material and the paper.1 I am interested in exploring how the Surrealist and ... These artists use different mediums and techniques from silk screen printing,.
Sydney College of The Arts The University of Sydney
Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours)
2012
BACHELOR OF VISUAL ARTS RESEARCH PAPER
Automatic Landscapes by Brooke Carlson Printmedia
October 2012
Table of Contents
Introduction
3
Chapter One Unconsciously Automatic
6
Chapter Two Responses to the Unconscious Mark
8
Chapter Three Automatic Landscapes
23
Conclusion
31
List of Illustrations
32
Bibliography
35
2
Introduction My Honours project, Automatic Landscapes investigates the relationship between the hand, the drawing material and the paper.1 I am interested in exploring how the Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist technique of automatic drawing can be adapted and redeployed within the context of contemporary art. The project focuses on the idea of using the ‘unconscious’ as a source material for art making.
In this paper I will briefly survey the Surrealist origins of this tradition and its grounding in the writings of Sigmund Freud before going on to consider a number of approaches taken by artists over the intervening period. I will examine how the heritage of the Surrealists ideas and these other artists have informed the work of a number of contemporary artists. In its conclusion the paper will reflect on how my own work relates to this tradition, old and new, and how some of the artists who are part of it have influenced the experimental approach I have taken in my work this year.
In my studio project I began by using the idea of the 'unconscious mind' to explore the process of making the drawings and to find a way of expressing personal anxieties through art works. As the project progressed I became interested in the performative aspect of the process and my work gradually became more engaged with the ideas of documentation and methodology. The project then developed towards focusing on the ways in which automatic drawing can be further explored through the documentation of performance and how this can become as much a part of the work as the finished image.
Automatic Landscapes is a relatively open intuitive project. Initially the work developed as a response to the digital print-based work from last year, gravitating towards the use of traditional conventions of drawing and painting. Through continually undertaking the process of automatic drawing, the project has evolved into a broader version of its original incarnation and now looks at the performative aspects and contemporary methods of improvisation.
Although I work across a range of different mediums and am interested in the role that the unconscious plays in all of them, this paper focuses on drawing in particular. Drawing encompasses a simple and at times obsessive nature, in terms of the application of traditional materials and mark-
1
Tracey, Drawing Now: between the lines of contemporary art (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007), ix.
3
making; its capacity to reflect postmodern preoccupations of appropriation, fragmentation and indeterminacy and its potential to challenge what might be considered aesthetic.2
In the first chapter I will examine Andre Breton’s methodology of automatic drawing as a process for investigating the unconscious. Breton formulated a relationship between art and the unconscious, that became significant for Surrealism. As Claude Cernuschi notes, ‘The impact of Surrealism was instrumental in developing both the formal strategies and artistic philosophy of early Abstract Expressionism.’3 My Honours project will look at how the Surrealist's approach to making images dictated by the unconscious thought can be recontextualised within contemporary art. This chapter will examine the automatic art making processes in relation to Sigmund Freud’s theories of the unconscious mind. The idea of censorship, established in his essay “On Dreams”, will be used to explore how automatic drawing was used by artists both as a means of creating non-objective art and as a methodology for retrieving repressed imagery.
The second chapter will explore how subsequent generations of artists developed the Surrealist idea of using the unconscious as a source material for art making. For the sake of simplicity I will break the ways in which Freud’s ideas were subsequently used by artists into two separate genres; those artists who used the idea of the unconscious to produce abstract imagery and those who used it to explore representational modes of image making. I will begin with an examination of three artists whose work investigates the use of automatism through abstraction. Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock’s improvisational method of painting and psychoanalytical drawings explore unconscious actions for creating images. Further experimentation of this approach to art making in a meditative way will be investigated through the works of Cy Twombly. Finally the work of Christopher Wool will be looked at as an example of a contemporary variation of the use of improvisation and a play on the processes of drawing and painting. The representational approach will be examined through the work of Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin, both of whom explored the idea of using the unconscious as means for recovering or referring to repressed traumatic memories. The act of drawing and repetitive mark-making is approached as a therapeutic process for overcoming the repressed. Bourgeois' work also crosses over into abstraction.
These three contemporary artists works who I have chosen to look at also work extensively with print processes; and this is something that is reflected in the progression of my own work and its exploration
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2
Ibid.
3
Claude Cernuschi, Jackson Pollock: “Psychoanalytic” Drawings (United States: Duke University Press, 1992), 4.
4
of automatic drawing. These artists use different mediums and techniques from silk screen printing, monoprints to drawing, all engaging with automatic drawing and unconscious actions to create art; demonstrating an adaption of Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist methodologies, contextualising Automatic Landscapes within the contemporary art world.
The third chapter will investigate how my own work itself explores the unconscious as a source material for art making through automatic drawing. The performative aspect in the process of automatic drawing will be identified in my work. This will be examined in relation to contemporary artists, Carolee Schneemann and Trisha Brown whose exploration of the line derived from bodily movements and gestures. I have explored this aspect through a performative approach, documenting the repetitive and ritualized process of automatic drawing with video footage and photographs.
In the concluding chapter, Automatic Landscapes I will review how the work of all the artists I have looked at above and their various approaches to using unconscious thought and bodily actions have influenced the work I made for this Honours project, paying particular attention to the performative aspect of automatic drawing and how it contributes to the work itself and reviewing the possibilities it has opened up in my thinking and art making.
5
Chapter One
Unconsciously Automatic Surrealism Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical theories of the unconscious thought were an important influence on the Surrealists. Founded in 1924, Andre Breton defined Surrealism as ‘pure psychic automatism, intended to express the real functioning of thought, and the dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason.’4 Fascinated by Freud’s psychological findings, Breton devised automatic drawing and writing as a method for tapping into the unconscious. The Surrealists adapted Breton’s methodology of automatism developing an interest in exploring the relationship between art and the unconscious. The automatic process was described by Breton as ‘operating obliquely, everywhere at once; without any order; imperiously, clairvoyantly, and yet knowingly, and only when the work is finished it is understood what has been done.’5 Through this process the result of the work produced is a recording of spontaneous and improvised actions. In retrieving the unconscious through automatic drawing, it became a Surrealist methodology for creating new forms and imagery.
The Surrealists looked to the new perspectives and understandings that could be gained from psychological interpretation and meanings of the unconscious. In this sense accessing the unconscious provided an ‘internal perception’6 , and thus creating a new awareness. Nine years after the Manifesto, Breton observes that what surfaces during the automatic experience communicates a subliminal message which is the vehicle of revelation.7 Breton’s methodology became a revelation for a range of different artists who all brought their own interpretations to bear on Freud's ideas. Freud The idea of unconscious thought was explored closely in relation to Freud’s principal ideas of censorship and repression. For Freud the unconscious thought is that area of thinking which is repressed and he theorises that there is a censorship which only allows what is agreeable to pass
4
Andre Breton, Andre Breton: What is Surrealism?, ed. Franklin Rosemont (London: Pluto Press, 1978), 122.
5
Ibid., 103.
6
Haim N. Finkelstein, The Screen in Surrealist Art and Thought (Burlington: Ashgate, 2007), 149.
7 Katharine Conley, “Surrealism’s Ghostly Automatic Body,” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies vol. 15, issue 3 (2011): 297. doi:10.1080/17409292.2011.577614
6
through to the conscious and holds back everything else. By this definition, that which is rejected by the censorship is in a state of repression. 8 The questions are posed; what makes these thoughts unacceptable and why are they trying to be withheld from conscious exploration? What happens once they are discovered? Artists were intrigued with the psychological meanings that could be explored within art. Freud notes further, ‘there is a repulsion exerted from the unconscious of the material that is to be repressed.’9 Repression is thus not able to be lifted until the resistances are overcome and the conscious idea is brought into connection with the unconscious memory trace.10 Freud investigated the dream as mediating process between with the conscious and unconscious mind. As the state of sleep causes a relaxation of the censorship, it allows that which has been repressed to make a path for itself to consciousness. 11 Breton took Freud’s theory of repression directly as he explains, ‘By Surrealism, we mean a certain psychic automatism that corresponds closely to the state of dreaming.’12 The methodology of automatic drawing was devised for enabling access to the repressed unconscious imagery. Claude Cernuschi observes, for in ‘the state of relaxation the mind is more susceptible to permitting the repressed and allows ideas to flow unrestrained.’13 In Breton’s Second Manifesto, Breton considers the images and the happenings in dreams to be as meaningful as something done in the state of waking. 14 The images produced through automatic drawing can be established as eliciting content associated with the repressed. Therefore these images are of significance and can be interpreted using his theories psychological analysis.
The premise of my Honours project is to explore the way which artists have adapted these theories to devise different processes for making art.
8
Sigmund Freud, On Dreams, ed. and trans. M. D. Eder (London: William Heinemann, 1914), 31.
9
Sigmund Freud, The Unconscious, trans. Graham Frankland (London: Penguin, 2005), 37.
10
Ibid., 58.
11
Freud, On Dreams, 31.
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12
Cernuschi, Jackson Pollock: “Psychoanalytic” Drawings, 4.
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13
Ibid.
14 Andre Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, trans. Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane (United States: University of Michigan Press, 1969), 125.
7
Chapter Two
Responses to the Unconscious Mark Contemporary artists have explored variations of the unconscious as a source material for art making. I will be specifically looking at the idea of the unconscious from two distinct perspectives, abstraction and representation. The Abstract Expressionist approach associated with the unconscious will be examined in Jackson Pollock and Cy Twombly’s work, and further experimentation of this process employed in contemporary art of Christopher Wool. The use of representation associated with traumatic past experiences in the works of Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin explores the unconscious thought as a therapeutic process for overcoming the repressed. In particular, Bourgeois will be investigated for her use of both representation and abstraction in her drawings concerned with the condition of insomnia.
Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock approached improvisation by devising the dripping technique for tapping into the unconscious mind. This technique derived from elements of chance, process and spontaneity demonstrates an exercise in automatic drawing. Cernuschi defines Pollock’s work as being ‘highly refined and elaborate sketches to rapid and automatic improvisations.’15 For the purpose of discussing Pollock’s work in relation to the unconscious, Pollock’s ‘Psychoanalytic’ Drawings will be focused upon. These drawings explore the validity of psychoanalytical interpretations in art. It has been acknowledged that Pollock suffered from anxiety and trauma rooted in childhood.16 Making his art while working through these psychological issues, Pollock's work functioned both as an experimental way of pushing the boundaries of painting and as a therapeutic process. During psychoanalysis in 1939 his Jungian psychotherapist stated that ‘the repressed material emerging in the drawings was symbolic evidence of Pollock’s psychological problems.’17 Although these works were not drawn for the purpose of psychoanalysis, they are from a period of his practice which was given meaning through the context of psychoanalysis and idea of the unconscious. Pollock’s Untitled, (Wysuph no. 82) (figure 1), depicts a loose and primitive autonomous line. This drawing is one of the most abstract in the cycle, alluding to the imagery found in Rorschach tests which were
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15
Cernuschi, Jackson Pollock: “Psychoanalytic” Drawings, 1.
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16
Ibid., 3.
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17
Ibid., 25.
8
used for therapy and psychoanalysis. It is interesting that Pollock did not consider his drawings with no representational imagery to be psychoanalytically relevant.18
Figure 1: Jackson Pollock, Untitled, (Wysuph no. 82).
Here the relationship between psychoanalysis and image raises questions of the meaning of imagery produced through the automatic process and interpretations of the unconscious thought. Pollock’s practice demonstrates the way in which Abstract Expressionists explored the Surrealist use of the unconscious as a source material for their art without adopting Freud's grounding motives for salvaging repressed thoughts; which was to heal or alleviate psychological damage caused by traumatic events in the past.
In the same way as Pollock’s Abstract Expressionist approach to art making, Cy Twombly’s practice of improvisation is identifiable as an experience directly connected to the idea of automatic drawing. The complexity of Twombly’s works from 1950’s onwards resulted from the primacy of the unconscious in the process of art making. Influenced by the Abstract Expressionist concern with ‘inner harmony’19 and
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18
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19
Ibid., 56.
Gregor Stemmrich, “Talking about the Essence of Something,” in States of Mind: painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, ed. Achim Hochdörfer (Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2009), 64.
9
creating a sense of balance in the work, Twombly demonstrates the use of improvisation in a meditative way rather than therapeutic. Although engaging with methods of improvisation, Twombly’s work remains rational, symmetrical, and invariably harmonious,20 similar to Pollock’s acclaimed drip paintings. Breton’s mediating terms used to describe the automatic experience in 1922-65 depict this aim of the Abstract Expressionists, ‘honesty, naiveté, truth, freedom, authenticity, and the notion of the primitive.’21 This experience invoked in automatic drawing occurs throughout Twombly’s practice. As Twombly states, ‘Each line now is the actual experience with its own innate history. It does not illustrate-it is the sensation of its own realisation.’22 The marks and lines become the experience which contributes to the final image. This aspiration of the Abstract Expressionists is an attempt to collapse the traditional understandings of referent and reference, signifier and signified. It extends the aim of Abstraction, severing the exercise of referencing the physicality of the real world within picture making.
The drawing of the line dictated by experience is a register of automatic drawing. This is particularly evident in works such as Untitled (figure 2), which Franz West refers to as ‘Twombly’s Semantic Loops.’23 Twombly depicts the automatic movement of line through continuous defined loops drawn with wax crayon. Here the line becomes the visible action.24 The repetition of these drawn lines creates a sense balance and mediation. Through the use of improvisation and gestural techniques in drawing, an emphasis on process becomes apparent in Twombly’s work. It is as if Twombly is drawing in a state uncontrolled so that the line derived through the process of art making is set free from any means of restraint or limitations. 25 This drawing process in Twombly’s art making explores with the same intent as the Surrealist’s automatic process; this being comprised of elements of chance and spontaneity to loosen the control of the conscious mind on what is presented.
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20
Nicola Del Roscio, ed. Writings on Cy Twombly (Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2002), 14.
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21
Conley, “Surrealism’s Ghostly Automatic Body,” 135.
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22
Hochdorfer, “Blue goes out, B comes in,” 27.
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23
Franz West, “On Cy Twombly’s Semantic Loops” in States of Mind: painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, ed. Achim Hochdörfer (Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2009), 166.
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24 Peter Geimer, “Cy Twombly, Painter/ Cy Twombly, Photographer,” in States of Mind: painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, ed. Achim Hochdörfer (Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2009), 119.
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25
Hochdorfer, “Blue goes out, B comes in,” 22.
10
Figure 2: Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1968.
Figure 3: Cy Twombly, Academy, 1955.
Crucial to Abstract Expressionism was allowing not only the physical actions, but also materials to play an important part in creating the image. Appropriately Twombly became a key player in the process of the re-evaluation of gestural abstraction that took place in the latter half of the 1950’s.26 Twombly’s work is derived from an involvement in letting the medium intervene throughout the process of drawing. The use of medium becomes significant to the marks created by improvisational gestures, this can be seen in Academy (figure 3, above), in which Twombly takes up the gestures of the pencil, smudging and erasing them.27 Twombly’s experimentation with medium through gestural abstraction is apparent in no. 6, Gaeta Set I (figure 4), a series of six drawings varying in mediums from house paint, crayon, oil, pastel, tempera to charcoal. Twombly’s works constantly vary in combination of mediums, and create an interplay between the conventions of painting and drawing. Combining both media on paper, qualities of drawing cross with painterly qualities. Twombly’s constant layering in his work through gestures and media can be identified as processes of drawing and erasing - ‘writing’, ‘unwriting’ and ‘rewriting’- developing into an interplay in which the one could stand for the other.28 Similar to Twombly, layering of processes can be found in my own work in the gestural form of mark-making and smudging.
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26
Ibid., 27.
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27
Ibid., 22.
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28
Stemmrich, “Talking about the Essence of Something,” 63.
11
Figure 4: Cy Twombly, no. 6, (Gaeta Set I), 1986.
Christopher Wool is a contemporary artist based in New York. Exhibiting since the mid-1970’s his work has progressed technically and conceptually with processes playing on the conventions of painting and drawing. While Wool does not make associations with his work as a therapeutic process or psychological exploration, he demonstrates an interest in the unconscious through the process of improvisation. Influenced by Pollock and his use of improvisation for tapping into the unconscious mind, Wool takes an Abstract Expressionist approach to the technique with the use of gesture and spontaneous mark-making. Ann Goldstein writes of Wool’s exhibition in 1998, ‘however important the process of dripping paint was to Wool at this time, it was ultimately Pollock's allover strategy of picture making that was most influential.’29 As Wool’s work derives from unconscious actions for art making, a relationship between his process and automatic drawing is identified. Glen O’Brien observes,‘Wool engages with action painting as a primary source to be edited and manipulated...’30 Layering of
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29 Ann
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30
Goldstein, “How to Paint,” in Christopher Wool, ed. Hans Werner Holzwarth (Koln: TASCHEN, 2012), 172-3.
Glenn O’Brien, “Apocalypse and Wallpaper,” in Christopher Wool, ed. Hans Werner Holzwarth, (Koln: TASCHEN,
2012), 8.
12
conscious and unconscious processes are at play as Wool creates his own adaption of automatic drawing within contemporary art. The improvised paintings are used primarily for the backgrounds of his works which can be seen in Untitled (figure 5), demonstrating his use of automatism as a way of generating new imagery. In this way, the unconscious is used as a source material, as the initial automatic drawing provides the foundation for his works.
Figure 5: Christopher Wool, Untitled, 2009.
Wool interrupts the use of automatism by consciously working back into the work initially derived from spontaneous and improvised actions. Here a tension is created in the work, as the improvisational marks are contrasted with the deliberate process of silk screen printing. This is evident in Minor Mishap (figure 6), in which Wool creates a silk screen print of an automatic gesture by translating an original splash of paint on paper into a half tone image to be printed, combining the spontaneity for the splutter with the swipe of the silkscreened image. 31 !
31
Goldstein, “How to Paint,” 176.
13
Figure 6: Christopher Wool, Minor Mishap, 2001.
Wool uses the automatic process as both a direct implement and a variation, to create a response to the Abstract Expressionist traditional technique of improvisation. There is an uncertainty to be deciphered of the overall image, as image reproduction and the primitive original are juxtaposed. In his works from 2003 such as Run Down Run (figure 7), Wool used ‘drawing and erasing,’32 to describe his process of erasure which he discovered by accident. Wool would draw lines with a spray gun, immediately wiping down the image with solvent before it had dried to leave a transparent effect of the autonomous line. Goldstein writes, ‘The gestural activity of wiping reflected Wool’s move toward drawing, as well as toward a more direct, and traditional, means of handmade picture making.’33 These works also served as an image to be reproduced as a silkscreen print such as Untitled (figure 8).
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32
Ibid.
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33
Ibid.
14
Figure 7: Christopher Wool, Run Down Run,
Figure 8: Christopher Wool, Untitled, 2004.
2003.
The emphasis on process in Wool’s work is of particular interest for my Honours project. The constant, obsessive process of working and re-working improvised actions in Wool’s work is relatable to the process of automatic drawing undertaken in my own work. From an involvement with these routine processes, repetitive imagery emerges creating an interconnection aesthetically throughout the series of works. The marks and mistakes from blocked silk screens to dirt are all part of the process. This connects with my own practice, as each smudge or accidental mark of experience contributes to creating the final image. Each improvised action through the process is carried out in individual moments, contributing to separate layers which become fused together. The outcome of the final image is an accumulation of all these moments. The process not only about producing images but is a record of the actions and experience of creating the work itself. 34 Concerned with the experience and performative aspect of art making, Wool’s work engages with the process of automatic drawing and use of the unconscious to derive non-objective and abstract imagery.
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34
Ibid.
15
A representational approach to using the unconscious in art is explored through the contemporary practices of Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin. This is different from abstract tradition of the unconscious, as both these artists use ‘personal’ representational material rather than ‘anonymous’ abstract imagery. Interestingly it is an approach that emphasises the original traumatic concerns of Freud. Since the ‘personal’ material is recognisable to the subject, it allows a form of therapy.
Bourgeois’ work is responsive to the unconscious thought that is discovered through repressed memory. Through exploring childhood experiences which elicit trauma and anxiety, Bourgeois’ work operates as a therapeutic process for working through the repressed. This is demonstrated in her work, Insomnia Drawings, 2001, a series of 220 drawings resulting from Bourgeois drawing in order to cope with the condition of insomnia. Insomnia is described as being able ‘to make unacknowledged or forbidden knowledge accessible.’35 This allows the insomniac to acquire the state of mind to access the unconscious thought, as they endure a heightened awareness becoming physically overwhelmed with memory traces of the past. 36 In accessing the unconscious under the condition of insomnia Bourgeois takes up the Surrealist aim of retrieving the unconscious to derive material for art making. Breton describes automatic drawing is used as a process ‘for developing a way back through time - as the repressed and the unconscious is located in the past.’37 In this sense the images that emerge in the Insomnia Drawings are identified as recovering repressed memory. Through locating the repressed, Bourgeois’ work becomes a means of therapy for channelling the condition of insomnia. The drawings are a system for mediating the repressed fear and anxiety found in the unconscious thought. In the Insomnia Drawings, the unconscious thought transpires through representational and abstract images. In the representational drawings symbolic meanings emerge such as the repeated image of water, for water traditionally symbolises unconscious energy.38 These meanings reference the unconscious, emphasising the way in which her work acts as a therapeutic process. This is evident in the drawing January 19, 1995 (figure 9), depicting a figure digging in the ground and pulling out long roots. As Bourgeois writes on the back of the drawing, ‘the digging out of forgotten events, unconscious
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35 Elisabeth Bronfen, “The Powers of Insomnia,” in Louise Bourgeois: the insomnia drawings, Volume 1, ed. Peter Fischer (Zurich: Daros, 2000), 42.
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36
Ibid., 40.
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37 Katharine Conley, “Surrealism and Outsider Art: From the "Automatic Message" to André Breton's Collection,” Yale French Studies no. 109 (2006): 136. Accessed May 15, 2012. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2129290
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Marie-Laure Bernadac, “The Insomnia Drawings of Louise Bourgeois,” in Louise Bourgeois: the insomnia drawings, Volume 1, ed. Peter Fischer (Zurich: Daros, 2000), 11. 38
16
memories you dig out or else they keep bothering you.’ (figure 10) Here the representational drawings depend on precise memory, as Bourgeois explains they surface as problems to be solved. 39
Figure 9: Louise Bourgeois, January 19, 1995, The Insomnia Drawings (recto) 1995.
Figure 10: Louise Bourgeois, January 19, 1995, The Insomnia Drawings (verso) 1995.
The abstract drawings through psychological meaning are also linked to the unconscious. The drawings containing geometric patterns demonstrate the way in which Bourgeois’ work serves as a therapeutic process. As these are drawn with the intention of creating calm and to provide a stable and reliable system for Bourgeois; a protection against fear and anxiety. 40 In these abstract drawings such as March 19, 1995, (figure 11) it is observable that the shapes of concentric circles and loops are similar to Pollock’s linear pencil drawing depicted in figure 1, and Twombly’s semantic loops in figure 2. This could allude to Bourgeois’ attempt to create a sense of harmony and balance in her work for the purposes of a therapeutic process. Significance can be found in Bourgeois’ use of the colour red throughout her practice and in the Insomnia Drawings. The decision to use red evokes psychological and !
39
Ibid., 12.
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40
Ibid.
17
symbolic interpretations such as that which Griselda Pollock notes, ‘Red is blood. Red is living beings, Red is intense. Red is desire. Red is passion. Red is rage. Red is the opposite of cold: lifeless, abstracted, dispassionate.’41
Figure 11: Louise Bourgeois, March 19, 1995, The Insomnia Drawings (recto) 1995.
Bourgeois’ use of accessing the unconscious as a therapeutic process can be further explored in her psychoanalytic writings. The psychoanalytic writings are the ‘result of an exercise in automatic writing deliberately undertaken as a method of unlocking the past.’42 LB-0219, loose sheet, September 13, 1957 (figure 12) is an example taken from her book, The Return of the Repressed: Psychoanalytic Writings (2012). Written text such as these are found accompanying some of the images in Bourgeois’ Insomnia Drawings (figure 9), creating a direct relationship between her automatic writing and drawings.
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41 Griseda Pollock and Suzanne Schmidt, “Seeing Red: Drawing Life in Recent Works on Paper by Louise Bourgeois,” Parkett, no. 82 (2008): 56.
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Louise Bourgeois, The Return of the Repressed: Psychoanalytic Writings, ed. Philip Larratt-Smith (London: Violette Editions, 2012), 12. 42
18
Figure 12: Louise Bourgeois, LB-0219, loose sheet, September 13, 1957.
Through Bourgeois’ drawing process, obsessive and repetitive mark-making is exercised. This is identifiable with the recording and documenting aspect of automatic drawing. Bourgeois explains her aim is to relive past emotion, re-experience fear. Repetition is how she handles fear and actively takes control.43 Exorcising past memories through drawing as a therapeutic process becomes a habitual part of her insomnia. What is habitual becomes automatic. Breton claims, ‘the experienced artist knows that the tracing of a line or a curve often falls within the domains of involuntary automatic actions. Even a mental attitude or a way of looking at things becomes habitual, and therefore outside the thinker’s control.’44 Bourgeois’ act of repetitively drawing takes an involvement in automatic drawing. Essentially, the drawings derived from mark-making in the course of this therapeutic process record her experience of insomnia. Arranging each individual drawing together as a grid to form a conventional art object, the outcome is a sequential exhibition of 220 works. Documented nightly specified with the date and time, the drawings collectively exhibit a diaristic way of representing her insomniac experience. This is shown on the back of the drawings as evident in figure 10. Brought visually to the audience is the artist’s documented progression through an undertaken therapeutic process.
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43 Louise Bourgeois, Louise Bourgeois: Emotions Abstracted, ed. Eva Keller and Regula Malin (Zurich: Daros Services AG, 2004), 21, 27.
44
Breton, Andre Breton: What is Surrealism?, 103.
19
Similar to Bourgeois, Emin’s work focuses on the therapeutic aspirations of Freud’s probing of the unconscious by using representation associated with the repressed memory. Traumatic childhood experiences are a constant reference point for Emin, from sexual abuse, rejection, distrust, fear, desire, abortion, depression, social failure, rape to anorexia. This is exhibited throughout the book, One Thousand Drawings (2009), a collection of Emin’s drawings documented from the early 1980’s to the late 1990’s. Emin’s drawings continuously explore the unconscious thought transmitted through the repressed memory. In Freud’s terms, the cause of repression is the desire to conceal certain thoughts and keep them at distance from the conscious.45 Freud notes, the reason for the censorship to deny these thoughts to the conscious is because they elicit a repulsion.46 This poses questions, what makes these thoughts so repulsive? Why are they trying to be withheld from investigation? And what happens once they are discovered? According to the psychoanalytical theories of Freud, Emin’s memories have been repressed as a result of the traumatic experience. Emin recovers the repressed and censored unconscious thoughts to derive material for her art. Through repetition of this process through the act of drawing, Emin’s work takes on a form of therapy. The unconscious that is elicited by these drawings connects to Breton’s therapeutic aspirations for automatic drawing. He notes in his writings that the motive for pursuing this repressed and unconscious thought is a sense of ‘recovery.’47 Emin’s obsession with repressed memory manifests throughout One Thousand Drawings. This is evident in the use of repetitive representational imagery of personal traumatic experiences in drawings such as, My True Self (figure 13) from Emin’s titled series, ‘ABORTION, HOW IT FEELS’. Figure 13 portrays a front on nude female figure, revealing only her torso and thighs with her vagina being the focal point. The title is self explanatory, as Emin reveals confrontational personal subject matter relating to memories such as rape. The nude self figure becomes almost routine for her drawings, recurring throughout One Thousand Drawings.
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45
Freud, On Dreams, 81.
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46
Freud, The Unconscious, 37.
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47
Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, 136-7.
20
Figure 13: Tracey Emin, My True Self, (drawing 530 from One Thousand Drawings), 1997.
Exploration of Emin’s own identity is constantly conducted through these past experiences. This is apparent in Figure 13 and Untitled from the ‘WESTWOOD’ series (figure 14), in which both text and title refer to the representational imagery of herself. Depicted in figure 14, is the written text, ‘poor love I think shes lost it.’ This drawing represents a confrontational perspective of a nude female with matter pouring out of her vagina. Chris Townsend writes, ‘Emin’s self-depiction is fixed in the trauma of memory.’ 48 Her work becomes centered around the self, a self which is only come to known to her audience through collections of re-lived past experiences. Through this repetitive psychological process, it becomes evident the way in which Emin’s work serves as a means of therapy. A relationship to automatic drawing can also be identified through the process of Emin’s work, as she engages with an improvisational approach to drawing and locating the repressed. Emin predominantly uses the printing process of monoprints in her work, allowing accidental smudges and marks to contribute to the final image (similar to Wool). In some of the drawings, the text is printed in reverse as a result of the monoprint. This occurs when the text is not consciously drawn in reverse before printing, demonstrating the immediate and instantaneous aspect of her process. The line depicted in figure 13 and figure 14 closely resembles the unconscious act of doodling. De Zegher outlines the definition of drawing, ‘as a kinesthetic practice of traction; attraction, extraction, protraction. Drawing is born from an outward gesture that links inner impulses and thoughts to the other through the touching
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Chris Townsend, “The Heart of Glass,” in The Art of Tracey Emin, ed. Mandy Merck and Chris Townsend (London: Thames and Hudson, 2002), 92. 48
21
of a surface with repeated graphic marks and lines.’49 In Emin’s work mark-making and repetition are conducted through the unique drawing process of monoprints, as no further copies can be made using the same procedure the marks produced exhibit the experience of the therapeutic process. Like Bourgeois and Wool, the process of the drawing becomes significant to the work itself. It is the performative aspect of the constant repetitive process undertaken in creating the work that my Honours project is interested in.
Figure 14: Tracey Emin, Untitled, (drawing 745 from One Thousand Drawings) 2000.
A variety of different papers is used throughout the collection such as hotel papers, grid papers, different coloured papers which often allude to found objects indicating the improvisational and instantaneous process of drawing. Similar to Bourgeois’ drawings, Emin’s One Thousand Drawings, is exhibited in a diaristic style. Each drawing is documented with the title written on the bottom left hand side, and the year dated on the right hand side. This creates an intimacy for opening up the often confronting imagery of personal experiences to her audience.
Bourgeois and Emin demonstrate the use of a therapeutic process in their work, which encompasses a performance of repetition, ritual and routine for working through trauma located in the repressed memory. !
49
Catherine De Zegher, On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010), 23.
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Chapter Three
Automatic Landscapes My own work, Automatic Landscapes explores the role of the unconscious in art making through the process of automatic drawing. Unlike earlier manifestations of automatic drawing to create imagery derived from the unconscious, my work investigates how the activity and performance involved in the process becomes integral to the work itself. In exploring the performative aspect of automatic drawing through video and photographic documentation, my work draws a direct relationship to performance artists, and attempts to connect it to the concerns of contemporary art. By taking an experimental approach, Automatic Landscapes looks into different aspects of the automatic process and how it can be used in interdisciplinary media. My work does not ignore the complexity of psychological theories and interpretations of the unconscious, but is rather concerned with the Surrealist idea of using it in art specifically through automatic drawing. In this chapter I will look at three different aspects of my work under the subheadings: Performance and Repetition, Drawing versus Print, and Trauma.
Performance and Repetition The ritual aspect of the repetitive process performed through automatic drawing in my work shows a relationship to Bourgeois’ Insomnia Drawings and Emin’s One Thousand Drawings. I perform the process of my automatic drawings by sitting on the floor with the paper, leaning over and drawing with impulsive mark-making using charcoal. This allows for more active and bodily gestures to happen as the body becomes physically placed in the work as opposed to the traditional upright easel. Drawing impulsively, the faster the speed, the less time there is to consciously think. This demonstrates the rhythmic manner of automatism described as suspension and flow. 50 Lack of control is exercised by the immediacy of mark-making. Instead of a visualizing beforehand, I draw from the feeling provoked through music and the senses of hearing, as the music aids to loosen my awareness and distract the conscious mind. Each drawing becomes an individual performance as it is done in one sitting, with no revisiting the work.
The performative aspect of recording and capturing spontaneous actions through automatic drawing becomes significant to the process of my work. The marks made by these unconscious actions can be read as the traces of the moment, the experience in which they were created.
!
50
Conley, “Surrealism’s Ghostly Automatic Body,” 299.
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Cornelia H. Butler considers that ‘the arcs of drawing and dance in the twentieth century could be described as dance moving beyond the image or readable gesture and as drawing transcending bodily form or trace.’51 This element of performance in the process of my work is reflected in work of contemporary performance artists, Carolee Schneemann and Trisha Brown. Up To And Including Her Limits (figure 15), is a work by Schneemann documenting a performance in which she draws on her enclosed surroundings: walls and the floor with her body harnessed to the wall. In this sense Schneemann undertakes the process of automatic drawing with the entire body’s movements. As a result these drawings become a record of every action and bodily gesture, the traces of the performance. Schneemann proclaims, ‘Up To And Including Her Limits was the direct result of Pollock’s physicalized painting process...My entire body becomes the agency of visual traces, vestige of the body’s energy in motion.’52
Figure 15: Carolee Schneemann, Up To And Including Her Limits, 1973-76.
Uncontrolled, unintentional and derived from elements of chance, the traces produced relate to the unconscious. As the harness acts as a discipline allowing no control over the movements throughout the drawing process, Schneemann forces herself to use unconscious actions.
!
51
De Zegher, On Line,140.
!
52
Ibid., 192.
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Trisha Brown’s series, It’s a Draw (figure 16) exhibits a similar performative approach to drawing. Like Schneemann, Brown attains an automatic quality by using virtually every part of her body to draw with charcoal, overcoming the traditional understanding of signifier and signified.53 In the same manner as Schneemann, Brown uses a sheet of paper large enough to collect the marks made by the bodily movements conducted in her performance of dancing across the page: ‘rolling over, pivoting, sitting back, pushing, skidding, pulling, swooping, breaking her materials, skipping and stuttering them over the surface (or across the gap between sheets), thrusting, rubbing up the texture of the floor beneath, sweating, scooting, fidgeting, smearing...’54
Figure 16: Trisha Brown, It’s a Draw/Live Feed, 2003.
Through these improvised actions and immediacy of mark-making as evident in Incident #1 (figure 17) Brown’s work demonstrates a process undertaken through automatic drawing. Her dance improvised movements overcome consciousness, as the body takes action and solves problems before the mind is
!
53
Ibid., 194.
!
54 Peter Eleey, “If You Couldn’t See Me: The Drawings of Trisha Brown,” in Trisha Brown: So That The Audience Does Not Know Whether I Have Stopped Dancing, ed. Peter Eleey (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2008), 25.
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aware there is one.55 This is how the performative process of automatic drawing and use of unconscious actions become more important than the resulting drawing.
Figure 17: Trisha Brown, Incident #1, (It’s a Draw Series), 2007.
To emphasize this in my work, I have cut up particular sections of my automatic drawings where incidents and peculiar marks occurred during the drawing process, such as Untitled #003 (figure 18) This is similar to Brown’s drawing in figure 17. I have further investigated performance in drawing through the use of documentation such as video and photographs comparable to Brown’s It’s a Draw/Live Feed (figure 16) highlighting a contemporary approach to exploring the process of automatic drawing in my work. This can be seen in 0317 (figure 19). Here the performance and modes of documentation become more interesting than the actual drawing.
!
55
Ibid., 30.
26
Figure 18: Brooke Carlson, Untitled #003,
Figure 19: Brooke Carlson, 0317,
(Automatic Landscapes Series), 2012.
(Automatic Landscapes Series), 2012.
Drawing versus Print Influenced by Wool’s approach to automatic drawing through the use of silk screen printing, I have explored juxtaposing unique drawing techniques with printed reproductions in my own work. This can be seen in Untitled, (figure 20) where I have experimented with silk screen printing my automatic drawings in half tone, similar to Wool. Accidents and mistakes from blocked screens and ink smudges, to printing on the table and rubbing the paper all become part of the improvisational process contributing to the final image.
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Figure 20: Brooke Carlson, Untitled (Automatic Landscapes Series), 2012.
For example, in figure 20 there was an error in exposing the halftone image onto the silk screen and through the process parts of the image was washed out. Furthering this experimentation I began to use a small squeegee to draw the ink through the silkscreen. The screen is not clamped down, but placed impulsively on top of the large piece of paper moving with my bodily gestures. This is depicted in the work, Automatic Drawing #25 (figure 21). Essentially, I have explored how the process of my preliminary automatic drawings translates into silk screen printing. Although the image exposed onto the screen remains the same, the printed image is spontaneous and derived from improvisational gestures.
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Figure 21: Brooke Carlson, Automatic Drawing #25,
Figure 22: Brooke Carlson, Automatic Drawing #6,
(Automatic Landscapes Series), 2012.
(Automatic Landscapes Series), 2012.
Another aspect of experimentation with the automatic process in my work is drawing into the printed material with charcoal and also silk screen printing on top of the drawings. Here I combine the initial automatic charcoal drawings with the improvisational approach to silk screen printing. This is demonstrated in Automatic Drawing #6 (figure 22, above), as the work creates a tension between the automatic drawing with the traditional medium of charcoal and the technically advanced process of silk screen printing. The halftone dots in the exposed image are formulated large enough to distinguish the silk screen print.
The use of memorabilia imagery such as the map, ticket, letter, diary and passport is an adaption from my previous work last year. This work explored the idea of obsessive collecting to preserve memories. The imagery depicts everyday objects collected and documented from 167 days of travel overseas. This has been brought into Automatic Landscapes to experiment with the use of representational imagery through the improvisational silk screen process. Similar to Wool’s use of monochromes, my works have been predominantly black and white to draw attention to the mark-making and maintain a simplicity. As Catherine De Zegher writes, ‘Clarity and legibility may seen compromised by colour, and lucidity of thought is exactly the aspect of drawing which is most valued.’56
!
56
De Zegher, On Line, 23.
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Trauma Performance is incorporated into Bourgeois and Emin’s work through using drawing to recover repressed memories as a therapeutic process. Although this is not a central concern for my work, there are aspects of my abstract imagery made through the process of automatic drawing which can be associated with using the unconscious for a therapeutic process. Similar to these artists, the repressed memory can be identified as eliciting fears and anxieties from childhood experiences. Furthermore, as the repetitive and excessive act of drawing provides a relief from emotional fetters and repressed memory. An emotional experience is evoked by darkness throughout the drawings, relating to the traumatic imagery and experiences of torture and death in nightmares. These nightmares have reoccurred since the age of eight and began at the time of my parents separation.
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Conclusion My Honours project explores the relationship between the process of automatic drawing and the idea of the unconscious mind. The work has developed the use of unconscious actions to derive non-objective imagery rather than focusing on psychological meanings or interpretations of the unconscious. Initially I was interested in the idea of the links between repressed thoughts and trauma and the role image making played in mediating these. Over the span of the project I turned my attention more towards the role of the unconscious bodily action. In this sense the imagery in my work is meaningless and concerned primarily with recording the traces of the performance of automatic drawing.
The project started out as a very open intuitive engagement with drawing with charcoal. Over the course of the year it has developed into a multilayered investigation of my original interest in the act of drawing spontaneously. While I have kept the idea of spontaneous mark-making at the centre of what I've done I'm much more aware of the balance between the conscious and unconscious in my work and the ways I can use this. In particular I have become very interested in the role of the unconscious body and in the processes of editing. Although the automatic process is improvisational and spontaneous, there is an unavoidable conscious aspect (identical to Wool’s practice) in selecting and editing of the final image. In the process of my work, I have found the most automatic, and unconsciously thought out drawings have been the most aesthetically successful.
For my Honours presentation I will exhibit a collection of works in the form of a wall scale collage. The works will be a selection from the sequential series of automatic drawings and prints together with photographs and a video of the drawing process.
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List of Illustrations Figure 1. Jackson Pollock, Untitled, (Wysuph no. 82). Coloured pencil, 8 1/4 x 7 1/2in. Jackson Pollock: “Psychoanalytic” Drawings. By Claude Cernuschi. United States: Duke University Press, 1992: 58. 9 Figure 2. Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1968. Oil-based house paint, wax crayon on canvas, 68 7/8 x 85 3/4in. New York City. States of Mind: painting, sculpture, photography, drawing. By Cy Twombly. Munich: Schirmer/ Mosel, 2009: 167. 11 Figure 3. Cy Twombly, Academy, 1955. Oil-based house paint, pastel, lead pencil, colour pencil on canvas, 75 1/4 x 94 7/8in. New York. Accessed July 21, 2012. Cy Twombly Info, http://www.cytwombly.info/ twombly_gallery.htm 11 Figure 4. Cy Twombly, no. 6, (Gaeta Set I), 1986. Series of six drawings. House paint, crayon, oil, lead pencil on paper, 11 1/4 x 9 5/8in. Private Collection. States of Mind: painting, sculpture, photography, drawing. By Cy Twombly. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2009: 261. 12 Figure 5. Christopher Wool, Untitled, 2009. Enamel and silkscreen ink on linen, 126 x 96in. Christopher Wool. By Hans Werner Holzwarth. Koln: TASCHEN, 2012: 381. 13 Figure 6. Christopher Wool, Minor Mishap, 2001. Silkscreen ink on linen, 108 x 72in. Christopher Wool. By Hans Werner Holzwarth. Koln: TASCHEN, 2012: 267. 14 Figure 7. Christopher Wool, Run Down Run, 2003. Enamel on linen, 96 x 72in. Christopher Wool. By Hans Werner Holzwarth. Koln: TASCHEN, 2012: 291. 15 Figure 8. Christopher Wool, Untitled, 2004. Enamel and silkscreen ink on linen, 66 x 48in. Christopher Wool. By Hans Werner Holzwarth. Koln: TASCHEN, 2012: 318. 15 Figure 9. Louise Bourgeois, January 19, 1995, The Insomnia Drawings, (recto) 1995. Charcoal, red and black ballpoint pen on cardboard, 12 x 9in. Louise Bourgeois: the insomnia drawings, Volume 2. By Louise Bourgeois. Zurich: Daros, 2000: 96. 17 32
Figure 10. Louise Bourgeois, January 15, 1995, The Insomnia Drawings, (verso) 1995. Red felt-tip pen on lined paper, 11 x 8 1/8in. Louise Bourgeois: the insomnia drawings, Volume 2. By Louise Bourgeois. Zurich: Daros, 2000: 90. 17 Figure 11. Louise Bourgeois, March 19, 1995, The Insomnia Drawings, 1995. Pencil, red felt-tip pen on music paper, 12 x 8 5/8in. Louise Bourgeois: the insomnia drawings, Volume 2. By Louise Bourgeois. Zurich: Daros, 2000: 181. 18 Figure 12. Louise Bourgeois, LB-0219, loose sheet, September 13, 1957. 8 x 10 1/2in. The Return of the Repressed: Psychoanalytic Writings. By Louise Bourgeois. London: Violette Editions, 2012: 18. 19 Figure 13. Tracey Emin, My True Self, (ABORTION, HOW IT FEELS Series), 1997. Monoprint, 29.7 x 42cm. One Thousand Drawings. By Tracey Emin. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2009: 745. 21 Figure 14. Tracey Emin, Untitled, (WESTWOOD Series), 2000. Monoprint, 58 x 81cm. One Thousand Drawings. By Tracey Emin. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2009: 530. 22 Figure 15. Carolee Schneemann, Up To And Including Her Limits, 1973-76. Performance, live video replay, crayon on paper, rope and harness suspended from ceiling. The Kitchen, New York City. Accessed July 24, 2012. Carolee Schneemann, http://www.caroleeschneemann.com/ uptoandincluding.html 24 Figure 16. Trisha Brown, It’s a Draw/Live Feed, 2003. Trisha Brown: So That The Audience Does Not Know Whether I Have Stopped Dancing. By Peter Eleey. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2008: 27. 25 Figure 17. Trisha Brown, Incident #1, (It’s a Draw Series), 2007. Trisha Brown: So That The Audience Does Not Know Whether I Have Stopped Dancing. Dimensions unknown. By Peter Eleey. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2008: 88. 26 Figure 18. Brooke Carlson, Untitled #003, (Automatic Landscapes Series), 2012. Charcoal on paper, 30 x 13cm. 27 33
Figure 19. Brooke Carlson, 0317, (Automatic Landscapes Series), 2012. Archival pigment print, 28 x 37cm. 27 Figure 20. Brooke Carlson, Untitled, (Automatic Landscapes Series), 2012. Silkscreen ink on card, 20 x 25cm. 28 Figure 21. Brooke Carlson, Automatic Drawing #25, (Automatic Landscapes Series), 2012. Silkscreen ink on paper, 56 x 76cm. 29 Figure 22. Brooke Carlson, Automatic Drawing #6, (Automatic Landscapes Series), 2012. Charcoal and silkscreen ink on paper, 56 x 76cm. 29
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Bibliography Books
Bataille, Georges. The Absence of Myth: Writings on Surrealism. Edited and translated by Michael Richardson. London: Verso, 1994. Barthes, Roland. The Responsibility of Forms: critical essays on music, art and representation. Translated by Richard Howard. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968. Bernadac, Marie-Laure. “The Insomnia Drawings of Louise Bourgeois.” In Louise Bourgeois: the insomnia drawings, Volume 1, edited by Peter Fischer, and translated by Deke Dusinberre, Lise-Eliane Pomier and Catherine Schelbert, 11-25. Zurich: Daros, 2000. Breton, Andre. What is Surrealism? Edited by Franklin Rosemont. London: Pluto Press, 1978. Breton, Andre. Manifestoes of Surrealism. Translated by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane. United States: University of Michigan Press, 1969. Bourgeois, Louise. Louise Bourgeois. Edited by Peter Weiermair. Zurich: Edition Stemmle, 1995. Bourgeois, Louise. Louise Bourgeois: Emotions Abstracted. Edited by Eva Keller and Regula Malin. Zurich: Daros Services AG, 2004. Bourgeois, Louise. The Return of the Repressed: Psychoanalytic Writings. Edited by Philip Larratt-Smith. London: Violette Editions, 2012. Bourgeois, Louise. Louise Bourgeois: Drawings and Observations. London: Bulfinch Press, 1995. Bourgeois, Louise. Louise Bourgeois: the insomnia drawings, Volume 2. Zurich: Daros, 2000. Bronfen, Elisabeth. “The Powers of Insomnia” In Louise Bourgeois: the insomnia drawings, Volume 1, edited by Peter Fischer, and translated by Deke Dusinberre, Lise-Eliane Pomier and Catherine Schelbert, 33-47. Zurich: Daros, 2000. Brown, Neal. Tracey Emin. London: Tate Publishing, 2006. Burton, Johanna. “Cy Twombly’s Transformations.” In States of Mind: painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, edited by Achim Hochdörfer and translated by Greg Bond, Nicholas Grindell and Steven Lindberg, 226-280. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2009. Cernuschi, Claude. Jackson Pollock: “Psychoanalytic” Drawings.United States: Duke University Press, 1992. Coxon, Ann. Louise Bourgeois. London: Tate Publishing, 2010. De Zegher, Catherine. On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010. 35
Eleey, Peter. “If You Couldn’t See Me: The Drawings of Trisha Brown.” In Trisha Brown: So That The Audience Does Not Know Whether I Have Stopped Dancing, edited by Peter Eleey, 18-35. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2008. Emin, Tracey. One Thousand Drawings. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2009. Foster, Hal...(et al.) Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. London: Thames and Hudson, 2004. Finkelstein, Haim N. The Screen in Surrealist Art and Thought. Burlington: Ashgate, 2007. Freud, Sigmund. The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. Edited and translated by James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press, 1953. Freud, Sigmund. The Unconscious. Translated by Graham Frankland. London: Penguin, 2005. Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Edited and translated by James Strachey. London: Penguin, 1958. Freud, Sigmund. On Dreams. Edited and translated by M. D. Eder. London: William Heinemann, 1914. Geimer, Peter. “Cy Twombly, Painter/ Cy Twombly, Photographer.” In States of Mind: painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, edited by Achim Hochdörfer and translated by Greg Bond, Nicholas Grindell and Steven Lindberg, 226-280. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2009. Goldstein, Ann. “How to Paint.” In Christopher Wool, edited by Hans Werner Holzwarth and translated by Chris Miller, 171-177. Koln: TASCHEN, 2012. Grant, Kim. Surrealism and the Visual Arts: Theory and Reception. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Guerlac, Suzanne. Literary Polemics: Bataille, Sartre, Valery, Breton. California: Stanford University Press, 1997. Hochdorfer, Achim. “Blue goes out, B comes in.” In States of Mind: painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, edited by Achim Hochdörfer and translated by Greg Bond, Nicholas Grindell and Steven Lindberg, 12-59. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2009. Keller, Eva. Louise Bourgeois: Emotions Abstracted, works 1941-2000. Germany: Hatie Cantz, 2004. Morris, Frances. Louise Bourgeois. New York: Rizzoli, 2008. Nixon, Mignon. Fantastic Reality: Louise Bourgeois and a Story of Modern Art. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2005. O’Brien, Glenn. “Apocalypse and Wallpaper.” In Christopher Wool, edited by Hans Werner Holzwarth, and translated by Chris Miller, 7-14. Koln: TASCHEN, 2012. Rose, Bernice. Allegories of Modernism: contemporary drawing. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1992. Rosemont, Franklin. Andre Breton and the First Principles of Surrealism. London: Pluto Press Ltd, 1978. Townsend, Chris. “The Heart of Glass.” In The Art of Tracey Emin, edited by Mandy Merck and Chris Townsend, 79-101. London: Thames and Hudson, 2002. 36
Townsend, Chris, and Mandy Merck,“Eminent Domain.” In The Art of Tracey Emin, edited by Mandy Merck and Chris Townsend, 6-21. London: Thames and Hudson, 2002. Tracey. Drawing Now: between the lines of contemporary art. London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007. Stemmrich, Gregor. “Talking about the Essence of Something.” In States of Mind: painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, edited by Achim Hochdörfer and translated by Greg Bond, Nicholas Grindell and Steven Lindberg, 60-115. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2009. Del Roscio, Nicola, ed. Writings on Cy Twombly. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2002. Varnedoe, Kirk. Cy Twombly: a retrospective. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1994. West, Franz. “On Cy Twombly’s Semantic Loops.” In States of Mind: painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, edited by Achim Hochdörfer and translated by Greg Bond, Nicholas Grindell, and Steven Lindberg, 166-225. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2009. Xenakis, Mekhi. Louise Bourgeois: the blind leading the blind. Paris: Galerie Lelong, 2008.
Exhibition Catalogues
Caruth, Cathy. Trauma: explorations in memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Exhibition catalogue. Corbett, John. “Impropositions: Christopher Wool, Improvisation, Dub Painting.” In Christopher Wool, translated by Jacques Bosser and Christopher Miller, 7-14. New York: Holzwarth Publications, 2012. Exhibition catalogue. Hergott, Fabrice. “Mirror of No Return.” In Christopher Wool, translations by Jacques Bosser and Christopher Miller, 23-28. New York: Holzwarth Publications, 2012. Exhibition catalogue. Kelsey, John. “Painting and Its Side Effects.” In Christopher Wool, translated by Jacques Bosser and Christopher Miller, 15-22. New York: Holzwarth Publications, 2012. Exhibition catalogue.
Journal Articles
Emin, Tracey. “Louise, Louise, Please, Please Me, Louise.” Parkett, no. 82 (2008): 28-39. Milliard, Coline. “Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin: Hauser & Wirth.” Modern Painters 23, no. 4 (2011): 76. Pollock, Griseda, and Suzanne Schmidt. “Seeing Red: Drawing Life in Recent Works on Paper by Louise Bourgeois.” Parkett, no. 82 (2008): 54-71.
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Electronic Readings
Conley, Katharine. “Surrealism and Outsider Art: From the "Automatic Message" to Breton's Collection.” Yale French Studies 109 (2006), 129-143. Accessed May 15, 2012. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2129290 Conley, Katharine. “Surrealism’s Ghostly Automatic Body.” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 15, no. 3 (2011): 297-304. Accessed May 15, 2012. doi: 10.1080/17409292.2011.577614 Fanthome, Christine. “The Influence and Treatment of Autobiography in Confessional Art: Observations on Tracey Emin’s Feature Film Top Spot.” Biography 29, no.1 (2006): 30-42. Accessed July 15, 2012. http://ezproxy.library.usyd.edu.au/login?url=http:// search.proquest.com/docview/ 215614430?accountid=14757
Websites
Carolee Schneemann. “Up To And Including Her Limits.” Accessed July 24, 2012. http://www.caroleeschneemann.com/uptoandincluding.html Saatchi Online. “Artist Julie Brixey-Williams.” Accessed July 24, 2012. http://www.saatchionline.com/profile/91093
Artworks
Bourgeois, Louise. January 19, 1995, The Insomnia Drawings, 1995. Charcoal, red and black ballpoint pen on cardboard, 12 x 9in. Reproduced by Louise Bourgeois, Louise Bourgeois: the insomnia drawings, Volume 2. (Zurich: Daros, 2000.), 96. Bourgeois, Louise. January 19, 1995, The Insomnia Drawings, 1995. Blue ballpoint pen on cardboard, 12 x 9in. Reproduced by Louise Bourgeois, Louise Bourgeois: the insomnia drawings, Volume 2. (Zurich: Daros, 2000.), 97. Bourgeois, Louise. March 19, 1995, The Insomnia Drawings, 1995. Pencil, red felt-tip pen on music paper, 12 x 8 5/8in. Reproduced by Louise Bourgeois, Louise Bourgeois: the insomnia drawings, Volume 2. (Zurich: Daros, 2000.), 181.
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Bourgeois, Louise. January 15, 1995, The Insomnia Drawings, 1995. Red felt-tip pen on lined paper, 11 x 8 1/8in. Reproduced by Louise Bourgeois, Louise Bourgeois: the insomnia drawings, Volume 2. (Zurich: Daros, 2000.), 90. Bourgeois, Louise. March 17, 1995, The Insomnia Drawings, 1995. Pencil on drawing paper, 9 x 11 5/8in. Reproduced by Louise Bourgeois, Louise Bourgeois: the insomnia drawings, Volume 2. (Zurich: Daros, 2000.),180. Bourgeois, Louise. LB-0219, loose sheet, September 13, 1957. 8 x 10 1/2in. Reproduced by Louise Bourgeois, The Return of the Repressed: Psychoanalytic Writings.(London: Violette Editions, 2012.), 18. Brown, Trisha. It’s a Draw/Live Feed, 2003. Reproduced by Peter Eleey, Trisha Brown: So That The Audience Does Not Know Whether I Have Stopped Dancing. (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2008.), 27. Brown, Trisha. Incident #1, (It’s a Draw Series), 2007. Dimensions unknown. Reproduced by Peter Eleey, Trisha Brown: So That The Audience Does Not Know Whether I Have Stopped Dancing, (Minneapolis : Walker Art Center, 2008.), 88. Emin, Tracey. My True Self, (ABORTION, HOW IT FEELS Series), 1997. Monoprint, 29.7 x 42cm. Reproduced by Tracey Emin, One Thousand Drawings. (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2009.), 745. Emin, Tracey. Untitled, (WESTWOOD Series), 2000. Monoprint, 58 x 81cm. Reproduced by Tracey Emin, One Thousand Drawings. (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2009.), 530. Pollock, Jackson. Untitled, (Wysuph no. 82). Coloured pencil, 8¼ x 7 1/2in. Location unknown. Reproduced by Claude Cernuschi, Jackson Pollock: “Psychoanalytic” Drawings. (United States: Duke University Press, 1992.), 58. Schneemann, Carolee. Up To And Including Her Limits, 1973-76. Performance, live video replay, crayon on paper, rope and harness suspended from ceiling. The Kitchen, New York City. Accessed July 21, 2012. Carolee Schneemann, http://www.caroleeschneemann.com/uptoandincluding.html Twombly, Cy. Academy, 1955. Oil-based house paint, pastel, lead pencil, colour pencil on canvas, 75 ¼ x 94 7/8in. New York. Accessed July 21, 2012. Cy Twombly Info, http://www.cytwombly.info/twombly_gallery.htm Twombly, Cy. Untitled, 1968. Oil-based house paint, wax crayon on canvas, 68 7/8 x 85 3/4in. New York City. Reproduced by Cy Twombly, States of Mind: painting, sculpture, photography, drawing. (Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2009.), 167. Twombly, Cy. no. 6, (Gaeta Set I), 1986. Series of six drawings. House paint, crayon, oil, lead pencil on paper, 11 1/4 x 9 5/8in. Private Collection. Reproduced by Cy Twombly, States of Mind: painting, sculpture, photography, drawing. (Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2009.), 261. 39
Wool, Christopher. Untitled, 2009. Enamel and silkscreen ink on linen, 126 x 96in. Reproduced by Hans Werner Holzwarth, Christopher Wool. (Koln: TASCHEN, 2012.), 381. Wool, Christopher. Minor Mishap, 2001. Silkscreen ink on linen, 108 x 72in. Reproduced by Hans Werner Holzwarth, Christopher Wool. (Koln: TASCHEN, 2012.), 267. Wool, Christopher. Run Down Run, 2003. Enamel on linen, 96 x 72in. Reproduced by Hans Werner Holzwarth, Christopher Wool. (Koln: TASCHEN, 2012.), 291. Wool, Christopher. Untitled, 2004. Enamel and silkscreen ink on linen, 66 x 48in. Reproduced by Hans Werner, Christopher Wool. (Holzwarth, Koln: TASCHEN, 2012.), 318.
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