The Pleasure You Feel…: Contemporary Art at Drum Castle
Judith Findlay
‘Obviously The Oak Tree is based on the concept of transubstantiation which is, in modern life, only found in Catholicism in the Mass. It seems to me a kind of idea, and a form of belief, which was much more common among the ancients as a way of understanding the world. It seems to me to be very close to that area of things which have become isolated in modern life into art, the kind of function that art has been set aside to deal with in modern life. It was originally much more central, and when it was more central, questions like transubstantiation were much more central to it. And therefore, I do think it’s a way of understanding about art…and how it operates…The Oak Tree, it seems to me, deals with the most essential characteristic of art, and the only really essential one, which is an aspect of faith and an aspect of thought and, because it’s a visual art, what it looks like, about the appearance of things. And those are the basic constituents of all visual art...’
‘They say an artist paying six dollars may exhibit. Mr Richard Mutt sent in a fountain. Without discussion this article disappeared and never was exhibited. What were the grounds for refusing Mr Mutt’s fountain: 1. Some contended it was immoral, vulgar. 2. Others, it was plagiarism, a plain piece of plumbing. Now Mr Mutt’s fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, no more than a bathtub is immoral. It is a fixture that you see every day in plumber’s show windows. Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object. As for plumbing, that is absurd. The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges.’
The title of this exhibition – Oak Trees and Fountains - alludes to two important art works: An Oak Tree, 1973 by Michael Craig Martin and Fountain, 1917 by Marcel Duchamp. As such it imagines a place name – it hangs a sign - which points to a way of formulating and comprehending the environment (the structures, fixtures, workings and contours) of this project. This imagining is an invitation not a direction (it is not supposed to be fixed or rigid or even adhered to but rather is meant to act as a trigger for an idea – a rumour – of something else). What is requested is a notional and allusive ‘beginning’ (or perhaps more correctly a point in a journey which has a past as well as a future; a place in a landscape that has a ‘here’ as well as a ‘there’). The title acknowledges the ‘framing’ of art (the ‘framing’ of art for example by its histories, institutions and theories). It recognises how art works (such as An Oak Tree and Fountain) sometimes highlight the mechanisms which make them ‘art’ at all, even as, in doing this, they retain their pleasure, mystery and wonder. To put this slightly differently, one might say that knowing, thinking and reasoning about art doesn’t rule out the need for faith – not faith in the art (the object or image or whatever) before you, but in something else that it may imply, indicate, allude to or evoke beyond (and in fact, in essence, this title proposes a definition of visual art as embodying – as being described by – the characteristics or elements of faith, thought, appearance and decision). Interestingly, this idea, embodying the concepts of transubstantiation and (in the case of Fountain) transfiguration, describes a process of change: art it would seem can be described as a form of transformation, conversion even. Crucially, this change describes a process, not only of making but also of seeing (seeing, as we already know, that relies on faith, reason, ‘look’ and discernment).
Something else catches my imagination: if art describes change then art might be described as an event – it exists in time as well as space (which helps in making sense of Nelson Goodman’s proposition that the right question to ask is not ‘What is art?’ but rather ‘When is art?’). Oak Trees and Fountains, as a name, functions then as a frame, operating at once as a ‘brief’ both to be followed and subverted, a ‘genre’ to be replicated and rejuvenated. The name therefore (the reason for it) is ambiguous: an artistic gesture and a curatorial foothold from which to venture and explore (as well as conceptualize and depict) the event (the ‘when’) of creative practice and process.
So we start with a picture in our heads of oak trees and fountains (wood and water: an image of life and growth, of sap and energy). It might or might not be anything to do with what I just described (perhaps not everyone who visits Drum Castle while Oak Trees and Fountains is showing will be familiar with Craig Martin’s and Duchamp’s versions (or indeed of any of the theories and ideas surrounding and informing these works). But I suspect most of us will be able to imagine an oak tree and a fountain, especially in the context of a place like Drum Castle - the gardens and grounds of castles and country houses could be emblemized by oak trees and fountains (woods and forests and lawns and flowerbeds; water and ponds and lakes and streams). And in turn, it is perhaps not too far fetched to say that oak trees and fountains are indicative of country gardens, country houses, estates and castles. Our own assumptions then – and those of the four artists (Victoria Claire Bernie, David Blyth, Jim Harold and Janice McNab) - are as good a place as any to start, and so, with this particular project, we have a choice: whether to linger with the artworks themselves (installed variously in and around Drum Castle) or forage ‘behind-the-scenes’, as it where, specifically, in the Old Laundry.
This is a building set apart from the Castle itself, and was the site for an exhibition within the main exhibition: a show of background and contextual information, research and documentation of the organisational and thought processes, ideas and information about – and importantly given by – the visitors. The point of it was precisely to make plain – to explore, imagine and depict – the creative process: the practice of making (and seeing) these art works. Housed inside the small, stone building were a number of wooden display boards on which were pinned various clippings - pictures, photographs, writings, questionnaires and maps. Each artist had been allocated a board on to which they had gathered their own choices and combinations of these thereby displaying their creative journeys from germs of ideas to finished art works.
Hinting most strongly at the project’s logos, Blyth’s research evoked ideas, stories, myths and legends of oak trees and water. His source material described how in long-lost times and far-off places (in history and in narrative) oak trees have been viewed as symbols of strength, joy, knowledge, good fortune and wisdom: in essence how they have stood for life (and in particular, a spiritual life). In the past, ancient pagan ceremonies, rituals and rites, performed by druids (those mysterious pre-Christian priests of Gaul and Norse with ‘knowledge of the oak’) took place under the shelter of its branches. Interestingly, Blyth tells me, druids were highly venerated in their culture along with bards, poets and seers: perhaps therefore the oak also signifies a time when artists were listened to seriously. His writings and pictures of natural springs, wells and fountains brought to mind the healing powers of water and its mystical, magical, curative properties (his research even highlighted a relevant aspect of local history: apparently the shipwrecked Saint Fittick was revived by a healing well on the shores of Aberdeen when he brought Christianity to the north east of Scotland).
The Green Closet by Blyth could be seen (if one paid attention) ‘hidden’ in the woods surrounding the Castle. It comprised five ‘listening booths’ or ‘hides’ connected to five trees (the common oak, the holly, the yew, the silver birch and the beech) by way of a system of electronics - wires and microphones. To find them one had to follow the path through the forest, and occasionally, using a canny combination of a map, good eyesight and good sense, one would glimpse one through the foliage. These constructions were three sided and made of glass, wood and brass fretwork. Like something of a Jules Vern story, they reminded one of all that is implied by the phrase ‘amateur scientist’. Standing inside, as if about to make a phone call or embark on time travel, one was confronted by a series of instructions, diagrams, notes from previous inhabitants and a button that one pressed in order to ‘hear the tree’. The ‘tree-sound’ came from a speaker in the wall of the booth and occupants were encouraged to write down what they imagined they heard, whether it be a river, a waterfall, birds, squirrels, leaves rustling, aircraft, children laughing, rain, wind, a crowd of people, a flow of traffic or sap rising. Thus seeing gave way to listening even as this listening was visualised (through words) by individuals imagining what they heard.
A Damask Rose by Jim Harold was located in the Castle’s walled rose garden. The work comprised five texts, four of which were set onto beautifully made freestanding signage boards painted cream to match the equally beautiful garden benches. One was able to sit on a bench and peruse the quiet, white words, just visible (only barely heard), on the creamy background. The fifth text was placed on a specially made damask-pink coloured wall in the bothy at the end of the garden: a poignant reminder of the year’s previous glorious blooms (now gone until next season).
I’ve just remembered something about words (and especially reading) that feels apt, and seems to make sense in relation to looking at (and listening to) artworks. For it has been said before by Jonathan Ree that literary fiction in particular has been defined too readily as non-performative.
‘Many readers find it almost impossible to avoid approaching novels as schemas for vocal performances, comparable to playscripts or vocal scores: we imagine the words spoken in specific voices, male or female, young or old and with particular timings, pitches, dynamics, and pronunciations. We gesticulate, chuckle, grunt and sigh. Some of us, in fact can get quite hoarse after a couple of hours of solitary absorption in a good novel.’
I wonder, as I sit here reading and reflecting on Harold’s beautiful sets of words if the same might be said of a good artwork. I study my favourite one again:
‘They had been silent for a while, the immediate environment forgotten. Looking away into the eastern sky their eyes followed the slow progress of a Tornado jet’s vapour trail and below it two circling black dots: a pair of eagles.’
I imagine the scene and the people who view it (I remember the times I have seen something similar) and realise that my attention (what I ‘see’) hovers between layers and between spaces. What I see is a combination of the garden and elsewhere: of ‘reality’ and imagination, of outer and inner existence, here and there, and now and memory. What Harold evokes is another world that relies on the quality (of stillness and quietness) of the space of this cultivated and cherished place, and the identities and narratives of somewhere else, less ordered, less predicable, more threatening. What is also clear is that, as Michael Mayne explains, ‘… the creation of a work of art is not entirely one-sided. It demands that I, the observer, should be in some sense a co-creator by the gift of my time and my attention,’ In other words, an artwork must be seen, be recognised, be described. Such descriptions, as Simon Frith points out, need to be apt even more than they need to be true and ‘description here is something like an actor or director’s interpretation of a dramatic role’. Description demands, to put this another way, that I (and you) perform the artwork.
Back in the Laundry, this somewhat ‘theatrical’ – or even musical – vision of art draws me to something contained in Bernie’s contextual material: I own a copy of Ocean of Sound by David Toop (the book – and accompanying CD - that Bernie refers to) and I make a mental note to review it when I get home. Meantime, I stand in the Brew House and watch Bernie’s beautiful film, Memoirs of a Beekeeper. The tiny screen onto which it is projected hangs on barely visible wires strung from the rough wooden rafters of the dimly lit room and a small box on a shelf houses the projector. The simple technology however, merely provides a backdrop (an ‘imagining space’) for something wonderful - familiar yet also quite strange. This is a film of flowers, leaves, light and bees, and of dreaming, or more especially that ‘shimmery’, ‘flickery’ space (that ‘warm buttery feeling of light on your face sort-of-space when your eyes go out of focus’) between sleep and waking (a space ‘of slight detachment from the pragmatic’) that might account for that occasional uncertainty one has concerning the origins of a memory (did it really happen or did I once dream it?). Bernie’s film is really beautiful and when it is ended I want to see it again – I want, in fact, to own it, to take it home with me. Memoirs of a Beekeeper is about how light and shadow might fall across a leaf or how it might feel and look and sound if you were to fade or dissolve into the green and veins and moisture of leaves or the colours and patterns of the petals of flowers. Crackles and water sounds and the noises of insects create pools and ripples of intricate and interconnected sound, and silence. This is like an audio sea, and in fact a play of words here is apt because Bernie’s film is a vision of listening. I consider a few of Toop’s opening words and reflect that Memoirs of a Beekeeper might equally ‘reconnect me to a world from which I had disengaged.’ By concentrating on the ‘close-up’, the minutia and the detail of a world literally right here, right now (under my feet and caressing my hands and face) it helps me to perceive the possibility of something much bigger, something infinite. You might say ‘[it] places [me] in the real universe.’
McNab’s Lyrical Scotland was the only body of work to be situated within Drum Castle itself. Consisting of seven oil paintings on paper (titled Nation, Heritage, Souvenir, William Wallace 1270 – 1305, Loch Ness 1955, Chocolate Box and Spiritualist) it was scattered amongst and therefore integrated with the other pictures, objects and ornaments contained in different rooms of the castle: the drawing room, the dining room, one of the bedrooms, the library and various hallways. Though not exactly hidden, the images were not differentiated from the possessions of the castle either. McNab’s concern was to scrutinize and question levels of authenticity and inauthenticity: the discrepancies (or perhaps merely curiosities) that she felt she had found within the curatorial, and physical space of Drum Castle. In the course of research for example, McNab had found that the collection of portraits housed in the castle depict another family to the one historically associated with Drum, and other parts of the collection comprise copies, gifts and loans with apparently no provenance. McNab’s own images toyed therefore with ideas of what is real and what is not and indicated a need for awareness and possibly a questioning of what we see, what we perceive and what we take for granted. William Wallace 1270 – 1305 for instance shows Wallace aka Mel Gibson daubed as the Braveheart of the movie, Loch Ness is a painting of a photograph of the monster of the loch (or the myth) and Nation (a tiny, kilted, souvenir piper contained in a snow globe) depicts traditional Scottish Highland dress – a tradition stretching all the way back to Victorian times and created by a novelist called Walter Scott. The result of this integration was a sense of ‘informality’ with regard to how one viewed (and felt and thought about) the exhibition. This was not supposed to be – or feel - like a ‘gallery’ show to visit. Rather, it emulated ‘home’ in that it implied paintings to live with (to own) not to visit. Well aware that her paintings would be understood in relation to all the other images and objects on display McNab gave up the distinction of the gallery space for a place that would completely interfere with her work. Having said this, in turn, her paintings created ‘interference’ too: a crackle in the normally uninterrupted, loud and clear signal of ‘heritage’. In a sense this was subversive and yet it made something new and refreshing. McNab brought two art worlds with different audiences and different values together (two worlds that are apparently and, for most part, assumed to be worlds apart). Connecting contemporary art and a wider public she provided, to use Colin Painter’s words, ‘genuine continuity’ between the two (even as in offering that continuity she created ‘resistance’ as well). In recognising, exploring and weaving artistic and cultural mechanisms McNab revealed a pleasure in colliding worlds.
I’m reminded here of Kettles’ Yard a house in Cambridge at one time owned by Jim Ede, a friend and patron to many artists. Mayne describes Kettles’ Yard thus:
‘…the walls are white, the wood scrubbed, the floors of brick or planks of wood; but the secret of the pleasure you feel is two-fold: the relatedness of everything to everything else, and the creation of proper spaces in which to see each work, each stone, each flower, in its own right.’
This, for me, was the joy of Oak Trees and Fountains, a project that explored and documented the process of art, the making and seeing of art, the relatedness of art, and in a way, the growth and ‘parts’ of art (the wood and water, the bridges and plumbing). At the same time, each art work was given proper space to be seen in it’s own right, to be seen that is not so much as nuts and bolts but rather as an opening to a new and different world, a new way of seeing, feeling and thinking. As Iris Murdoch has written,
‘Art makes places and open spaces for reflection. It is a defence against materialism and against pseudo-scientific attitudes to life… The art object conveys, in the most accessible and for many the only available form, the idea of a transcendent perfection.’
Just in case there is a danger here of splitting the seen from the unseen or indeed of elevating one over the other (the point here is reconciliation – to perceive one through the other), I’ll end with the very ‘grounded’ words of Ede. These are words that I have held in my thoughts as I have reflected on Oak Trees and Fountains. And they put, and keep, things in perspective and in balance (as well as speaking of the worth of art):
‘It is salutary, that in a world rocked by greed, misunderstanding and fear…it is still possible and justifiable to find important the exact placing of two pebbles.’
The act – or event – of relating, giving of space and exact placing (and imagination in order to make these meaningful): this is the pleasure I feel.
Notes
Michael Craig Martin. Unpublished interview with Rod Stoneman, 1986. Quoted in Lynne Cooke, ‘The Prevarication of Meaning’, Michael Craig Martin: A Retrospective (London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1989), pp. 11-36.
Marcel Duchamp, ‘The Richard Mutt Case’, 1917. Reproduced here from Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (eds.), Art in Theory 1900-1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1992), p. 248.
Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, 1978), pp. 57-70.
Jonathan Ree, ‘Funny Voices: Stories, Punctuation and Personal Identity’, New Literary History, no 21 (1990), p. 1046.
Michael Mayne, This Sunrise of Wonder: Letters for the Journey (London: Fount, 1995), p. 159.
Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 264.
These words are Victoria Bernie’s own. See the accompanying exhibition leaflet for Oak Trees and Fountains: Memoirs of a Beekeeper.
David Toop, Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds (London: Serpent’s Tail, 1995), p. 1.
See my essay ‘In my house: A short essay about art in Scotland’, Critical Quarterly, vol.42, no. 4 (Winter 2000).
As Brian O’Doherty explains, in a gallery an art work is ‘isolated from everything that would detract from its own evaluation of itself.’ Brian O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (San Francisco: The Lapis Press, 1976), p.14.
Colin Painter, The Uses of an Artist: Constable in Constable Country (Ipswich: Ipswich Borough Council Museums and Galleries, 1998), p. 8.
Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (Chatto and Windus, 1992), p. 8.
Quoted in Michael Mayne, p. 204.
© Judith Findlay 2005