seminar 28/5/2008

In this seminar I will present my thought process as to put emphasis on the areas of critical theory and painting in which my interests lie:
1. Karl Popper
First I will start with Karl Popper's theory of knowledge, and how I have used it as a methodology to progress my practice.
2. My approach to this methodology
Relating my practice to this methodology, I will show how in the process I have gained knowledge in my field of research.
3. Knowledge and Communication
Then I will look at different systems of communication used in images and in language, and how the two systems operate differently to fabricate our understanding and ways of communication.
4. Knowledge and Meaning
In knowledge and meaning I will slightly touch on Lacan's use of language. And will also give examples of sentences that lose their meaning when linguistics comes into play.
5. The Stranger
Lastly, I will introduce the significance of 'the stranger', and discuss whether or not knowledge is universally good and powerful.


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1//////// Karl Popper
My research this year is largely drawn from a continuation started last year, where I looked at painting and its limitations, ways to negotiate within these limits, and the problematic of the ways to go around them. My investigation into painting's capacity to reconsider its own structure last year, I thought, indicated a relationship between critical theory and the practice of painting. The exploration which I took on last year to negotiate painting's limits required a series of trials and experiments.

We may refer to philosopher Karl Popper's theory of knowledge to see how this methodology can be established. Under Popper's schema we start from a problem and try to solve it by producing a tentative theory as our tentative solution. We then put our theory to the test, trying to fail it: this is the critical method of error elimination. As a result of all this a new problem arises (or perhaps several new problems).

As the equation shown:
P1 + TT + EE = P2
Where P1 is the initial problem from which we start. It may be a practical or theoretical problem, TT is the Tentative Theory which we offer in order to solve that problem. EE means a process of error elimination, by way of critical tests or of critical discussions. P2 means the problem with which we end -- problems which emerge from the discussions and tests.


2//////// My Approach

(left) Sylvie Huang -1. "100% Wool – Brighton," 2008, yarn on wall.
(right) Sylvie Huang -2. "100% Wool – Lilac Mist," 2008, yarn on canvas, 80x100cm.

Should I apply this approach to my studio practice, here I have chosen a few examples to illustrate my progress:
At the beginning of the year I wanted to use a material that was different from what I used last year, as to leave my obsession of the paint medium. This can be viewed as P1, where I see paint as a problem to progress my investigation in the practice.

In both (1) and (2) I started from a point in the plane, working subconsciously with the string until it meets the boundary of the given architectural element, or edge of the canvas. It was a conversation between shapes and surface. This process made obvious that the string as a material had its existing dimensionality that was different from that of paint, and by sticking it to a surface forfeited its flexibility as a soft material. This was more evident in the detached areas (figure 1.2, 2.2), showing the material’s three-dimensional nature.

(left) Sylvie Huang -1.2 detail
(right) Sylvie Huang -2.2 detail

In order to faithfully explore this material, various techniques are used to negotiate the confines of image-making, such as cutting, gluing, folding, and twisting of materials, etc. I believe this process of 'drawing in space' speaks of painterly concerns that envision an interdisciplinary terrain between painting, sculpture, and architecture. These works as examples of my learning process this year to date, from which I have acquired knowledge in this specific interdisciplinary field.

(left) Sylvie Huang -3. "100% Wool – Hero Tones", 2008
(right) Sylvie Huang -4. "100% Wool – Rose Cream," 2008

Referring back to Popper Using Popper's methodology, we may sum up these particular works as follows:

P1 (initial problem) = material
Paint was restricting me, because it is associated too much with painting. Even though I was treating it in a different way, it restricted my ability to explore other materials and their intrinsic qualities. I have decided to explore the possibilities with wool yarn. Problem is, what is the materiality of wool? How can I treat a material as an object in its own right? In my case, how can I treat wool as an object?

TT (tentative theory)
My tentative theory here is by succeeding in my exploration of wool yarn, I should be able to treat any material as an object. This material has different possibilities to create different combinations. It won't be made into anything use-able, but manipulations of the material can change our perception of the material - By treating it as an object in its own right, you can disassociate it from prior notions of its destined usage (e.g. to knit a scarf)

EE (error elimination) = surfaces and dimension
By sticking this material to either a formal or informal surface, I have not allowed all its dimensions to come through. We still associate it with paint on a surface. It is merely replacing paint as a material, and not bringing the properties of the wool yarn to the surface. Therefore, I have eliminated this technique of sticking the wool to a flat surface.

P2 (problem with which we end) = colour
Amongst other techniques used I discovered how colour as a fluid medium could be a distraction to looking at materiality, for that it brings in psychological associations. Thus 'colour' brought to my awareness as P2 here in my investigation of materiality as one of the results of my experiments.

The quest into this specific genre of 'image making' abandons the depiction of subject, making painting the subject of painting. As one of the pioneers working in this field, Donald Judd believes that materials vary greatly and are simply materials (Judd, 1997). His 'specific objects' are purged of any traces of illusionism, metaphor, gesture of anthropomorphic references. Yet without these references, do we need to turn to areas outside of art and aesthetics -- disciplines such as linguistics and ideologies to interpret art?


3//////// Knowledge and Communication
It has long been my belief that art is about communication, regardless of the medium or discipline an artist works with. Yet there are different means of communication and often visual communication works on a different system from that of verbal communication.

René Magritte. "The Treachery of Images (This is not a pipe)," 1929.

To illustrate my point, here we have a René Magritte’s painting "The Treachery of Images," 1929. In this painting we see a truthful representation of a pipe, and an inscription underneath it saying "Ceci n’est pas une pipe (It is not a pipe)." Magritte knits verbal signs and plastic elements together, and brings pure similitudes and nonaffirmative verbal statements into play within the instability of a disoriented volume and an unmapped space. We may argue that the title of this painting could also have been "A pipe is a pipe." (Žižek, 1968:104).

This is an example that brings about discussions on separation between linguistic signs and plastic elements, and equivalence of resemblance and affirmation. These two principles constituted the tension in classical painting, because the second reintroduced discourse into an art from which the linguistic element was excluded, since affirmation exists only where there is speech. Hence the fact that classical painting spoke while constituting itself entirely outside language. (Foucault)

My intention here is to present an entry point to see how linguistic and visual communications operate in their own systems, and how confusing it could be when we combine the two. Each instance successfully communicates something (the visual shows a pipe, and the written is a statement that makes sense). However, each instance also contradicts the other. For an in-depth discussion or an interpretation to take place, it is preferable that one should have knowledge in, for example, the Real, the Thing-in-itself.


4//////// Knowledge and Meaning
In today's society, each discipline is more and more specialised in its own development: I would not be surprised to find myself completely alienated in the department of engineering. The acquisition of knowledge, as we have seen in Popper's theory and my application of this methodology, can be a very personal development, thus it may also be exclusive. Which makes me wonder, with the development in visual art and the interpretation of art, whether or not do we have to rely on both to make successful works of art?

Contemporary curatorial practice usually offers accompanying texts to exhibitions either as parallel writing or interpretation of the works. In a recent article responding to the Whitney Museum's Biennale exhibition of contemporary art in The Wall Street Journal Online (18 April 2008), journalist Eric Gibson writes: 'Texts written by the Whitney's curators and outside contributors are being widely (and accurately) dismissed as unalloyed gibberish.' This complaint is made significant by the fact that it comes also from artists and critics who are knowledgeable and well-disposed toward the museum and its efforts. He explains that when the writer no longer had to base his critical observations on a close scrutiny of the work of art after Duchamp -- 'He could simply riff.' This gave birth to the phenomenon in art criticism of inaccessible writing. Indeed, popular verbs with critics such as 'resuscitates,' 'references' and 'activates' may nonetheless say just about nothing. As we can see from one of the 'random quotes' from the exhibition:

... Bove's 'settings' draw on the style, and substance, of certain time-specific materials to resuscitate their referential possibilities, to pull them out of historical stasis and return them to active symbolic duty, where new adjacencies might reactivate latent meanings.

The crypticness of this passage brings to mind the discussions of French psychiatrist Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) and his use of language, also known as Lacanese, that du Lacan (of Lacan) has been used in colloquial French with reference to an incomprehensible phrase or an exceedingly awkward formulation. This is because Lacan is known for his use of puns and play with words in his seminars. Therefore, it makes Lacanese nearly impossible to be translated into another language; and as a result, if I may add, makes this knowledge more difficult to be accessed by others.


Examples given by Corinne Maier may help us see the complexity in speaking Lacanese, in her 'travel guide' to 'Lacania.' A proper way of saying 'I am ill' in Lacanese is: 'My symptom does no longer succeed in quilting my lack of being' (Maier, 2003: 52). And a woman who wants to speak to her friend because her husband has just left her, in Lacanese, she says: 'For the subject who is now confronted with its lack of being, the hole of the loss in the real mobilises the signifier' (ibid.: 62). Here we see that Lacanese seems to be a sophisticated designer idiom for the improved description and communication of a new set of meanings.


In the course of my research, this book Knowing Nothing, Staying Stupid by Dany Nobus and Malcolm Quinn has been recommended by my critical studies supervisor. In which I find the notion of the knowledge economy extremely insightful as to grasp the ideas I have been pondering for sometime:

A form of dependency in which we are all potential knowledge specialists, and therefore perpetually in debt to someone else's knowledge. Rather than establishing a commonality of understanding, this situation consolidates the rule of the individual knowledge ego. (Nobus, 2005: 1)
With the knowledge economy we have today, it has drawn to my attention whether the fabrication of knowledge can be standardised. In the case of an educational institution, such as the university, where admittedly the individual knowledge ego thrives, understanding others becomes potentially more and more difficult. In order to gain access to another person’s knowledge, we may constantly find ourselves in a repeating process of studying and trying to interpret.


5//////// the Stranger
Or, we may go even further to suppose that we may be ceaselessly in the pursuit of the knowledge of others' without formulating our own's, simply because we want to be able to understand others, and we do not want to appear not as knowledgeable, or 'stupid.' It may be useful at this point, to introduce 'the stranger' which I find helpful:

Derrida[1] has reminded us, from Plato’s dialogues it can already be seen that it is often the stranger who formulates 'the intolerable question', who unwittingly challenges the authority of the master, who is not scared to jeopardize the hospitality he has received. [...] The stranger speaks from ignorance and thus forces his interlocutors to break the silence that governs mutual understanding within his presence, as Simmel[2] put it, physical proximity and social remoteness, geographical nearness and mental distance, the person of alien origin occupies a privileged position, which gives him the opportunity to cross boundaries and somehow be exonerated by reason of ignorance, and which can make him privy to secrets that will never be revealed to any 'regular' inhabitant of the community. (Nobus, 2005: 67)

1. Derrida, Jacques. Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond, trans. Rachel Bowlby, Standford, CA: Standford University Press, 2000.
2. Simmel, Georg. “The Stranger,” trans. Donald N. Levine, in Donald N. Levine (ed.) On Individuality and Social Forms, Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press, 1971. 143-9

This suggests that ignorance may be as powerful as knowledge in effective communication and understanding. It is a concept I still find puzzling and difficult to realise, but nevertheless a concept I feel that I could relate to. In my interpretation, if we could apply this in the case of visual art, perhaps it is worth approaching the work without an overload of context, and allowing our visual sensory to explore, relate and connect.


(left) Wassily Kandinsky. "Farbstudie Quadrate," 1913. Image source: http://www.artcyclopedia.com/goto/prints-329769
(right) Sylvie Huang. "Untitled." 2008.

Here we have two works that have perceptible similarities, such as in colour, saturation, and use of geometric forms. While Kandinsky (1866-1944) links colour to musical harmony, Huang's choice of colour refers to commodity objects. Putting these two works of different contexts side by side, we may be able to see them from a stranger's point of view for at least a brief of a moment, that regardless of the contexts these works set within, they communicate directly and instantly of a combination of colours and forms that stimulates our instinct response.


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References
　　　　 Judd, Donald. "Selected Writings." Donald Judd Sculpture, Prints, Furniture. Centro Cultural de Belém, 1997. 11-21
　　　　 Judd, Donald. "Specific Objects," Arts yearbook 8. New York, 1965: 74-82; reprinted in Judd, Complete Writings 1959-1975. Halifax Nova Scotia, 1975.
　　　　Foucault, Michel. "This is Not a Pipe (1968)." Retrieved 13 May 2008.
　　　　Gibson, Eric. "The Lost Art of Writing About Art." The Wall Street Journal Online: 18 April 2008.
　　　　Maier, Corinne. Le Lacan dira-t-on: Guide français-lacanien. Paris: Mots & Cie. 2003
　　　　Nobus, Danny and Malcolm Quinn. Knowing Nothing Staying Stupid: Elements for a psychoanalytic epistemology. New York: Routledge, 2005.
　　　　Liddle, Rod. "The Countdown of the World's 'Public Intellectuals'." Times Online: 4 May 2008. Retrieved 10 May 2008.
　　　　 Rose-Carol Washton Long. "Review: Kandinsky, the Language of the Eye by Paul Overy." The Art Bulletin, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Jun., 1971): 273 (review consists of 1 page). Published by: College Art Association.
　　　　Popper, Karl R. "Knowledge: Objective and Subjective." Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem: In defence of interaction. Routledge, 1994: 1-23.
　　　　 Žižek, Slavoj. "On Radical Evil and Related Matters." Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993: 100-5.

Donald Judd: Sculpture Prints Furniture

Judd Donald - Sculpture Prints Furniture

Donald Judd Sculpture, Prints, Furniture. Centro Cultural de Belém, 1997.
60's Abstract Expressionism in the United States
Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Carl André, Robert Morris, and Sol LeWitt --> Minimal art

Greenberg v.s. Judd
Judd's "specific objects": simple geometric forms purged of any traces of illusionism, metaphor, gesture of anthropomorphic references. His object's engagement with both the wall, floor and ceiling broke the traditional association of the wall with painting and theatre, and his rigorous engagement with scale, symmetry, volume and architectural space linked his art strongly with architecture. (5)
Judd's work subverted traditional notions of artistic creativity, which involved hierarchical relations between different elements. Instead, he used concepts such as gestalt, unity and indivisibility to realise his specific objects, each of which was conceived as a whole, with its own clearly-defined scale. With these primary structures, developed in repetitions of unitary, identical and symmetrical elements, Judd created a new lexicon. (5)

purity & forms
open & closed volumes
plain or coloured plywood, Plexiglas or metal.
space, scale & material.
painting & architecture

Judd, Donald. "Selected Writings". Donald Judd Sculpture, Prints, Furniture. Centro Cultural de Belém, 1997. 11-21

"Jean Arp". Arts, September 1963
part & whole relationship
example of Arp's sculpture: One of the most interesting aspects of Arp's sculpture [...] is that a good piece is a whole which has no parts. The protuberances can never clearly be considered other, smaller units; are not secondary units. This lack of distinct parts forces you to see the piece as a whole. The perception of wholeness dominates the impressions of its parts... (11) "Kenneth Noland", Arts. September 1963
& Norland's painting: Painting has to be as powerful as any kind of art; it can't claim a special identity, an existence for its own sake as a medium. If it does it will end up like lithography and etching. Painting now is not quite sufficient, although only in terms of plain power. It lacks the specificity and power of actual materials, actual colour, and actual space. (12)
"Specific Objects", Arts yearbook, 1965 The new three-dimensional work doesn't constitute a movement, school or style. The common aspects are too general and too little common to define a movement... (13)
In the paintings of Pollock, Rothko, Still and Newman, and more recently of Reinhardt and Noland, the rectangle is emphasized. The elements inside the rectangle are broad shapes and surface are only those which can occur plausibly within and on a rectangular plane [...] A painting is nearly and entity, one thing, and not the indefinable sum of a group of entities and references. (13)
Three dimensions are real space. That gets rid of the problem of illusionism and of literal space, space in and around marks and colors - which is riddance of one of the salient and most objectionable relics of European art. The several limits of painting are no longer present. A work can be as powerful as it can be thought to be... Obviously, anything in three dimensions can be any shape, regular or irregular, and can any have relation to the wall, floor, ceiling, room, rooms or exterior or none at all... (14)
Materials vary greatly and are simply materials -- Formica, aluminum, cold-rolled steel, Plexiglas, red and common brass, and so forth. They are specific. If they are used directly, they are more specific. Also, they are usually aggressive. There is an objectivity to the obdurate identity of a material. Also, of course, the qualities of materials -- hard mass, soft mass, thickness of 1/32, 1/16, 1/8 inch, pliability, slickness, translucency, dullness -- have unobjective uses. (15) A painting isn't an image. The shapes, the unity, projection, order and color are specific, aggressive and powerful. (16)"

Don Judd: an interview with John Coplans
Originally published in Don Judd, Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, California, 1971
yea, kinda boring the interview. not much point made.

Review: Hal Foster
Originally published in ARTFORUM magazine, 1978
Rosalind Krauss wrote of a Robert Morris piece, 'the specific configuration of the work is not allowed to become a figure seen against the "ground" of the object's "real" structure'. (Artforum, November 1973) When a box is aligned with the wall, it may have more to do with the illusionism of painting: each box, like a canvas, is seen as a natural extension of our own visual field. (44) Sculpture that is Minimalist in origin must face the brand of "theatre" applied to Minimalism proper by Michael Fried (Artforum, Summer 1967). To Fried the Minimalist object is theatrical insofar as it imposes as a presence, a presence that provokes a situation between viewer and itself. This he spurned as not self-critical. (45) Not only does Minimalist sculpture have a physical presence, i.e. command a situation or theatre, it also speaks to a metaphysical presence, i.e. to a plenitude, not an "exhaustion", of gestalt, forms, ideas, etc. (46) Rosalind Krauss noted, Judd used forms that seemed given, forms that were somehow a priori. This was done in order to delimit (or disguise) intentionality, what she called "the intention-laden grammar of process", and the presence implicit therein. To Krauss the idea was to make meaning "a function of external space" as opposed to a function of internal space, that metaphorical realm where the operations of the constitutive mind occur. She saw the break with the 'Cartesianism' that was the ground of "Western illusionism". (47)

Donald Judd's Equivocal Objects Prudence Carlson
Originally published in ART IN AMERICA, Brant Publications Inc., January 1984.
As always, Judd's new boxes, whether single or arranged in series, are emphatically self-referential objects that wed form, material and content and that, as a consequence, "exist between mind and matter, detached from both and representing neither" (Noted in Lucy R. Lippard, "Cult of the Direct and the Difficult", Changing, New York, E.P. Dutton & Co., 1971, 116). hmm, pretty repetitive about Judd's practice. no need to note more i guess.

Seminar 30/05/2007

I have not been to many of the masters' seminars, but I've benefited a lot from the ones that I've been to. I think it's a really good opportunity to get to know other's projects and interests, and also their styles, since I do not talk much to them personally. Having said so, I feel I am a completely different person when doing a public speech/performance. I guess the bottom line is my self-consciousness in fear of being unable getting the attention; and when on the stage where I am granted such focused attention, I do enjoy it -- though, only after a certain time of preparation.

Most people do have a lot to say and do have a body of research there, yet some do not realise the fact that it's only a 20-minute seminar, and only so much can be put in it. The only way is to work on the structure and practice before actually giving the seminar -- for that I am grateful of the help from Liyen, and the discussion we had helped to get my head around the whole research process too. So I guess it's true, as what Liyen's suggested, it's just telling stories and giving introductions. And I do agree, for that it helps the audience's understanding of your work and generate discussion. Often people are so immersed in their own research and put on this full-on in-depth lecture which is a good learning experience too, but hard for those who have not been researching in the same field to digest all information in 20 minutes.

So, here is the complete content of my seminar. I will have to look back to it and further my research soon. My apologies for not fully referencing the whole writing, etc.

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Greetings.
Today, I am going to give a general outlook of my interests in some specific areas of painting and the developments of which. Emphasis will be put on the development of abstract painting after the influence of minimalism.

Coming from a painting background, I am also aware that we live in an era of critical theory. As we know that the different aspects of painting have been looked at again and again closely; as a result, some artists tend to be more excited about using new media nowadays. In an art world dominated by critical theory and new forms that speak to that theory, what are the values of painting for the contemporary visual arts curriculum?

My research this year is based on a concern for painting. In this seminar I propose to give an introduction on some of the difficulties that painters have been dealing with, also, I will give a more in-depth overview of the works of Daniel Buren, to show how he carries his practices throughout the years.

Firstly, I would like to start with a quote by Donald Judd taken from the book "Specific Objects." He says that:

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Three dimensions are real space. That gets rid of the problem of illusionism and of literal space, space in and around marks and colours - which is riddance of one of the salient and most objectionable relics of European art. The several limits of painting are no longer present.

Donald Judd
"Specific Objects," reprinted in Complete Writings: 1969-1975. Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. New York: New York University Press, 1975. 184

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What I find interesting is that Judd started his career as a painter, yet he points out one of the foremost limitations of painting – space; and suggests that sculpture (or other 3 dimensional art forms) conveys better. Surly anyone working within the field would have been aware of painting's limits; for example, its dimension, space, colour and representation. But is Judd's suggestion of moving away from painting the only way to progress a practice? Many artists who are aware of the limits of painting still work within the domain to try to push the boundaries. My interest is to take on the limitations and explore them in my way.

In the next slide, I will give some examples of works that work toward the same goal. To show that if Judd was right, or that he simply shows ignorance that there are also several limits to negotiate within painting.

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Here I have chosen 3 major limits of painting as I've found them to be within my research, though they might need some refining later on; and for each I have selected an example that negotiate with such limit.

1) Structure: (& Reduction. Surface, support, framing, dimension, space)
When we speak of the formal properties of a painting we think of a covered surface on a support that set within a frame. And what is set within the frame concerns perspectives, composition, thus dimension and space. The minimalist's approach to reduce these elements culminates in various endpoints, including monochrome and geometry.

-Jackson Pollock, Lavender Mist: Number 1, 1950-

This Jackson Pollock's action painting constructs a new kind of autonomy. The part-to-whole relationship and unity suggest a re-articulation of painting. The elements and aspects of Pollock's paintings are polarised rather than amalgamated. This construction of a new kind of autonomy provokes painting with questions less of its reduction than of its structure.

2) Technique: (Variation; use of different formal elements and tools)
In the history of painting, various techniques have been created to perfect representation (e.g. perspectives), or to introduce a different way of seeing (e.g. cubism). According to Hubert Damisch*1, technique is to be understood as both 'thought and invention.' The different strategies taken by various painters to explore the limits of painting contribute to the invention of numerous techniques.

-Claude Viallat and Daniel Dezeuze-
Here we have the knotting of Claude Viallat and the cutting of Daniel Dezeuze to show their different approaches to construct painting. As opposed to minimalist's industrial methods (which represent a counterimpulse toward the generalising of technique, and this counterimpulse coincides with a displacement away from the privilege of painting as a medium into an array of other spaces and mediums), the works here demonstrate that painting as a discipline remains capable of sustaining technique as a measure of its thought and invention.

3) Series: (Extension; Repetition; Fragmentation)
Serial practices elaborate decisive ways of thinking through the work's exposure. (If we look at each work in the series as an "instance" and it shows that anything we term a work has an identity that is already displace to, and by, the "instance" of the work’s exteriority in and as its essentially seriate dispersion, a dispersion that places its "medium" in question. and their implications for painting.)

-Polly Apfelbaum, Eclipse, velvet and dye, dimensions vary with installation, 1996-

There are a number of different ways to seriate a practice, here I have chosen a work by Polly Apfelbaum. It represents one piece in a series of variations in the display of the work or its architectural context. This implication of serial practices open further questions of the relation of the work to its structure, and thus ways of inquiring how, in light of its structural articulations, a work can be dispersed and not "reduced."

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Next I will present a movement that took place in the late 60s. Based on a concern for art, and painting being its primarily form, Buren teamed up with 3 of his contemporaries and formed the group BMPT.

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+ 1966 – 1967
+ Initiated by 4 artistes: Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier, Niele Toroni.

Group BMPT tries to make "paintings as paintings" on the concepts of creation and painting. Each of the group member practices a repetitive gesture deprived of any artistic base and wants to supply only what the work presents.

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Example of the members' works:

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-Olivier Mosset. Untitled, 1966. Acrylic on canvas. Carré d'Art – Museé d'art contemporain de Nîmes-

Mosset repeats identical black circles on white surfaces.

Parmentier paints large horizontal bands delimited with the adhesive tape in order to remove any overflow of the brush.

Both Mosset and Parmentier practice a repetitive gesture with a simple form that is void of any subjectivity.


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-Niele Toroni at work. Les murs, un autre regard, installation Nice, 2005-

Toroni uses the mark made by a brush of a particular width as the motif on the canvas with regular interval.
I would like to point out that each and every mark made by the same brush is unique. If we could refer this back to the point made on Serial Practice earlier, each and every mark thus presents an instance. And it's by repetition and through the display of the context that the whole practice is complete.

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(left image)
-Daniel Buren. The Rotating Square In and Out of the Frame, 1989-

(right image)

-Daniel Buren. The Missing Square, 1989-

Buren uses vertical stripes in a uniform and repetitive way while leaving the same interval between the lines so as to create a perfect legibility.

In this slide we have 2 stripe paintings by Buren. On the left "The Rotating Square In and Out of the Frame" we see that he uses the simplest form of strips to create movements within frames. In the piece on the right "The Missing Square", Buren has taken his strips in frames to create a puzzle-like effect, and the way I see it, he also seeks an active involvement from the viewer.

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One might argue the legitimacy of painting being the medium to question the making of art. Here I would like to put the emphasis on seeing how painting opens beyond itself by virtue of the limits that define it and onto a field it reveals as both relational and contingent, exposed to, and so capable of exposing, the institutional and cultural limits within which it claims its presence.

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-Daniel Buren. Murs de peintures, 1966–1977. Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris -
(Flikr: Beair)
Buren's idea that "every act is a political one*2" applies here as a response to the minimalist’s requirement of maximum space in between the works. Here the paintings are hung in the style as if they were in the 19th century, and each work requires equal attention.

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(Flickr: Beathe)
Buren's interest in the physical components of the work, such as its surface and support, lead to the exploration of material and ideological aspects of artworks that are usually not visible, revealing what conventional paintings tend to hide. He treats painting itself as the subject of painting, and what he's done here is taking his stripes and displacing them in a non-art context.

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-Daniel Buren, Les Deux Plateaux , 1986. Palais Royal, Paris-
(Flickr: robert_562)
This in situ work was done in 1986 in the great courtyard of the Palais Royal, in Paris: "Les Deux Plateaux", more commonly referred to as the "Columns of Buren". This work provoked an intense debate over the integration of contemporary art and historic buildings during that time.

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-Daniel Buren. in situ Place des Terreaux (1992, Christian Dreve). Lyon, France-
(photo: hsiaohui)
He is known best for using regular, contrasting maxi stripes to integrate the visual surface and architectural space, notably historical, landmark architecture.
(Christain Dreve is the architect)

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(photo: hsiaohui)
His signature stripes of 8.7cm in width coloured and alternative white work as an expansion of the act of looking. The stripes ultimately did not reduce the meaning of the work, instead led to an expansion of the ability to see within the field of the visible. In this sense, Buren's practice has always involved a particular approach to the physical environment and context.

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-Daniel Buren. Le Temps D'une Oeuvre , 2005. Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon, Biennale de Lyon d'Art Contemporain-
(Flikr: dalbera)
This piece explores the collaboration with light, thus space and time. Each day the gallery attendant would take off random coloured pixaglas to reveal the original lighting of the exhibition space. This may seem like a work done by a different artist, yet we can still see that he's incorporated his stripes in this work.

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-Daniel Buren. Plus grand ou plus petit que ? 2006. Château de Tours, France-
(Flickr: zokapi)
Here that's another example of an exhibition that I've been to. In this slide we see the exterior of a castle in the city of Tours.

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-Daniel Buren. Plus grand ou plus petit que ? 2006. Château de Tours, France-
(photo: hsiaohui)
The interior, ground, first, and second floor.

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We see with the later works that Buren has incorporated the idea of inside-outside into his practice. Yet all his works, from his unauthorised paper stripes glued on Parisian billboard in the late 60s to his more recent in situ interventions in the public space, discard conventional assumptions about the formal qualities of artworks, and present visual elements that alert the viewer to the characteristics and function of the space.

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la pratique est tout processus de transformation d'une matière première et la théorie lui est essentielle; la théorie est une forme spécifique de la pratique, s'en distinguant par son caractère scientifique.

Louis Althusser, « Pour Marx »

It must be clearly understood that when theory is considered as producer/creator, the only theory or theoretic practice is the result presented/the painting or, according to Althusser’s definition "Theory: a specific form of practice."

Daniel Buren

5 Texts. New York: John Weber Gallery, 1973

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There is freedom in what Buren has done, and that enormous freedom comes from an utter understanding of the limits of painting. I see imposing limitations as a method of working, as opposed to not knowing them, and thus not dealing with them. For that the limitation is the condition for painting's connection with the world, so also for its critical force. (As Painting, 87)

The reason why I want to explore the genre of painting is that I see a positive relationship between critical theory and the practice of painting, and have witnessed painting's capacity to reconsider its own structure. Many artists like Buren have experimented painting within their own institutional and cultural contexts; and I believe within the contemporary context, there are issues to be explored.

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Notes

1. Huber Damisch writes Pollock (1959): "The invention takes place, at the decisive moment when the painter raised this process, dripping - which after all had been only a means of 'padding' (remplissage) - to the dignity of an original principle for the organisation of surfaces."
   Damisch, Hubert. "La figure et l'entrelacs," Fenêtre jaune cadmium, ou les dessous de la peinture. Paris:Editions du Seuil, 1984. 76
2. "All acts are political, and whether one is conscious or not, the presentation of one's work/production does not escape this rule"
   Buren, Daniel. "En Regard," Les Ecrits, Tome3. Bordeaux: CAPC, 1991. 208-9

Super Readings That Have Helped Me Greatly in Constructing This Seminar:

• As Painting: Division and Displacement. Ed. Philip Armstrong, Laura Lisbon, and Stephen Melville. Columbus: Wexner Center for the Arts, the Ohio State University, 2001.
• Melville, Stephen. "Counting/As/Painting." Philip Armstrong, Laura Lisbon, and Stephen Melville. 1-26
• Philip Armstrong and Laura Lisbon. "As Painting: Problematics." Philip Armstrong, Laura Lisbon, and Stephen Melville. 27-54
• "Daniel Buren." Philip Armstrong, Laura Lisbon, and Stephen Melville. 86-9
• Nadaner, Dan. "Painting in an Era of Critical Theory." Studies in Art Education vol.39 no.2 (Winter 1998): 168-82
• Crimp, Douglas. "The End of Painting." October vol.16. 1981: 69-86
  

Further Readings:

• Buren, Daniel. 5 texts. New York: John Weber Gallery, 1973. (FA 759 B952)
• ---. Reboundings: An Essay by Daniel Buren, Followed by 7 Plates and & Diagrams. Brussels: Daled & Gevaert, 1977. (FA 759 B952r)

Online Readings:

• DANIEL BUREN, Plus grand ou plus petit que ?, travail in situ, au château de Tours pour le 25 ème anniversaire du CCC.
• Le musée qui n'existait pas, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris 2002
• Rencontre à l'atelier, FIAC 2000