hepcathipsterheppatter
This started off as an automatic drawing and then turned into something. Correction, this started as a note looking for an Ad Reinhardt quote about bumping into sculpture as you back up to look at painting. Non-members Only is a sign I think I saw somewhere in Vancouver. Anyone know the place. Seems it was neon at a club or music venue or something. Then came the drawing.
I often find myself doodling while doing other things. On the phone, in a meeting, reading and I also sit down once in a while and try some automatic drawing. I’ve been digging a few of these up recently after being away for a while. Some marks recur while some reference things on my mind and develop into more thought out drawings that may depart from the automatic idea that I’ve written of before. Search Automatism or Automatic drawing in this blog. I cannot remember and am too lazy to look up the exact reference at the moment. More to come.
This one done with my formerly trusty, but now leaking fine point rapidograph pen.
I’ve mentioned before how drawings and methods in doing corpses maintains a certain routine. Once in a while, we get new people joining in and something has to be explained and then new ideas or approaches come up. There is a default method that repeats itself. Fold the paper in three. Begin at the top or bottom and pass on. In this case, we somehow decided to fold the paper in triangles and random patterns. This comes up with some interesting flow and allows more than three people to participate (something we’ve done before). The next few corpses were done this way. Some more intricate than others. No origami forms yet, but that can’t be far off.
Unfortunately, I missed The Bieb’s tour, but a while back I did catch Dr. Robert Belton’s tour of Unreal at the Kamloops Art Gallery, an exhibition based on surrealist ideas now on tour from the Vancouver Art Gallery. The above is a work I put together from a birthday party plate and a cutout section from this magazine. Not sure exactly how this came about, but I bring it up because of the uncanny likeness to this work by Elizabeth Zvonar, which is in the exhibition. 
Channelling, 2009, digital lightjet print of a handcut collage, Collection of Vancouver Art Gallery
Mine is also handcut, but back to the tour. It wasn’t your typical exhibition tour. First off, we were all asked to introduce ourselves. For doing so, we received a free book. 
Dr. Belton then asked that each of us to make a donation to the local food bank in return for this book, which I have done. The mini lecture that launched the tour started with Dada and Duchamp as a starting point then into Breton and the Surrealist Manifesto, which I covered or at least pasted back here. He quickly pointed to the beginnings of Surrealism as more than just a movement in art, but that of reaction to social conditions and change. That is a very brief summary of his opening remarks, but I think that covers the gist. The tour participants were diverse with some people with no art background to experts in the field, so I was pleased to hear him providing some context. Perhaps the most important thing said was identifying Surrealism along two veins, one relating to automatism and to a lesser degree intially, one of oneirism. Breton and crew being more interested in the former and judging by the posters that high school and university students have tacked to their walls and the trend in ridiculous facial hair and the endless pop culture references to Dali, the latter being what the majority of people think surrealism is all about. Thankfully, Unreal concentrates more on automatism. The highlight of the exhibition is a work by Jean-Paul Riopelle of the Automatistes, who I covered or at least pasted back here. Unreal covers territory from the beginnings including Canadian content in Jock MacDonald and Riopelle, the return of surrealist and dada ideas in the 60s and 70s and then a handful of contemporary work from the last handful of years.
Jock MacDonald, The Black Quartet; The Black Quartette, 1946, ink, watercolour on paper
A nice little work of automatism, but I can’t help but think there’s a little too much thought going on here with the inclusion of the birds. I’ll give him a pass as it is something I’ve wrestled with before. However, he then went on to become one of those vastly overrated Painters eleven… ugh.
Anyway?anyways? Any weighs, I enjoyed the exhibition immensely and though I usually hate to state things as being my “favourite” I will say it is great to see the small Riopelle drawing, who I would have to say is one of my favourite historical Canadian artists. Not sure how complimentary that is considering all the qualifiers. Perhaps another favourite is the leopard print sax of Dr. Brute though due to copyright and the lack of a camera on hand anywayz you’ll have to imagine it from the uncanny likeness to this sax I made a few weeks ago which also includes a kazoo for a mouthpiece.
Another is Jason McLean’s No Comment, a wall of drawings based on found posters, scraps of paper and writings. Sorry, no photo of this either, but this link will give you a good idea. Part of the tour included everyone’s favourite (there’s that word again) drawing game of exquisite corpse. There were clearly people in the audience who do not draw and do not know this game, so I was very interested to see how this turned out. Also, Dr Robert Belton did not introduce this game as exquisite corpse. He instead referred to it as a surrealist drawing game, explained the process and demonstrated how to fold the paper. So. No preconceived ideas of drawing a body. Also, in reference to the beginnings of the corpse he had contributors scrawl a word or phrase on each section. A noun, a verb and a concluding word or phrase. Fortunately, he let me copy them after the talk. Results below.
Check it out. Featured on Toemailer blog.
All of the corpses that have appeared on this blog have been done portrait style and as was recently pointed out the sections have been referred to as the head, body and legs. Occasionally people ask if they are doing the top or bottom, head or legs, but for the most part I have been trying not to answer that question. I wanted these to be as open as possible. After drawing a few over the course of an evening, one of my friends noted that we weren’t all drawing body parts and wondered why since it was a corpse we were putting together. I constantly refer to these as corpses, so I guess there is an assumption that we are drawing a body. I have a wide variety of people taking part in these, some familiar with the surrealist tradition, some that just like to draw, some that don’t like to draw, but jump in anyway. After explaining that it didn’t have to be a body and you could do whatever you wanted in the space, I think it changed the approach for a few people. Corpse 71 being one of them. I feel like I fall into a pattern or routine and assume people know the tradition, but every once in a while I am reminded how people perceive what I think of as common knowledge a little differently. Certainly this isn’t a new approach and evidence of the open idea of the corpse is found in previous corpses, but I hope to see more of this once people open up to broader ideas in these drawings. The above corpse came together the same evening, and after only a cursory glance, I would say this is the first on the blog that came out more landscape oriented. Another change in perspective amidst this continuing process.
office of surrealist investigations 
