MODULE 2: COLOR, TEXTURE, TRANSFORMATIONS + COLLAGE
2.1 INTRODUCTION
In these weeks exercises, we will be working with our digital image editors in 2 different directions. First, we will use them to explore more techniques for incorporating color and texture into digital images and artworks. Picking up on last week’s theme of moving from the photographic to the graphic, we will go from adjusting colors already present in digital images and digitally capturing textures, to adding new color and textures elements to digital images, and finally move towards developing images centered around primarily color and/or texture explorations.
In the second half of the exercises, we will address more selection, layering and transformation techniques for creating digital image collage. This will add another realm of possibility when it comes to visually exploring the space between the photographic and the graphic. Collage is a technique and form with subversive, radical roots, many of which challenge the visual assumptions tied to the photograph - such as “truth”, “beauty”, “order”, etc - by literally cutting, reconstructing and reordering such images. Image editors offer powerful ways to further pursue this restructuring, especially in their abilities to extend the illusion of photographic “integrity” or “realism” to images that do not actually physically exist. In other words, they can make the unreal appear real, or possible.
2.2 ARTWORKS ABOUT COLOR
There are many modern and contemporary artists who focus on the ways in which our eyes see and our brains interpret color on a physiological level. Some of these artists worked directly with color theory principles. In many instances, these practices and resulting artworks further expand the general scope of knowledge surrounding color and color theory. Color is a topic where art and science overlap extensively - Sir Issac Newton developed the first color wheel, and many pre-industrial painters throughout the world needed to employ chemistry and experimentation when developing pigments and paints. (This might be an interesting parallel when it comes to the digital techniques and concepts we are applying in this course).
There is a certainly a gray area with color and meaning where it begins to shift from physiological to psychological, social and emotional. As methodical as some artists are with their color explorations, I think it is still important to consider that a color theory might not hold true across different social and cultural viewers or time periods. That being said, color does have the potential to express a more universal visual language (than perhaps symbols, signs and written languages) which many of the artists below explore from a multitude of standpoints.
There are whole courses that cover color theory and application - the examples below barely scratch the surface of what is out there in terms of artworks, however, this can be an excellent short list of seeing a few ways that different artists approach making works about color. When viewing these images, think about how you choose colors to include in your artworks - what are your reasons for selecting different colors? How do you develop color schemes? What kinds of meanings are you using color to invoke or connect to, or, alternatively, what accidental meanings might have been communicated with past uses of color.
The slideshow below begins with several prints by Josef Albers, from his book "Interactions of Color" first published in 1963. This book used color exercises and diagrams to explain many color theory principles that Albers explored - and in many cases helped define - in his previous works.
2.3 Color + Pattern
The works below all work with different repeated patterns of color and shapes. Similar to Josef Albers, many of these apply different colors to similar patterns, but none as methodical or rooted in color theory or color interaction. Ellsworth Kelly, for example, developed some of his grid patterns completely based on chance - he randomly drew numbers for each square in a grid and then applied the corresponding hue or swatch to that space on the canvas. In this examples, Kelly is using the random grid of color to express not a color theory, but to illustrate the chance operations his painting was generated by.
Piet Mondrian attempted to achieve an expressive visual harmony that had less to do with scientific color theory, and more about the balance and visual harmonics with patterns and grids of primary yellow, blue and red hues. As much as these images also rely on complex patterns and shapes to direct the eye, color is still a key compositional element that creates interactions, movement and different focal points.
2.4 Color Field Paintings
Color Field painters - along with other abstract expressionists - have drawn a lot of criticism over the years from gallery and museum goers who argue that their paintings “aren’t art”. I don’t agree with this sentiment, however, I do think its worth noting this response, and that their more “simple” aesthetic is often misunderstood.
These paintings can help better understand “conceptual art”. For many of these artists, their work was about immersing the viewer in color - they were attempting to turn color into a subject. Instead of a painting with the color red, they hoped to create the sense of “red”. Scale is also an important factor - many of them tower above viewers in real life. These artists were not concerned with a complex technique or making a painting that looked like something - their primary goal was an idea or a feeling they were trying to invoke. Consider this theme, especially when working with digital tools where many of the processes and operations are regarded as “easier” than their analog counterparts. How might this perception influence meaning or aesthetic value for some viewers? What is your goal, or the idea, motivating whatever digital process you are attempting?
2.5 Color + Light
Many artists work with a combination of light and color. The two together can oftentimes shift a work from 2D, to 3D to even 4D (artworks where time is one of the driving components). Works by James Turrell or Carlos Cruz Diez, for example, place colored lights in specifically constructed spaces or environments - the three dimensional spaces themselves become a critical part of the artwork. In Turell’s “Skyspace” installations, he creates a portal for viewing the sky as a color, which constantly changes throughout the day and the night.
Digital image editors provide many processes for applying colors to different photographed environments - these incorporations can be used to plan a sculptural project or physical installation of an actual site, or used to enhance or add meaning to different photographed objects or spaces.
And the more recent Ariana Grande video, which borrows the colored lighting fixtures in some of James Turrell’s other works.
2.6 Texture, the myth of Two Dimensions + the Digital
Texture is an important, interesting component of image-making when it comes to both 2D artworks and digitally produced artworks. Texture can certainly complicate even the most basic foundations of 2D images - as soon as the artist ads a physical - or actual - texture to an image, whether it be with layering paint or by gluing objects into the surface of a canvas, it ceases to be strictly “Two-Dimensional” by definition. Even the most minimal application of watercolor technically adds volume to an artwork and affects a , and papers with heavier weights and textured surfaces, even before any pigment, ink or treatment is added to them, have both texture and volume (however slight).
To go even a bit further down the rabbit hole, digitally produced artworks add yet another layer to this conversation. One could argue that “blank” or “new” files in digital editing environments actually present artists with a truly “2D” surface. As we discussed earlier, the images that appear on a screen, as well as projected images, are composed by light. Certainly a screen has a texture, as does the surface of projection, however, the light that “applies” these images has less physicality than paints, inks, graphite, charcoal, etc, and, hopefully in most cases, does not physically or permanently alter the surface that they are temporarily applied to. So, ask yourself, does light have 0 dimensions? Is it 2D because it is a volume-less image with only a length and width. Or is it 4 dimensional? 5 Dimensional? Maybe you are in the interstellar tesseract right now, as you read this dimension-defying digital type.
Whichever dimension you have decided you are in currently, I am bringing attention to texture in this module and with an exercise because I believe it is something heavily overlooked in digital image making. This might because of the ultra clean, pristine new documents most programs start with. Or, perhaps it is because screen based works do lack the physical nature that analog artworks possess.
For the most part, every texture in a screen-based digital artwork is “implied”, meaning that its resembles a physical texture but does not retain physical characteristics. This doesn’t mean texture can’t be a central component of your digital images. Many artists also use digitally imported textures to “prototype” or “mock-up” how an image will look in its final application, if it is not screen-based.
The images and videos below all document works created by a digital artist / sculptor Daniel Rozin. I am showing these because they are a great example of the visual potential of combining physical textures and sculptures with digital processes and programs. This artist could have easily stopped with a screen or projector, but by incorporating physical materials into these pieces he adds an entire layer of meaning and material ideas for viewers to explore.
2.7 Texture + the Indexical Image
Indexical images are images that are directly connected to the place and/or subject that they capture. Examples of these images are traces of objects or traces or outlines of silhouettes. These images need to made in the physical presence of their subject. Below are a few more examples of indexical images.
A technique called “Frottage” or rubbings, present an indexical method for capturing textures. Most people have probably done this at some point - used crayons to rub over a paper covering a leaf or a some other textured surface to develop almost carbon-copy of that texture. These indexical images all feature a unique 1-1 ratio with their related physical textures. In some ways, they are both implied AND actual texture. The artists below work with these unique indexical properties to produce assemblages or “maps” of objects and places.
But first read this very short story ( 1 paragraph ) about creating a map so precise it was the same size as the landscape, On Exactitude in Science
I incorporated this technique into one of the exercises because digital image editors offer a way to experiment with and push the boundaries of these types of indexical textures and images. Because digital image editors allow these textures to be rescaled, layered and altered in ways that are difficult to impossible with analog processes, new visual aesthetics and ideas can be developed. Think about the short story and the artworks below - the visuals “map” a space, but their size limits their descriptive capabilities and functionality in some ways. But what if, using digital tools, these 1-1 ratios could be then scaled down and reproduced? An artist could fit the indexical textures of an entire room on a singe print.
2.8 Collage
The second half of this week’s exercises cover using digital image editors to create self-portrait collages. Digital tools and formats provide a powerful new possibility space for creating image collages, as well as video and sound collage (which we will study in depth during the second half of the quarter). Not only do they allow the artist to easily cut, transform and recombine preexisting, found and/or created images, photographs and graphics together, they can maintain the integrity of the originals in a way that analog collage processes cannot. This ability gives the artist more options when creating collage - do they want to make the process evident or obvious, or do they want their images to appear realistic, yes completely surreal?
2.9 Early Collage - Dada Roots and WWI
Collage is a technique with subversive roots that unfortunately tend to get lost with time and the proliferation of its visual aesthetic. Modern collage developed in Europe as a response to WWI, with an art movement known as Dada or Dadaism. World War 1, which lasted from 1914 - 1918, killed millions of civilians and soldiers, and also post-dated the Industrial Revolution, which produced advanced weaponry and artillery, armored vehicles such as transports and tanks, fighter planes, machine guns and chemical weapons. The images of this war were also clearer and more widespread with the technological advancements in photography and printed media, like newspapers. Even people who did not witness the war across the UK and Europe still felt the social and psychological impacts.
Dadaism grew out of a direct response to these impacts of WWI. These artists were working against the structure of “the establishment” and the society that had produced modern warfare. They thought if civilization could create war, they wanted to break-down that civilization. So, collage for Dada artists such as Hannah Hoch and Kurt Schwitters was literally about cutting the images of civilization and transforming them into something different, unreasonable or nonsensical.
Below are a few descriptions of the collage and Dada-ist process from the artists themselves.
“Dada wished to replace the logical nonsense of the men of today with an illogical nonsense,” - Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia
“The beginnings of Dada…were not the beginnings of art, but of disgust.”
-Tristan Tzara.
2.10 Textual Collage
Dadaists didn’t stop at images when developing collage aesthetics. They also worked with cutting and recombining textual images, advertisements, signage, and, eventually, narrative texts.
2.11 Sculptural Collage and the Birth of the Readymade
Dada also worked with collaging sculpture, primarily by recombining found objects into new sculptural assemblages.
Kurt Schwitters: "Out of parsimony I took whatever I found to do this…One can even shout with refuse, and this is what I did, nailing and gluing it together.”
This was a technique adapted by Marcel Duchamp in the development of his readymade objects - objects that, when recombined, defied their intended function. Duchamp is well known for many different art works he produced throughout the 20th century, and many of them explored this idea of the readymade, including the infamous “Fountain” urinal (although this sculpture’s authorship has recently been disputed). This idea of using found objects in sculpture has expanded far beyond these Dadaist roots, and is something still being explored and taken in new directions by contemporary artists.
2.12 Collage and the Political
The Dadaist movement was followed closely by the Surrealists, another group of artists producing artworks that were in many ways also informed by the events of a war, this time WW2. While Dadaism was more anarchist in its direct deconstruction of political and social structures through images, text and sculpture, Surrealism critiqued these same elements with the complete rejection of rational thought, the idea being that perhaps if people could learn to imagine, dream and create in new ways, then these atrocities would cease to exist.
I think these early approaches to radical art making are interesting to view in context with later collage works that are also very political and/or social. What was at first implied more conceptually or as a physical technique in the cutting and reconstitution of images, later began to incorporate more recognizable texts, images and symbolic juxtapositions. Was this because the viewer and technology was changing, and what was once a shocking technique did not deliver the same impact? Or did this change occur as the technique spread and more and more artists brought their own ideas and styles to the practice of collage, not to mention their own personal experiences that were different from those of the Dadaists and Surrealists.
I want to caution that some of the images below contain images that many might find offensive - in these examples, these images are being used explicitly by artists who are challenging their iconography, content and/or what they symbolize. Many of the artists adopting and working with these images are doing so from a standpoint of deconstruction or reclaiming and have a connection with, relationship to, and understanding of them that might involve a specific personal experience, how the artist identifies, or what different communities the artist might belong to.
2.13 Contemporary Collage FORMS
Below are a few more examples of contemporary collage, including some collage produced with digital tools. Similar to how the early collage artists above were cutting words and images from printed newspapers and advertisements, contemporary artists can used digital tools to do the same thing with digitized media. Digital mages, text, sounds, music, speeches, videos, movies, tv shows, video games and even computer programs / algorithms can be recombined to create something new. Digital tools and processes make this technique more diverse and expansive, however, the core idea - the breakdown of the "original", the critique of the mainstream remains the same.
Think about these radical origins as you are developing your collaged self-portraits. What meanings might come from recombining and transforming elements from your own image, or combining elements from your own image with other objects? Does this meaning change if the collage technique is more obvious or subtle? And, what affect does this process have on you - the artists and subject - as you are collaging yourself?
Collage + Remix Artworks by Nikkolas Smith - Smith applies traditional collage concepts of cutting and recombining to make work that addresses social justice issues, systemic racism and police violence against Black Americans. Below are examples of his collage work, showing how this process can be about creating spaces for new possibilities, some that challenge oppressive structures and others that deviate from conventional expectations.
Below I have included a few examples of digitally based installations and digitally driven mechanical sculptures that also explore these ideas of collage and transformation. I am ending the lecture with these artworks because I believe they indicate yet another new direction and expansion of collage techniques that also relate directly to early Dadaist collage works.
