The Performance of a Painting:
Introduction
by
Drew Davidson
Chapter One
The topic of this study was sparked while I was majoring in Speech Communication and minoring in Art History. In my communication classes, I was exploring different modes of expressing thoughts and feelings. There were studies that dealt with verbal and nonverbal communication, theories explaining why this behavior hinted at that emotion, and performances that explored experience. I was fascinated by these modes and how they opened up new ideas and feelings for me. Concurrently, in my art history classes, I was having difficulty expressing my experiences with art. In painting, music, sculpture and dance there seems to be eloquence "beyond" words. A painting or a song could move me to tears and fill me with joy, unleashing feelings in meaningful, magical eloquence. I wanted to express the eloquence of this experience.
Thus, I began to question the nature of experiencing art. I asked, is there a way to express the experience of art in a manner that would allow a person to re-experience another's viewing of it? How do viewers perceive and construct meaning from a painting? Can this experience of viewing a painting be construed as a performative event involving viewer and painting?
Purpose of Study
Two questions guide this study. 1) If the experience of viewing a painting is performative, could it not be expressed performatively? 2) Would a performance of this
experience be an effective mode of expression that allows others to experience one's viewing of a painting?
The experience of a painting is often expressed through critical analysis. However, the discourse of the academy often felt like a "comfortless straitjacket" in which an essay is written to "conform to the scientific model of thesis and support" (Freedman, Frey and Zauhar 2). With this discourse, my attempts seemed to flounder around in incoherent, disconnected paragraphs. I got lost in this academic sea of discourse, swimming circles within whirls of words, struggling to express the experience of painting. The imposed order of academic discourse seemed restrictive. I was interested in exploring spaces that were less "rigid [and] dichotomous" in their conventions and allowed for more experimentation in the expression of thoughts and feelings (Heuvel 13). I was seeking a mode of expression that "captured some of the inconsistency [and] indeterminacy" of the affair of viewing painting (18).
I had intuitively sensed a kind of performing in my experience of a painting, an experience of overlapping and indeterminate possibilities. Perhaps, it was this performative quality that I had missed when attempting to discuss and describe it before through critical analysis. This insufficiency felt analogous to the idea that a text on the page was different on the stage (Reinelt and Roach 5). If so, the experience of viewing painting could be repeated or echoed in its expression and allowed to resonate for others.
To test these ideas, my experience with Jasper Johns' painting, Periscope (Hart Crane) (1963) was performed (See Appendices A and F). The medium of painting was explored as opposed to photography specifically because a painting is a "selective interpretation" while a photograph is a "selective transparency" (Sontag 6). A photograph belongs to its subject. It is a trace of the real, while a painting is an "interpretation of the real" (Berger, About Looking 54). A painting is an artist's interpretation of what s/he has seen. This theme of interpretation was echoed by the idea that the viewers of a painting perform the painting through their interpretations of what they see. Another parallel to be drawn was that this performance was based on interpretations of Periscope (Hart Crane). And these performed interpretations were open to interpretations themselves. Again, the theme of interpretation was echoed as the viewers of this performance interpreted it.
An irony in this study lies in the fact that throughout Periscope (Hart Crane) was viewed mostly through photographs of it. Also, the audience of the performance only saw photographed and projected images of Periscope (Hart Crane). These photographs subvert the "uniqueness of the [painted] image" as it is reproduced (Berger, Ways of Seeing 19). Viewers no longer must travel to see the painting; the painting travels to them through photographs of it (20). As a result, the possible meanings of the painted image multiply and fragment (19). In a painting's travels, as it were, meaning is diversified depending on the context(s) in which it is viewed (20). There is a contextual difference between viewing a painting in a museum and viewing it in a book in your room that affects the viewer's interpretations of the painting. Also, photographs of a painting do distort the painting somewhat. A photograph does not completely capture the texture, subtle color and depth of a painting, which affects the interpretations of it.
So, the uniqueness of the Periscope (Hart Crane) now lies in it being the original of a reproduction. Viewers of the performance had seen several images of the painting, but they still had not seen the painting itself. The audience of this performance was interpreting what they saw. Of course, they could go to the National Museum of American Art in Washington, DC and see for themselves what the projections and photographs shown during the performance lacked (20). Johns' painting is an interpretation that was interpreted again and again.
As an artist, Jasper Johns seems an ideal subject because his works deal with issues of "the complex and ambiguous process of experiencing art" (Sandler 183). He explores through painting, issues of how a viewer might experience his work. Also congenial is his interest in the "nature of vision" and how it effects the perception of art (187). He is not only intrigued by what is seen in his work, but by what is not seen, and in turn, how it is seen. Johns, like many artists such as Duchamp, Rauschenberg and Warhol, plays with art's boundaries by incorporating everyday objects within his work, questioning definitions of what constitutes art.
Unlike the others, Johns makes works that are "made like 'art' and are not real artifacts, although they look as if they could function as such in 'life'" (185). Johns does not hide the fact that his works are artistic interpretations of real objects. He "acts on the materials of art . . . to re-create a commonplace object . . . in a virtuoso fashion" (189). His works are always "beautifully made" (191). They are both blatantly artistic and referential to art and the art-making process. A good example is his sculpture, Painted Bronze (1960) (Crichton, Plate 68). It is an intricate work of painted bronze that looks like a Savarin Coffee tin with paint brushes in it. Like Painted Bronze, Johns' works are about "the 'language' of art," questioning what a painting or sculpture, "is, or might be, or has been said to be" (Sandler 193).
Periscope (Hart Crane), as a painting, deals with issues of a painting's expression. It continues in Johns' tradition of including in his works the words for colors. In Periscope (Hart Crane), RED is painted in brown and red, YELLOW is mostly painted grey, and BLUE is painted in several shades of blue. These colored words cause a "contradiction between the verbal images and the colored areas" (Sandler 187). The question that comes to mind is thus: should the names of colors necessarily call the colors to mind (187)? In a sense, it becomes possible to read the paintings as compositions of visual poetry (Francis et al. 127). The words of color and the colors of paint have a "fragmentarily poetic effect" that hints at feelings (127). Thoughts and feelings are evoked through the layers and textures of the various shades of colors and their names that are written and read in paint.
Also noteworthy is the fact that words for colors are included in several other works by Johns: By the Sea, Land's End, and Out the Window, thus multiplying and fragmenting the possible meanings of Periscope (Hart Crane) as it is viewed within the context of these works (Crichton 48). The titles of these works emphasize problems of perception in making statements about the position of the viewer and/or the viewed work itself, thus placing either the viewer and/or the work (48). For example, the reference to a periscope in the title of this painting could be seen as placing the viewer in the position of looking at, or through, a periscope to view this work, or the painting itself could be seen to serve as a periscope through which the viewer can look.
More pointedly than the other works, Periscope (Hart Crane)'s verbal connections are heightened with the reference to a poet and a poem. The painting's title is drawn from a section of Hart Crane's poem, The Bridge. The pertinent lines are from part IV, which is entitled "Cape Hatteras:"
The captured fume of space foams in our ears-
What whisperings of far watches on the main
Relapsing into silence, while time clears
Our lenses, lifts a focus, resurrects
A periscope to glimpse what joys or pain
Our eyes can share or answer- then deflects
Us, shunting to a labyrinth submersed
Where each sees only his dim past reversed . . .
(Crane 77).
Similar to the poem, the painting seems to suggest a "dim past" not "clearly perceived . . . but not completely forgotten" (Orton 75). This suggestion is achieved in the painting through the deep shadows of grey in combination with the sharp, stenciled words of color and the poignant hand print touching the canvas. Periscope (Hart Crane) intriguingly mixes visual and verbal expression. It is a poetic expression made with paint.
The performance of Periscope (Hart Crane) was a mix of "representation and interpretation" (Sayre, Object 18). In the performance, the painting was not only represented, but interpreted. Also, the experience of this painting was represented and interpreted. The nature of experiencing a painting, and how to echo and express it, was explored within and through the performance. Ideally, the performance expressed my thoughts and ideas in a manner that allowed the audience to experience Periscope (Hart Crane).
Definition
By performance, I mean an act that is "interactional in nature and involving symbolic forms and live bodies" (Stern and Henderson 3). It is an act that involves the interactions between a performer and a text, and an audience and a performer. The symbolism occurs at the "intersection between text and context." This is where and how the page is brought to life on the stage through the performed gestures and actions. The text can be "literary or oral or gestural, but it must be . . . repeatable." It must be possible to (re)present the text on different occasions. Context is the "social, political, historical, psychological and aesthetic factors that shape the way we understand the text" (17). It is the culture in which we, the viewers, are influenced. A performance is thus positioned within the cultural discourse of its place and time (Auslander 8). When and where it occurs influences how and what occurs. The context shapes and limits the possible meanings of a performance that the performers and the audience can interpret.
Issues of text and context led to thinking of a performance as an event that lives in the present, in the here and now. A performance cannot be reproduced; it can be repeated, but then it is a different production (Phelan, Unmarked 146). Each production is a (re)presentation of the script of the performance. Monroe Beardsley uses the phrase, "presentation of an object" to define the differences between performances of the same text (44). Each performance, or presentation of a script, is different from the last, each affected by the present time and place. Each performance of a text is filled with the potential of the present. It is happening in the here and now. It is a presence "imbued in performance" through the knowledge that "it will occur this way only this time" (Heuvel 12).
In the performative viewing of a painting, more than one type of presence exists. There is the enduring presence of the painting itself, and there is "the series of presents which constitutes whatever 'present' meaning the painting holds" for the viewers (Sayre, Object 19). In other words, the painted image exists and endures along with the current meaning(s) found in the viewers' responses, whether detailed or fleeting, which create and sustain a process of presents. Also, there is a presence found in the photographs of the original painting itself. The experience of multiple presents with Periscope (Hart Crane) was represented, interpreted and echoed within the multiple presents of a performance.
A performance is also metonymic, an "additive and associative" process that works on "contiguity and displacement" (Phelan 150). To borrow Peggy Phelan's example, "'The kettle is boiling' is a statement that assumes water is contiguous with the kettle. The point is not that the kettle is like water," as in a metaphor, "but that the kettle is boiling because the water inside the kettle is" boiling (150). Performance is metonymic in the sense that a performance echoes the text from which it springs forth and echoes the process of performing itself. A performance simultaneously represents the text on stage and itself as well. This idea is analogous to Sayre's example that "the spoken breath is identical with the event that it describes because it is the event" (Object 16). In the process of performing, both text and performance are (re)presented.
In the performative viewing of a painting several levels of metonymy can be identified. First, metonymy in performance itself exists as described above. Second, metonymy occurs in the performative viewing, which "involves the active role [of] the audience... in creating the emergent meanings" of the painting (Stern and Henderson 406). The viewers reinterpret a painting within each experience they have with it. Third, the viewers become aware of this present interpretation to the painting, becoming "spectators of their own performances, becoming a kind of performer" (Phelan 161). The viewers become introspectively aware of their response(s) to the painting. In this awareness, the performing viewers are engaging their present experience of the painting within their collected experience(s) of it (Sayre, "Performance" 103). The viewers are simultaneously representing the painting in their performative viewing as well as representing their interpretation of it. Fourth, a performance of this viewing experience would be additive and associative to the performative act of viewing. The experience of viewing a painting would be metonymically (re)presented and (re)experienced in a performance.
Methodology
I explored the nature of experiencing Jasper Johns' Periscope (Hart Crane) through the medium of performance (See Appendix F). The process of staging this performance started with the construction of a script based on my collected and recorded experiences with Periscope (Hart Crane). I compiled these experiences into a script in the form of an autobiographical account or "intimate critique" (Freedman, Frey and Zauhar 3). My experiences not only served as the base for this script, but they were also interpreted and questioned within it. In compiling this script, a "creative urge originating" in myself was being heeded (Kleinau and McHughes 138). The cluster of texts became components of the compiled script and were shaped through my direction.
Using the collected texts to create a new text, I compiled in the manner of a collage, which takes fragments from texts and joins them together to form a new text (139). The original texts were now "subservient to [the] new compositional arrangement" of the script (139). This newly created text was metonymic itself as it incorporated and echoed the component texts within itself. In being a compiled collage, the script represented and echoed the multiplicity of possible interpretations found in the performance and in the painting.
This script was compiled from ideas, language, and images drawn from the following: other critics and theorists on the link between performance and painting; discussion by Jasper Johns about Periscope (Hart Crane) and painting in general; parts of this thesis; papers written about this painting along with professors' comments on them; my poem, "One To 3," that addresses this painting along with John Cage's piece, "Music for Amplified Toy Pianos," and John Ashbery's poem, "If the Birds Knew"; the description written when I first saw this painting in the National Museum of American Art in Washington, DC; the notes taken in classes and in research on the painting; critical theories read that discuss issues of painting, art, performance, perception and expression; analytical descriptions of this painting; conversations about it; the music that corresponds to my moods with this painting; other works of art by Jasper Johns; and my own paintings (See Appendices D and E).
Like Periscope (Hart Crane), this performance was a site in which to explore a myriad of ideas and images (Strine, Long and HopKins 186). It was similar to the category of performance that Long labels "arguing" (Long, "Performance as Doing" 26). In this performance, there was an ongoing argument occurring within the script. I was commenting on, judging, and critiquing the various sources that had touched on the nature of this experience (26). It was a performance within which theory and criticism were demonstrated and questioned. The voices in the script evaluated one another. Within this performance, I was supporting and subverting my experience of Periscope (Hart Crane) as well as the nature of this experience.
Script and Staging
In working with the texts mentioned above, five voices seemed identifiable: Player, Artist, Critic, Docent and Student. The Player's voice is playful and disruptive; s/he is enjoying and emphasizing the ambiguity found in looking at paintings. The Artist is positioned as a creator who wonders how her or his paintings will be viewed by an audience. S/he is philosophizing through paint. The Critic's voice comes from academia. Attempting to theorize, s/he tries to analyze, codify and control the experience of viewing painting and its expression. The Docent is a guide, explaining for the audience. S/he wants to open up the experience to the audience by helping them understand. The Student represents the voice of the audience, asking questions about the performance and its meaning. S/he wants to understand the experience of viewing a painting and how to express it. These five voices are accompanied by a narrative video which shows sections of Periscope (Hart Crane) and other works by Johns. In it, a narrator explains the reasoning behind the performance itself. In fact, parts of this chapter are quoted in the video, explaining why this performance was used to explore, echo and express Periscope (Hart Crane).
A sensorium of experiences occurred during the performance: the smell of paint, the sounds of music and video, the chance to touch and paint on canvas, the sights of slides, video and paintings, the movements of the cast and the audience. The variety of actions, sounds and sights opened the space to an absorbing, kaleidoscopic atmosphere. The audience was seated in the middle of this sensorious room including them within the performance. They were encouraged to act by exploring the room, using the paint supplies and/or reading the books. Also, by being physically in the middle of the performance, the audience became a part of the performance. They were viewing performers, similar to the viewers of a painting, who are viewing performers as well.
This effect was heightened by the multiple images of Periscope (Hart Crane). Images of the painting were projected on all four walls by several slide projectors and a video projector. The audience walked into these images as they entered the room, echoing how a viewer enters a painting when s/he views it. The audience and cast were surrounded by the painting through the image(s). Concurrently, their shadows were cast within and about the projected images. They visually became a part of the image of Periscope (Hart Crane).
After refining, rehearsing and performing the script, I reflected on the experience of this study. Did the performance engage the audience, inviting them to explore the ideas of performance and painting? Was the experience made accessible to them through this performance? What did I learn? Did it help me to make sense of this experience? Did it open up a space in which I could express the performative viewing of painting? Did it represent and echo the multiplicity of the affair of viewing painting? Has this performance expressed the experience of painting in such a way that allowed me and the audience to re-experience Jasper Johns' Periscope (Hart Crane)? And, ultimately, was performance an effective means of expressing, exploring and evoking the nature of experiencing painting?
For exploring these issues, I relied on a journal kept throughout this study, opinions, ideas and input gathered from the cast and my thesis committee, and interviews with the audience members.
Related Literature
Articles and studies dealing specifically with the interaction of performance and painting fall into three groups: 1) studies that treat paintings as performative; 2) studies of performances that include painting; and 3) studies that discuss the performance of painting.
The first group consists of only a few items, and they argue in one way or another that paintings can be regarded as performative. In his essay, "Hogarth's Painting 'The Beggar's Opera': Cast and Audience at the First Night," John Walker discusses the performative effects of having six different versions of this painting. Hogarth painted the performance of "The Beggar's Opera" six times, and in each version the cast is the same but the audience is different. The viewer is seeing a different performance of the play in each painting, a difference reflected again in the variety of viewers of the paintings.
Roni Feinstein deals with similar issues in her dissertation about Robert Rauschenberg's works. She considers Rauschenberg's use of multimedia in his work and how he builds his paintings together from a variety of sources. His paintings, she states, are productions that reflect Rauschenberg's earlier performance works. Victor H. Mair also describes a performative use of painting in his book, Painting and Performance. Stories are told through painted pictures in the Chinese tradition of Picture-Storytelling. In essence it is a performative recitation: instead of words, the painted pictures are used to tell the story.
The second group of studies focuses on performances that include paintings. Several dissertations treat performances that include paintings. Ellen Zweig discusses the happenings of the seventies that were intermedia events combining music and painting in a performance. Similarly, Luiz Galizia deals with the theater developed by Robert Wilson, who combined music, painting and architecture in performance. Jon Kay, relating this rise of performance art to the plastic arts of painting, sculpture and architecture, states that artists realized they could explore the other arts through performance in ways that allowed them to mix media. Catherine Schieve's dissertation puts these ideas into practice, composing a musical score with paint. It was not only a work to be heard, but to be seen.
In "Between Art and Criticism," Stephen Melville applies these issues in his discussion of Laurie Anderson's performance work, United States. He describes how she presents visual images defined as neither criticism nor painting, but in the context of Anderson's work, they are performative (Melville 34). He quotes Anderson on her efforts to make the distinction between art and ideas, because she believes "ideas have a direct line to the brain", while "art sneaks in through the senses" (38). Melville asserts that the success of her work is in her failure to make this distinction. Instead, he claims that her achievement comes from her ability to blend art and ideas in performance.
This performative blending appears in Charlotte MacArthur's discussion of how the performer's ability to develop characters is analogous to an artist painting a portrait. In their performance, the performer develops or "paints" a portrait of the character they are portraying. It is a portrait through portrayal. Judith Hamera discusses how the performer can also "paint" a self-portrait through a performance. Through both form and content, a performer is able to present a self-portrait that represents how they have come to where they are (Hamera, "On Reading..." 239). Hamera emphasizes that in a performance, a performer is free to articulate and represent the "superimposition of themselves on the material" (240). In performance, s/he can "paint" a picture of themselves over and through the script.
The third group of studies treats the process of performing painting, expressing painting through performance. Henry Sayre, in Object of Performance, describes paintings as being either performative or not. The difference lies between paintings that evoke the undecidability of the viewer(s) and paintings that merely rest in their own indeterminacy. David Salle's painting, His Brain, Sayre claims, is not performative because it is only filled with its own indeterminacies. The painting is "assimilative, not disseminative;" it is a "closed, finished, and contained work [that] cannot be altered (25). He then cites Eric Fischl's Bad Boy as an example of a performative painting that invites the undecidable interpretations of the audience. The painting is "theatrical and performative," encouraging the audience to add to the narrative of the painting (26). Sayre locates the possibility of the performance of paintings within the characteristics of the painting itself.
In Unmarked, Peggy Phelan writes that painting is increasingly drawn toward performance. To explain her claim, Phelan describes two works by Sophie Calle, both of which feature Calle interviewing visitors and guards at a museum, asking them to describe paintings that were missing from the collection either from theft or loan. She then transcribed these descriptions and hung them in place of the paintings. Calle's works, Phelan argues, suggest that the presence of the descriptions of the paintings "supplement (add to, defer and displace) the [absent] paintings" (147). Calle is gesturing toward a notion of an interactive exchange between the paintings and the viewers (146).
The descriptions of the paintings performatively represent and subvert the need for the absent paintings (147). They help restage and remember the absent paintings, keeping them alive in the present by the performance of the viewer's descriptions and memories (147). Phelan segues into the idea that if Calle "asked the same people over and over about the same painting, each time they would describe a slightly different painting . . . demonstrating the performative quality of . . . seeing" (147). The performance of the painting would be reproduced with each different description.
Kristin Valentine discusses the combination of painting and poetry in performance in her article on the Pre-Raphaelite Paradigm. She explains how the Pre-Raphaelite artists looked at "painting as mute poetry and poetry as speaking pictures" (98). The artists used color in both poetry and painting in an attempt to create "a sense of freshness and vitality." Valentine asserts that a theatre production that presents a meeting point between painting and poetry would successfully fulfill the Pre-Raphaelite's intentions (103). She concludes that theatre may be used to interpret arts, such as painting and poetry, that have "concordant aesthetic bases" (108).
Timothy Cage has also engaged performance and painting in his thesis and in two articles. Throughout, Cage is looking at the link between selected ekphrastic poems, poems evoked by art, and their related paintings through a performative lens. In his thesis, he develops a process to judge whether an audience's enjoyment and understanding of the two related arts were increased when combined in performance. Cage, like Valentine, is using performance to explore the links between verbal and visual images.
Cage continues his exploration in an article written with Lawrence Rosenfeld. They state that ekphrastic poems describe what the eye sees in the poem, enabling the viewer to see the painting more fully (Cage and Rosenfeld 200). Both poems and paintings, Cage and Rosenfeld claim, are extended in performance. "The performance of ekphrastic poetry in combination with the viewing of the appropriate paintings," is said by Cage and Rosenfeld, "to increase both the clarity of the two art forms and an appreciation of the experience" (205).
Cage and Beverly Whitaker Long have since compiled a bibliography of ekphrastic poems and their related paintings. In the preface to this bibliography, they discuss the relationship or union between the verbal and the visual. For them, ekphrasis encompasses and articulates the interactions between "painter and image, viewer and image evoked in paint, poet and image, viewer and image evoked in poetry, and among viewer, poem and painting" (Long and Cage 287). They are using a performance of ekphrastic poems and their paintings to articulate and enact these links.
My proposed study has a slightly different focus than most of the work discussed above. The first group of studies deals with painting's performative capacity, the second group with performances that included painting, and the third group with the actual performance of painting. The emphasis of this study is on expressing the experience of viewing a painting through performance. My exploration of performance and painting uses performance to express the affair with painting, an affair that encompasses performance, criticism, theories, professors, audiences and myself. While there are differences, there are also similarities to the related studies. Like the first group, the performative characteristics of a painting turned my thoughts about painting toward performance. The issues dealt with in the second group parallel my ideas on how paintings could be used within performances. Both this study and the third group focus on expressing painting through performance.
Having been exposed to this variety of studies within the space of performance and painting only strengthened the focus of my study. I was more aware of what I wanted to accomplish and I believed even more strongly that it was through a performance that I would best be able to represent, echo and express the indeterminate and kaleidoscopic nature of the experience of viewing a painting through the expression of the experience of Jasper Johns' painting, Periscope (Hart Crane).
Chapter Two
The Process of Performing a Painting:
Planning and Rehearsal
This chapter contains a narrative description of the process of preparing for the performance event. In this description, sometimes anecdotal, selected performance choices are reported, focusing on the ones that crucially shaped the performance. I begin with the compilation of the script and follow through the rehearsals to the production event.
Scripting
The process for this performance began with the writing of the script. Over a hundred pages of texts served as the basis from which script was drawn. Originally, the script was about 40-45 pages long and it seemed to contain at least ten voices. After many drafts, it was trimmed down to twenty odd pages with five different voices emerging. I believed the characters were ready to be voiced aloud. Alone, I had read it aloud several times, and it felt like it was time for different voices to enliven it.
In this stage of script development, numerous people were invited to participate over the course of several readings. Many voices reading the lines opened up many nuances within the script. Over the course of these readings, around fifteen people participated and most read several times and assumed several voices. It is difficult to describe the revelation of hearing other voices read the script. The script immediately changed into this new beast with previously unnoticed problems and potential. The different vocalizations of the words opened
up new possibilities in the meanings of the lines, reminding me that a text on the page is indeed different on the stage (Reinelt and Roach 5).
The discoveries made during this part of the process greatly improved the quality of the script and subsequently that of the final production. During these readings, the problems with the script that became most apparent were its wordiness and lack of balance. Technical sections of dialogue that were over a paragraph long, when read aloud, were flat and disrupted the flow of the reading. Also, places in the script in which one character did not have a line for several pages, led to an imbalance in the point of views portrayed by the characters.
The wordiness of the script needed to be pared down to quicken the pace and smooth out the flow, and the distribution of lines needed to be balanced in order to give each point of view equal consideration. One solution to the problem of wordiness was the addition of a video which contained some of the technical sections of dialogue and was played before, during and after the show (See Appendix E). This helped reduce the loss of lines and added another voice to the script and another dynamic to the performance. Even so, it was highly fragmented, dense, and complex, and an emphasis was placed on making it even more polished and precise. Lines were constantly rewritten and ideas were paraphrased to create a more fluent script.
Another problem of the script was related to characterization. The lines were often rewritten with an eye to individualizing what the characters said, thus giving them more distinct voices. Also, it was also obvious from the very first readings that the words in the script were suggestive of movement which could be represented physically. The challenge was to take the rhythm of the words and physically echo and evoke them on the stage.
This process of reading the script with a group led me to appreciate more fully the expressive dimensions and potential of performance. Through performance, the experience of a painting could not only be echoed, but shaped as well. My experience of the Jasper Johns' Periscope (Hart Crane) grew through the process of preparing for the performance. Various connotations continued to emerge as different people read the script, I was able to see my ideas as if they were different from themselves ( Pollock, "Telling the Told" 7). The comments from the readers shaped my experience and, in turn, my experience of the painting shaped theirs. The medium of performance was very useful in conveying thoughts and feelings in a reciprocal manner. The inherent give and take with everyone sharing and learning from each other was the process itself. My own experience of Periscope (Hart Crane) increased ten fold when rehearsals for the performance began.
Rehearsals
The process of rehearsals was partly shaped by a variety of demands from outside the performance. First, there was the matter of finding a space. I felt that it was extremely important to have the right room in which to hold this performance, because for me, the room served as a catalyst for making things happen, it was more than space in which things happen. There were many options; a gallery in the University's Museum, the Cabaret or the Great Hall in the Student Union, the performance space in the Communication Studies building, or the Critique Room in the Art Center. My first choice would have been the museum in order to have the audience watch a performance about looking at painting and also have the opportunity to look at paintings both before and after the performance. A space in the museum was not available because of conflicting schedules and agendas of the museum.
The two spaces in the Student Union were both awkward for different reasons. The Cabaret had policy that disallowed moving the seating, so it would not be possible to place the audience in the center of the room. The Great Hall was so large and cavernous that voices would get lost without microphones. The performance space of the Communication Studies department would have been extremely convenient, but lacked light colored walls that were desirable for multiple slide projections. So, almost by default, the Critique Room became the space for this performance. It was a narrow room that limited staging, but it was an empty room with bare white walls. Also, it was in the Hanes Art Center, so the audience would be walking by art studios as they entered and left the performance.
Casting led to more challenges. This performance occurred over the summer of 1995 and not many people were around. The complexity and oddity of the script, together with my own lack of experience in directing, seemed to demand a skilled group of performers. As a result of these considerations, the cast for this performance was recruited more than auditioned. The cast changed during the readings of the script. Two of the cast members committed in the early readings, another toward the end. The final two members agreed to participate at the first rehearsal and only after much negotiating for a short rehearsal schedule to fit their heavy time demands. This tight rehearsal schedule directly effected several performance choices which will be described later.
Finally, there were technical matters--props, lights and setting. Through the Communication Studies and Art departments and my own resources, I attempted to collect everything desired for the performance. For the most part this was successful, but not all of the objects were available and/or affordable, so we worked with what was at hand. For example, if the performance had been in the University Museum, I dreamed of obtaining the original Periscope (Hart Crane) on loan for the performance. But the logistical difficulty and the potential cost made slides the obvious choice.
The rehearsal process proceeded while issues of space, cast and set pieces were still being settled. To start each rehearsal, the cast improvised dialogue about paintings that were brought into the rehearsals. For example, the cast would ad-lib a discussion of what they saw in Periscope (Hart Crane) in a manner they believed their characters would adopt. Another activity that occurred regularly was to have the cast paint, to let them create a painting and then discuss each other's works in the manner of their characters. By creating a painting and then talking about it, they were experiencing painting in a manner similar to mine of Johns. Both of these activities allowed the cast to actually perform analogies to the script. They were performing interpretative viewings. When the cast developed their characters' auto-biographies, it focused their characters and also revealed the dynamics between the characters in a new light for me. The distinctions between the characters became even sharper now that the cast was performing the characters' responses to each other.
New possibilities opened up when the cast read the script in the room in which it was to be performed. Here, when I sat in the middle of the room and the characters were speaking over and around me, I felt as if I were inside a verbal tennis match. To maximize this discursive effect, blocking aimed to keep the cast spread out over the room, and not bunched together. Another effect that we strove for was to have an atmosphere of multiple stimuli in the performance space. The characters moved around and through the audience as they interacted with each other. The challenge was to direct and design this potential over load so that it was not confusing and frustrating, but fun and stimulating. I wanted the performance to be alternately disjointed and linear, destabilized and stable.
The intricacies of the script developed into a complex performance and this greatly slowed down the rehearsal schedule as we constantly fell behind. I came to realize that the quality of the performance increased with slow rehearsals. So, I opted for gaining and maintaining quality with a slowed pace and possibly the loss of sections of the script. The rehearsal schedule was under the tensive realities of time pressure and quality control.
Throughout the rehearsals, the structure of the performance changed steadily through my own ideas and those of the cast and visitors, including committee members. For example, several of the cast members pointed out that the Student was somewhat analogous to Alice in Wonderland in that he is within an art wonderland in which the rest of the cast is trying to win his and the audience's attention. Another stated that the characters essentially represented points of view, and a visitor noted that these points of view could be seen as notes played within the performance in relation with other notes, clashing and blending, giving the performance a rhythm.
Major changes continued, even in the final week of rehearsal. It was widely felt by the entire cast that the poem in the script had become an island unto itself. It was a moment that could be beautiful or flat. By having the cast overlap the lines and echo each other, the poem could be this intricate sonic tapestry, or it could be a garbled bunch of words. One cast member suggested highlighting the poem through a staging that would emphasize it as a performance within the performance. The cast could drop their characters for this "performance" and embody the words of the painting while standing in front of projections of the painting. This "performance" thus enacted the sensuality of the words.
In the final rehearsals the script still felt too long and repetitive. The complexity of the script made the memorization of it difficult. The cast as a whole encouraged me to cut more lines, freeing them to work on highlighting, punctuating and differentiating the lines throughout the script. A visitor noted that we should emphasize the language around the painting and the painting around the language. The cast needed to know which lines, metaphorically, were bold, italic or plain text, and this difference should then be clear in the blocking, volume, and pace of the lines. Similarly, visual punctuation in the dialogue needed clarity--the periods, commas, exclamation points and question marks. Another visitor emphasized that the cast should know who was talking to whom and why; they should listen to each other and respond verbally and visually. Another mentioned that the painting, Periscope (Hart Crane) warranted more interaction. The painting was both the focus and a performer in this event and having the cast look at it would engage themselves with it and engage the audience with it as well.
Performance Space, Setting, Properties,
and Costumes
The space for this performance was set with padded backless benches in the middle of the room in which the audience sat facing outward in both directions (See Appendices B and C). Paint supplies around in four stations invited the audience to dabble as they pleased, becoming, in effect, a part of the performance. Also, the piles of books around the room could be browsed by audience members if they wished. These same books were cited or consulted over the course of this study, so the study itself was present in the performance. Paintings by the cast and audience members along with the lines of the poems from the performance were hung and interspersed with projections of Periscope (Hart Crane) around the room, giving a museum-gallery-playroom feel to the room. To the background of various types of music, audience members were welcome to walk around and enjoy the room before and after the performance. Slide projections of Jasper Johns' Periscope (Hart Crane) appeared on three of the walls throughout the performance. A video projector focusing on the fourth ran throughout, showing various images of Johns' paintings and adding narration to the proceedings (See Appendix E).
The room had overhead lighting in the form of fluorescent and track lighting. Before and after the show the fluorescent lights were on, but during the performance the track lighting served as spots that lit the corners in which the podium, easel and pile were located, and also the center of the room was lit from both sides of the room.
The cast entered the room as the audience was painting and exploring the room. In this instance they were not in character, but simply visiting with the audience and watching them paint, thus becoming a viewer of the performing audience. During the performance, the cast performed as crew, handling all of the technical aspects such as lighting, music and projection. Also, they occasionally sat with audience when not speaking. (The script contains directions for the cast members: "through the audience" and "over the audience." Through the audience refers to walking across the thruway between the two groups of benches for audience members [See Appendices B and C]. Over the audience refers to the cast saying lines to each other over the heads of audience.)
The cast wore similar grey T-shirts that had a white silk screen print of Periscope (Hart Crane), connecting them as cast members and serving a foundation from which costumed details will then illustrate their distinctions. These distinctions were intensified with each cast member having a base area in the room. For example, the Critic carried a pointer and wore a suit with his T-shirt. His base was the corner in which the podium stood. The Artist wore a smock and carried around art supplies as she painted throughout the performance at her base, the easel. The Player wore lycra tights and had a trickster's bag from which he pulled various props. His base was the bench on which he had even more props and toys with which to play. The Docent wore a black skirt and carried notecards. The Docent's base was around the center of the room and is shared with the Student who carried a walkman and wore a red ball cap and shorts. The Director of the performance also wore a matching T-shirt and my base was the director's chair. Also, the Greeter for the performance event, who wore an outfit that matched the Docent's, passed out programs before the event and encouraged people to explore the room. The performance began with the Docent clapping to get the audience's and the cast's attention. The cast responded by positioning themselves at their bases and the Docent then introduced them from their point of views, which illustrated visually for the audience the structure of the interactions among the characters (See Appendix D).
Chapter Three
The Performance Event(s):
Reflections and Conclusions
As I reflect on the performance event(s), I think back to the two questions that have guided this study. 1) If the experience of viewing a painting is performative, could it not be expressed performatively? 2) Would a performance of this experience be an effective mode of expression that allows others to experience one's viewing of a painting? I now realize that my interests and expectations for this study were more complex than they first seemed. I wanted to express the experience of a painting in a manner that would echo and evoke the beauty I found in that experience. For this study, a performance and this thesis were the means of expression with which I have struggled. During this process, the complexity of my goal became apparent. I was not only interested in making the experience of a painting, specifically my experience of Jasper Johns' painting, Periscope (Hart Crane), resonate for others; I was also intrigued by the possibility of opening up alternative ways to express myself that would serve not only as an analysis of the subject scrutinized, but also resonate interactively the thoughts, ideas and experiences of that subject. I not only wanted the performance to enable other's to re-experience Periscope (Hart Crane), but for the thesis to do so as well.
This chapter contains a description and interpretation of the performance event(s), focusing on selected formative moments realized within the performance(s). After these moments are addressed, I look at responses from the cast, audience and committee members. As I reflect on their responses, I discuss how they illustrate the event(s) success and its limits, and look to possible continuations in this study of painting and performance.
Performance Event(s)
My goals were realized in the performance(s) during certain moments in several ways: the pre-show interaction of the audience, the cast and the room, the large and fragmented amount of information of the performance, subversive moments in the script, and attempted realizations of the ideas behind the performance.
Before the performance(s), the audience was encouraged by the Greeter and the Director to explore the sensorious room. They performed and enacted analogies to the performance. They were active viewers who, when the performance began, then became viewing performers. The cast entered as themselves and explored the room and the audience. In contrast to the audience, the cast members were functioning as viewing performers who would soon become performing viewers. The performance allowed for a process in which both audience and performers played a part (Schmitt 21).
The room was an important aspect of the event(s). Filled with books, paintings, and paint supplies, it was meant to tempt, or seduce, the audience into painting and exploring. The active position of the viewer(s) was the focus of this study and the performance event(s), and, concordantly, the audience was centered in the space of the performance. Just as the person who designs a set is not separate from a performance, the audience is an integral part of the event. This locus was intensified with the audience's physical interactivity throughout the performance. Their bodies were involved as they twisted and turned, following the movements of sights and sounds. Engaging the event was not "a passive activity but . . . an act" (Heuvel 148). The audience's performance was their experience and interpretations of the event(s) (187).
The amount of information conveyed during the performance verged on overload even conceding that the audience(s) were actively viewing the performance. The audience members were not meant to absorb and digest everything that occurred. The point was not to center their attention on one idea, but to spread ideas about in a seemingly random order. Both the performance experience and the experience of viewing a painting were fragmented; multiple spaces and a variety of points of view blended and clashed. This fragmentation was not meant to "deconstruct order, but to investigate the possibilities of new order[s]," allowing for a questioning of the (re)presentation itself (Heuvel 182).
The fragmentation of the performance was aided by several moments that subverted a linear reading of the event as well as acknowledged and illustrated the validity of numerous and diverse points of view. In this manner, no one point of view within the event was highlighted or proposed over another and the audience was "invited to find meanings in the collisions and collusions between" the multiple points of view (Heuvel 102). For instance, when theories about the different possible interpretations of the hand in Periscope (Hart Crane) were discussed, the pace of the dialogue reached a crescendo with the Student deflating the theories by asking if it could just be a hand. This moment showed one of the characters subverting the statement(s) of other character(s), rupturing one another's point of view and developing indeterminacy in the information presented through the performance (18).
Another subversive moment was constructed as the Critic and Docent appeared to flip through several different slides of other works by Johns, while in reality they were viewing a slide of Periscope (Hart Crane) repeatedly and reacting to this same slide as if it were different slides of different paintings. This moment contradicted the audience's possible desire to see other works by Johns, but more than that, it was meant to subvert the performance itself. Having a character seem to err called "into question the verifiability" of their statements (Heuvel 121). It was a moment of apparent falsity in the performance which could have caused the audience to doubt the characters, potentially causing them to question all of the information within the performance, thereby undermining it. Another subversion occurred when the Artist declared that it was better to express your ideas about art through the medium itself (i.e. by painting). This moment not only discounted the other characters' statements, but subverted all verbalizations of the visual. Painting was honored as an effective medium for exploring itself at the expense of verbal forms of communication; most significantly, the cited books in the room and the text of the performance itself.
Several attempts to realize the concepts behind the performance were juxtaposed along with the intended subversion of the moments described above. For instance, both the first and second rendering of the descriptive poem about Periscope (Hart Crane) embodied and evoked the painting. The cast read the first poem from scripts as they stood within the projections of the painting with the Student in the center of the room. The scripts signaled this poem as a performance within the performance which was supported with the cast dropping their characters and embodying the painting through the words of the poem and their positions within the projections.
The scripts also illustrated visually the differences between a text on the page and on the stage. "The physical presence of the scripts . . . destroy[ed] the illusion that the text [had] disappeared" within the performance (Heuvel 126). The script of the poem was present, but it was read aloud in a manner that could not be reproduced in a reading by oneself. The lines of the poem were overlapped and echoed, forming a layered and textured sonic poem. The first poem was then echoed in the second which was similar to and different from the first, paraphrasing its overlapping and echoing lines. The second poem was also a physical echo of the first poem; its tone was quieter, no scripts were involved, and the room was pitch black.
Following the second poem, only the slide projectors were turned back on and the cast exited the room, leaving the audience in a darkened room surrounded by images of Periscope (Hart Crane). In effect, the painting took the curtain call, suggesting that it engendered the engagement of the ideas, images, cast, and audience. This moment was then supported with the cast re-entering the room as themselves again, turning on the overhead fluorescent lights and immediately mixing with the audience instead of taking a bow. The end of the show was meant to be an echo of the beginning with cast and audience joined together, mingling as before. Both audience and cast were literally and figuratively viewing performers of Periscope (Hart Crane).
Responses
After the performances, I investigated several kinds of responses: audience's immediate reactions voiced to the cast after the performances, audience's opinions collected through interviews, cast's immediate post-performance responses and reaction papers, and committee's responses to the performances. After each performance, the audience mingled in the room with the cast, discussing different moments or aspects of the performance. Their immediate responses were positive and negative critiques of the event. Follow up interviews were conducted to further explore the audience's responses to the performance. Before addressing the interviews, the responses from the cast, audience, and committee will be discussed.
The cast's responses ranged from self-criticism to comments about the performance to curiosity about the audience. Their comments mainly focused on what they felt could have been better. They talked of lines flubbed, mistakes made and possible improvements. They were hyper-critical of their individual performances and curious about the audience's responses to the event. The performance's focus on the audience seemed to draw their attention to the audience as well. Their comments sometimes led to rehearsals before the next evening's performance. For instance, after the first evening, the cast expressed discomfort in standing half in the projections during the reading of the first poem. One member said he felt out of position because it was difficult to know if he was half way in the image with the light in his eyes. Another worried that they looked out of position. Together, we ran the scene both ways and decided to have them stand fully in the images for the following performances. Through the rehearsal process, we were shaping our experience with the painting.
Another cast member noticed that the Docent and the Greeter looked similar. We discussed how the two were also connected since they both were in control of the performance, albeit in different capacities. The Greeter figuratively and literally controlled the performance from the outside, passing out programs to those she admitted into the room. The Docent, on the other hand, commanded the performance from within, directing the other characters and moderating their points of view. We decided to further emphasize this connection visually, having them wear identical outfits for the rest of the events. Together, we were constructing visual statements to support the ideas in the script.
The entire cast noticed and appreciated that the room was filling up with the audience's pre-show paintings. We discussed how with each new performance the audience(s) became more and more a physical presence in the performance(s). We began to think of the audience members as fellow collaborators. We were seeing them as the focus of our performance. For us, the paintings showed that the audience actively contributed to the performance, leaving their mark as they enacted analogies to the performance.
The cast also wrote short response papers, reflecting on the experience of the performance,