Robert L. Benedetti in The Actor in You: Twelve Simple Steps to Understanding the Art of Acting [insert proper citation] draws upon the methods of Konstantin Stanislavski to define his fifth step as the actor’s sticking to the text when exploring the text to develop understanding of the work, the role, and all it entails as crucial to the text being understood as authentic. The actor can only know what is in the words put on the page by the author/playwright and can only act in response to this information. The script or text provides a structure, boundaries in which the actor performs the character. Informed by experiences the actor may respond to what the author has written but this must be done so that the plausibility of the character as shown throughout the text maintains authenticity as intended by the writer. Going ‘off script’ by the actor’s insertion of information on the character portrayed which is not contained within the script is damaging to the work and its performance in terms of its acceptance as authentic. It is up to the actor to explore the text in a manner in which he or she remains within the established boundaries for the sake of the authenticity of the performance.
In the development and performance of the personas as tools in my practice I have taken this mandate of sticking to the text as a rule to be preserved for the sake of developing authenticity, a concept that is key to the identity of both the painter and the painting and one in which I will explore further in my scholarly and practical research. However, I have also taken it upon myself to challenge this rule by developing a persona who’s very being is to challenge the notions of the boundaries of identity and associated concept of authenticity through the art I, she, we make.
Deducing from the premise that only an authentic acting or playing the part willingly or unwillingly assumed can done when it is be based upon what is known about the text and the identities it contains by both actor and audience; meaning one must acknowledge there is much in the space beyond the known and commit to not crossing boundaries and venturing into that space which we cannot know for the sake remaining authentic. The boundaries of the text, the edges of the page, the paper, the canvas must be respected if they are to remain authentic.
Within the work also known as the products of my research, this adherence to the boundaries of each persona appears in the limits placed upon each by the text I have written. For Franzi this can be found in his subservient nature which does allow for occasional moments of risk taking, when he ‘takes matters into his own hands’ intervening in paintings that he is not invited to collaborate in hoping they will be saved, or by answering emails not intended for him. It is apparent in his use of a limited palette of blue, fluid acrylic paints and surfaces that are essentially cast-offs of my studio process, and the technical narrowness of his painting, a technique quickly drying the thinned layers of paint with a hair dryer, a contradictory process of directing an uncontrollable flow as a means to create thickness out of thinness and an ironic tool when viewed in relation to his physical description as a lumbering, much older, obese, bald man who is years past a prime he never had due to his subservient nature. There are actions he will or will not undertake but these are all prescribed by the text from which he has emerged. How and if Franiz will break a rule or cross a boundary is predetermined by this text akin to an instruction manual accompanying any tool; and I, as the hand applying the tool called ‘Franzi’ read the manual and follow the directions. [insert images]
Petra is a much more complex tool than Franzi in that the range of her applications, particularly as a painter and as a reader, extend much beyond those of Franzi. If Franzi could be likened to a manually cranked hand drill with a single bit, then Petra is a high end power drill with bits that will easily drill through any surface AND has the ability to drive any size screw with the quick change of its bit to boot! She also comes with her own instruction manual, and for Petra to function most effectively and efficiently I stick to it. Because she is complex there remains part of her text, the back pages of her manual which I have yet to read, yet to explore. This learning process continues to occur through both the collaborative as well as individual making we and she do in the studio. Like the other personas, Petra extends her hand to others beyond myself in ways fitting to her text, ways that I myself would not do but simultaneously could be understood as a mirror of what I do do. This existence of Petra as my reflection or mirrored self is most apparent in her left handedness. Looking into the mirror, or rather the films documenting her painting, I see the opposite hand of my own dominant hand applying paint in the tool of Petra. The materials we each predominantly work with further enunciate the opposite qualities of myself and this persona. Petra works in watercolor while I prefer oil paint. The two media resist each other, yet in collaboration they can create a lovely emulsion that synchronously enriches and hydrates the painting and the painting process. [insert images]
Then there is Melusine, the outlier, the non-painter. Melusine is where I begin to challenge the edict of sticking to the script by developing a persona whose foundation is a text with no boundaries. She does not fit into the parameters of a page or a painting. Although she has been described physically, this description is ambiguous and has shifted continually since she first appeared. A snippet of who she portrays herself to be might appear now and again in a photo, but she is never seen as a whole, or on video, there is no record of her writing (action) other than the product. There is no record of her doing anything, and no object -article of clothing- attributable to her can be found in my studio.
Unlike the other two personas who were ‘scripted’ since their inception Melusine’s sudden appearances (and disappearances) from her very first to her most recent qualify her as a personæ durans an ephemeral persona. Her ephemeral existence is what enables her to transcend edges and boundaries, to slide around the rules of the game, making up her own as she goes. She is a mistress of the realm of improvisation, and interestingly that is not the realm of the image but of the text; the very object whose boundaries which by my application of her as a tool in my practice I seek to challenge if not to dissolve.
At this point I should clarify the greater text in which the instruction manuals of the personas exist as mere paragraphs, perhaps even only as a few limited sentences, is the text of identity. The pages of this large volume on which I am focused are those addressing the identity of painter and painting in relation to the practice of painting as art, the object resulting from this practice, and the role of the onlooker or ‘spectator’ as defined by Richard Wollheim in Painting as an Art. [insert proper citation] Ironic is the very notion that the text of identity could be contained in a book, bound and with clear boundaries -the front and back cover-, sections, chapters, paragraphs, sentences, words, word-fragments, or letters when viewed through the lens of my challenge of developing a persona without the boundaries of the text such as Melusine.
Having this type of persona, Melusine, is key to understanding and exploring the limitless possibilities of a multifaceted identity that has but is not constrained by borders. We define our spaces by borders; boxing ourselves in as a matter of safety, security and defining who we are, where we are, and why we are. Borders come and go but there is no way they can be entirely eliminated. A good example of this is the constantly changing map of the world and the shifts that are occurring across the globe as I type these words. We existing in a box in which we find ourselves being rudely awaken from the dream of global free-trade zones and unconstrained movement of peoples between once artificially, politically defined places on this map by the powerful few as the powerless many with a simple tick in a box of yes or no, stay or go, him or her; or as the frustrated perform an incendiary act of a bomb detonation, or a plane is repurposed as weapon of mass destruction, or a lone gunman with access to a weapon that can kill large numbers of people going about their daily lives; all these in a few seconds or minutes set off a chain reaction leading to another swipe of a politician’s pen across a page with clearly identifiable edges to create an even greater gap between having power or having it not. The challenge embodied in the ephemeral persona, my tool called Melusine, is to apply her as a means to redefine the borders of an identity defined by sources ‘outside’ the character but emerging from within text.
This text from which the personas emerge is the history of painting, the history of the object, of the painter and of the spectator and is the foundation upon which the identities of these as they relate to each other in the world today, specifically the art world, are defined, given parameters or boundaries in which they are to play, to be, or not. They also are found in the texts of other worlds defined by creative practices; by performers, musicians and writers predominantly. It is these texts which provide the text of paintings history the model from which the relationship of the parts -the personas- to the whole -painting- can be developed. Melusine belongs to neither of these texts, but floats between the two.
The very looseness of Melusine’s text, the unbound instruction manual of this persona presents an image of a free bird, following her own paths as opposed to the paths and their edges others have laid out for her. Hence the risqué and renegade qualities she possess. Specifically, this has meant in relation to the project, the painting, that Melusine has exerted her influence from a place outside of the object -the paintings- rather than from within. This place of influence, where she has performed as a tool, has been in the questioning of the scholarly research in relation to my research questions, the development of the persona as a tool in a painting practice, and the methods I am applying within my playful methodology discussed in the dissertation section titled Playing. Thus far Melusine has shown me that play is not child’s play but hard work and, at times, can reveal a very dark and scary side for all the players in the game. Concurrently, her ‘being’ an ephemeral persona, a free spirit serves to remind me that despite the distortions and disturbances I have encountered as I engage in the challenge I have set myself with this practice-led research that play is not only possible but vital to the ability to successful create and apply personas as tools for redefining identity within my painting practice. I have discovered this element, play, can only be researched through scholarly methods and expressed theoretically to a certain point. To fully understand the relevance of play as a method in a playful painting methodology play must be practiced, engaged in.
The difficulty of practicing play as part of my painting methodology lies in the space of my own contentious relationship to the many facets of my identity, the facet of ‘painter’ being only one. By creating the personas as tools to apply in my painting practice, by writing their instruction manuals and honing them through their application per the text that defines them I seek to create for myself additional space in which to explore what it is that makes my personal relationship to my identity contentious and allows me to focus on the impact this has not only on my painterly identity but on the resulting objects of my practice and my ability to engage in a playful methodology.
Of the personas Melusine, the non-painter, the writer, the disregarder of boundaries, the wandering free spirit, is the most important ‘tool’ to my development as a painter, to the research questions I ask, to my attempts to follow the path(s) I need to travel for painting freely and from my own self - a multifaceted identity of which the facet painter sparkles brighter than the rest. She is the mask I can put on to live not just as a fragment of myself as with Franzi, or a mirror of myself as with Petra, but as an other than myself.
Melusine stands not only as a contrast to the other two personas, Franzi and Petra, but to my own current painterly self. Her existence has taken the form of written communications, primarily with one other painter but in the act of those communications to this other painter she has communicated to me through her writing process. The importance of the other being a painter like myself is that as a painter there is an element of like me and not at all like me. Additionally, the painter from my understanding has achieved the goal of to paint freely which I have set for myself with this research project. I choose to define this action of communication as one based on the notion of ‘don’t tell me, show me’, albeit it has mainly been a showing through telling -the creation of a text without boundaries- and at times through actions more than images. Melusine is definitively the dominant persona in this studio, and I count myself as also being a ‘persona’ subjected to her dominance. Because she is the most dominant at times her influence, whether positive or negative, can be felt in the failed attempts of the other three, Franzi, Petra and myself, at communicating through texts and actions without boundaries between ourselves and others. Her influence on the actual images and objects being produced begins to be felt, or rather seen, as her poems enter into the paintings in a barely decipherable script called Sütterlin. [insert image]
True to the ambiguity that is Melusine, her poetry is written in German, a language fewer and fewer people are learning to speak and read as birth rates decline and migration increases. They are hand written in a font that officially existed for a very short period of time in the first half of the twentieth century and is rapidly losing the population of persons able to write or read it. Adding this into the collaborative paintings creates another layer of questioning of meaning, of the identity of the object and how it is possibly defined by or in relation to a text which very few viewers will ever be privy to. [insert image]
In the collaborative double-sided painting titled Concertinaed, [insert image] the fragments of poetry, scanned and printed onto the watercolor paper section by section, reverse and mirror each other like the hands of Petra and myself as we painted it. The words are buried in the layers of fluid, thin blue paint splattered onto and blown around the surface, to reticulate and form crevices in which other layers of paint gather in the process of the image being more clearly defined by Petra and myself with her paint. There is no my paint, no oil paint in this painting, but I am still present in the process of my collaboration. In this work the personas positioned me as a tool to the tools, calling upon my skills to prepare the surface through the scanning and printing, the binding together of the individual sheets of paper and ultimately to collaboratively develop a conceptual frame work in which the painting is to be presented.
This framework creating the rules of the game in which Concertinaed is meant to be played by the spectator is intended to challenge notions of the boundaries of identity. Practically, this means that the painting is meant to be exhibited standing on a shelf or partial plinth, nearly the length of the seven foot long painting, attached to the wall. The base upon which Concertinaed sits in a semi-unfolded state, is covered in a mirror or other reflective material only on the surface upon which the painting sits. The wall behind the painting to which the shelf is attached is outfitted with a piece of the same reflective material or mirror, the same length as the shelf and of a height no greater than the height of the paper-painting. The shelf should be hung so the center of the painting sitting on the shelf is at approximately the eye-level of the person installing it. The shelf itself is no more than eight inches deep so that the painting sitting on it semi-unfurled is crowded onto its depth. The points of the Concertinaed which are furthest to the back almost touch the mirror wall -but don’t. The points farthest to the front almost meet the edge of the shelf -but don’t. When viewed straight or head on the painting, despite its folding and unfolding, become a flat but folded object, raising the question for the spectator of its identity as a sculpture or a painting. The fact that it is neither one nor the other and has been created in a time where the concept of a fixed identity of the object has long taken apart and questioned in the art world is irrelevant. Yet, the spectators’ ingrained response to question of the objects identity, his or her gut reaction is to ask such a question. What is it? In which box does it fit? [insert drawing or image of proposed installation]
The question becomes the impetus for the spectator to move closer to the object, and in doing so he or she is given the opportunity to discover the reflective surface upon which the painting sits. This opens the lid on a further box of questioning. If the plinth’s surface has been covered in this reflective material then the work must be a sculpture? Close observation reveals the paper sitting on the mirrored shelf is most definitely painted, and with obvious pleasure given to the act of painting. Still closer examination shows the bottom-most, the printed layer of the paper and its nearly indecipherable text emerging through the obvious layers of paint. Is it a print? Is it a book? Should I be able to read something that is obviously there?
The revelations and questions do not stop there. When looking down into the reflective surface upon which the painted object sits the mirror image, doubling the object, is revealed, and along with this doubling possibly the spectator’s own reflection. The image in the mirror is not sculptural, it is a flat, reflected image accompanied by fragments of the surrounding environment, including the presence of the spectator and possibly other spectators. Is all this part of the work too? Is there an end to what this object first seen at a distance as a painting might reveal to its being? What’s more, every time the spectator looks into the mirror the view changes and bringing the essense of the temporal into the work.
Finally, the spectator might become aware of the wall behind the painting also covered in a reflective material and in it he or she will see the backside of this double-sided painting reflected into the shiny surface. But the spectator will have to work to discover this, moving around to the sides, peeking over the top, and looking down into the mirror on the shelf behind the painting on which the painting sits. Playing is hard work.
On one hand this idea of challenging the viewer to work for the experience he or she might have with the work could come across as mean spirited, setting up an experience that is more frustrating than pleasurable or playful. However, creating an experience in which the spectator is drawn into engaging with the work -the painting- visually from positions other than the fixed notions of engagement and installation is part of my attempt to express the necessity of engaging with the multifacetedness of identity through playful exploration and questioning. The contrasting nature of laziness and the effort we make to be lazy, to play, is hard work.
How a painting is perceived through its presentation or installation in both an actual as well as virtual space has grown to become an important part of my research for the ways in which methods of play can be applied outside of as well as inside the persona tools and through the work we produce in collaboration to engage the spectator in a collaborative exploration of identity and painting. As the sales slogan of a large American insurance company goes “we work hard so you don’t have to”; but the slogan of an athletic wear manufacturer is preferred by myself and the personas “work hard, play harder”. Challenging the spectator to work to see, and still inhibiting the ability to see everything can create not just a frustrating but a playful encounter between the spectator and the object. Examples of this can be found in the work of painter Laura Owens. [insert examples, images]
By positioning the spectator of the object or the other with whom the personas, primarily Melusine, are in contact with as a type of collaborator in the development of the idea through the presentation of the work or reliquaries which are the remnants of my collaborative engagement with the personas, to ’show’ rather than ‘tell’, has allowed me to gauge the response of these particular others in a reactive way. This reactive approach in my playful methodology has enabled me to go back into the studio and work further with the tools in painting, fine tune the questioning through the practice, and assess the spectator’s response to the resulting objects. It is a slow process, and being ’novel’ to me the ability to address the research in this way to others, spectators, as sounding boards has been difficult due not only to the newness of the research to me, but my ability to communicate and connect the work to a wider audience as painting. Playing by oneself can be benficial, but in terms of exploring identity having an other to play with is important. The personas are at times the other to my self; other times to understand them another other is needed.
I have made attempts individually and in groups, with others both artists and non-artists, painters and non-painters, and am finding encounters with those less inclined to go freely into risky places of their own questioning or art making which may present a challenge to their identity, in part as defined by their own creative practice or other determining factors, have mostly fallen flat. A common reaction when learning of the research is one of fear that it could push the practitioner into a psychotic state. While I do not believe that extreme to be likely I see how it can create conditions conducive to mental instability via an extreme state of uncertainty border lining on neurosis generated through the endless questioning. I am aware of the impact this has had all around me and could potentially have on others engaging with these tools, methods and methodology. However, by recognizing the problematic conditions of my research and by keeping them in mind, I believe further research is not only warranted as the potential benefits of freedom for my practice and a deeper awareness of identity are quite possible. The key for further progression is identifying and implementing safety valves to let off the steam as needed in a controlled, safe setting to myself and others. In tandem to this and in hindsight I think some of the darker and scarier sides of the research and the related the misunderstandings, frustrations, and breakdown in communication might possibly have been prevented with more forethought as to ethical implications of working with the personas and how mechanisms in place to address these might be established; therefore I intend to look closer into addressing this for the remainder of this research.
As has been pointed out to me, I am aware this inability to communicate the complexity of the personas and their relationship to the exploration of understanding identity of painting and painter has been apparent in the presentations I have given by the responses received. There exists a gap between my ability to present ‘formally’ with conviction -the stiffness of my presentations- and the moments when I informally speak of the personas in the presentations and they begin to ‘come alive’. Continued work on this aspect of presentation is required and I foresee that through developing the ideas of presentation of the objects of the practice -the painting- the presentation of the tools of the practice -the personas- will benefit as well. The works created thus far have a presence that stands alone as aesthetic objects or experiences and contain the seeds with the potential to grow into vines which will allow me to swing across, if not the trees to produce the wood to bridge it. With these the personas will be able to cross the gap from stiffness to being ‘alive’. [insert an image? Video links?]
This brings me back to the beginning of this writing and the edict of method acting to stick to the text as a means of conveying the authenticity of the character and of the work. By further developing the work -the paintings and their presentation- in collaboration with the tools of the personas and a refocusing on the how the element of play might become a more prominent part of my playful methodology I believe I can successfully present my case for the application of personas as a tool in the painter’s toolbox which assisst in the affirmation of and challenges the idea of authenticity to painters and painting carried over from the twentieth century into the twenty-first.
To address what additional trainings or aides to my research I might undertake two key technical devices which I can foresee as being helpful in terms of how I collaborate with the personas and how I present this research as a whole -the objects as well as the written dissertation -is to gain skills in using both PhotoShop and InDesign. As I begin my explorations of both I realize the contribution of learning to use this software has the potential to greatly enrich the practice and presentation of my research as well as the development of the personas particularly in the digital space of my Research website and how it is eventually presented as a key component of this project in both the exhibition and dissertation. [insert website images]
My Research website has an identity beyond that of a standard blog. In it appear the works in their various forms, iterations and subsequent presentations or installations, the writings and the questions; all that which gives rise to the research, my research, my practice. I liken the website and its contents to notes contained in a box that has neither bottom, sides or a lid. This box, my Research website, is a semi-private repository. It is password protected, making it limitedly accessible to others. It is the space where I collect, collate and partially disseminate the notes of my research. The place I go in order to reflect on what I and the others have done. As a semi-private sphere it is meant first and foremost as a space for me to freely engage with my research on the terms I have set for myself as a means to achieving the goals of the project. It is only out of the demands imposed by structures outside my research practice but upon which this research practice is dependent which necessitate my making accessible to others.
The best analogy I can think of in the history of art and the one with greatest relevance to my practice-led research by which to contextualize my Research website as a digital box of notes, are the boxes of notes, including the mini-retrospective or personal mini-museum titled Box in a Valise, which were complied, carefully copied, and published over a period of nearly half a century by Marcel Duchamp. For all practical purposes the meanings of the content of these boxes remains a mystery to those who attempt to study them; they only lead to more questions or rather, hypotheses, about the work than the answers one might think are being sought in them. Theses boxes of notes to oneself have become an industry of their own. I believe that the only one who could decipher the contents of those boxes was the artist himself, and he preferred it that way. He was not interested in having the spectator, the reader of the notes understand them anymore than Michelangelo might have thought how a person centuries late might look at a fragment of a drawing study he did of an arm and ask the same questions he was asking. We might surmise what the artist was thinking through the text left behind, but much will always remain unknown to us. Duchamp knew the thrill brought on by playing a game in hopes of the big win; he presented the boxes as slowly released treasure troves through which one might stumble and find something of value by playing the game according to the rules he established. Additionally, through his brokering of other artists and their works he was aware of the value in the work he gave up producing and the reproduction of them as a product to be placed in the art market. This is particularly apparent by the last decade of his life when he began re-releasing the boxes in limited editions. In addition to exploring the impact of the art market on the identity of painting and painter in the twenty first century, I want to explore the boxes of Duchamp more in relation to my website in a subsequent chapter on painting. In that chapter I will also take a closer look at the Boxes of Carolee Schneemann for possible overlap to Duchamp and a connection between Duchamp and the painting of Laura Owens. [insert images?]
The point I find myself at almost eighteen months into this research is one where information is still being gathered, processed and applied in both the practical making and scholarly forays undertaken in my thoughts and writing. I do not deem the darkness and uncertainties I have encountered as a failure of the ’tool’ but as confirmation of the answer to the question ‘who is this new knowledge/tool/method which I am applying in my playful methodology for?’ I feel in the year since writing the initial prospectus I can more assertively answer that it is for a painter, any painter who might benefit for a tool to free his or herself from the boundaries either they have established for themselves, or from the boxes defining their identity as a painter and which he or she has allowed or found themselves to have fallen into. Not every painter or artist is the ‘free bird’ he or she see themselves as being when they look into a mirror. However, there are such painters and these are not that painter - a painter or any painter- for whom the fruits of my research might be beneficial. Those other painters, the ones for who my research is unnecessary are the focus of my research in the Painting section of the dissertation. Still, I believe there is at least a painter or a visual artist other than myself for whom my research can offer another approach on his or her personal quest to achieving this freedom in painting or whatever form of making he or she engages in relative to his or her painterly or artistic identity.
While my tools, methods and methodology are not the same found in every painter’s practice, and possibly are not to be found in any other painter’s practice; it is my experience in and ability to understand the importance of the development of creative freedom through a customized tool to the painter which I put forth as a means of coming to terms with the challenge given to painters, visual artist, by Marcel Duchamp in his confrontation with the historical identity of painter and painting; this is the challenge he carefully set about questioning on four sheets of glass, a fragile material which shattered symbolically by the action of his questioning. Duchamp continued this challenge through the development of a persona -his alter ego Rrose Sélavy, in the Readymades, in the numerous assisted self-portraits, and in the many notes he boxed up and sent into the world but which truly remain even today comprehensible to only one person -the artist himself. His final box in his set being étant donnés, and the most indecipherable of all his boxes filled with questioning notes. The value of the challenge to painting Duchamp presented via his questions continues to this day and will probably continue to be for as long as this planet and any human life on it continues to revolve around the sun. Together with Melusine in conversations contained within the section of the dissertation titled Personas I will explore the impact of Duchamp, and why not just Duchamp but other artist, such as David Bowie, and authors such as Fernando Pessoa and a smattering of contemporary authors writing in the same or a variety of genres under a single name/identity or multiple pseudonyms, are relative to my development of personas as tools for my painting practice. These conversations will form a group of chapters that are creative in form to reveal the identities of the personas developed for and through my practice and to convey the value in the scholarly research I have collected and by which I will make my case for the efficacy of personas in creative practice to breakdown boundaries of identity and enhance a freedom to create for the artist. Playing, painting, and personas did not stop with Duchamp, but the identities of painting and the painter was shattered into millions of fragments which as a painter I seek to gain deeper understanding of and a freedom to paint through my practice-led research of Playing Painting Personas a century later. [insert images]