Lygia Clark (1920–1988) Bodily Sensation and Affect: Expression as Communion

NOTES

• I have shown how affect is always an element of interpretation even in so-called affectless art in: “Mild Intoxication and Other Aesthetic Feelings: Psychoanalysis and Art Revisited”, Angelaki 10.3 (2005) 157–70.
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• I have analysed the operation of affect in the work of contemporary Australian artists such as: Anne Ferran, Simryn Gill, Joyce Hinterding, Sherre DeLys and Joan Grounds. See “Tickled Pink: Laughter as Institutional Critique”, catalogue (Sydney: Sydney Biennale 2004) 98–99; “What is Affect? Considering the Affective Dimension of Contemporary Installation”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art 2.2/3.1 (2002): 207–25; “Seriality and Insanity, The Aesthetics of Administration Revisited: Anne Ferran's 1-38”, Eyeline (2004): 18–21.
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• In addition to Clark's writings, a film on her body therapy, Memoira do corpo (1984), dir. Mário Carneiro, further documents her psychoanalytic ideas. Suely Rolnik has assembled an invaluable video archive of interviews with various people who knew Clark. Of particular relevance for exploring her ideas about psychoanalysis and her development of body therapy are interviews with the French psychoanalyst, Pierre Fédida, with whom Clark started analysis in 1972, and Lula Wanderley, an ex-patient and practitioner of her form of therapy. The video archive was part of the exhibition curated by Rolnik, Lygia Clark de l'oeuvre a l'événement (Nantes: Musee des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, 8 October-31 December 2005).
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• Ferreira Gullar, “Neo-concrete Manifesto”, Geometric Abstraction: Latin American Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, catalogue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums and New Haven: Yale UP, 2001) 154.
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• Yve-Alain Bois, “Some Latin Americans in Paris”, Geometric Abstraction: Latin American Art. 88. Paulo Herkenhoff, in an essay in the same catalogue, makes a counterargument to Bois’, claiming that the artists were influenced by Ferreira Gullar and Mario Pedrosa's interests. See Paulo Herkenhoff, “Divergent Parallels: Towards a Comparative Study of Neo-concretism and Minimalism”: 111–2. In the catalogue, as noted above, it is listed as solely authored by Ferriera Gullar. The manifesto is also reproduced in the American journal, October, with an introduction by Yve-Alain Bois. There it is presented in the context of Clark's writings and is attributed to the seven signatories: Amilcar de Castro, Ferreira Gullar, Franz Weismann, Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Reynaldo Jardim, Theon Spanudis. See “1959: Neo-concretist Manifesto” in Lygia Clark, “Nostalgia of the Body”, October 69 (1994): 91–5. To confuse matters further Gullar indicates there were eight signatories, he includes Aluísio Carv˜o. See Ferreira Gullar, “Frente Group and Neo-Concrete Reaction”, Constructive Art in Brazil: Adolpho Leirner Collection, catalogue, ed. Aracy Amaral (São Paulo: DBA, 1998) 159.
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• Amilcar de Castro et al. “1959: Neo-concretist Manifesto”, October. 91.
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• ibid. 93.
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• ibid. 94.
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• ibid. 94.
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• Lygia Clark, “Conference given in the Belo Horizonte National School of Architecture in 1956”, Lygia Clark, ed. Manuel Borja-Villel, catalogue (Barcelona: Fundacio Antoni Tapies, 1998) 72.
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• Clark, “Lygia Clark and the Concrete Expressional Space”, (1959) ed. Edelweiss Sarmento, Lygia Clark, 85.
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• Clark, “Light Line”, 1958, Lygia Clark. 102.
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• ibid.
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• Robert Morris, “Notes on Sculpture, Part 2” (1966) Continuous Project Altered Daily (Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1995) 15.
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• Clark cited in Mary Schneider Enriquez, “Mapping Change: A Historical Perspective on Geometric Abstraction in Argentina, Venezuela, and Brazil,” Geometric Abstraction: Latin American Art. 32.
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• Clark, “Conference given in the Belo Horizonte”: 71.
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• Peter B¨rger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Michael Shaw (Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 1984).
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• There is, however, a crucial difference between the trajectory of Clark's future work and minimalism. In minimalist sculpture, the encounter between beholder and work of art is staged—it is a “theatrical” relation, to use Michael Fried's term. Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood”, Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battcock (Berkeley; University of California P, 1968) 116–47. In other words, the beholder self-consciously enters an established situation which requires his or her presence. In marked contrast, in Clark's work the role of the beholder is ultimately denied, participation is meant to fully absorb the viewer into the work of art, not to theatricalise their presence.
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• Bois, “Some Latin Americans in Paris”: 88. In contrast, Suely Rolnik claims Clark was “never a reader of philosophy.” See Suely Rolnik, “Molding a Contemporary Soul: The Empty-Full of Lygia Clark”, The Experimental Exercise of Freedom, eds. Susan Martin and Alma Ruiz, catalogue (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, 1999) 70. Rolnik cites a document from the Clark archives in which Clark claims she wasn't cultured, didn't read and gained most of her knowledge from Mário Pedrosa and Mário Schenberg (105, n.18). This kind of statement recurs in her diaries but the idea that she wasn't cultured is not supported by the clear intelligence of her own writings.
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• “Specific Objects” is Donald Judd's term for works that are neither painting nor sculpture. See Donald Judd, “Specific Objects” [1965], Art in Theory 1900–1990, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992) 809–12.
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• A small excerpt of Ferriera Gullar's, “Teoria do Nāo Objeto”, is published in Mari Carmen Ramirez and Hector Olea, Inverted Utopias: Avant-garde Art in Latin America, catalogue. (New Haven: Yale UP and Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2004) 521–2. The full text has recently been published for the first time in English. See Ferreira Gullar “Theory of the Non-Object”, trans. Michael Asbury, Cosmopolitan Modernisms, ed. Kobena Mercer (London and Cambridge, MA.: Institute of International Visual Arts, and MIT? 2005), 170–3. Gullar discusses the genesis of the term and its relationship to Clark's Beasts in Ferreira Gullar, “Frente Group and Neo-Concrete Reaction”, 156–8. See also the discussion by Paulo Herkenhoff, “The Optic of the Invisible Wish for Space: Fontana/Brazil”, Brasil: Lucio Fontana, catalogue (Milan: Charta, 2001) 178.
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• Lygia Clark, Unpublished Text [1960], Lygia Clark, ed. M. Borja-Villel: 140. In a letter to Guy Brett, she referred to her later works as “not intended to be beautiful, aesthetic, but a preparation for life.” Clark cited in Guy Brett, “Lygia Clark: The Borderline between Art Life”, Third Text (Autumn 1987) 75.
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• There is some debate about the starting date of the Bichos series, dates vary from 1959 to 1960. The starting date of 1959 is given by Gabriela Rangel Mantilla and Jacqueline Barnitz. See Mantilla, “Lygia Clark”, Geometric Abstraction. 244; Barnitz, Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America (Austin: U of Texas P, 2001) 218. According to Paulo Herkenhoff the series begins in 1960. See Paulo Herkenhoff, “Lygia Clark,” Lygia Clark 42. Multiples were made in 1964.
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• Lygia Clark, “Bichos,”(1983) Lygia Clark 121.
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• ibid.
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• ibid.
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• Donald Judd, “Lygia Clark”, Arts Magazine 37.8 (April 1963) 60.
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• David Medalla, “Lygia Clark: An Appreciation”, Signals (Feb/March 1965) 11.
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• David Medalla, “Signals”, The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain, ed. Rasheed Araeen (London: Hayward Gallery, 1989) 116.
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• Lygia Clark, “1965: Concerning the Instant”, “Nostalgia of the Body”, October, 69 (1994): 100.
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• Gaston Bachelard, “The Intuition of the Instant,” trans. Sebastian Brett, Signals (April-May 1965) 5.
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• Lygia Clark, “On the Magic of the Object” in Lygia Clark: 153.
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• Lygia Clark, “1964: Trailings,” in Lygia Clark, “Nostalgia of the Body,” October 99.
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• Maria Alice Milliet, “From Concretist Paradox to Experimental Exercise of Freedom”, Brazil: Body and Soul, ed. Edward J. Sullivan, catalouge (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2002) 389.
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• Lygia Clark, “1964: Trailings”: 99.
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• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1968) 138.
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• Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind”, The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, ed. Galen A. Johnson, trans. Michael Smith (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1993) 125–6.
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• Silvan Tomkins, Affect Imagery Consciousness, Vol 1: The Positive Affects (New York: Springer, 1962) 498.
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• Mário Pedrosa cited in Guy Brett, “Lygia Clark: Six Cells”, Lygia Clark: 21.
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• Daniel Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View of Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology (NY: Basic Books, 1985) 54.
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• ibid.
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• Sigmund Freud, “The Economic Problem of Masochism’” On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis, trans. James Strachey (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984) 414.
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• Gaston Bachelard, The Dialectic of Duration [1950], trans. Mary McAllester Jones (Manchester: Clinamen, 2000) 142.
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• ibid. 21.
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• D. W. Winnicott, “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena”, Through Paediatrics to Psychoanalysis: Collected Papers (London: Karnac, 1984) 233.
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• ibid. 230.
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• Bois, “Introduction”, Lygia Clark, “Nostalgia of the Body”, October, 86.
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• Winnicott Transitional Objects: 240.
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• Brett, “Lygia Clark: The Borderline between Art Life”: 80.
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• Lygia Clark, “On the Fantastic Reality of Today and Tomorrow” [1967], Lygia Clark: 219.
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• Brett, “Lygia Clark: The Borderline between Art Life,” 81. Brett notes that one mask without earpieces or a nosepiece, has mirrors “so that one stares back into one's own eyes.” Brett, “Lygia Clark: Six Cells,” Lygia Clark 21.
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• Clark, “On the Fantastic Reality”: 220.
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• Clark, Letter to Helio Oiticica (1968), Lygia Clark: 236.
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• Clark, “On the Fantastic Reality”: 220.
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• Winnicott, cited in Adam Phillips, Winnicott (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard UP, 1988) 80.
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• Winnicott cited in Phillips, Winnicott: 81.
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• Guy Brett has noted this paradoxical pursuit of liberation by means of its opposite: binding, blocking, restricting. Brett, “Six Cells”: 24–5. Silvan Tomkins discusses such claustrophobic wishes. See Silvan Tomkins, Affect Imagery Consciousness: Vol 1 The Positive Affects, (NY, 1962) 422.
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• Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge, 2002) 215.
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• See Tomkins's discussion of claustral joy in Affect Imagery Consciousness: Vol 1: 419–22.
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• This mutuality is a feature of many of Clark's-body-to-body actions even when another participant is not present. Solitary communion with the quasi-body is possible when it evokes a sense of a supportive enveloping environment.
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• Clark cited by Brett, “Borderline”: 83.
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• Clark, “L'art c'est le corps” (1973), Lygia Clark: 233.
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• Clark's idea of cells that are part of an infinite tissue echoes Merleau-Ponty's metaphor used to describe vision and the body as continuous and yet separate from the world. The body is a kind of “fold” in the flesh of the world. See Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible: 146.
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• Clark, “L'art c'est le corps”: 233.
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• Clark, “The Body is the House: Sexuality, Invasion of Individual Territory” (1971), Lygia Clark: 248.
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• Clark, Lygia Clark: 298.
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• Christopher Bollas, The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known (New York: Columbia UP, 1987).
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• The work of Melanie Klein is referred to in Clark's article, “Relational Objects”, Lygia Clark: 321, Klein's work models the infant's phantasies and defences predominantly in terms of oral metaphors or strategies: for example, incorporation and projection. The desire to devour the mother and her babies is one of many graphic phantasies she recounts.
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• Brett notes how Clark renews Oswald de Andrade's 1928 idea of Antropofágia, namely the idea that Brazilian culture “swallowed” other cultures in order to create its own. See Brett, “Six Cells”: 23.
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• Clark, Lygia Clark: 280.
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• Clark, “On the Magic of the Object” (1983), Lygia Clark, 154.
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• Thierry de Duve, “Performance Here and Now: Minimal Art, a Plea for a New Genre of Theatre”, trans. D. Guilbaut, Open Letter 5–6 (Summer/Fall 1983) 259.
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