Chance, Process & Outcome
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“Accidents don’t just happen - they are caused”
"Quote from a Health & Safety policy document
If we adopt that principle within the context of art, there are a number of examples where artists have created visual images through accident or 'chance' but, in effect, have engineered the activity that will bring it about. Around 1915, this mode of creativity became a reality with the Dadaists.
With its roots in Switzerland, Dadaism was an art movement of the early 20th century and was a reaction to the horrors of the First World War. Almost as an act of denial Dadaists ‘wished to replace the logical nonsense of the men of today with an illogical nonsense’ [Brecht].
Spreading across Europe and to New York, the movement included artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp and Kurt Schwitters. It comes as no surprise that: ‘The art, poetry and performance produced by dada artists is often satirical and nonsensical in nature.’ [tate.org.uk].
However, as described by George Brecht in his paper Chance Imagery, the Dadaists ‘also considered the unconscious to be a source of creativity - of images free from biases ingrained, for example, by parents, social custom and all the other artificial restrictions on intellectual freedom.’ This theory is also described by Tristan Tzara who is quoted as saying:
“The unconscious is inexhaustible and uncontrollable. It’s force surpasses us. It is as mysterious as the last particle of a brain cell. Even if we knew it we could not reconstruct it”
Marcel Duchamp seems to be the first artist to utilise chance to create an image. In what actually feels to me a very considered and controlled action - albeit a very inventive one - he let fall a one metre length of thread from one metre above a blank canvas. Where the thread fell, in whatever shape, he fixed it to the canvas. This action was repeated to give three canvases and the work was titled ‘3 Stoppages Étalon’ or ‘3 Standard Stoppages’
Marcel Duchamp, '3 stoppages étalon' (1913-14)
Other Dadaists followed suit with Hans Arp creating collages from shuffled scraps of paper and Tristan Tzara making poems from random words cut from newspaper and drawn ‘blind’ from a hat. I decided to make my own dadaist poem (and I promise 'but and love' were random selections!):
Contemporary work that follows the dadaist ethos includes James Hoff who, for example, worked with computer viruses to produce the ‘Skywiper’ series of images. In this interview, The Art of Infection Hoff discusses his approach.
James Hoff, Skywiper images. (2014) shown at Callicoon Gallery
And so artworks are created through elements of chance but in each case, the artist seems to be very much in control of causing that chance to come into effect. Where their ideas come from initially is another matter and perhaps this is where the unconscious or the freeing from artificial or intellectual restrictions becomes so important. Perhaps the artwork resulting from chance, can itself then trigger further ideas because deep and long-term memory areas of the brain get ‘nudged’ by events. There could in fact be a continuum of conscious and unconscious activity, particularly where artists have provided themselves with the environment and enablers to allow these processes to take their course.
For me, making an aesthetic judgement about a work created using chance procedures will still start with my instinctive response - as it would with any other artwork - but there is something about a level of wonderment that then kicks in and introduces some different criteria and questioning. Did it really fall that way? Would I find it more or less aesthetically pleasing if something had happened differently? What made the artist come up with that idea in the first place? Is there any other message or value attached to this ‘chance’ creation?
A key thing that studying fine art has taught me is that ‘achieving a lack of control’ is a tough challenge! But it is one worth working for, particularly to allow some of those deeply buried or unconscious thoughts and ideas to emerge. I know I have to work on developing an intellectual freedom and my own ‘enabling space’.
The Oblique Strategies pick was helpful for this. Picking ‘Listen to the quiet voice’ felt very much like permission to bring kernels of ideas to the surface and give them proper consideration. It is a positive message to keep in front of me.
References:
Brecht, George (1966) Chance Imagery, A Great Bear Pamphlet, New York
Dadaism: An art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th Century with early centres in Zurich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire. In New York, Dada began circa 1915 and after 1920 flourished in Paris. Wikipedia
Artists include: Marcel Duchamp, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, Man Ray, Max Ernst, Hugo Ball, Kurt Schwitters.
Also see: Art Terms; Dada. Tate https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/d/dada
And works by Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp:
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/man-ray-lenigme-disidore-ducasse-t07957
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-3-stoppages-etalon-3-standard-stoppages-t07507