Frederick Art Agains

Frederick Hammersley’s Art against the Machine

THE PAINTER’S COMPUTER-GENERATED DRAWINGS WERE GROUNDBREAKING AND PLAYFUL By James Glisson

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Frederick Hammersley (1919–2009) studied at Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts) and taught at Southern California institutions from 1948 to 1968, when he moved to New Mexico. A focused Huntington exhibition curated by James Glisson, Frederick Hammersley: To Paint without Thinking (Oct. 2017 to Jan. 2018), will look at Hammersley’s lifelong preoccupation with creating art from sets of instructions and rules, and, in particular, his encounter with computer-generated art during the late 1960s.

Frederick Hammersley first came into prominence as one of the four artists in Jules Langsner’s land- mark exhibition Four Abstract Classicists (1959), which began in San Francisco and then traveled to Los Angeles, Belfast, and London. Along with John McLaughlin, Karl Benjamin, and Lorser Feitelson, Hammersley offered an alternative to the lush, gesturally expressive art of the Abstract Expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. With their machine-like precision and titles that rely on wordplay, Hammersley’s geometric paintings are not about physical or emotional intensity, like the works of Abstract Expressionists; nor are they austere, like the paintings of John McLaughlin. While The Huntington in the past had generally not collected post-war American art, the gift of Andy Warhol’s Small Crushed Campbell’s Soup Can (Beef Noodle) (1962) from the estate of Robert Shapazian in 2010 and subsequent gifts from an anonymous donor in honor of Shapazian have significantly enlarged this area of the collection. Hammersley’s See saw was one of those gifts. When I was consulting the artist’s papers at the Getty Research Institute, it became apparent that a

Left: Frederick Hammersley, sure, 1980. Ink on paper. Gift of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Image © Frederick Hammersley Foundation. Right: Frederick Hammersley, See saw, 1966. Oil on linen. Anonymous gift in memory of Robert Shapazian. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Image © Frederick Hammersley Foundation.

huntington.org 19 Frederick Hammersley’s Art against the Machine

THE PAINTER’S COMPUTER-GENERATED DRAWINGS WERE GROUNDBREAKING AND PLAYFUL By James Glisson

huntington.org 19 Opposite (left): Frederick Hammersley, JELLY CENTERS, 1969. Computer-generated drawing. Gift of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Image © Frederick Hammersley Foundation. Opposite (center): Frederick Hammersley, . ROTISSERIE ., 1969. Computer- generated drawing. Gift of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Image © Frederick Hammersley Foundation. Opposite (right): Frederick Hammersely, TEA TALK, 1969. Computer-generated drawing. Gift of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Image © Frederick Hammersley Foundation. Below (top): Frederick Hammersley, SLEEPING PILL IT’S NOT, 1969. Computer-generated drawing. Gift of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Image © Frederick Hammersley Foundation. Below (bottom): Frederick Hammersley, ENOUGH IS PLENTY, 1969. Computer-generated drawing. Gift of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Image © Frederick Hammersley Foundation.

complex set of rules and procedures were used to squares in the corners jump forward. With only into a small range of shapes: rectangles, triangles, generate See saw’s deceptively simple composition. two colors and two sets of four congruent squares ellipses, circles, and curves generated by a loga- To understand Hammersley’s art fully, one needs set at 45-degree angles to one another, See saw rithmic function. to know something about his system, and The has the laconic austerity of a Euclidean geometric Within this constricted set of options, Hammer- Huntington’s exhibition Frederick Hammersley: construction, yet the toggling of the sets of squares sley made a surprising range of shapes and patterns, To Paint without Thinking (Oct. 2017–Jan. 2018) makes it into a kinetic illusion, which the work’s as the Computer Drawings at The Huntington will pair finished works in various mediums with title references. The inability of geometry, with its demonstrate. While many mimic his paintings, archival materials to elucidate his procedures for timeless axioms about right angles and circles, to they lack solid color blocks; rather, the drawings generating compositions. accommodate everyday human perception—the are diaphanous—light gray veils layered across the Early in my research for the exhibition and squares are obviously not really moving—speaks page. Hammersley’s calling them “drawings” is accompanying book-length catalogue, it became to the problem of order and disorder, about systems significant—the easy explanation is that he followed clear to me that Hammersley’s Computer Drawings, and when they break down. No system, no set of the lead of Nash and Williams, who in a 1970 essay created in 1968 and 1969 when he taught at the rules, no protocol can work in every instance in the also called the printed output of ART 1 “drawings.” University of New Mexico, were not outliers but real world: machines break, unpredictable situations However, I think Hammersley is signaling their central to unraveling his art’s complexity. After arise, rules turn out to be unworkable, and humans experimental nature. After all, he could have 20 years as an artist who had experimented with get fed up and revolt. called them “prints,” since they were made on a rules, Hammersley happened upon a purely rule- In the late 1960s, Hammersley left Los Angeles printer. As with an engraving or woodcut, mul- based medium, computer art. (After all, a computer to take a teaching position at the University of New tiple identical copies could be made easily: just feed program is nothing more than a set of instructions Mexico, where the artist Katherine Nash and the punch card through the IBM 360/40 and out for a computer.) Their indispensable role as windows computer scientist Richard Williams collaborated pops another batch. A print—whether a cheap onto his arcane working process and their impor- to make ART 1, among the first programs anywhere poster, an engraving, or a photograph—is assumed tance for the exhibition surely factored into the designed to be used by visual artists. When I inter- not to be unique. More to the point, drawing is the Frederick Hammersley Foundation’s decision to give viewed Williams, he recalled teaching art students medium par excellence for artistic experimentation. The Huntington 75 computer drawings, as well as and Hammersley how to punch cards to create Pencil and paper in hand, an artist sketches, erases, 30 additional drawings and a rare sculpture—a shapes, which required following an exacting set turns the page clockwise, flips the page over, and total of 106 objects. As a result of this extraordi- of instructions. A misplaced punch could cause an starts again. He also pushes against the mechanical nary generosity, The Huntington now has broad error. The punch cards were then run through an nature of the computer drawings. Even if they lack and representative coverage of Hammersley’s work. IBM 360/40 mainframe, and the output was printed the stray marks and wavering lines left by an errant Even though Hammersley used rules and pro- on a high-speed IBM 1403 printer. Like a typewriter, human hand, they are still fashioned by an artist. cedures to create his art, neither See Saw nor JELLY the 1403 could print only letters, numbers, punc- As if to remind us that he made these drawings, CENTERS have the tone of schematic engineering tuation, and a limited range of symbols, including Hammersley signed each of the 75 prints in The diagrams, much less paint-by-number demonstra- #, &, and *. The matrix for the image was 50 rows Huntington’s series. tions. They are zany. They follow rules and break x 105 columns. Additionally, ART 1 could double Logic, the ability to follow instructions to the them. See saw, for example, visually flips back print characters to make them bold or cause dif- letter, and the willingness to learn through trial and forth. First the black diamonds in the center ferent characters to be printed on top of each other, and error were needed to produce the Computer assert themselves, and then they recede as the say A over B. ART 1 could form these characters Drawings. This is not exactly the skill set required

20 huntington.org huntington.org 21 Opposite (left): Frederick Hammersley, JELLY CENTERS, 1969. Computer-generated drawing. Gift of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Image © Frederick Hammersley Foundation. Opposite (center): Frederick Hammersley, . ROTISSERIE ., 1969. Computer- generated drawing. Gift of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Image © Frederick Hammersley Foundation. Opposite (right): Frederick Hammersely, TEA TALK, 1969. Computer-generated drawing. Gift of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Image © Frederick Hammersley Foundation. Below (top): Frederick Hammersley, SLEEPING PILL IT’S NOT, 1969. Computer-generated drawing. Gift of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Image © Frederick Hammersley Foundation. Below (bottom): Frederick Hammersley, ENOUGH IS PLENTY, 1969. Computer-generated drawing. Gift of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Image © Frederick Hammersley Foundation.

20 huntington.org huntington.org 21 to be a draftsman. However, throughout his life—to keep his eye sharp and his hand dexterous—Hammersley drew figures and portraits, and the Frederick Hammersley Foundation’s gift includes a broad selection of accomplished drawings. There is a red-and-black-chalk anatomical study, an exquisitely simple sketch of what might be a geranium leaf, and a delicately rendered boy’s head, a copy from an Old Master painting. One consistent subject over the years was the artist himself, and The Huntington owns a handful of self-portraits that range from an emphatic THE ORIGINAL line study to a demented ink sketch to a ballpoint pen drawing in which his features emerge from a fog of scribble. In all of them, however deliberately infantile or fuzzy, Hammersley’s long face and broad forehead stand out. The titles of works—such as See saw, SLEEPING PILL IT’S NOT (1969), ENOUGH IS PLENTY (1969), and JELLY CENTERS (1969)— CONVERTIBLE play with words and, as you may have noticed, the rules of capitalization. The paintings’ titles have only the first word capitalized, as if each title were a sentence or a phrase. The Computer Drawings’ titles are all capitals, consistent with the limitations of the IBM printer. The eccentric capitalization is a friendly reminder of the importance of the titles and the care Hammersley took in selecting them. In some instances, the titles match the image. JELLY CENTERS contains squishy lozenge shapes that could be jellybeans or jelly-filled doughnuts. In other instances, the title refers to its own subject. The two periods on either side of the title . ROTISSERIE . (1969) are like the ends of a spit The year-round beautiful weather in Los Angeles driven through the word. Imagine the word as a piece of meat rotating. creates the irresistible urge to cruise along the Other titles, however, have no obvious descriptive meaning. SLEEPING coast with the top down. Even the charioteers on PILL is definitely not any kind of pill, sleeping or otherwise. Another series is titled TEA TALK, which seems like a mismatch of “tea time” display at the Getty Villa can’t resist the feeling and “coffee talk.” Its graduated blocks of gray, like a bar chart, have no of the wind through their hair. Come visit them Top (left): Frederick Hammersley, untitled, 1941. Ink, conte, and graphite on relationship to talk or tea or their combination. ENOUGH IS PLENTY and the more than 1,200 antiquities on display. paper.Gift of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Image © Frederick Hammersley vaguely resembles a stylized face with two owlish eyes staring out, and the Foundation. Top (right): Frederick Hammersley, untitled, 1974. Graphite on phrase, on reflection, melts into a puddle of nonsense. Enough is enough, The Getty Villa. One mile north of Sunset on PCH. paper. Gift of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Image © Frederick Hammersley but plenty is usually more than enough, right? Or not? Hammersley is Reserve your free ticket today. Foundation. Bottom: Frederick Hammersley, copy, 1974. Pencil on paper. Gift pulling our legs and chipping away at the conventional understanding of of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Image © Frederick Hammersley Foundation. a title as explicating an artwork’s subject matter or meaning. Admission is free. An advance timed-entry ticket is required.

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TRIM:8 1/2” X 10 1/2” INSERTION: SPRING/SUMMER 2016 PROOF: 1 By calling them drawings, signing them, and adding witty titles, Ham- mersley humanizes machine-made computer printouts. During the 1960s, the possibilities for computer technology were seen as literally endless and only decades away. While some of this was utopian—take The Jetsons (original broadcast 1962–63) or Star Trek (original broadcast 1966–69) with their labor-saving gadgets—other visions of a computerized future were horrific. Perhaps most famously, HAL 9000, the homicidal sociopath computer in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), murders some of the crew before the protagonist, Dr. David Bowman, shuts it down by removing the CPU boards from their cooling tank. One of the film’s motifs is that HAL, as the computer is called, is infallible, unlike the astronauts. Albeit in radically different ways, 2001, an epic about misplaced human trust in the efficacy of technology, and the Computer Drawings, with their wry sensibility, both address an awkward fit between computer systems and flesh-and-blood, error-prone human beings. Despite the user-friendly graphic interfaces of today’s computers, we know the computer is the boss, and we adjust to its constraints. (Try making it do something it isn’t programmed to do, and you discover who’s in charge.) When Hammersley worked with ART 1 to make the drawings now at The Huntington, he could operate only within the program’s protocols. Yet the artist, who turned the rules of geometry into something playful in his paintings, impishly subverted the computer’s rigidity in his Computer Drawings. An IBM mainframe may have produced the drawings, but only a human could appreciate their lace-like patterns and humorous titles.

James Glisson is the Bradford and Christine Mishler Assistant Curator of American Art at The Huntington.

Call Nadine Black at 310.300.3050 or email [email protected]

Top: Frederick Hammersley, untitled, 1974–80(?). Ballpoint pen on computer paper. Gift of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Image © Frederick Hammersley Foundation. Bottom (right): Frederick Hammersley, light switch, 1988. Lithograph. Gift of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Image © Frederick Hammersley Foundation. Bottom (left): WEALTH ADVISORY | INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT Frederick Hammersley, like it, 1978. Ink on paper. Gift of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, GLOBAL CAPITAL MARKETS | RETIREMENT PLAN SERVICES and Botanical Gardens. Image © Frederick Hammersley Foundation.

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