Freeing Colour from Representation in the Works of Hélio Oiticica

This is the abstract and introduction to the thesis I wrote as part of my masters at NCAD in 2012. If anyone would like to read the completed thesis, contact me and I would be happy to e-mail you a copy. 

Abstract

Of my research in colour theory most publications tend to forewarn the reader of the multiple, scattered and often contradictory observations made by artists, scientists, philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists and so on with regard to the nature of colour and its discourses. Instead of positioning myself within a purely scientific, anthropological, or philosophical location I wish to focus my investigations within the visual arts in relation to the work of Brazilian artist Oiticica (1937 –1980) and his radical theories on the nature of colour.

Oiticica considered colour to be a fully autonomous system that had remained far too long subordinated to pictorial support. Using the theories of the Neo-Concrete movement and of French philosopher Henri Bergson, Oiticica conceived colour as having its own spatial and temporal dimension, appreciated only when released from the plane and liberated in space, to the point where colour is no longer subordinated to the surface, ‘it tends to embody itself...it creates its own structure and the work becomes the body of color’ (Ramírez 2007, pp.20-34). Oiticica makes the case for an acceptance of the autonomy and living quality of colour through a dissection of the meaning of colour, time, structure and space within and around an artwork.  Through a sensorial engagement with a work of art, Oiticica argues further that when art is placed within a metaphysical framework and becomes entirely free of representation, it will achieve the highest goal of absolute transcendence. The aim of this thesis is to fully understand how Oiticica can locate colour as an entity existing autonomously free from form. how can Oiticica’s chromatic experiments assist spectators of a work of art  in a phenomenological engagement with the reality of the world, and what new perspective can Oiticica’s theories offer on the position of colour in twentieth century art?

Introduction

 ‘Colour deceives continuously’ Josef Albers

Colour is a fundamental feature of the visual world and most colour theories endeavour to produce logical/theoretical proposals which endeavour to understand this phenomenon. In an investigation of the phenomenological perception of colour, difficulties arise as the boundaries between art, physics, psychology, psychophysics, chemistry, and philosophy blur and intertwine in their efforts to produce consistent clarification. Discourses on colour are not solely relegated to an academic system; rather, colour encompasses the arts, the sciences and popular culture. Scientific study can prove that colour occurs when light bounces from a surface and on to our retinas and that it cannot exist in itself but only when looked at. Alternatively Gestalt theory, states that things which share visual characteristics such as shape, colour, size, texture, or value will be seen as belonging together in the viewer’s mind, as every stimulus is perceived in its most simple form; ‘all appearances of a colour are legitimate, because we always experience perceptual wholes, not isolated parts. We never see figures (or swatches) alone, only dynamic "figure-ground" relationships’ (Behrens, 1998, p.300). It has been argued that our perception is linked to memory and recognition and so our relating to colour is strongly informed by our cultural habits. It is well known that colour maintains a fundamental and important position in the I Ching, the systems of the Chakras and the Islamic and Hebrew traditions to name but a few. Colour has profound effects on the senses and the psyche, as investigated by Wassily Kandinsky in his text Concerning the Spiritual in Art. He argues that ‘colour is a power which directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.’(Kandinsky, 1977, p.25) Thus colour is neither a construction of the mind nor a purely physical phenemon: colour has ‘a certain manner of being-in-the-world which implies the actual presence of a particular atmosphere’ (Langer, 1989 p.73). Add to these the numerous theories of  many artists such as Yves Klein, Donald Judd, Josef Albers, Mark Rothko, and Helio Oiticica, who preferred  to  prioritise their own  subjective colour practices, and it becomes clear that colour studies are varied and  often contradictory.

It is the relationship with colour that most interests me in the work of Hélio Oiticica, in particular his concept of colour as having the potential to embody itself, becoming an autonomous structure. He considered colour to be a fully autonomous system that had remained far too long subordinated to pictorial support. Oiticica conceived of colour as having its own spatial and temporal dimension, appreciated only when released from the plane and liberated in space, to the point where colour is no longer subordinated to the surface; ‘it tends to embody itself...it creates its own structure and the work becomes the body of colour.’ (Ramírez, 2007, pp.20-34)  Oiticica makes the case that, through the acceptance of the living quality of colour, man can fully understand the true nature of living reality. By liberating colour from the plane, from representation, one can re-imagine notions of time, space and structure. And, furthermore, colour for the artist serves as a springboard, a means of connecting oneself to that which Oiticica perceived to be the true reality existing within an eternal moment; the transcendental; existence itself, beyond fixed notions of form and structure, time and space. This is my reasoning for an interest focused solely on Oiticica’s ideas as opposed to the equally subjective and continuous chromatic experiments that Joseph Albers undertook.

My argument is that while many colour theorists have presented popular and well regarded theories as to the meaning and function of colour, Oiticica goes further than most, employing colour in a way that tries to fuse the gap between art and life, a means of getting closer to the real sensation of being-in-the-world, to truly embody the reality of the lived experience. Oiticica viewed art as ‘one of pinnacles of man’s spiritual fulfillment [and] it should be approached as such, otherwise misinterpretations are inevitable’ (Ramirez, 2007, p.223) It is no coincidence therefore that he was seduced by the writings and work of his contemporaries Mário Pedrosa, Ferreira Gullar, his long time friend Lygia Clark and the theories of French philosopher Henri Bergson and later, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It is not surprising that Oiticica would be attracted to a branch of philosophy which placed the body as the centre of knowledge and experience. Oiticica navigates between his desire to understand the nature of colour and an awakening of the viewer to his or her bodily sensations and the existing relationship of the body to colour. In this visceral philosophy, through a sensorial engagement one can realize the existence, in and of itself, of elements previously tied to representation and the pictorial plane. By manipulating the experience of colour through his installations, Oiticica was able to affect each participant and remind him or her of the universality of the physical body through the activation of the senses. Because of the insistence on the body as the location of sensory experience and the interest in the temporal dimension of time and space, Bergson and Merleau-Ponty serve as important reference points throughout this thesis. Oiticica’s studies of colour were closely aligned with his desire for people to physically and mentally engage with his art. His experiments required the active participation of the public and were accompanied by theoretical elaborations, through commentaries, texts and poems.

Hélio Oiticica was an artist whose production and career were highlighted by an experimental and innovative drive to investigate art as the human articulation of life and sensation. His work approached and handled numerous areas of modern art movements, interconnecting varied elements and questions regarding concerns such as art’s relation and communion with life, the duality of the object and the subject, the role of the body, political, sexual and cultural identities and the function of colour and representation. His work has pursued an articulation of sensuous engagement through art of the reality of existing presently. Associated with the Neo-Concrete movement in Brazil in the 1950’s, Oiticica’s artworks encompass some of the major strands of Modern art found in many of the movements celebrated in Eurocentric art historical narratives. In most ways the work and writings of Hélio Oiticica and his contemporaries anticipated many of the concerns that would preoccupy the Minimalist movement in the U.S. Oiticica’s prolific body of work featured elements of Constructivism, Abstraction, Minimalism and Conceptualism along with political, bodily, participatory and installation practices.

Oiticica’s fixation with and studious explorations of colour can be mapped extensively throughout his oeuvre, from his childhood studies of pigments with his father through  the work exhibited with Grupo Frente (a movement that took Constructivism as its theoretical framework, based in Brazil in the 1950s) and gathering momentum through the Relevo Especial (Spatial Reliefs), wooden, free-floating structures comprising of angled reliefs which disrupt the perception of colour,  Bólides; monochrome painted wood boxes, equipped with sliding doors and drawers,  often holding caches of bright pigments, sand and fabrics allowing a participant to feel colour, and the Grande Nuclei; complex angled  paintings in space, through which colour dictates the overall support and structure. Finally his sensorial studies reach climax in the parangoles, a series of coloured, textured capes designed to be worn by participants and activated through the manipulation of fabric and pigment, movement and dance. These artworks seek to invoke a physical response and engage the senses of sight and touch designed to be worn by the participant. The parangoles, for Oiticica were the actualisation of ‘embodied’ colour in temporal movement

In the first chapter I will give a broad overview of the theories, theorists, artists and cultural instances which complemented, shaped and helped to articulate Oiticica’s interest in dissolving the pictorial plane and a theory of the non-object. All of which would help to set the framework for Oiticica’s own theoretical writings regarding the potential of colour to exist freely. I will reference the vital assertions of critic and writer Mario Pedrosa and the writings of poet Ferreira Gullar and his Theory of the Non-Object, and Oiticica’s involvement in the Neo-Concrete group, one which found its roots in the European abstract movement of Concrete art.  The term was proposed by Theo van Doesburg in Paris in 1931. The artists associated with the movement can be linked together through their collective adherence to abstraction derived from the simplification of form and mathematical rigor. In the Concrete Manifesto van Doesburg maintained that;

A work of art does not derive from nature but is an autonomous reality composed of colour and form, an object for intellectual and spiritual use, [Art ]should receive nothing from nature's formal properties or from sensuality or sentimentality...

 With a brief analysis of Oiticica’s involvement with such figures and movements of the Brazilian avant garde, we can understand the difficult journey away from pictorial representation and the cleansing of colour from such constraints as the flat two dimensional surface. The early works of the Sêcos (1956-57) and Metasequemas (1957-58) exhibited with the Grupo Frente along with a brief description of the successful chromatic  experiments of Oiticica’s Invecoes series will be examined in this context.

 In chapter two I will look more closely at the phenomenological writings and aspects of his work more closely and how this might help the understanding of his work. Along with the artists theoretical writings Color, Time, and Structure (1960) and The Transition of Color from the Painting into Space and the Meaning of Construction (1962) I will examine the importance of Henri Bergson in The Creative Mind, Introduction to Metaphysics(1912) and  Matter and Memory(1911) Maurice Merleau- Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (1960)  also accounted for an influence on the Brazilian avant garde of the nineteen-sixties and provided some theoretical credence for Oiticica’s account of colour, space, structure and time. I will examine closely the series of Relevo Especial (Spatial Reliefs) and Bólides (Fire boxes) and the necessity of the colour red in providing the optimal phenomenological encounter. 

In chapter three I will interrogate an anxiety that I see as enveloping the work of this exceptional artist. He was an artist who believed in art as experiential as opposed to solely being an articulation of ideas. He tries to overcome a theory of forms, the object and representation by presenting states and realities that are formless, unrepresentable, ephemeral, moments to be consumed, while at the same time heavily theorising his work and name-checking Bergson and Merleau-Ponty. Art precedes theories of art. What we see in the art of Oiticica is the collapsing of binary, dualistic concepts of subject- object and the liberation of art from the shackles of representation. Paradoxically, he creates visceral, sensorial experiences beyond theoretical speculation while presenting them within the conceptual frameworks of traditional Western intellectual tropes, thus re-invoking the binary concepts he seeks to subvert.

In chapter four I will look at the accumulation and success of his colour investigations accumulating in the parangolés, which seek to invoke a physical response and engage the senses of sight and touch. These capes served the actual embodiment and free movement of colour, the penultimate sensorial engagement with the body. I will present what I perceive to be the most radical aspect of Oiticica’s ideas and the challenge presented to his viewers, namely a reclaiming of art as the key to unlocking the sublime and the assertion that, through an engagement with colour a new reality of time and space presents itself. Colour becomes a springboard onto which one can reach the metaphysical plane.

Within the conclusion, rather than trying to resolve all of the elements in discussion, this thesis will attempt to juxtapose these numerous tensions and questions in a contemporary context. For example, why do the artists articulations regarding colour not appear to be as popular as the equally careful investigations carried out by Johann Wolfgang Goethe or the ‘practice before theory’ articulations of Albers (Albers, 2006, p.1). Could this be due to the insistence upon the subjective, sensorial, romantic and (possibly) outmoded view of art as holding the key to transcendental reality? Is it a result of Oiticica’s ideas being rooted in a phenomenological exploration tied to the early ninteenth century?  Is it because of a tendency in art history to focus upon a European and U.S dialogue? Until very recently little exploration had taken place within his work to the great emphasis he placed in the specific meaning and integral part that colour took part in the structure of his artworks. Is the revival of interest in his work and that of other Brazilian avant-garde artists a result of the popularity of participatory and installation-based work which is still at forefront of contemporary discussions of art-making, and can trace their roots of this movement back to the practices of Clark and Oiticica? Has all the discussion regarding the end of art blossomed new interest in the current trend of looking back and re-theorising art from the sixties and seventies?

Perhaps, in a world where the most significant and lauded artists are those whose work is both an embodiment and perpetuation of the primal power of economics and money, it is time to re-examine the visceral, spiritually-yearning, formally-challenging, conceptually-intriguing work of an artist such as Hélio Oiticica. His reflections on colour are not abstract musings on a world safely contained in the world of detached post-modernity, but the active invocation of an alternative way. We must consider Oiticica’s reflections as offering an alternative way of articulating the visual world and the potential of an artwork to free both the viewer and the object presented from fixed notions of representation, meaning and place in time.