-Thus spoke Viracocha
What is a painting? Essentially it is a liquid substance applied to a surface which is either wooden or is stretched upon a wooden frame.
So if we take this idea of truth to materials further, we end up with the liquid substance i.e. the paint, being applied directly onto the tree from which the surface is formed.
Purity of form? Maybe, but why use paint at all if we are remaining true to what the logs are? The work I create has evolved out of painting and the subject was always landscape or nature. Even though the objects I paint are generally labelled as being sculptural, the issues I deal with have always been painterly ones in origin. It not, therefore, merely about the purity of form of the logs but also of the substance which is generally assumed to be present in an art practice.
By dripping paint onto canvas Pollock was showing the true nature of paint. It is a liquid substance and he was letting it do what was in its nature as opposed to manipulating it to represent something it wasn't. But he still used the wooen canvas, which was portaying wood as something it wasn't.
Just as paint is its own thing, now the true nature of the surface it is generally applied to is revealed. When Barthes wrote of the death of the author this is what he had in mind. It is the unveiling of oblects and substances in their own right as opposed to being dependent upon the will of the artist. Just as Barthes stated, it is the story of an object, like in Georges Batailles 'Story of the Eye'. The characters lives are of secondary importance in a narritive, which centres around the object. Or in Richard Longs piece 'Chared Log' which follows the progress of the object of its own accord.
So I cannot take credit as the paint acts of its own accord through both gravity and its fluidity, reacting to the surface it covers. Just as I cannot take any for the sculptural properties in the shapes of the logs.