BODY NOTES

As the nexus between the self and the world, the body is the means by which knowledge, perception and experience are manifested. The specific conditions a body lives (gender, race and class as examples) naturally affect these formations of knowledge/perception/ experience, as do the unique events that occur in a body’s lived history. Bodies are also inscribed, written over with meanings that they cannot control. In the history of Western art the human figure has rarely (if ever) represented itself alone, but has functioned as a repository of meanings – signifying political, cultural, theological and psychological notions. In the development of late Modernism, Formalism’s rejection of representation or “content” forced the figure out of art. Insisting on the purity of the medium, Formalism metaphorically painted itself into a corner by taking the idea to its last degree - Minimalism. This impasse led a younger generation of artists to return to subject matter in art. The crisis of painting also directed artists towards drawing, a medium outside the unbearable history of painting. Drawing bears an inherent trace of the body; the hand of the artist can be detected in the lines, marks and smudges that comprise the drawing.

The current exhibition, Body Notes, presents the work of five artists who have pursued figure drawing, often in conjunction with their painting practices. All are Concordia University Faculty of Fine Arts alumni: Caroline George (BFA 1991), Sophie Jodoin (BFA 1988), and Marc Seguin (BFA 1995), while Theresa Sapergia (MFA 2005) and Marion Wagschal (BFA 1965) are also instructors in the Studio Arts department at Concordia. Each of these artists is an exceptional draughtsperson and all expressed similar sentiments about drawing’s desirability as a medium. The freedom, ease and spontaneity of drawing allows the artist to explore the subject without the demands of painting or its history; surface preparation, colour and paint handling can be left aside in favour of direct transmission of ideas and perceptions. Drawing is also viewed as more honest since reworkings, changes in direction and mistakes are not hidden but allowed to exist as a valid part of the final work. Because the medium is more direct, the artists also believe that drawing allows them greater focus, a more instinctual approach and more ability to take risks than would be possible in a painting.

Marion Wagschal has worked with the figure throughout her career. Using sitters she knows well, she develops a sense of their personalities, thoughts, emotions and experiences. She does not tire of working with the form of the human body, in each sitting finding an opportunity to observe something new. In the drawing Puff (2000) Wagschal presents an image of her brother, in full-length, seated in a relaxed attitude. A violin rests at his feet indicating his identity as a musician, while the apparent physical strength of the figure and the size of the work reiterate the traditions of heroic portraiture. Yet a closer look at the image reveals a certain vulnerability in the sitter. Her style typically goes beyond the physical description and creates interplay between the observed surfaces and a sense of the sitter’s inner state. In the place of surfaces there is a sense of dissolution and the exposure of layers, a simultaneous seeing and seeing-through the subject.

Like Wagschal, Sophie Jodoin tends to work repeatedly with the same sitters, weaving a thread of history through the corpus of her art. Her interest in the figure is based on a fascination with individuality, the endless variations of which allow her to explore aspects of herself, taking a new view of the world as her subjects might see it. In the Diary of K Series (2005) she has created a journal of a single model, a little person named Karine. Jodoin recorded K’s moods and self-presentations over a year-long period in a series of monochrome drawings on mylar. As seen in Diary of K #17, Jodoin’s remarkable rendering allows her to convey a strong sense of presence despite the small scale of the work. Like a peek into a private journal, these images provide a glimpse of the sitter’s personality; here K’s dignity, strength and frailty are exposed, as is Jodoin’s acute observation and empathy. Ultimately, however, the reading of the work ­– the reaction to the images of K – reveals the viewer.

Caroline George uses figure drawing for its ability to create a point of access and identification for the viewer. Unlike Jodoin and Wagschal, Caroline George has attempted to eliminate specificity from the figure, taking it towards androgyny. In her large-scale work, Abroad Reach (1991), the figure extends an arm in two directions, pulled between the poles of future/past or here/there. The outstretched arm is incomplete, the attempt to rework it has been abandoned, adding a sense of futility to the gesture. A dark horizontal band weights the figure into the lower register of the image, creating a balanced tension with the area of light below and the crouching form, mirroring the emotional tension of the figure.

For Marc Séguin, the body is the reality point, the vehicle of everyday life and basis of self-identity. As such, it works as the perfect sign since the ready identification between viewer and image facilitates a dialogue with the work. The essential act of life is to sort through the tangle of existence and find the means to understand the human condition. In Autoportrait en déni (2002) Séguin has placed his image on an empty ground, anchored there by an aura of smudge marks and drips. The figure is rendered in a thin charcoal and oil wash on a raw canvas background. The undefined space and lightness of the media act as a counter-point to the weight of the subject. At alternate moments the form is strongly delineated, then almost dissolves into the surface giving it an elusive quality. In an act of denial, the figure stands with eyes covered — blinding himself in order to turn his vision inward.

Theresa Sapergia follows the tradition of drawing, creating images that are technically precise and beautiful in the quality of the mark. Sapergia engages in figure drawing because the common experience of living in a body allows the viewer an empathetic response to such images. Her interest is in the corporeal reality, the body as flesh subject to the forces of the material world. Sapergia’s work A Thousand Natural Shocks (2006) searches for the moment of recognition between the viewer and the image comprised of “marks and dust.” She recognizes the body as transient in nature, negotiating identities between the physical and metaphysical. The animal quality of the body sets it on a borderline that allows it to be both ordinary and magical.

Like handwriting, drawing retains the sense of time unfolding, of the body moving through space – the arm’s sweep, the eye’s journey over surface and along contour, forming a sensual mapping of discovery and transmutation. The five artists in Body Notes discover that moment of transmutation, when the materials of art making are transformed into images that reveal something beyond the surface. Drawing’s power is in its simplicity and directness, in making the artist’s thoughts and perceptions apparent. The body functions as the ideal sign, one that can bear multiple meanings that can be read in as many ways. Ultimately, the body functions as the medium by which we understand the relationships that govern our lives — relationships that form life itself.

Lynn Beavis
Gallery Coordinator