Edwin Jager
Iconometer #47
MoMA Fugue
Iconometer #47 is titled, MoMA Fugue, and it exemplifies how I use
Iconometer as a tool for investigation
and experimentation. I had the opportunity to create this piece while I was the
Visiting Artist at the Paper Fox Printmaking Workshop at Lawrence University in
Appleton, Wisconsin.
If you’re in the Appleton, Wisconsin area any time before May 7, 2017, a
limited-edition version of this issue is on view as part of the “Selectionsfrom the Paper Fox Printmaking Collection” exhibition at Lawrence University’s
Wriston Art Center Galleries.
Iconometer #47 is a serigraph that exists in
two important states: as a small edition of signed and numbered prints and trimmed and folded to become an issue of Iconometer.
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| Edwin Jager: MoMA Fugue (2012) |
Key inspiration for this issue can be found
in the research for my Liquid into My
Skin project. It’s a series of installation and sculptural works that assemble
photographic transparencies into visual mosaics. I’ll go into this project in
more detail in a later blog post.
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| Edwin Jager: Liquid Into My Skin, Gallery 44 Institute for Contemporary Photography, Toronto, Ontario (2002) |
This work led me to the paintings and experimental
films created by Hans Richter, in collaboration with Viking Eggeling. Like many
of their contemporaries, they were researching non-objective compositions of
abstract shape and color. A good example of this is found in Richter’s work, Orchestration of Color from 1923, which composes brightly colored squares on a black background.
As they moved these abstractions into the medium of film, they looked to Johann
Sebastian Bach’s fugues and counterpoint for inspiration. The movie, Rhythmus 21, also from 1923, illustrates this approach of creating what Malcolm Cook called,
“visual music”.
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| Hans Richter, Orchestration of Color (1923) |
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| Hans Richter, Rhythmus 21 (1923) |
With #47, I wanted to create a similar
“orchestration of color” but instead of building my compositions with abstract
shapes, I turned to my collection of motion studies for content. I have captured
many sequences of photos where I have placed the camera in a strategic location
and then used the continuous shutter mode to record a series of still images of
people moving through the frame. I find the resulting patterns that are created
to be really fascinating and reminiscent of the work of Eadweard Muybridge’s
catalogues of motion, Frank Gilbreth’s efficiency studies or even Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase.
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| Eadweard Muybridge: sequences of himself throwing a disc, using a step and walking (circa 1893) |
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| Frank Gilbreth: Untitled motion study (1917) |
I used both drawing and digital manipulation
to transform a series of photographs that I took of people riding the escalator
at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I combined this imagery on the
page with the graphic representation of segment from Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge to provide a visual
thread that pulls the viewer linearly through the page but also breaks up and
disrupts the imagery, accentuating the movement.
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| Edwin Jager: MoMA Up&Down (2012) |
With this particular format, I
had the opportunity to play a lot with the page and the viewer’s interaction.
It begins as a closed book and is revealed as a series of spreads until the
entire composition is exposed. Once the
page is opened completely, the abstract color and form coalesces into a more
clearly defined subject, with mirrored forms, illusion of depth and layers of
visual information printed on both sides of the translucent sheet.
As the piece
was evolving, I became increasingly intrigued by the stained-glass effect that
I was achieving. I think it’s fitting that the images are from the Museum of
Modern Art in New York as it reminds me of other artist’s interpretations of
the modernist “cathedral”, such as Lyonel Feninger’s woodcut print that
illustrated the Bauhaus manifesto, or Kurt Schwitters’ Cathedral of Erotic Misery from his
Hannover Merzbau.
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| Lyonel Feninger: Cathedral for Program of the State Bauhaus in Weimar (1919) |
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| Kurt Schwitters’ Cathedral of Erotic Misery (1933) |
Iconometer is a small and intimate publication.
For my subscribers, and myself, it’s fun to read the new issues but it’s also
intriguing to see how they fit within the continuum of Iconometer. With #47, I wanted to allow the dialog between the
folded book (movie) and the flat print (window) to be unrestricted by a binding. I turned the cover into a sleeve that serves as the container
for the book.
As with every issue, I have to consider not only my ideas and the
rendering of the subject matter but also how I will package the content within
the context of the project. It’s a small vessel but it can hold a lot.
You can purchase your own copy of Iconometer #47 here.
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