Students Resource

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• Students Resource
• Key Stage 4

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Contents

• Subversive Spaces Surrealism and Contemporary
  Art
• Psychic Interiors
• Claude Cahun
• René Magritte
• Tony Oursler
• Markus Schinwald
• Liminal Spaces
• Wandering the City
• William Anastasi
• Rosemarie Castoro
• George Shaw
• Alex Villar
• Emergent Themes
• The Body
• Film

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WAG Learning and Interpretation Resources

• The Learning and Interpretation team develops
  resources that are distinctive for Secondary and
  Post-16 students that aim to encourage creative
  exploration, interdisciplinary thinking and
  intriguing curiosity. They are unique to the
  Whitworth Art Gallery and can be used in the
  gallery spaces with reference to current
  temporary exhibitions and the Whitworths
  collections. This resource is for use with
  PowerPoint or as a printed handout. It can be
  used as pre-visit preparation, during a visit to
  the Whitworth Art Gallery and also as a
  contextual reference source.

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• Subversive Spaces Surrealism and Contemporary
  Art
• The familiar spaces of the Whitworth Art Gallery
  will be disturbed and subverted by this major
  exhibition that brings together examples of
  contemporary art and installation with historical
  surrealist works. The show aims to highlight the
  relevance of surrealist ideas on art practices
  now. It brings together painting, sculpture,
  installation, photography, video and film.
• The exhibition has been curated according
  to these two themes
• Psychic Interiors
• Wandering the city

A definition of the key words in red can be found
in the Glossary at the end of this resource.
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S Q U U R O R T E A A T L I I O S N M S

• Surrealists used collage and montage
  techniques. These creative compositional skills
  are characterised by the combination of
  contrasting everyday images to reveal the
  extraordinary as intrinsic. The Surrealists
  understanding of the everyday was that it was
  already strange and extraordinary, but is
  perceived as being mundane.
• (Ben Highmore (2003), Everyday Life and Cultural
  Theory, Routledge)

Surrealism, with its fascination for social
transgressions, disruptive poetics, revolutionary
politics and the unconscious, has left a
considerable legacy for modern culture. (David
Bate, The Mise en Scéne of Desire in Mise en
scéne. (1994), ICA)
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Artist Case Studies

• Psychic Interiors
• Claude Cahun Self-portrait in Cupboard
• René Magritte Man with Newspaper
• Tony Oursler The Most Beautiful Thing I have
  Never Seen
• Markus Schinwald Contortionists (Vicky)
• Wandering the City
• William Anastasi Subway Drawings
• Rosemarie Castoro Streetworks
• George Shaw Scenes from the Passion The Swing
• Alex Villar Temporary Occupations

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Psychic Interiors

• Psychic Interiors
• This section explores themes of psychic
  disturbance- anxiety and hysteria- provoked by
  and manifesting in interior and mainly domestic
  spaces.
• Artists like René Magritte de-familiarise
  domestic space and sow unease. Interior spaces
  are frequently depicted by surrealist artists.
• The familiar is often transformed into the
  uncanny. Space was reconfigured in surprising and
  disorienting ways by the surrealists through
  distortions of scale, shifting and unstable
  structures, dematerialised forms, permeable
  boundaries and the disruption of gravity.

Douglas Gordon, Hysterical. Video. 1995
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Claude Cahun, Self portrait, (in cupboard), 1932,
Jersey Heritage Trust

• Claude Cahun was born in 1894 and was originally
  named Lucy Schwob. She was a poet, essayist,
  literary critic, short-story writer, translator,
  actress, photographer and revolutionary activist.
  
• The self-portrait photographs of Claude Cahun
  show an extraordinary range of mise en scéne of
  the self as image. Claude Cahun disrupts the
  meaning of what a self-portrait is and leaves the
  viewer disorientated. They mimic and mock
  categories of social identity and questions the
  boundaries of gender identity. Cahuns
  photographs tend to emphasise the cultural coding
  of the body rather than the body itself
  costumes, masks, theatrical make-up and facial
  expression take precedence when compared with
  those other Surrealists emphasis on the female
  body as torso.
• The Mise en Scéne of Desire by David Bate in
  Mise en scéne (1994), ICA

• Mise en Scéne
• Mise en Scéne are the components that make up
  the staging of a scene for the camera the
  setting, lighting, costumes, actors, make-up and
  props, etc
• Mise en scéne is used to describe different
  historical and contemporary types of staging.
• Photographic mise en scéne has these elements in
  common with the theatre, in addition to those
  photographic effects of the camera itself focus,
  lens, angle, depth-of-field, perspective, film,
  framing, point of view.
• The Mise en Scéne of Desire by David Bate in Mise
  en scéne (1994), ICA

How do other works in the exhibition and the
Whitworths collections relate to Mise en Scéne?
Do compositional methods used in painting Still
Life and Portraiture relate to this idea?
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René Magritte, Man With a Newspaper, 1928, TATE

• René Magritte was born in 1898 in Lessines,
  Belgium. Using a meticulously realistic
  technique, and often depicting the most banal of
  situations, Magritte succeeded in alternately
  astounding, amusing, enchanting and puzzling the
  viewer with his totally unexpected juxtapositions
  and metamorphoses.
• The Man with Newspaper is a painting that
  depicts objects that make up the petty-bourgeois
  household interior.There is nothing disturbing
  about the surroundings of the man reading his
  newspaper. The decoration on the wall is the most
  absurd and the most ordinary imaginable. The
  window with the curtains , the small bouquet of
  flowers on the windowsill, and even the view are
  exactly of the kind the petty bourgeois selects
  to create the required atmosphere in his home.
  Magritte found the scene in an 1890s medical
  book, La Nouvelle Médication Naturelle by F.E.
  Bilz.
• Magritte divides the canvas into four rectangles
  and paints the same room four times, showing the
  man reading his newspaper in only one of these
  scenes. By being removed from the picture, the
  man becomes invisible. This repetition also is
  sufficient- and necessary- to show that despite
  the mans having disappeared, nothing essential
  has changed.
• Hammacher, A.M (1986), Magritte, Thames Hudson

Experiment with your own surreal compositions by
drawing what is around you (people, works of art,
gallery spaces, etc) and then drawing an everyday
object or objects (think about contrasting the
scale, where it is going to be) amongst your
drawing. How does this change the meaning?
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Tony Oursler, The Most Beautiful Thing Ive Never
Seen, 1995, TATE

• Tony Oursler was born in 1957 in New York. He
  attended the California Institute for the Arts in
  1979. He lives and works in New York. Tony
  Oursler examines both the content of mass media,
  in particular television programmes, which are
  dominated by violence, sex, evil and good, and
  media as modes of communication. In his
  installations he subverts our fascination for
  mass media, thereby helping to create a defense
  mechanism against them.
• In The Most Beautiful Thing Ive Never Seen an
  important aspect of Tony Ourslers work is his
  fascination with the immense potential of new
  technologies- especially those, such as video, in
  which he finds structures of a quasi-mimetic
  kind. Technology, in his view, has the power to
  imitate human spiritual and emotional capacities,
  and he therefore regards it as the real heart of
  our age.
• Tony Oursler Videotapes, Dummies, Drawings,
  Photographs, Viruses, Light, Heads, Eyes and
  CD-ROM (exh. cat., ed. E. Schneider Hanover,
  Kstver., 1998)

Draw what you see in the gallery (think about not
only the works on display, but the furniture,
people, fire extinguishers, lights, etc). From
the drawings you have made, assemble the objects
together to form a 2D installation. Do the
images as a collective have a different meaning?
Could this drawing be re-interpreted as a 3D
installation?
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Interview with Tony Oursler
This excerpt is taken from an interview from the
book, Correspondences that looks at the
connections between Tony Oursler and Gustave
Courbet. The following text gives an insight into
how artists develop their ideas and work in their
studios. Tony Oursler was interviewed by artist
Jacqueline Humphries.

• Jacqueline Humphries Fantasies are real for
  artistsMany would say that an artwork is
  finished when it leaves the studio, when it
  becomes available for viewing that is.So how do
  you go about your fantasy/reality construct?
• Tony Oursler First you need an idea. I dont
  know which is harder thinking it up or making it.
  Sometimes people ask me where I get my ideas and
  at first I thought what a stupid question, but
  then I realised the beauty of it.
• Jacqueline Humphries Where did the ideas come
  from?
• Tony Oursler Well, some say we are born empty
  and then we get filled with the things that are
  already here, received ideas. The
  doomsday-appropriation-mantra.
• Jacqueline Humphries Art is hard work and
  requires a lot of thinking.
• Tony Oursler I work from a conceptual base but
  when art is successful its magic. You can try
  and explain it, but if you could explain, then it
  wouldnt be magic. Its what artists are doing in
  their studio, struggling to make the impossible
  happen, to grasp at process.
• Tony Oursler, Gustave Courbet Correspondences
  (2004), Museé dOrsay, Art Contemporam No.2,
  Hazan

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Markus Schinwald, Contortionists (Vicky), 2003,
Georg Karg

• Markus Schinwald was born in Salzburg, Austria
  in 1973 and currently lives in Vienna. Markus
  Schinwald's work alludes in a very
  individualistic way to historical myths,
  psychoanalysis, and cultural theories.
• Markus Scinwalds Contortionists are
  large-scaled panoramic photographs resulting from
  Schinwalds ongoing collaboration with dancers
  and the attempt to represent altered versions of
  the human body, which seem to be only nuances
  away from that which is physically possible.
  Japanese or Russian snake women perform in
  utopian manner what could well as be digitally
  altered via prostheses and animations. Yet,
  Schinwalds explorations of the physical self as
  paradoxes of the real relate to the conditions of
  analogue photography and the ultimate boundaries
  of the human body.
• http//www.e-flux.com/shows/view/1528

Explore the range of ways you can contort your
body and draw what you see in the gallery from
that position. How does this affect the way you
see, look and draw?
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Wandering the City

• Walking through the city- an ephemeral,
  experimental, unrepeatable activity- was an
  experiment reflecting the surrealists desire to
  transform the very fabric of everyday life.
• Walking became an act of giving up control and a
  means of achieving a hypnotic state, between
  dream and reality.
• The very act of traversing certain spaces
  conjures a space of anxiety and desire in which
  personal journeys are overlaid with political,
  social and historical shifts.
• As an exploration of urban culture it feeds into
  Manchesters seemingly never-ending regeneration
  of disused space and its remaining psychical
  pockets of history and political activism.

Calin Dan, Sample City, 2003 (Video)
Brassai, photographs published in Minotaure
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William Anastasi, Subway Drawings, 1968-2004,
Stalke Gallery and Thomas Rehbein Gallery

• William Anastasi was born in 1933 in
  Philadelphia, USA. He is one of the founders of
  both Conceptual and Minimal Art.
• Anastasi almost seems to have been divorcing
  himself from the body and turning his signs into
  an automatic writing.
• Fausing, Bent, SENSE-AND WORD-PLAY in Hansen,
  Elizabeth Delin (2001), William Anastasi- A
  Retrospective, Nikolaj- Copenhagen Contemporary
  Art Centre.
• In the subway drawings, it is also the
  randomness that smiles on Anastasi, in the sense
  that he allows the rain to determine not only the
  speed but also the form, via its unpredictable
  movements.
• Fausing, Bent, SENSE-AND WORD-PLAY in Hansen,
  Elizabeth Delin (2001), William Anastasi- A
  Retrospective, Nikolaj- Copenhagen Contemporary
  Art Centre.

Using your sketchbook and a pencil, lightly place
your pencil vertically on a page from your
sketchbook. Walk around the gallery without
looking at the page and map your journey.
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Interview with William Anastasi
Thomas McEvilley is an art critic and port. He
interviewed William Anastasi about the Subway
Drawings and how the parameters can be challenged
by experimenting with unconventional processes
and techniques.

• Thomas McEvilley I have the impression that
  blind drawings and paintings really came to the
  forefront of your work in the 80s.
• William Anastasi In the early 70s I made the
  first large blind drawings. Then starting in 1977
  I would go downtown on the subway a lot to play
  chess with John Cage. I would fill my pocket with
  a couple dozen sharpened pencils. Then on the
  subway I would put on firing range headphones to
  make it silent. It also makes people less likely
  to interrupt me. I would sit erect with my back
  away from the seat, with a pencil in each hand
  and a sheet of paper taped to a board on my lap.
  I would hold the pencils like darts and lightly
  touch the surface. The train ride is lurching
  enough so you need an external point to keep your
  balance I would use the pencils for that and
  allow the swaying of my body as the train
  careened around curves to make the drawing. I bet
  Ive done a thousand of those. I would ride from
  137th street to 18th street and after the game
  back again.
• Thomas McEvilley The results are extraordinary.
  Its interesting too that you got better at it,
  though some of the early ones are beautiful in a
  less knowing, more innocent way. So this goes
  back to your paradoxical discovery, in 1962 or
  so, that you got better visual results with your
  eyes closed.

• William Anastasi You can see what a treasure
  randomness is. When you, for example, make random
  collocations of words through clipping or
  whatever, the results are always heartbreakingly
  beautiful.
• Thomas Mc Evilley Yes, thats an amazing thing
  to contemplate, when we think of all our concern
  to control, and how it conventionalizes events.
  Others have done blind drawings- Robert Morris, I
  think, for example- but you seem to have made a
  special affirmation of them.
• William Anastasi I seldom do drawings with my
  eyes open anymore. The large blind drawings of
  course arent done on the subway but in my
  studio. The studio drawings are timed by the
  ride in the studio I set a time beforehand,
  usually between half an hour and four hours, and
  usually execute them non-stop.
• McEvilley (1989), William Anastasi, Scott
  Hawthorn Gallery

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Rosemarie Castoro, Streetworks, 1969, courtesy of
the artist
I attended Art Workers Coalition meetings in
1969. Poets and artists produced Street Works.
I made an atoll out of Manhattan Island by
cracking the sidewalk with shiny tape,
bringing to mind my childhood paintings of
deserted islands. I times myself for a week, a
weekend and a day. My stopwatch works examined
the inventory of my daily activities. While
waiting for a huge school clock to be cleaned in
a Canal Street surplus store, I fixed my
attention in a box of casters. Art as traveling.
Anywhere you care to go. I moved my ceiling,
letting in more light. www.rosemariecastoro.com/
200420writings-ecrits.pdf One night in the
spring of 1968, Rosemarie Castoro rode a bicycle
along a circuit encompassing twenty square blocks
of midtown Manhattan. I had a gallon of paint
attached to my bike, with a hole in the bottom,
she recently recalled. As long as I kept moving,
there was a line of drips. Once when I had to
stop at a red light, a man in a car pointed out
that the paint had begun to puddle. Actually, I
used quite a lot- four gallons- and it took me
three hours. Afterwards, I went to Maxs, which
was the artists bar in those days. Also, St
Adrians, which was farther down town. Anyway, I
went back the next day to photograph the drips.
It was part of a series of pieces called
Streetworks, organised by Scott Burton and John
Perreault. We would just do them and run away.
Ratcliff, Carter (2000), Out of the Box The
Reinvention of Art, 1965-1975
Walk around an exhibition space is a way you
wouldnt usually (think about how you walk- large
strides, fast movements followed by slow ones,
zigzag rather than linear, rhythmical, crawling).
Write down the movements as a set of
instructions. Swap instructions and photograph
someone else following your Gallerywork.
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George Shaw, Scenes from the Passion The Swing,
2002, courtesy of the artist/ Wilkinson Gallery

• George Shaw was born in Coventry in 1966. He
  studies at Sheffield Polytechnic and later at the
  Royal College of Art in London. His paintings
  describe a sense of location at once familiar and
  eerie a place where serenity and anxiety are
  equally present. They play games with time too,
  hinting at some unspecified recent past.
• Scenes from the Passion The Swing, courtesy of
  the artist/ Wilkinson Gallery
• Shaws paintings depict semi-suburban
  environments council flats and blocks of flats,
  schools, rows of garages, subways, shabby parks
  and recreation grounds.The locations are based on
  photographs taken by Shaw within a half-mile
  radius of his childhood home. Their modernity
  lies in their staleness, their visceral
  identification of an environment which is
  post-industrial rather than post-modern. Shaws
  art making process is rooted within a vernacular
  method. He works with lab-processed snaps, refers
  to the initial drawings as How To Draw styles,
  uses MDF board and Humbrol enamel paints.
• The Sleep of Estates An Introduction to the
  art of George Shaw by Michael Bracewell in What
  I did this Summer, George Shaw, 2003, Dundee
  Contemporary Arts and Ikon Gallery)

Observe the gallery spaces and imagine they were
completely deserted. How would this changed the
way you viewed the exhibition or walked through
the gallery. Would it be eerie and uncanny? Would
you behave differently (maybe become more anxious
or feel liberated and freely explore the space).
How could you convey these feelings figuratively
through drawing, painting or other media?
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Alex Villar, Temporary Occupations, 2001,
courtesy of the artist
Alex Villar was born in 1961 in Brazil. He
studied at Hunter College, New York and took part
in the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2000.
The artist lives and works in New York.
I have developed a practice that concentrates on
matters of social space. My interventions are
done primarily in public spaces. They consist of
positioning the body of the performer in
situations where the codes that regulate everyday
activity can be made explicit. The body is made
to conform to the limitations of claustrophobic
spaces, therefore accentuating arbitrary
boundaries and possibly subverting them.
http//www.de-tour.org/biography/index.h
tml
Are there any spaces in the gallery that arent
usually occupied by people who visit the gallery?
(think about places like under the stairs,
corners, etc). Find these types of liminal spaces
and occupy them by either standing, sitting,
crouching or any other way. Draw what you see
from that perspective and write down any curious
observations from that experience.
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EMERGENT THEMES
In addition to the two curatorial themes, Psychic
Interiors and , further themes connect the
artists from Artist Case Studies. These themes
can be used to explore the exhibition, the
relationship between the works in Subversive
Spaces Surrealism and Contemporary Art and the
Whitworths permanent collection, the
architectural framework and layout of the gallery
spaces. The chosen themes are

• The Body
• Film
• Mapping

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Connections to our Collections
Psychic Interiors
Connections to our Collections shows how the
works in Subversive Spaces Surrealism and
Contemporary Art link to the Whitworths
collections either that are currently on display
or on the Whitworths Online Collections
Database. Access the online collections by going
to http//www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/collect
ion
Camden Decoration (lithograph),unattributed
Shand Kydd Ltd (WPM), 1938
Rhone Decoration (lithograph), unattributed,
Shand Kydd Ltd (WPM), 1931
Interior, Hilton, Roger,1973
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Connections to our Collections
Wandering the City
View of the City of Paris, with the Louvre,
Thomas Girtin, Frederick Christian Lewis,1802
Westbourne Park, Bawden, Richard
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The Body
Connections to our Collections

• The body has been a subject that has been
  depicted historically and has continued to be
  explored by contemporary artists.
• The body has also been used as a medium in
  performance art, where the body is used express
  movement, choreographed actions, staged events or
  happenings.
• Other mediums are also used to explore the human
  form, including painting, sculpture, video,
  photography and digital media. Issues of gender,
  identity and subverting social, cultural and
  political norms are also investigated of artists
  interested in using the body as a subject and /or
  medium.
• The following artists use the body either as the
  subject or medium of their work

The theme, The Body links to the Whitworths
collections that are either currently on display
or on the Whitworths Online Collections Database
. Access the online collections by going to
http//www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/collection

• William Anastasi
• Claude Cahun
• René Magritte
• Markus Schinwald
• Alex Villar

Peter Schlesinger David Hockney, 1967
Self Portrait, Freud, Lucian,1942-1944
Torso, Barbara Hepworth, 1930
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Film
Connections to our Collections

• Artists use film in diverse ways. These include
  documenting movement, the passing of time,
  creating filmic assemblages and re-appropriating
  moving images.
• Mise en Scéne is a key idea that is used in
  cinematography. Artists also use film to comment
  and critique its impact and influence on society
  .
• Performance Art is often ephemeral, but film can
  be used to document performances and enable the
  work to have a permanent record that can be
  experienced by a wider audience in other
  contexts.
• The following artists that can be related to
  film or filmic techniques

The theme, Film links to the Whitworths
collections that are either currently on display
or on the Whitworths Online Collections Database
. Access the online collections by going to
http//www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/collection
Claude Cahun Tony Oursler Markus
Schinwald Rosemarie Castoro Alex Villar
Broken English August '91 Anya Gallaccio,1997
Release Richard Hamilton, 1967

• Historical Surrealist Films
• Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, Un Chien Andalou,
  1929
• Man Ray, Le Retour à la raison, 1919
• Marcel Duchamp, Anemic Cinema
• René Clair and Francis Picabia, EntrActe, 1924
• Antonin Artaud, The Sea-shell and the Clergyman,
  1928

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Mapping
Connections to our Collections

• Maps are used to plan journeys to specific
  places. They can also document the geographical
  relationship between different areas of the
  world. Many maps are designed for generic use.
  Personal maps can be developed that enable
  individuals to document their journeys or express
  their relationship to their environment. Factors
  that could be considered include emotion
  response, associations, personal everyday
  landmarks, scale, medium, memories.. Christian
  Nold is an artist, designer and educator working
  to develop new participatory models for communal
  representation, including maps (http//www.softhoo
  k.com). Mapping can be used to develop ideas,
  document a personal journey or become the work
  itself. The following artists that can be related
  mapping
• William Anastasi
• Rosemarie Castoro
• Alex Villar

Abraham Ortelius, Map of New Asia, 1584 Tanzanian
Urafiki, Diamond Jubilee Commemorative Kitenge,
design no 570, 2002
Shelly Goldsmith, Monsoon Capital, 1999
The above piece is a preparatory sample of
Monsoon Capital by Shelly Goldsmith. It is part
TACTILE, the Whitworths contemporary textile
makers handling collection.
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Glossary
Use the Glossary as a reference for key terms
that emerge from this resource.

• Analogue- relating to or using signals or
  information represented by a continuously
  variable quantity (rather than digits)
• Anxiety- concern about an imminent danger,
  difficulty, etc
• Appropriation- adapt or change established
  ideas/objects/art
• Arbitrary- based on uninformed opinions or random
  choices
• Assemblage- a collection of things
• Atoll- a ring-shaped coral reef and small island,
  enclosing a lagoon and surrounded by open sea
• Automatic- done spontaneously without conscious
  thought or intention
• Banal- trite, feeble, commonplace
• Bourgeois- conventionally middle-class/humdrum,
  unimaginative
• Cinematography- the art of making motion-picture
  films
• Claustrophobia- an abnormal fear of enclosed
  spaces
• Collage- a form of art in which various materials
  are arranged and glued to a backing
• Collocation- the juxtaposition or association of
  a particular word with another particular word or
  words
• Concept- a general notion an abstract idea
• Construct- make by fitting parts together
• Contortion- the act of process of twisting
• Critique- a critical analysis
• Dematerialised- make or become non-material or
  spiritual
• Disorientate- confuse (a person) as to his or her
  whereabouts or bearings

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• Hypnosis- a state like sleep in which the subject
  acts only on external suggestion
• Hysteria- a wild uncontrollable emotion or
  excitement
• Installation- the act or an instance of
  installing
• Inventory- a complete list of objects, household
  contents, etc
• Legacy- something handed down by a predecessor
• Mantra- a word or sound repeated to aid
  concentration in meditation
• Metamorphose- change in form
• Mimic- imitate, resemble closely
• Minimal- characterised by the use of simple or
  primary forms or structures
• Mock- ridicule
• Modernism- modern ideas or methods
• Montage- a process of selecting, editing and
  piecing together separate sections of cinema or
  television film to form a continuous whole
• Mundane- dull, routine
• Myth- a widely held, but false notion
• Nuance- a subtle difference in or shade of
  meaning, feeling, colour, etc
• Panorama- a picture or photograph containing a
  wide view
• Paradox- a seemingly absurd or contradictory
  statement
• Permeate- penetrate throughout, saturate
• Prostheses- an artificial part supplied to remedy
  a deficiency

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NOTES
Reflect upon Subversive Spaces Surrealism and
Contemporary Art and note down or sketch your
thoughts and ideas.
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• If you would like further information on these
  resources please email leanne.manfredi_at_manchester.
  ac.uk or telephone [phone]