How to make a STUDY as a part of an artistic work/practice
When considering the “study” it might be clarifying to think of how it differs from a “project proposal”.
(an aside: as soon as we think things through in this manner, thinking about what they are “not”, we are using a strategy of analysis which could be called: negation, opposition, dichotomy. Its not so important what we call it, but to realize that this is a specific approach, a way of operating, and analyzing. We may ask later what that would mean in material terms, for instance, how would you use this mode of analysis when making a study.)
A project proposal is goal oriented, teleological, it contains a kind of argument, it is intended for an audience other than the artist. It arises from a desire to move from a state of having conceived a project to having built it.
A STUDY on the other hand is something made out of interest, desire, perhaps not even yet intention but just a kind of vibration, it is an “IN THE MIDST OF IT” kind of thing. Some studies may function as artworks, or proposals, but they are made for other purposes, as explorations. The audience of a study is, primarily the artist themself. However (and especially in the case of this assignment) as the study is a vehicle for exteriorizing, manifesting, giving form to, nascent ideas, images, collecting disparate references, etc. it functions best if it is not hermetic (that is it isn’t a code that can only be read by the artist) but in some sense gives the artist a perspective, even a distance on their operations toward “production”. So therefore the study often has a public interest as well.
Each artist may, over the years of practice, figure out their mode of study making. It may take many forms, writing, models, drawing, collage, video diary, audio clips.
As we are looking at Helio Oiticia, we might consider his “Bolides” as forms of study, what followed them in his ouvre were larger versions of installations, with many of the same principles, interested also in colour, and experience, not only as formal categories, but also philosophically and politically.
Hélio Oiticica/ B01 Box Bólide 01 1963 (from Tate site)
The painter Gerhard Richter’s “Atlas” a giant collection of clippings which are the source material for his work are also an amazing example of a study. (And now there is a kind of atlas of the Atlas, on line) http://www.gerhard-richter.com/art/atlas/atlas.php?11587
Gerhard Richter/ Newspaper photographs. 1962, 51.7 cm x 66.7 cm, Atlas Sheet: 7
We want to consider what kind of operations/modes of material-conceptual-image-audio-etc analysis are good for studies, but first we might consider…how do I decide what my study is “on” or “about”. This is the beauty of a STUDY, to some degree the study is going to tell the artist what it is “about” rather than visa versa.
In the text by Hinderer Cruz which frames the notes by Oitica which we also read, he talks of a everyday experience of startled attraction, that he suggests carried a continuing effect in Oiticia’s practice. It is just this kind of NOTICING that forms the seeds, the basis, is further germinated in studies and works. To quote from p. 11 of that text “During the conversation between Oiticia and Mario Montez recorded as the basis for ‘MARIO MONTEZ, TROPICAMP’, Oiticia recalls his first visit to Times Square in New York City in 1948. He tells Montez about the deep impression a Broadway poster made on him as a ten-year old—For Irving Berlin’s ‘Annie Get Your Gun’…The poster depicted Annie holding a gun that ‘stuck out of the huge poster’ and was suspended in space as a horizontal element…This early memory can be considered key for the reception of Oiticica’s work for many reasons, both biographical and formalist (the overcoming of the illusionist pictorial space, etc)…”
BUT how should we do this study? Theory has its methodologies, marxist, psychoanalytic, historical, formal, etc. Within these there may be many tendencies, or modes of thinking attributable to one or the other, such as negation, association, cause and effect, etc. Are there modes that are appropriate to studio art analysis? These are the kind of questions that one might ponder as one moves in and around, toward and away from, above and below ones “topic”. A topic that may just be a collection of interests and observations. Like the moment you want to interact with a sleeping dog, or falling snow, or shadows, the big question is WHAT is the RIGHT APPROACH? The approach that wont melt the very thing your interested in.
But very likely there is no “right” approach. So we could start with:
References: clippings, thoughts, sounds, colours, attractions, topics, themes, research areas, an image.
Research: verbal, visual, material research, what, when, how, a set of notes of all types may emerge.
Materials: 2 D or 3D or durational media, and a combination. Paper, cardboard, wood, glass, etc.
Organization: by similarity, dissimilarity, colour, size
Organization!: hierarchy or vertical, horizontal or even, clumps and clusters
Organization?!: in relation to the page, a time frame, a space, one piece in relation to another
Relations
Mimesis: ie creating a faithful copy. Sometimes this will be a good mode of study.
Similarity: collecting lots of related images/words/objects etc.
Association: a lot like “similarity” however one can associate a wide range of images, thoughts, events, etc. without them being necessarily similar, they may have all happened at the same point in time for instance, so they would be associated by history/time rather than likeness.
Negation: find the opposite, the factor that operates to cancel or oppose whatever it is you are working with
Appropriation: just take it
Quotation: incorporate parts of a reference
Addition and Subtraction: the point of interest or attraction, the theme or topic…and something else? or take part away (think of John Baldesari’s many works where he obliterates part of the image)
Collage: related to “addition” above, a intuitive system of connections, new connections, magnetisms
Punctuation: if your interest (the subject of your study) has a syntax, can you alter the rhythm the flow, ie, add new punctuation
Vocabulary: if your interest (the subject of your study) could be said to have a vocabulary, then what kind of substitutions, or translations, can you perform, would you like to perform on some of the elements or “words”.
All these suggested modes of working are not just for themselves aesthetically, but a way to STUDY, to OBSERVE, to be SURPRISED BY, to DEFAMILIARIZE, to put into VISUAL, MATERIAL TERMS, the material (your subject or theme or area of interest) that you are approaching.
Bruce Nauman, Composite Photo of Two Messes on the Studio Floor, 1967
http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A4243&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1