So today I have been reading Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972… Lucy R Lipard. As I leafed through the pages I slowly dosed off.
My sister picked up the book and when I woke up she said ‘You draw a circle because it’s not been drawn before and that’s art’
Well I guess that is true. Artists are creating something that has not existed before so that it can be experienced. Whether you put the concept, materials or process first this is essentially what you are doing.
I’m reading this book about concept coming first but for me the materials I use are informing the ideas. Is this because I am skilled in the use of paper, in the same way a painter or sculptor knows their material?
‘It is rather materialistic in the Marxian sense that you can’t do something that does not exist for you. If you don’t have control over the means of production, you can’t produce anything, so you have to find the means of production that you can control’ Carl Andre
But in deciding to use paper I have chosen to use a transient material often a waste production but also a material of huge value.
Kenya Hara, who I have spoken about said
‘paper evolved into a medium that recorded and preserved intellectual and aestheic achievement.’
By using paper as an artist medium am I not playing with our ‘preserved achievements’?
