Artists Research:

Jospeh Beuys:

>traditional separation between fine art and domestic items

Felt Suit 1970 Joseph Beuys 1921-1986 ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/AR00092

The simple, descriptive title of this work emphasises the material used and indicates that the object is a suit – something that usually has an everyday, practical function rather than a creative one. Despite Beuys’s statement that the suit could be worn as a means of displaying it, in the same interview he said that doing so would be impractical since ‘in a relatively short time it’ll lose its shape because felt is not a material which holds its form’ (Beuys in Schnellman and Klüsser 1980, unpaginated). Nonetheless, in producing this work that could serve as a functional object, Beuys may have been questioning the traditional separation between fine art and domestic items. He stated further that when making works which seem to be everyday objects, he hoped that viewers might ‘realize that everyone is an artist, because, many people will ask themselves: “Why don’t I make something like that, something similar.” The sentence “Everybody is an artist” simply means to point out that the human being is a creative being, that he is a creator, and what’s more, that he can be productive in a great many different ways. To me, it’s irrelevant whether a product comes from a painter, from a sculptor or from a physicist.’ (Beuys in Schnellman and Klüsser 1980, unpaginated.)

Between 1965 and 1986 Beuys created over five hundred sets of ‘multiples’ or editioned works. In 1970 he stated that he worked in this way because he was ‘interested in spreading ideas’ and multiples allowed him to reach ‘a larger number of people’ (Beuys in Schnellman and Klüsser 1980, unpaginated).

Beuys frequently used felt in his work, including in sculptures (see, for instance, Homogeneous Infiltration for Piano 1966, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris), installations (such as The Pack 1969, Neue Galerie, Kassel) and performances (see, for example, Felt TV 1970). He associated felt with the production of ‘warmth’ and sometimes referred to object-based works involving the material as ‘warmth sculptures’ (quoted in Schnellman and Klüsser 1980, unpaginated). In 1979 he wrote that he was interested in producing sculptures that emphasise ongoing processes (such as insulation) rather than fixed states because he wanted to show that ‘Everything is in a state of change’, an idea that he linked with the concept of ‘social sculpture’, or ‘how we mold and shape the world in which we live: sculpture as an evolutionary process’ (Joseph Beuys, ‘Introduction’, in Carin Kuoni, Energy Plan for the Western Man: Joseph Beuys in America, New York 1990, p.19).

Further reading
Jörg Schnellman and Bernd Klüsser, Joseph Beuys: Multiples, 5th edn, Berlin 1980, unpaginated, reproduced.
Joseph Beuys: Actions, Vitrines, Environments, exhibition catalogue, Menil Collection, Houston 2004, p.216, reproduced p.44.
Claudia Mesch and Viola Michely, Joseph Beuys: The Reader, London 2007.

David Hodge
March 2015

Paul Neagu:

This text discusses a number of ‘tactile’ and ‘palpable’ objects by Paul Neagu, Tactile Object, 1969 (T07749), Great Tactile Table, 1970 (T07750), Tactile Object, 1970 (T07751), Palpable Object, 1970-2 (T07755), Palpable Object, 1970-2 (T07756), Tactile Object, 1970-2 (T07757), Tactile Object, 1972 (T07758) and White Tactile Object with Hinges, 1972 (T07759).

Romanian-born Neagu started to make ‘tactile’ and ‘palpable’ objects in Bucharest in 1969 and continued to produce them in London, where he moved in 1970, until 1972. His ‘tactile objects’ were originally intended as suspended objects. Neagu explained in 1986, ‘the more the sculpture runs away from the plinth the less are its chances as a special object’ (quoted in Narrow Water Gallery exhibition catalogue, 1988, n.p.). The ‘palpable objects’ are articulated constructions whose hinged or moving parts were originally intended to be physically manipulated by the spectator. They often incorporate boxes or compartments containing various tactile substances, such as fabrics or leather.

Neagu’s first exhibition in Great Britain was at the Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh, as part of the 1969 Edinburgh Festival. The exhibition comprised numerous constructed objects, made from various found elements, suspended from the ceiling. The rooms in which the objects were hung were painted black and unlit. Visitors to the gallery experienced the exhibits by feeling their way around the room, sensing the objects individually by touch alone. In this way, Neagu’s intention was to create works which elicited a response that went beyond, and largely eliminated, purely visual considerations, focusing instead on form, texture and the associations these qualities provoked. In 1969 the artist produced a ‘Palpable Art Manifesto!’ In this, he maintained that ‘the eye is fatigued, perverted, shallow, its culture is degenerate, degraded and obsolete, seduced by photography, film, television.’ Art had therefore to ‘give up its purely visual aesthetic if it wants to survive specifically as plastic art, and must move towards an organic and unified aesthetic that will make use of senses that are still fresh, pure.’ Neagu then asserted, ‘you can take things in better, more completely, with your ten fingers, pores and mucous membranes than with only two eyes’, concluding that ‘palpable art is a new joy for the “blind”, while for the “clear-sighted” it is “the most thoroughly three-dimensional study”‘ (‘Palpable Art Manifesto! Edinburgh 1969’, reprinted in Sunderland Arts Centre exhibition catalogue, 1975, p.6.)

During the early 1970s Neagu also made objects which were similar in construction and intention to his ‘tactile objects’ but took the form of figures. The Great Tactile Table, first exhibited at the Sigi Krauss Gallery in London in 1971, is one of these figurative tactile objects. These works comprise figures in the form of numerous individual boxes into which spectators could dip their fingers and feel various substances and textures. As well as engaging the viewer’s physical involvement, the compartmentalised formal structure of the work also carries metaphorical significance. The sculpture’s cellular nature suggests the way the body is a compound of individual parts and different sensations. At the same time it invites connections between the cellular nature of the individual and of larger human structures, notably society, which is similarly composed of discrete parts. The implication is that both the individual and society as a whole are continuously striving for unity and equilibrium.

White Tactile Object with Hinges, 1972, shows another way in which Neagu developed his ideas. The piece comprises a wooden box, painted white and fitted with a lid, hinged along one edge. The interior of the box is subdivided by a number of cardboard matchboxes and the spaces between the matchboxes are filled with newspaper papier maché painted brown. An extension of the ‘palpable’ and ‘tactile’ objects, this kind of object operates visually but is intended to evoke tactile sensations through the spectator’s experience of looking. The appearance of the object – deliberately encrusted, amorphous and organic-looking – is highly suggestive of its tactile nature.

Further reading:
Paul Neagu, exhibition leaflet, Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh 1969, unpaginated
‘Gradually Going Torn-ado!’ Paul Neagu and his Generative Art Group, exhibition catalogue, Sunderland Arts Centre 1975
Paul Neagu: Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, exhibition catalogue, Narrow Water Gallery, Warrenpoint, Co. Down 1988, unpaginated

Paul Moorhouse
November 2000
Revised by Giorgia Bottinelli
May 2002

‘Andrew Lord’

Lord uses clay to create what he calls ‘process sculptures’. His earlier works employed fairly conventional ideas of making ceramic vessels through a use of modelling or pressing and squeezing, but this two-part work explores the relationship of the body to the act of making. He works to objectify gestures that might communicate the senses, as biting is a physical act that also communicates taste. He has explained how using his body as a tool ‘became a way of identifying and isolating senses and sensations and a way to assemble a catalogue of my physical self, a record of my physical memory.’

Gallery label, September 2016

Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane:

Souped Up Tea Urn & Tea Pot (Dartford 2004) is an installation by the British artists Jeremy Deller and Allan Kane comprising various pieces of tea-making equipment arranged on a table. Viewers can be invited to use the objects when the work is on display, but Kane has stated that the work can also be shown without this interactive element (Allan Kane, email to Tate Curator Rachel Taylor, 6 December 2004, Tate Acquisition File, Jeremy Deller and Allan Kane 2002–, PC 10.1). The items on the table include a large urn and a teapot, both painted with a stylised flame pattern featuring dark red, gold and orange tones. The urn is designed to boil water and features a temperature gauge. Both the teapot and the urn have smooth, shiny surfaces, and they show indications of use, including stains and residue around the teapot’s interior and spout. The installation also features twelve assorted and used-looking mugs, which are presented on a pale brown, rectangular wooden tray with a low rim. The table has metal fold-out legs and a shiny, greyish upper surface.

This work was first conceived by Deller and Kane in 2004. It is an identical reproduction of an installation that was initially commissioned for Romantic Detachment, a 2004 exhibition at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York which focused on contemporary European and North American explorations of romanticism. In 2005 the original version was donated to Water Yeat Village Hall in Cumbria in the UK, which is near the headquarters of Grizedale Arts, the institution responsible for curating Romantic Detachment.

The objects in this installation were acquired by the artists, who then asked car body painter John Dillon to paint the urn and teapot. The artists reportedly asked Dillon to decorate them using a design based on those normally found on Harley Davidson motorcycles and low rider cars (Griffin and Sutherland 2009, p.167). In 2004 Dillon detailed his painting procedure, which included many stages: the objects’ surfaces were sanded multiple times and various coats of paint were applied, after which both items were machine polished (Allan Kane, email to Tate Curator Rachel Taylor, 6 December 2004, Tate Acquisition File, Jeremy Deller and Allan Kane 2002–, PC 10.1). According to the Grizedale Arts website, the mugs accompanying Tate’s version of the work were purchased from the Kendal-based warehouse of the charity Help the Aged by Alistair Hudson, Deputy Director of Grizedale Arts, and chosen for their compatibility with ‘village hall aesthetics’ (‘Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane: At Grizedale’, Grizedale Arts website, http://www.grizedale.org/contributors/deller.and.kane/jeremy.deller, accessed 1 September 2015).

The phrase ‘souped up’ generally refers to modified cars with increased engine power. Here it emphasises Dillon’s use of car body painting techniques to adapt the appearance of the urn and teapot, yet it could also refer to the idea of these objects being used to heat up soup. The work’s punning title therefore seems to emphasise its odd conflation of catering implements with car culture. As the art historian Hal Foster has noted, such incongruous combinations of signifiers are common in Deller’s practice (Hal Foster, ‘History is a Hen Harrier’, in English Magic, exhibition catalogue, British Pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale, Venice 2013, p.11). This can also be discerned in the juxtaposition of British tea-drinking culture with a painted design which, according to a text produced by Grizedale Arts, ‘directly emulated a style of American West Coast iconography which was itself influenced largely by Latino culture’ (Griffin and Sutherland 2009, p.167).

The work’s references to vernacular culture are characteristic of Deller and Kanes’ practices. For example, from 2000 to 2007 they collaborated on Folk Archive, which saw them collecting and documenting works of contemporary British folk art. Discussing Deller’s interest in ‘the vernacular’, the cultural theorist Stuart Hall has associated him with the principle that ‘people who are sometimes considered to be unimportant, or not worth listening to, matter. They are creative but often have their creativity denied or taken away from them. He believes they should be valued for what they are … and that one way of doing that is to re-deploy them as sources of new artistic work’ (Stuart Hall, ‘Jeremy Deller’s Political Imaginary’, in Hayward Gallery 2012, pp.88–9).

Tea-drinking has also featured in other works by Deller. For example, when he represented Britain at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, staff members served free tea in one room of the pavilion. Discussing this in 2013, Deller stated: ‘it’s a mild trap. It means people hang out, they sit around, they might read the catalogue, you hope, might read some other things, they might chat’ (Deller in Freire Barnes, ‘Meet the Artist: Jeremy Deller’, Time Out, 2013, http://www.timeout.com/london/art/meet-the-artist-jeremy-deller, accessed 1 September 2015).

Further reading
Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane, Folk Archive: Contemporary Popular Art from the UK, London 2005.
Jonathan Griffin and Adam Sutherland, Grizedale Arts: Adding Complexity to Confusion, Coniston 2009, p.167.
Jeremy Deller: Joy in People, exhibition catalogue, Hayward Gallery, London 2012.

David Hodge
September 2015

Eric Bainbridge:

>Does the loss of functional make this fine art?

More Blancmange 1988 is a large sculpture by Eric Bainbridge comprised of six enlarged spoons standing lined up in a shallow box. The work is made of fibreglass, plywood and plaster covered with white artificial fur fabric. It is displayed on the floor, leaning against the gallery wall. The title of the work refers to the dessert blancmange, traditionally made of milk or cream and therefore often appearing white in colour, which became associated with middle and working class cuisine in post-war England. The addition of ‘more’ suggests an excess of this often sickly food, relating to the large scale of these otherwise everyday objects.

Like a number of other British artists of his generation, Bainbridge’s work from the 1980s was characterised by removing objects from their usual setting and representing them transformed. As the artist has written of More Blancmange:

The work is based on a box of ‘ivory’ souvenir/presentation spoons bought in a charity shop. The initial interest was the snug fit of the spoons in the box and the potential ridiculousness of the subsequent enlargement of the objects, and their increased sense of vulnerability when displayed at the increased scale. At this time I was becoming interested in finding existing objects to remake that already contained the sculptural qualities that I liked (rather than combining various objects as I had done earlier).
(Bainbridge, email correspondence with Tate curator Katharine Stout, February 2013.)
Bainbridge’s interest in everyday objects suggests a relationship to surrealism and particularly Meret Oppenheim’s Object 1936 (Museum of Modern Art, New York), which also used artificial fur. Like Oppenheim’s fur-covered teacup, saucer and teaspoon, More Blancmange sets up an uncanny encounter to surprise the viewer. The furry white surface of the spoons contrasts with their usual smoothness, provoking a strange sensation. This effect is common to Bainbridge’s work of the period, which encourages a way of experiencing art that is not solely visual. An encounter with More Blancmange provokes an awareness of one’s own body, either because of the object’s overwhelming size or the familiar, but unexpected, texture of the coverings. As the curator Stuart Morgan remarked in 1990, ‘The fabric unified surfaces, blurred edges and served to camouflage the familiar but magnified objects he [Bainbridge] chose to remake. His technique had become one of systematic bafflement. Dwarfed by overblown, woolly but somehow familiar shapes, the spectator wandered, intimidated by the new self assurance these artefacts had acquired.’ (Morgan in Riverside Studios 1990, p.6.)

The use of fabric in Bainbridge’s work can also be aligned to the work of pop artists such as the American sculptor Claes Oldenburg (see Soft Drainpipe – Blue (Cool) Version 1967, Tate T01257) or British sculptor Jann Haworth (see Beads and Background 1963–4, Tate T13643). Like these artists, Bainbridge exaggerates everyday objects, suggesting new ways of relating to the things that surround us day to day. However, Bainbridge’s work is less concerned with the softness and material form of fabric, than the particular response that the fur or colour provokes in the viewer when used as a covering for other objects. As Bainbridge has described:

The work [More Blancmange] is from the final group of fur works (after this the fur was turned inwards and the rear side of the fabric was displayed). The white works were intended to play on the concept of newness/cleanness (white goods) and the inevitable degrading through time – as in the use of white in the paintings of Malevich and Mondrian … The simplicity and dumbness of the image gives this work an accessibility and popular appeal.
(Eric Bainbridge, email correspondence with Tate curator Katharine Stout, February 2013.)
Further reading
Eric Bainbridge, Style, Space, Elegance, exhibition catalogue, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 1989.
Eric Bainbridge, exhibition catalogue, Riverside Studios, London 1990.
Eric Bainbridge: Forward Thinking 1976–2008, exhibition catalogue, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Middlesbrough 2008.

Katharine Stout
February 2013

Barbara Kasten: