10.5920/shibusa.05 73 Chapter Five Smashed pianos and dysfunctional brushes Pip Dickens Developing a new series of works can often germinating. Untitled #11 comprises bold, present a ‘chicken and egg’ dilemma whereby sweeping networks of scribbled, visceral lines which it is not clear whether it is the tools – informal irregular ‘grids’ that suggest natural selected that will steer a work’s development structures, for example a spider’s web. This or whether an imagined concept will suggest irregular ‘membrane’ carves through and the choice of tools. One of the most graphic across other more solid and coherent shapes examples of how a tool might change – and forms within the work. It appears, dramatically – an artist’s practice is the therefore, that the quintessential component – relationship of Jackson Pollock with a stick: the trigger – that would jettison these existing qualities into a new and very dramatic Sometimes I use a brush but often prefer methodology was the taking up of the stick as using a stick. Sometimes I pour the paint the conveyor of viscous paint, via the element straight out of the can. I like to use a of air and marked by Pollock’s personal dripping fluid paint. I also use sand, rhythm of time, creating the action paintings broken glass, pebbles, string, nails, or for which he is renowned. As Pollock stated, other foreign matter.1 ‘A method of painting is a natural growth out of a need. I want to express my feelings rather In film footage of Pollock taken by Hans than illustrate them’.2 Namuth in the 1950s, he can be seen hovering A great shift takes place at the moment over his large floor-based canvases like a bee when Pollock departs from the artistic over a flower. Neither hand, brush nor stick conventions of transformation techniques; makes direct contact with the canvas, but where drawing (pattern and line) is ‘freed from the rhythmic relationship between painter the function of bounding shape … thereby and the terrain of the large canvas performs a creating a new kind of space’.3 Philip Leider powerful, magnetic choreography. Physically discusses Pollock’s process in relation to how separate, the dynamic resides in the space it influenced artists such as Stella (although between them. Seconds lapse before paint hits through substantially different methodologies): the canvas – the point at which an arm concludes its arc, the moment when the stick You could visualize the picture being made is withdrawn. – there were just no secrets. It was amazing Full Fathom Five (1947, oil on canvas how much energy was freed by this with nails, tacks, buttons, key, coins, cigarettes bluntness, this honesty, this complete and matches) seems to signal Pollock’s obviousness of the process by which the breakthrough into action painting, although picture was made.4 Free Form (1946, oil on canvas) with its liquid splatters, and even earlier engravings such as In these ‘all-over’ paintings, line is Untitled #11 (1944–5) suggest that a new no longer outline: ‘It did not mark contours route of expression through physical gesture or define edges’ states art critic Robert and articulation was already in place albeit Hughes.5 Pollock was conscious about 10.5920/shibusa.05 74 Shibusa getting away from conventions of drawing and applying paint to canvas. The likelihood that Extracting Beauty painting, describing how his paintings had no hardened, damaged and distorted brushes may beginning and no end and that ‘they have a life refuse ‘take up’ of a reasonable ‘load’ of paint of their own’. would seem a negative trait, yet, in reality, the Pollock’s relationship with stick, paint result was a series of lines yielded through the and canvas frees itself from historical and unforgiving nature of hardened brush hairs theoretical boundaries. His paintings place that forced separation of paint into a series of him as man in a moment of time – like a parallel lines of uneven width. The same was dancing shaman with his rattle, he steps out true of not loading the brush at all but of the rational and distanced observer-maker allowing it to plough its way through a role of artist into a world where the physical, painted surface. The effect of ‘cutting through’ demonstrative, atavistic life force dances to its and dispersing paint into parallel lines nods in own rhythm. the direction of linear katagami stencil formats. Moreover, while traversing the On their short flight to the canvas, the painting, occasional nodules of built-up paint skeins and spatters of paint acquired a collect and drop along these lines. Again, this singular grace. The paint laid itself in arcs is reminiscent of the strange cut effects made and loops, as tight as the curve of a trout- by stencil artisans, which, through an overall cast. What Pollock’s hand did not know, linear pattern, may introduce optical contrast the laws of fluid motion made up for.6 through circular ‘blobs’ left uncut. Adkins states that although the sounds In Chapter 1 Adkins introduced the wrought from the broken piano were of value, fundamental models on which our work these initial forays in distorted piano sounds developed: directed him, ultimately, towards the clarinet, which, he determined ‘acts as the grey research of Japanese objects (kimonos, that ties the different colours together’, katagami stencils, dysfunctional tools and he characterises the three registers of the and instruments); instrument into (lower) purple, (mid) green philosophy (shibui); and (high) yellow. process (the skills of repetition and Two aspects emerge from this. First, that rehearsal of the artisan and colour it is unlikely Adkins would have ultimately perceptions and use). selected the clarinet for this series of works had he not identified earlier with the broken Each of these three models offered, piano and perceived qualities in it that led him individually, a vast array of possibilities to think about those of the clarinet. At the and approaches. same time, my experimentation with what may be considered redundant brushes – Objects seemingly useless objects – created a general awareness of what traits they were still able to Two surprising areas of commonality in offer and led to their reassignment as ‘useful’ our research revealed themselves: first, a tools. This, in turn led to looking at other shared yet unplanned decision to experiment seemingly useless objects; for example, a piece with broken or damaged objects; and second, of plastic from some discarded computer a coincidence of colour attribution. In terms packaging that had comb-like qualities. By of the former, Adkins had acquired a piano manufacturing clones of this object, each with with substantial damage, and in the winter varying arrangements of ‘teeth’, it changed the months of 2010 plucked and preserved its way paint was applied to canvas – the process tremulous euphonics. At the same time, of drawing slowed down. I spent many hours dysfunctional and damaged brushes were put pulling brushes and combs across surfaces, to use in my painting studio, to investigate through a range of different paint mediums quintessential qualities they might reveal when of varying consistency and viscosity. 10.5920/shibusa.05 75 Smashed pianos and dysfunctional brushes Pip Dickens Figure 5.2 Dickens, Shibusa series – The Offing, 2011, oil on canvas, 41 × 46 cm. © Pip Dickens 10.5920/shibusa.05 76 Shibusa 1 4 Extracting Beauty 5 2 6 3 Figure 5.3 Dickens, Shibusa series – Composition #2, 2011, 51.5 × 66 cm: sequential development of the painting (left column) 1, 2 and 3, (right column) 4, 5 and detail from the finished work. © Pip Dickens Whether, ultimately, a dysfunctional brush pulling these tools across the ground of the was used for a particular painting or not, the painting were periods of calm and quiet value was in the slowing down of time and exploration – often mesmeric. It would be easy reappraising (and appreciating) what can be to make comparisons with the repeated raking done with very little. The results were forays of sand and stone in the Japanese rock (zen) into works whose linear qualities are garden, although in fact the comparison has extraordinarily subtle, barely perceptible been made in hindsight. (see Figures 5.2 and 5.3). Days spent slowly 10.5920/shibusa.05 The second, exciting, coincidence was which is quiet and subdued’.7 Shibusa, as 77 Smashed pianos and dysfunctional brushes in colour palette. Adkins described that it Adkins summarises, is a balance of simplicity suggested itself when considering the different and complexity. registers of the clarinet (purple, green, yellow, As a philosophy, shibusa is really quite and most importantly ‘greyness’). Quite complex because it may even include the more independently, my new experimental paintings exotic and decorative. This is most clearly were evolving using a very limited palette of described by Takie Sugiyama Lebra: greys, Indian yellow (and other yellows), dark, translucent purple and purple-blacks, allowing Japanese words expressing esthetic a variety of resultant tones between them – properties are typically diffuse and lilacs, pinks, lemon, warm greys, and so on undefinable. Shibui is an example. (see Figure 5.1). Kawakita tries to define it in terms of The complementary values of purple mutual opposites: shibui can refer to jimi, Pip Dickens and yellow are well known, but in these ‘plain, quiet, restrained and introvert’, new works there is a concentration on but does not exclude its opposite, hade, qualities of saturation, tonal values and ‘gay, showy’. Further, shibui is a gradation. Transparency and contrasts of combination of iki, ‘stylish, urbane, opacity negotiate, through hard and soft polished, sophisticated’, and its opposite, edges, to find points at which interplay of yabo, ‘awkward, naïve, uncouth, rustically light and shadow start and finish – not a artless’.8 horizon but more an ‘offing’.