Using an enactive perspective, in this research, I look at the brushwork as a non- representational ‘gesture that is intellectual in nature’ (Macleod and Holdridge 2005: 206). Traces of this gesture are embodied in textures of paint and conveyed to viewers through haptic visuality. As discussed in chapter II, a haptic sense is interpreted here as signalling a transaction between being and doing. The ‘sensuous presence’ (Key 2009: 562) (being) of painting presenting itself as an object through haptic visuality (doing), is the ‘immanence of abstract painterly form[s]’ (ibid. 563). Consequently, by means of visual ‘material resonance’ (ibid.), these paintings work by encouraging viewers to re-enact their ‘phenomenology of being and doing’ (ibid.).
Graw claims painting specificity is located in the pictorial gesture. She defines painting as ‘a form of production of signs that is experienced as highly personalized’ (in Geimer et al. 2012: 45). She argues a painting is an object in which labour as
process is transformed into ‘objectified labor’ (ibid. 56), meaning that painting is an object in which ‘[t]he process of labor is not hidden but seemingly exposed’ (ibid.). Graw’s approach focuses on action, but still reflects traces of representational models. She stresses pictorial marks are embodiments of a ‘semiotic activity’ (ibid. 45) performed by an individual, and calls this the ‘indexicality’ of painting, alluding to these marks as signs representing the absent person who inscribed them. For Graw, painting is a ‘quasi person’ (ibid. 54), an indexical sign that not only points, but almost replaces the painter’s figure. Accordingly, her view endorses ‘the model of artistic authorship that relies on artistic intentionality’ (Kirk 2014: 120). This model proposes such original intention can be traced back by analysing the work.
Powers also has a representational view of the brushwork. He endorses Fry (1909) and Binyon’s (1911) works to claim ‘an artist’s brushstroke […] is a direct record of his character’ (2013: 320). Fry formulates a theoretical system in which gesture and expression are condensed into one. He claims ‘[t]he drawn line is the record of a gesture, and that gesture is modified by the artist’s feelings which are thus communicated to us directly’ (Fry 1909: 185-186). Binyon also supports the fusion of gesture and emotions and claims this assemblage can be identified in a painting’s “rhythm”. Powers (2013: 320) stresses that rhythm reveals ‘the expressive power of brushstrokes capable of conveying the personal thoughts and emotions of the artist’.
All these representational approaches endorse a highly individualised view of the brushwork. Powers for instance, states that the ‘expressive mark […] its content is the artist’s interior state’ (ibid. 324). Similar to Graw, he believes the painter is the final
goal of a work and states the artist ‘is both the subject and the primary referent of the expressive mark’ (ibid.).
MacColl is a special case, as he presents a radically rational and physical view of the brushwork, claiming that the trace left by a gesture ‘represents nothing; it is merely the graphic trace of a point moving under the laws of balance’ (1919: 255). My perspective is located somewhere in between both extremes. As argued in relation to Deleuzoguattarian’s work, I identify a power of the trace for actualising compounds of sensations, which include physical, cognitive and affective actions. Also, in my perspective the marks’ expressivity is not personalised but elevated to the abstract and universal, through making.
In contrast to Graw, in my view the brushwork is not a sign and does not have a ‘physical connection’ with an individual (in Geimer et al. 2012: 50); I see painters’ identity as hybrid assemblages integrating individuals and paintings (subjects and objects). Also, I do not see it as a fixed identity but a becoming, that is, an ongoing construction in a permanent ‘state of process’ (Message 2010: 280) continuously evolving with every new work produced. I even propose that the painter is not a fixed identity, which can be absent or represented by pictorial marks. Rather, marks are outcomes of singular activities performed by assemblages composed by ‘the producing person’ (Graw in Geimer et al. 2012: 50) and pictorial medium in dialogue with the world.
Crowther (2012: 46) calls a painter’s style the ‘distinctive style in which they embody paint marks’, which reflects a personal way of viewing and experiencing the world.
The style can be seen in ‘hapticity operating within’ (ibid. 45) a painting and in Crowther’s view, is what carries aesthetic meaning. He claims style is vehicle or ‘bearer of aesthetic meaning’ (ibid. 1), hence, it is a dual entity embodying both form and content of a work. Blume (2001: 18) agrees, arguing images in a painting emerge from the hand and hence, ‘are channelled by both body and mind and not only by intellect’.
Morley also uses the concept of indexicality while analysing Agnes Martin’s work. However, he uses it in a different way to Graw and in a similar way to the enactive account I present in this thesis:
the traces of graphite or lead are uneven and slightly wobbly […] the repetitiveness of the grid or horizontal lines, and the persistent straightness of the lines, suggests concentrated and rhythmic effort, or focused action over time, thus serving as an indexical sign leading us to an awareness of the active bodily engagement of the artist. (Morley 2016: 49)
Key (2009: 559) also endorses a non-representational account of the brushwork in relation to labour and ‘the work of the painter’. She signals the haptic and optic relation as meditating painting specificity and argues that in pictorial surfaces they are closely tied, determining each other. Key stresses ‘the trace of the skilled hand in painting’s surface is bound up in the visual experience’ (ibid. 557). As ambiguous as it sounds, Key’s emphasis on opticality of painting actually aims to analyse the medium to understand its ‘sensuous material presence’ (ibid.), which paradoxically operates through visual transmission. She also suggests a ‘liberating aspect of abstract
painting is vested in handiwork rather than in optical experience’ (ibid. 560). Similarly, I propose the enchantment of painting is principally located in viewers’ awareness of its materiality that, by resonating with its generating process, evokes imaginative actions in them.