Published in TRACEY: What is Drawing For? October 2007 http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ac/tracey/ [email protected]

Contemporary Drawing Research

What is drawing for? Drawing is for exploring Elizabeth Murton: artist

[email protected] www.elizabeth.murton.co.uk

What is drawing for? Elizabeth Murton

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What is drawing for? Drawing is for exploring. This short essay considers the philosophy of The Fold by Giles Deleuze as a description of the malleable surface or space which a drawn line can lie across; and as a window into the relationship between mind and body, and therefore the relationship between the immaterial idea and its material exploration in drawing. The Playing Frame will be discussed as a drawing that provides visual and physical explorations of three dimensional surface. Drawing can explore new dimensions. Explore a little further.

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What is drawing for? Drawing is for exploring. Paper is the most commonly thought of surface for drawing. Using a pencil, a two dimensional image would probably be created. If drawing is for exploring, what are its limits? ‘Technically, paper is just the “support” of a drawing, and the material added to it is the “medium”.’ (Wigley 2001, 28). If we change the support to which a medium is added. We can begin to redefine what exists within the parameters of a drawing. The support or surface provides the space to draw on. Space is thought of as active and constantly changing. It is realised in the body’s relationship to it. Giles Deleuze in his philosophy The Fold considers this as the form between mind, body and space, ‘It is not the body that realizes, but it is in the body that something is realized…’ (Deleuze 2004, 105). ‘Herni Lefebvre viewed space as a “living space”, as neither a void nor physical object, but “another space… actually lived and socially created spatiality.”’ (Soja 1989, 17-18) Space can be defined by what is affecting it at a given time, by the bodies and objects present. It is consistent only in its malleability. ‘To Draw’ is firstly ‘to produce by making lines on a surface’ and secondly ‘to pull or haul’ in fact ‘to move in a particular direction.’ (Allen 2002, 262) The Playing Frame is a sculpture, and a drawing. It can change through participant interaction. It consists of a wooden sculpture, instructional illustrations and bags containing fabric shapes, ropes and bendy poles. The wooden part of the sculpture is continuous, like a drawn line that is moving over the floor, around the corner and two walls. The surface of the wood is punctuated regularly with holes for the poles to fit. This allows the potential participators to create different 3D aesthetic compositions. The poles add line to the frame work as a flexible constructional component. The Playing Frame takes elements of a tent’s structure to offer a spatial and visual exploration. The aesthetic of the installation at any one time will depend on the co-operation between what the artist has chosen to provide and what people have chosen to do with it. Information on how to play is offered, but not what the outcome has to be. Textile is a pliable material which can be moved around to form different compositions by the participant. The bright colours reference an Early Learning aesthetic of play, exploration and fun. The Frame is about working things out through hands on investigation: learning through play. There is no winning: it is about taking part and exploring what you can create together.

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Image 1. The Playing Frame at South Hill Park, Elizabeth Murton, 2007, wood, poles, rope and fabric. (Please insert) The Fold suggest a malleable surface, a surface for manipulation through drawing. It is a texture like fabric folded ‘The fold can be first of all recognised in the textile model of the kind implied by garments…’ (Deleuze 2004, 121). The fold exists in the surface, in the resonation of thoughts (Deleuze 2004) and in the action of matter, ‘The world is interpreted as a body of infinite folds and surfaces that twist and weave through compressed space and time.’ (Conley 2004, back cover) The theory of The Fold creates a picture of constant action and redefinition. This can be investigated through drawing upon or drawing with the malleable surface. The following poem is an artists biography of immaterial concept and material process. The action of drawing is an uninterrupted theme throughout the poem. It speaks of structure, movement and action, all aspects of The Fold, The Playing Frame, and the weaving loom. The latter is an original source of inspiration for the artist’s practice: not the finished piece of cloth, but the three dimensional image that forms as threads are taught and passing through the system of the loom. At the beginning, Attracted by architecture Attracted by shape How structure dictates movement in a space Stitched with pen and thread The drawing of architecture The sculpture of drawing The surface the needle marks, Was itself woven Focused on threads But before the cloth is together

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Slowly Threads compose Kinetic Through machinery Pattern Through space Linear structure of the loom Line- Drawing Recording Playing Involving Explore a little further Drawing is for tracking the movement of the material through space. These can be permanent or ephemeral marks. The lines of thread were drawn into the space in two senses of the word: ‘Attracted by shape How structure dictates the movement in a space’ Firstly as drawn lines upon a surface; the surface is the space of the loom. Secondly the lines are drawn in the sense of being pulled through the mechanisms of the loom in a certain direction. The lines were ephemeral because after being through the surface or space of the machine, they become part of a cloth: a solid surface themselves. Drawing explores the movement of these passing lines.

Image 2. Before woven, Elizabeth Murton, 2004, wooden loom and white cotton. (Please insert)

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Lucio Fontana exploited the use of textile and its texture for his works on canvas in Spatial Concept `Waiting' 1960 Concetto spaziale `Attesa'. Here the canvas is no longer flat, the slit through the work creates an opening ‘The basis of the Concetto Spaziale works was the piercing or later, slashing with a razor, of the canvas to create an actual dimension of space’. (Tate no date) The surface being marked introduces a textural element. The line has penetrated the surface and now is present in front and behind the canvas. Drawing is exploring a textural dimension. In Concetto spaziale series, the marks were actions. They explore the movement of the drawer. The making of a slash, or in other works perforating the surface with holes. What marks the surface is no longer present. There is no pencil or charcoal left. But the action has altered the construction of the surface. In the Playing Frame, what can be added and taken away does not change. What changes the composition of the drawing is how people chose to act with the pieces. Where they choose to leave their mark is a physical action. Drawing is a process of movement, just as the fold is a philosophy of movement. Drawing enables an exploration of our concepts of space and our physical relationship to it. ‘A certain way of looking at paper, or rather a certain blindness to it, allows physical marks to assume the status of immaterial ideas.’ (Wigley 2001, 29) Perhaps this can occur when the lines are not dependent on the paper. Such as The Playing Frame where every angle the viewer sees is different, ‘What must be radically distinguished are the bends of matter, which always consist in hiding something from the relative surface that they are affecting…’ (Deleuze 2004, 104). Not only can the viewers move around The Playing Frame they can go inside. Here their movement is physically influenced by the spacial presence of line. Every angle is of a new composition and combination of surface and material. Every view is a visual exploration. The sculpture of drawing. The Playing Frame is a drawing albeit a sculpture. If drawing is for producing something material on a surface which consists of lines; The Playing Frame certainly does this. If the process of drawing makes explorations more solid this is true of the Frame. The surface and the line are not restricted, and here they are flexible too. They remain and exist even when off the page. The lines need to relate to the surface, but do they need to exist only on the surface? They could exist on their own and move in front or behind. Or in fact belong to many surfaces. Drawing is for producing a relationship between line or lines and a surface or many surfaces. The Playing Frame began as an immaterial idea. The idea was tested, shapes drawn on paper with felt-tip pens and pencil. It proceeded to take the wall as its surface. It is an active drawing, it is interactive, the poles and ropes can constantly be moved, added and taken away. Communication between the material world, the drawing and the idea, can be visualised as two connected levels (Deleuze 2004). The higher folds of the soul or mind have an innate understanding of the world. The lower floor has five windows (senses). Here in the lower floor are the pleats of matter that wrap around and constantly move. ‘It is not the body that realizes, but it is in the body that something is realized…’ (Deleuze 2004, 105) An understanding of the world moves from mind to body where it is expressed in drawing, and the experience of drawing moves up from body to inform the mind. It is through these movements and through the physicality of matter that realisation occurs. It is here through the exchange between matter and the mind where drawings are realised. Drawing is for exploring a little further. (Discovering, searching, investigating, examining, considering)

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Images Image 1. The Playing Frame at South Hill Park, Elizabeth Murton, 2007, wood, poles, rope and fabric. Image 2. Before woven, Elizabeth Murton, 2004, wooden loom and white cotton.

Bibliography Allen, R., (Consulting Ed), (2002), The Penguin English Dictionary. London, The Penguin Group Deleuze, G. (2004), The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota. Conley, T. (2004) Foreword and Translation, in Deleuze, G. (2004), The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota. de Zegher, C., & Wigley, M. (2001), The Activist Drawing Retracing Situationist Architectures from Constant’s New Babylon to Beyond. New York, The Drawing Centre & Massachussetts, The MIT Press. Murton, E., (2006) How does Deleuze’s Fold allow for an interpretation of the body and space in a performance by Seven Sisters Group and installations by Ernesto Neto and veech.media. architecture. (Dissertation) Soja, E. W., (1989), Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of space In Critical Social Theory. London, Verson in Brooker, P., (2003), A Glossary of Culbural Theory. (2nd Ed), London, Arnold. Wigley, M. (2001), Paper, Scissors, Blur in de Zegher, C., & Wigley, M. (2001), The Activist Drawing Retracing Situationist Architectures from Constant’s New Babylon to Beyond. New York, The Drawing Centre & Massachussetts, The MIT Press.

Electronic Sources Anon, (No date) Spazialismo, Tate Glossary, available from http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=4492&tabview=te xt&texttype=10 [click the word Spazialismo in the text] [Accessed 13:09 23 august 07]

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