Contemporary Painting: Autopoietic Improvisation and a Relational Ecology
Abstract
Contemporary painting as a form of research-making and knowledge acquisition through applied practice calls for a re-evaluation of the relationship between painter and painting. This dissertation examines the complexity of this relationship by displacing authority over the artwork and its meaning from the artist. From this poststructuralist starting point the thesis expands upon Derridean ideas of deconstruction by folding them back into Martin Heidegger’s concepts of earth and world. The aim is to reintroduce the physical materiality of paint back into the relationship between painter and painting, prompting a reassessment of the importance of a wider ecological context. Through an Object-Oriented Ontology Heidegger’s concept of Dasein is expanded upon as the thesis moves from a human centered position, whereby meaning is derived from our human relationship to art, to a nonhuman, decentered, ecological position that maintains that objects exist independently from human perception. The work of Anselm Kiefer is used to document a movement away from human history and linear timescales towards ideas surrounding nonhuman timescales which include geological, material-object, and ecological formulations. Lastly, the thesis addresses how these theoretical examinations might be reflected in how a painter physically interacts with a painting in a studio. Autopoietic improvisation offers a way to address contemporary approaches to painting in a studio environment which brings together a decentered human position with other modes of interagency. This research seeks to question the hierarchies associated with anthropocentrism and to shed light on the intra-agentic forces at play within a contemporary painting practice.