Richard Diebenkorn at the De Young

Just went to see the Diebenkorn exhibit at the DeYoung.  This is a "NOT TO MISS" exhibit, especially for those interested in COLOR!

 

Monotone Symphony

We are all familiar with monochromatic paintings, but a monotone symphony?!

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September 17, 2013

From the New York Times, Wednesday, 09/18/2012

A Sound, Then Silence (Try Not to Breathe)

By RANDY KENNEDY

The sound, a D major chord produced by an orchestra and a chorus, begins abruptly, full force, and fills the air for 20 minutes, like a sonorous foghorn with a stuck switch. It ends as suddenly as it begins, but there is no applause because the orchestra is only half finished — its members sit without playing or even moving, “performing” silence for just as long.

This highly eccentric symphony, receiving its first New York performance on Wednesday, was created by the artist Yves Klein, who is best known for his monochrome paintings. He harbored no small ambitions when he began thinking in the late 1940s about a kind of musical complement to his visual ideas: a symphony of monotony and silence, a much harder thing to do well than he or anyone imagined.

“You can’t really do a full rehearsal of something like this,” said Roland Dahinden, a Swiss composer and performer who has conducted the piece four times in Europe and will take the baton (and stopwatch) in New York. “It’s too hard. Everyone would just die.” Klein was one of the leading heirs of Marcel Duchamp’s Modernist wit, but he was not joking around. “The Monotone-Silence” Symphony, he wrote, expressed no less than “what I wished my life to be.” But Klein, who died of a heart attack at the age of 34 in 1962, never had the chance to hear his symphony realized as he imagined it. For the only documented performance during his lifetime, in 1960, at an art gallery in Paris, with Klein himself in white tie as conductor, only 10 musicians participated.

On Wednesday evening, the fulsome orchestra he dreamed of — 70 musicians and singers — will gather to perform the work at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, at East 73rd Street. The hope among those involved is that the sold-out performance, the product of months of intense planning, will hew closer to Klein’s ethereal intentions than many other versions attempted since his death.

With that goal in mind, the performers and Mr. Dahinden have been preparing themselves mentally over the last few weeks for an unusual test of stamina, patience and repose: to play one note in an “intense and continuous” way, as Klein instructed, for an unreasonable amount of time and then to remain quiet and motionless for longer than most people ever do.

Mr. Dahinden, who is being flown in for the one-night event by the Dominique Lévy Gallery, which is producing it, added: “When it’s right, you have this huge block of sound. There is such a beauty within the piece. You sit in the audience and you start to hear some melodies and some fragments of melodies, and yet nobody is playing them.” Klein said he saw the work as “having neither a beginning nor an end,” a creation “freed from the phenomenology of time.”

To pull off the first half of the symphony, the singers and musicians — 10 cellists, 10 violinists, 3 bassists, 3 flutists, 3 oboists and 3 French horn players — need to produce the chord with no vibrato or variation, breathing and bowing in such a way as to create a sound with no audible breaks. (Early on, Klein compared the sound to a human scream and played recordings of screams — one quite harrowing example was the voice of the French playwright Antonin Artaud — to demonstrate.)

Sahra Motalebi, a New York singer and performance artist who has helped to assemble the musicians and the choir — which will be made up of both professional singers and experimental musicians — said: “The reality is that it’s like a kind of bizarre primordial universe chorus. It’s not like a note you’ve ever heard.”

Klein conceived of the idea for the symphony around 1947-48, the same years that John Cage, in New York, was formulating “4’33”,” a landmark work that involves a pianist not playing the piano but instead attuning an audience to the complexities of silence. Though there seems to be no evidence that Cage and Klein were aware of each other at the time or influenced each other later, Klein also came to view silence as the most important part of the musical work.

“This is really my symphony,” he wrote, “and not the sounds during its performance.”

Daniel Moquay, who oversees the Klein archive and estate in Paris, said the silence is sometimes more difficult than the sound for audiences to take in. “You get into the deepness of a silence and you realize that silence is not a nothing,” he said. “Silence is something that is very, very powerful.”

The work anticipated some of the interests that Fluxus artists would soon begin exploring in New York and Europe in the 1960s, and it feels very much in tune with works by young contemporary artists like Ragnar Kjartansson, who in 2011 staged a critically acclaimed 12-hour performance of the denouement of Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” by opera singers.

Klein’s symphony has been performed both with the permission of the estate, and without, over the last four decades — once by a chorus of as many as a hundred singers, and at least once by a single musician with a laptop.

During the original 1960 performance, Klein included a companion piece in which three naked women — he called them “living brushes” — covered themselves in his signature deep blue paint and pressed their bodies on paper during the sound half of the symphony, freezing during the silence; that part will not be recreated in New York.

Dominique Lévy, who is opening her new gallery at 909 Madison Avenue, next door to the church, became determined to produce the symphony to accompany her inaugural exhibition, “Audible Presence: Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Cy Twombly,” an examination of ideas about time and music in works by those three artists. (Tickets for the free performance were all claimed almost immediately after it was announced.)

Ms. Lévy first heard the symphony in 2007 and said that after the abrupt cut between the sound and the silence, “I had all these conflicting feelings of wanting to laugh and then confusion and then finally deep emotion.”

Early this year, she secured permission from the Klein archive to produce the work and dispatched Jennifer G. Buonocore, the gallery’s associate director, to Paris to delve into the archive, to try to ensure that the work would be realized with the best understanding of what Klein wanted.

But even with the best efforts and intentions, Mr. Moquay said, the symphony doesn’t always work. Of four performances held in a Paris church during a Klein exhibition at the Pompidou Center in 2007, he said he felt that only one was wholly successful. But it worked so well, he added, that a lovely kind of St. Francis moment occurred.

“The door of the church was open, and a pigeon came in and sat where everyone could see him,” he said. “During the 20-minute silence, he did not move at all. It was kind of incredible. And then when the silence was over, he left.”

 

Sketchbook Assignment #1

FROTTAGE ASSIGNMENT

tracing paper
charcoal
pencils: use hard and soft lead
gray or black pastels (optional)
or any other media that works and is achromatic (without color)

find textured surfaces place your tracing paper on top and make a rubbing with any of the above media. The rubbing does not to be large -- 4" x 3" at the largest.

Cut any size rectangle or square from each rubbing. These could be 2" x 3" or 1.5" x 2", etc, but once you decide on a size be somewhat consistent.

Create a value ladder or scale in you sketch book with the cut rubbings.  You can make this ladder any size. It can run from the top of a page to the bottom or run from one page horizontal to the other.

Below are some examples of Frottage:

(here you see the paper put over a textured surface)

MUNSELL COLOR SYSTEM

Color Models

The Munsell Color System

One of the most influential color-modeling systems was devised by Albert Henry Munsell, an American artist. Munsell desired to create a "rational way to describe color" that would use clear decimal notation instead of a lot of color names that he considered "foolish" and "misleading." His system, which he began in 1898 with the creation of his color sphere, or tree, saw its full expression with his publication, A Color Notation, in 1905. This work has been reprinted several times and is still a standard for colorimetry (the measuring of color).

Munsell modeled his system as an orb around whose equator runs a band of colors. The axis of the orb is a scale of neutral gray values with white as the north pole and black as the south pole. Extending horizontally from the axis at each gray value is a gradation of color progressing from neutral gray to full saturation. With these three defining aspects, any of thousands of colors could be fully described. Munsell named these aspects, or qualities, Hue, Value, and Chroma.

Hue
Munsell defined hue as "the quality by which we distinguish one color from another." He selected five principle colors: red, yellow, green, blue, and purple; and five intermediate colors: yellow-red, green-yellow, blue-green, purple-blue, and red-purple; and he arranged these in a wheel measured off in 100 compass points:

The colors were simply identified as R for red, YR for red-yellow, Y for yellow, etc. Each primary and intermediate color was allotted ten degrees around the compass and then further identified by its place in the segment. For example, primary red would be identified as 5R since it stands at the mid-point of the red segment. 2.5R would be a red tending more toward red-purple, while 7.5R is a red tending more toward yellow-red.

Munsell's arrangement of colors in this way was also important for his concept of color harmony, or balance. Munsell was a conservative artist with strict views on the aesthetics of painting. He wanted his system to serve not only as guide for notating colors, but as a guide for choosing complimentary colors for artistic work.

Value
Value was defined by Munsell defined value as "the quality by which we distinguish a light color from a dark one." Value is a neutral axis that refers to the grey level of the color. This ranges from white to black. As notations such as 10R, 5YR, 7.5PB, etc. denote particular hues, the notation N is used to denote the gray value at any point on the axis. Thus a value of 5N would denote a middle gray, 2N a dark gray, and 7N a light gray. In Munsell's original system, values 1N and 9N are, respectively, black and white, though this was later expanded to values of 0 (black) through 10 (white).

The value of a particular hue would be noted with the value after the hue designation. For example, 5PB 6/ indicates a middle purple-blue at the value level of 6.

It should be noted, too, that Munsell's scale of value is visual, or perceptual. That is, it's based on how we see differences in relative light, not on a strict set of mathematical values from a light source or illuminant.

Chroma
Chroma is the quality that distinguishes the difference from a pure hue to a gray shade. The chroma axis extends from the value axis at a right angle and the amount of chroma is noted after the value designation. Thus 7.5YR 7/12 indicates a yellow-red hue tending toward yellow with a value of 7 and a chroma of 12:

However, chroma is not uniform for every hue at every value. Munsell saw that full chroma for individual hues might be achieved at very different places in the color sphere. For example, the fullest chroma for hue 5RP (red-purple) is achieved at 5/26:

Another color such as 10YR (yellowish yellow-red) has a much shorter chroma axis and reaches fullest chroma at 7/10 and 6/10:

In the Munsell System, reds, blues, and purples tend to be stronger hues that average higher chroma values at full saturation, while yellows and greens are weaker hues that average fullest chroma saturation relatively close to the neutral axis. And, reds, blues, and purples reach fullest saturation at mid-levels on the value scale, while yellows and greens reach it at higher values (7/- or 8/-).

The result of these differences is that what Munsell originally envisioned as a sphere or orb is radically asymmetrical. A three-dimensional solid representation of Munsell's system would look like the following:

This gave rise to the alternate describing the solid representation as a tree.

Munsell's system, although dating back to the 19th century and devised more by intuition than exact science, is still an internationally accepted, leading color system. The Munsell Book of Colors is sold commercially to printers and designers, as are a number of other Munsell color products.

Also available are digital color libraries for Munsell Book of Colors and Munsell High Chroma Colors. These libraries are available in Adobe PageMaker and Adobe FrameMaker and can be found in some other drawing and layout programs as well. However, as we will point out again later, any digital color library will not display accurately due to the gamut constraints of RGB. You can only match colors accurately using printed swatches supplied by companies such as Munsell.

The Munsell company, founded by A.H. Munsell in 1918, is currently owned by GretagMacbeth and can be found on the Web at www.munsell.com.

ASSIGNMENT 1, COLOR THEORY

CUBIST COLLAGE AND MATIERE STUDIES

A Couple of years ago while visiting New York, I had a peak art experience that was completely serendipitous.  As usual, I was a hectic mess running around town trying to fit in a "to see" list in my short visit to New York.  The day before I left to go home, I had two things on my agenda: to see a show at the Moma of Picasso's guitar drawings and then, right after, go to the Paul Taylor Dance Company performance of his classic choreography, Orbs.  As it turned out, the drawing exhibit and dance performance were both concerned with a similar endeavor of deconstructing the object into simplified lines, planes in space, locating iconic forms and dismantling of the "classical" approach to art.  The rigor of Picasso's drawings was amazing.  As I walked through the exhibit, I could see his  almost visceral struggle to wrench form from it's moorings in order to privilege the surface of the picture plane. The marks, textures, planes and spacial relationship became paramount to the "image" or "picture."  At some point, I was so emotionally overcome with his efforts, I had to race out of the galleries and take a break!  The same urgency of finding new form existed in the Paul Taylor piece.  I hadn't expected to see similarities in the two, but it left for a lasting impression.  In any event, this was the inspiration for this assignment.  Study and read the interactive MOMA website before you start the project. Also, read the review of the performance I saw, which I will hand out in class & watch Youtube Taylor performance before you begin. Sadly, I couldn't find Orbs, but feel free to explore his work and, by the way, the company usually performs at the Zellerback Hall every year.



 

COLOR CHARTS EXHIBITION AT MOMA

Here is the link to an exhibit at MOMA on color charts.  It's a great resource!

COLOR CHARTShttp://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2008/colorchart/flashsite/

James Kalm Video

James Kalm is a New York artist who goes to openings and videos them.  The featured artist, Chuck Webster, was influenced by the paintings of Mark Rothko made for the titular Rothko Chapel.  I had seen a show of Webster's work some years ago and though they were too pretty.  Since then, he has really beefed them up. Kalm always videos a street artist to start of the movie.  I believe this one is named Brad and Kalm has videoed him several times.  The poor guy is constantly getting busted as the camera rolls!  Here is a link to the video, enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLvYUjHZEWY&feature=em-uploademail

ESSAY ON ALBERS by OLIVER BARKER

Experimentation, Not Replication

Josef Albers and the Vorkurs

Oliver Barker

"Let us be younger with our students and include in our consideration new architecture and new furniture, modern music and modern pictures.  We ought to discuss movies and fashions, make-up and stationery, advertising, shop signs and newspapers, modern songs and jazz.  The pupil and his growing into his world are more important than a teacher and his background."

Written in 1935, just two years after leaving Germany to begin a new life at Black Mountain College in the United States, the above passage encapsulates Josef Albers’s virulent enthusiasm for his role as a progressive educator. Albers stressed his seminal philosophy for the creation of learned individuals through the encouragement of independent and open-ended experimentation.  Spontaneity and “a playful tinkering with the material…”   unburdened by formal training underpinned Albers’s earliest years as a teacher and remained a key tenet throughout his distinguished career as an educator.
Born and educated in Bottrop, in the Westphalian region of Germany, Albers began his pedagogical profession in 1908 as an elementary school teacher at the Josephschule public school in Bottrop. In an interview conducted when he was 83 years old, Albers reflected on those initial and formative years as a public school teacher:

"I took my teaching job very seriously … I was put in a school in the country where I had (children of varying ages)… all in one room. I had to prepare myself so thoroughly at home that I declared in writing at that time that homework is first for the teacher … every pupil learns from their own age level easier than from a teacher who is a generation ahead of them…"

This requirement for students to learn through the shared experience of interacting with their peers, rather than relying solely on the teacher’s instruction, became a fundamental precept to Albers’s approach as an educator. By the time Albers began teaching at the Bauhaus, this approach manifested itself in the form of group critiques, as documented by the now ubiquitous 1928 photograph of Albers and his Bauhaus Dessau students. During these group critiques Albers would habitually ask students to “ … test our results by discussing and defending them as a group…individual and group crits require a well-founded justification of the choice of material, procedure, and form.” In his seminal 1928 article Werklicher Formunterricht (Teaching Design) Albers gave further voice to the necessity of learning through a collective dialogue, concluding his treatise on education with the words “as students and teachers, we must again learn from and with one another…”
Albers’s dedication to the process of collaborative learning was a core principle of his entire teaching philosophy, a philosophy informed by his own experience as a student. In 1918, having set aside his teaching responsibilities to pursue his own artistic studies, Albers enrolled in the Königliche Bayerische Akademie de Bildenden Kunst (Royal Bavarian Art Academy) in Munich. After his first year there as a student, Albers became disheartened by the academic training offered at the school which he later described as a “backward looking” approach. Around this same time, Albers encountered Walter Gropius’s manifesto for the newly formed Bauhaus school which would allow for the creation of “a new guild of craftsmen…and the new building of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity…”  Spurred on by this pronouncement, Albers enrolled at the Weimar Bauhaus in the spring of 1920 with the aim of cleansing himself of his past academic training. He embraced Gropius’s new artistic order where the collaborative study and execution of artistic pursuits placed emphasis on the present, celebrating the possession of practical and technical knowledge. Of this seismic and life-altering shift, Albers later stated “I was thirty-two…threw all my old things out of the window, started once more from the bottom. That was the best step I made in my life.”
Upon arrival at the Bauhaus, Albers enrolled in the school’s introductory course known as the Vorkurs. Structured as a preliminary overview seminar, the Vorkurs was a requirement for all new Bauhaus students before they were allowed to progress to study in a specific Bauhaus workshop. Since the Bauhaus’s inception, the Vorkurs had been taught by Johannes Itten but, following disagreement with Gropius about the course’s direction, Itten departed the school suddenly in late 1922 creating an opportunity for Albers to be appointed as a Vorkurs instructor. Sharing this newly divided role with Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Albers focused his energies primarily on teaching the materials and design components of the course. As a Bauhaus educator Albers approached this role with characteristic intensity, immediately removing the expressionistic tendencies that had characterized Itten’s teaching of the course. Instead, Albers instigated a methodology categorized by problem solving in which no single method existed for the resolution of the exercises, encouraging students to find their own solutions to the tasks presented. Of this new practice, Albers wrote:

"For me education is not first giving answers, but giving questions. And if a student comes to me with a question, I consider if very carefully whether I should answer him or not. When I give him the answer to an execution, then I take away from him the opportunity to invent it himself and discover it himself."

Under the umbrella of the Vorkurs Albers provided his students with two approaches to studying the functional and utilitarian aspects of the physical materials with which they were working. In the opening lines of Werklicher Formunterricht, Albers wrote:

“ours is an economically oriented age…economic form arises out of function and material. study of material naturally precedes understanding of function. thus our attempt to come to terms with form begins with study of the material.”

Within the framework of what Albers called Materie studies, Albers’s Vorkurs students explored elements of a material’s external appearance. In examining the distinct characteristics of a material’s surface for themselves, students experienced what Albers described as:

"the systemic ordering of materials into suites with rising or falling values…tactile scales from hard to soft, smooth to rough, warm to cold or hard-edged to amorphous, smoothly polished to sticky-absorbent."

Simultaneously, Albers challenged his students to investigate the internal properties of materials, exploiting their structural possibilities and limitations. Working with a wide range of materials – paper, wire mesh, corrugated cardboard, glass, plastic, sheet metal, tin foil, matchboxes – students were encouraged to examine the dormant possibilities of these substances. These exercises defined what Albers identified as “…learning to see both statically and dynamically…” and further encouraged students to learn experientially through their own exploration and practice, placing emphasis on the need for “…intimate contact with the material through one’s own fingertips…”
As an initial exercise Albers had his students begin their exploration of materials by studying the three-dimensional potential of paper. By folding and fastening paper in ways that would place “emphasis on the edge…and test its performance under tension and pressure,”  the resulting creations were varied and diverse. While there was no one way to approach each exercise, Albers encouraged students to plan their folded paper models in advance, ensuring that the economy of form was measured in relation to the anticipated expenditure of material and labor. The resulting studies, captured in an iconic series of photographs by fellow Bauhausler Erich Consemüller, show architectonic structures achieved through the cutting and folding of paper without any loss or waste placing emphasis on the previously unrecognized potential of paper as a material. The textural and malleable properties of this material were also explored through repeated folding to create prismatic structures and fluid, organic forms. By pushing the Vorkurs in these new exciting directions, Albers enabled his students to explore the hidden three-dimensional aptitude of paper. The resulting forms from these studies inhabited the realms of positive and negative space thus revealing the latent potential at odds with paper’s traditional applications. The objective within Albers’s Vorkurs was not to create finished works of art, but to explore the duality and latent potential of materials.
Albers’s emphasis as an educator was on forward-looking experimentation. In each classroom setting where a proactive and disciplined approach is allowed to lead the consistent evaluation of the both processes as well as of the end results, the powerful educational legacy of Albers’s Vorkurs lives on.