PHENOMENOLOGY
“The phenomenological world is not the bringing to explicit expression of a pre-existing being, but the laying down of being. Philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing the truth into being.”
The subject of Phenomenology interested me when it was first introduced to me, I’ve heard it briefly in psychology before but not in the art world. This intrigued me to find out more about the subject and find the right philosophers input that best descript me and my art practice, also to find relevant texts that use and inspire similar methodologies to myself. Most of my work has been quite practical to help with my understanding from artists.
The motivation started with what was presented to us and it was evident that most of the art being presented or related to phenomenology was sculpture and in addition found the short essays very useful. I searched more with the internet and libraries, I found the tulip site very useful. I came across a document on Google, a book and here’s a short sub-section of it by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Phenomenology of Perception“:
“The perception of other people and the intersubjective world is problematic only for adults. The child lives in a world which he unhesitatingly believes accessible to all around him. He has no awares of himself or of others as private subjectives, nor does he suspect that all of us, himself included, are limited to one certain point of view of the world. That is why he subjects neither his thoughts, in which he believes as they present themselves, to any sort of criticism. He has no knowledge of points of view. For him men are empty heads turned towards one single, self-evident world where everything takes place, even dreams, which are, he thinks, in his room, and even thinking, since it is not distinct from words.”
After I read the book, I noticed how we all used the pattern of relating the theories to everyday life, such as vulnerability and exploits of nudity. However it has made us find something beautiful in art, producing impossible structures that fit in the scenery, building cities through surrealists alienated worlds, also enhancing our knowledge of actual real life situations and perspectives, making us aware of that we cant doubt what we see. But other phenomenologist’s disagree with this theory too.
I then began taking place my research of artists that use phenomenology in their work, I mostly found strong sculpture pieces and looked into life-casting but established that most known painters including Claude Monet, Gustav Klimt and Francis Bacon frequently used this in the perspectives and compositions of the content of work being displayed or experimented. Almost using optical illusions to deceive your eye and perception of what your looking at.
The pattern of psychological impacts of how we observe the body effect how we see things without focusing our eyes, seeing the same images desensitises the way we see. It doesn’t have to be a hyper-realistic torso or a face, we already can visually perceive and recognise shapes in everyday environments such as bricks, shadows and clouds. So I’ve learnt you don’t have to produce a hyper-real figure to make a good quality sculpture.
I went on to look at both sculptors and painters then came across KeseyPollock, two Seattle girls, Erin Pollock and Steph Kesey life-casting videos. The interdisciplinary of collaborative work consists of painting, sculpting, life-casting and photography. In the interview on YouTube they talk about how their sculptures still carry on, how other sculptors stop with the final piece. They carry on manipulating the materials and mediums and document the process.
I also looked at more contemporary artists that used paint and sculpture. Can Pedemir an conceptual Istanbul artist that works on distortation and abstraction of the body form. His works are ranging in size from miniatures to life-sized alienated humanoid sculptures often placed in urban environments. Mainly working, documenting through photographing his experimentations with warped, deformation experiments using various methodologies by putting forms of altered physical conditions, placing and effecting them with mathematical equations.
‘Bertrand Russell asked “Is there anything so certain that no reasonable man can doubt it?” That apparently simple question is significant because it indicates the assumptions that we tend to make about the world. For example, that table over there…. It’s just a table. We probably don’t think too much about it. Common sense tells us that each of us perceive it in a slightly different way, from different points of view according to where we are in the room…
..Furthermore it will appear different according to different light conditions and how the light reflects from its surfaces. If I turn the light off it will appear o vanish. We are all receiving sense-impressions which seems to depend upon the table, but are not the table itself. It is not really possible to say there is a fixed, unchanging entity called table…
…From that point of view of common-sense that is clearly absurd, but from the point of view of crucial philosophical enquiry it is the only conclusion one can come to. Philosophically we cannot be absolutely certain. Bertrand Russell also said that anyone not prepared for to confront absurdity shouldn’t take up philosophy and the same might be said of art…’
( NATURE OF THINGS - SHORT ESSAY )
This subsection of text from the short essay by …. . This prepared me to think about my own practice and how I use important observation skills to try and recreate what I see and/or resources. Example is Claude Monet Hay Stack Series (1890-91) which he painted many variations of the same landscape at different times during the day and throughout the year. Showing that we already know its yellow but evidently at sunset glowing oranges and navy shadows.
I have attended life-drawing sessions to increase my understanding of the human antimony and to help with my decisions with the life-casting. I considered making a sculpture and did produce small human figures using recycled matter and found objects. In addition to this I found a branch that looked like a stick man on a weekend walk to Fingle Bridge, Dartmoor. I couldn’t resist taking him home with me.
However overlooking at the quick sketches I noticed they all had a pattern of unstable proportions.
The subject of Phenomenology interested me when it was first introduced to me, I’ve heard it briefly in psychology before but not in the art world. This intrigued me to find out more about the subject and find the right philosophers input that best descript me and my art practice, also to find relevant texts that use and inspire similar methodologies to myself. Most of my work has been quite practical to help with my understanding from artists.
The motivation started with what was presented to us and it was evident that most of the art being presented or related to phenomenology was sculpture and in addition found the short essays very useful. I searched more with the internet and libraries, I found the tulip site very useful. I came across a document on Google, a book and here’s a short sub-section of it by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Phenomenology of Perception“:
“The perception of other people and the intersubjective world is problematic only for adults. The child lives in a world which he unhesitatingly believes accessible to all around him. He has no awares of himself or of others as private subjectives, nor does he suspect that all of us, himself included, are limited to one certain point of view of the world. That is why he subjects neither his thoughts, in which he believes as they present themselves, to any sort of criticism. He has no knowledge of points of view. For him men are empty heads turned towards one single, self-evident world where everything takes place, even dreams, which are, he thinks, in his room, and even thinking, since it is not distinct from words.”
After I read the book, I noticed how we all used the pattern of relating the theories to everyday life, such as vulnerability and exploits of nudity. However it has made us find something beautiful in art, producing impossible structures that fit in the scenery, building cities through surrealists alienated worlds, also enhancing our knowledge of actual real life situations and perspectives, making us aware of that we cant doubt what we see. But other phenomenologist’s disagree with this theory too.
I then began taking place my research of artists that use phenomenology in their work, I mostly found strong sculpture pieces and looked into life-casting but established that most known painters including Claude Monet, Gustav Klimt and Francis Bacon frequently used this in the perspectives and compositions of the content of work being displayed or experimented. Almost using optical illusions to deceive your eye and perception of what your looking at.
The pattern of psychological impacts of how we observe the body effect how we see things without focusing our eyes, seeing the same images desensitises the way we see. It doesn’t have to be a hyper-realistic torso or a face, we already can visually perceive and recognise shapes in everyday environments such as bricks, shadows and clouds. So I’ve learnt you don’t have to produce a hyper-real figure to make a good quality sculpture.
I went on to look at both sculptors and painters then came across KeseyPollock, two Seattle girls, Erin Pollock and Steph Kesey life-casting videos. The interdisciplinary of collaborative work consists of painting, sculpting, life-casting and photography. In the interview on YouTube they talk about how their sculptures still carry on, how other sculptors stop with the final piece. They carry on manipulating the materials and mediums and document the process.
I also looked at more contemporary artists that used paint and sculpture. Can Pedemir an conceptual Istanbul artist that works on distortation and abstraction of the body form. His works are ranging in size from miniatures to life-sized alienated humanoid sculptures often placed in urban environments. Mainly working, documenting through photographing his experimentations with warped, deformation experiments using various methodologies by putting forms of altered physical conditions, placing and effecting them with mathematical equations.
‘Bertrand Russell asked “Is there anything so certain that no reasonable man can doubt it?” That apparently simple question is significant because it indicates the assumptions that we tend to make about the world. For example, that table over there…. It’s just a table. We probably don’t think too much about it. Common sense tells us that each of us perceive it in a slightly different way, from different points of view according to where we are in the room…
..Furthermore it will appear different according to different light conditions and how the light reflects from its surfaces. If I turn the light off it will appear o vanish. We are all receiving sense-impressions which seems to depend upon the table, but are not the table itself. It is not really possible to say there is a fixed, unchanging entity called table…
…From that point of view of common-sense that is clearly absurd, but from the point of view of crucial philosophical enquiry it is the only conclusion one can come to. Philosophically we cannot be absolutely certain. Bertrand Russell also said that anyone not prepared for to confront absurdity shouldn’t take up philosophy and the same might be said of art…’
( NATURE OF THINGS - SHORT ESSAY )
This subsection of text from the short essay by …. . This prepared me to think about my own practice and how I use important observation skills to try and recreate what I see and/or resources. Example is Claude Monet Hay Stack Series (1890-91) which he painted many variations of the same landscape at different times during the day and throughout the year. Showing that we already know its yellow but evidently at sunset glowing oranges and navy shadows.
I have attended life-drawing sessions to increase my understanding of the human antimony and to help with my decisions with the life-casting. I considered making a sculpture and did produce small human figures using recycled matter and found objects. In addition to this I found a branch that looked like a stick man on a weekend walk to Fingle Bridge, Dartmoor. I couldn’t resist taking him home with me.
However overlooking at the quick sketches I noticed they all had a pattern of unstable proportions.
![Picture](/uploads/2/0/1/1/20118069/1513919.jpg?445)
Opposite is a life-drawing study of a woman. I’ve elongated the abdominal structure and emphasised the mark-making outline of the body, reminding me of Egon Schiele’s work. I also noticed how I didn’t add the arms subconsciously? I’m not sure but it shows how it relates to Greek mythologies naturally.
SKETCHBOOK TWO - LIFE-DRAWING STUDIES - 2014
SKETCHBOOK TWO - LIFE-DRAWING STUDIES - 2014
In my small human sculpture experiments I have used cardboard, match-sticks, blue tack, sticks/branches and even small stones. I have it in mind to make a life sized humanoid sculpture using these materials as life-casting myself and a male figure would of needed more time to plan, prepare and produce the mould as well as other techniques and methods involved in this particular process. I was trying to recreate the negative lines and the surroundings as the positive white page, just creating the outline just like the life drawing study above.
In the photographs below is a series of photographs of a experimentation on KeseyPollock methods using preparing, making, destroying and then documenting techniques. In addition to this how Martin Creed’s use of household objects methods of creating art with it. In this one I used Cooks matchsticks and The Works masking tape and a regular lighter fire to set fire to the sculpture, destroying it and distinguishing into nothingness. Then using my camera to document the process.
These are is sequence from first product to end product
In the photographs below is a series of photographs of a experimentation on KeseyPollock methods using preparing, making, destroying and then documenting techniques. In addition to this how Martin Creed’s use of household objects methods of creating art with it. In this one I used Cooks matchsticks and The Works masking tape and a regular lighter fire to set fire to the sculpture, destroying it and distinguishing into nothingness. Then using my camera to document the process.
These are is sequence from first product to end product
Below is a sequence of Start Product and End Product - destroying the small sculpture with fire.
The experiment went as I predicted, as I planned to set fire to the bottom but started with the arm. The fire went out two times in which I just re-lighted it with a cigarette lighter, once the flame was big enough the sculpture went alit, leaving burnt dusty remains. This experiment was well-behaved and was an successful try-out. This time because of the size of the sculpture but as predicted the fire reacts with the wind to create interesting photographs, and what really interests me the black residue it leaves behind.
I would certainly do it bigger next time with flammable materials to get a real vivid fire going, distorting and destroying the figurine. Creating new formations and abstractions. In addition to this record the process rather than photographing the documentation, in a controlled environment due the flames getting out of control I then can get a clear perception of that happens to the burnt content of subject matter.
The black dust and excess of the burnt matches engrossed my attention and how my first thoughts was of the phenomenon cause by the belt surrounding venus that’s occurs during the evening time, when a band of pinkish, brownish sky will appear between the sky and the horizon. Dust waves containing minerals such as coal and iron. This led me to go onto Martin Creed’s work and how he uses the most simplistic items to portray his ideas. Such as the Blue Tac, placing one small blob onto the wall.
The black dust could emphasise on many subject areas, such as to what the black dust could be, a single particle to underline an atom. These ideas can go on mind mapping themselves but on the other hand can I say this black dust is resemblances of Venus’s ring belts that molten rock is not common but real pieces of outer space are near enough priceless. Our earth made from the same materials but not thought after only precise rocks and minerals. Creating the thought of having it, or just simply believing in it.
Excluding for a second what if these science phenomena’s were surrounding and bursting around Earth, colliding into the atmosphere, we would not pre-exist these stormy, unliveable, realistic environments. But we know it happens frequently on other planets. So in displaying this black dust deposit, creating a moment of false reality but the phenomena is what it could be?. The act of bringing the truth into being.
“ The artist Tony Cragg talks of ‘these things we have chosen to call sculpture’ as existing on equal terms with every other object. He doesn’t make assumptions about what sculpture is but calls on it to ‘admit its fraternity in the republic of existence, where no object is a second class citizen.’ Sculpture’s prerogative, its primary duty, is to ‘confront us with the fact of our material reality and to make the fact available to thought and feeling, an open secret shared with others in common space.’
Beuys and Cragg are both declaring that art is part of the real world, the world of physical stuff and experience that we deal with everyday. Its not some separate and elevated category of special objects, but a way of understanding the nature of the world around us.” (Nature of Things - SHORT ESSAY)
My finals closing stages of the project was how do display my black dust and what materials and processes should I use? Obviously I thought of using matchsticks however in point of fact a lot of it distinguishes away. So I thought of re-creating the dust of Venus’s belt so therefore I crushed up black soft pastels to produce the black dust effect, also using crushed up red and orange soft pastels to create the hot embers left behind. This is displayed on a white bit of paper to create blankness and to let the colours dominate the surrounding white area.
I then went onto using crushed up pink, purple and brown soft pastels to create the warm pinkish horizon that causes the black dusty belts to get violent and viotile to the contiguous atmosphere. So I have briskly splashed the coloured soft pastel pigment onto the blackness of the white paper recreating the violent storms. I’ve also added blue pigment to resemble the minerals and coal particles in the dust clouds.
In conclusion to my findings that phenomenology is everywhere to how we perceive things to actuality what reality is and how we can make our minds believe what it wants to believe. Leaving us to create vivid and surreal thoughts and interpretations of subject matter. But intriguingly how I went onto something complicated to something so simplistically small and tactile but surrounds us almost everywhere in the real world and stands the strongest piece.
The final outcome went considerably well but what I would do next time is to execute it with more simplistic outcomes such as just producing a clean un-burnt matchstick next to a disintegrated dust. Using more of a Martin Creed’s approach to household objects. I’m not sure at this point if it would be stronger but With further practical and contextual studies I could practise this.
By Keshia
I would certainly do it bigger next time with flammable materials to get a real vivid fire going, distorting and destroying the figurine. Creating new formations and abstractions. In addition to this record the process rather than photographing the documentation, in a controlled environment due the flames getting out of control I then can get a clear perception of that happens to the burnt content of subject matter.
The black dust and excess of the burnt matches engrossed my attention and how my first thoughts was of the phenomenon cause by the belt surrounding venus that’s occurs during the evening time, when a band of pinkish, brownish sky will appear between the sky and the horizon. Dust waves containing minerals such as coal and iron. This led me to go onto Martin Creed’s work and how he uses the most simplistic items to portray his ideas. Such as the Blue Tac, placing one small blob onto the wall.
The black dust could emphasise on many subject areas, such as to what the black dust could be, a single particle to underline an atom. These ideas can go on mind mapping themselves but on the other hand can I say this black dust is resemblances of Venus’s ring belts that molten rock is not common but real pieces of outer space are near enough priceless. Our earth made from the same materials but not thought after only precise rocks and minerals. Creating the thought of having it, or just simply believing in it.
Excluding for a second what if these science phenomena’s were surrounding and bursting around Earth, colliding into the atmosphere, we would not pre-exist these stormy, unliveable, realistic environments. But we know it happens frequently on other planets. So in displaying this black dust deposit, creating a moment of false reality but the phenomena is what it could be?. The act of bringing the truth into being.
“ The artist Tony Cragg talks of ‘these things we have chosen to call sculpture’ as existing on equal terms with every other object. He doesn’t make assumptions about what sculpture is but calls on it to ‘admit its fraternity in the republic of existence, where no object is a second class citizen.’ Sculpture’s prerogative, its primary duty, is to ‘confront us with the fact of our material reality and to make the fact available to thought and feeling, an open secret shared with others in common space.’
Beuys and Cragg are both declaring that art is part of the real world, the world of physical stuff and experience that we deal with everyday. Its not some separate and elevated category of special objects, but a way of understanding the nature of the world around us.” (Nature of Things - SHORT ESSAY)
My finals closing stages of the project was how do display my black dust and what materials and processes should I use? Obviously I thought of using matchsticks however in point of fact a lot of it distinguishes away. So I thought of re-creating the dust of Venus’s belt so therefore I crushed up black soft pastels to produce the black dust effect, also using crushed up red and orange soft pastels to create the hot embers left behind. This is displayed on a white bit of paper to create blankness and to let the colours dominate the surrounding white area.
I then went onto using crushed up pink, purple and brown soft pastels to create the warm pinkish horizon that causes the black dusty belts to get violent and viotile to the contiguous atmosphere. So I have briskly splashed the coloured soft pastel pigment onto the blackness of the white paper recreating the violent storms. I’ve also added blue pigment to resemble the minerals and coal particles in the dust clouds.
In conclusion to my findings that phenomenology is everywhere to how we perceive things to actuality what reality is and how we can make our minds believe what it wants to believe. Leaving us to create vivid and surreal thoughts and interpretations of subject matter. But intriguingly how I went onto something complicated to something so simplistically small and tactile but surrounds us almost everywhere in the real world and stands the strongest piece.
The final outcome went considerably well but what I would do next time is to execute it with more simplistic outcomes such as just producing a clean un-burnt matchstick next to a disintegrated dust. Using more of a Martin Creed’s approach to household objects. I’m not sure at this point if it would be stronger but With further practical and contextual studies I could practise this.
By Keshia