusier 1946 – 1952 Oeuvre Complete Vol. 5, Zurich: Les Editions d’Architecture, 1953, pp. 191
[xx] Le Corbusier, op. cit., pp. 191
[xxi] Based on anecdotal evidence from long-term inhabitants of the Unite on a site visit in October 2003.
