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Tessa Sidey
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'Lines in Space', Printmaking
Today, Autumn 2004
FREE LIKE A FISH |
The classic science fiction satire Flatland, written by
Edwin Abbott Abbott and first published in 1884, centres on a
two dimensional world. The reader encounters a constrained life
of straight lines and regulation, where movement, irregularity,
colour, feeling, light and shade are absent or outlawed, and
women appear as little more than a one dimensional point. A
chance encounter with a stranger from Spaceland sets up an
alternative dialogue with the third dimension. This romance of
many dimensions has long been a favourite of Agathe Sorel, who
in her prints and sculpture has spent over forty years exploring
the dimensional and expressive possibilities of the engraved
line. 1
Sorel was born in Hungary in 1935, into what would have been
considered as a dangerously intellectual middle class family.
The war saw the Sorel family persecuted by the Nazis while,
under the Stalinists, a grandmother living in former Yugoslavia
and an aunt in the capitalist West provided further ground for
discrimination. Her mother, fluent in four or five languages and
highly qualified, intended to become a chemist but finally had
to compromise and study art history in Vienna where she met her
future husband, a young doctor completing his specialist studies
in psychoanalysis. The rudiments of printmaking were learnt at a
lycée school in Budapest, though it was under the aegis of
studying stage design that Sorel first entered the Academy of
Applied Arts. Strings were pulled to secure a move to the
Institute of Fine Arts, but the dominant creed of the time,
kitsch social realism, failed to impress and was fiercely
resisted. The compulsory classes on anatomy and perspective,
rooted in structural analysis, has nevertheless continued to be
a permanent influence. ‘Each part of the skeleton would be
considered with an eye for precision and analysis; drawn
separately and then joined up. We had a live model, and as we
drew it, we placed the skeleton inside it. …having considered
the function of each bone and the special distortions of a
particular pose’2. It was at this time that Sorel met her future
husband Gabriel (Gábor) Sitkey, a fellow Academician, studying
textile design.
The 1956 Revolution saw Sorel and her mother move to England,
settling in London, where she enrolled as an illustration
student at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. There she
encountered a mixture of liberation and entrenchment, ‘The
pedestrian realism of the Euston Road school was
dominant…Printmaking was beginning to emerge, led by Robert
Erskine at the St George’s Gallery, but the etching press was
still in a corner of the graphic design studio at Camberwell,
together with a beautiful Albion press used mainly by Michael
Rothenstein, Tadek Beutlich and a few interested students’.
Significantly it was Michael Rothenstein (1908-1993) who
suggested the move to Paris to study under Stanley William
Hayter (1901-1988) at the Atelier 17 Workshop. He himself had
only spent a few weeks on three occasions at Hayter’s. With a
Gulbenkian Scholarship however, Sorel was able to stay for two
years between 1958 and 1960.
Sorel has been unequivocal in pursuing her own interests as an
artist, but it is the Hayter adherence to experimentation,
self-reliance and, a critical dialogue with process that has
shaped, and continues to shape, her working practice. As she
describes,’ We took weeks to work on a plate, layering one
technique over the other. We were encouraged to adopt an almost
schizophrenic approach, alternating between the creative and the
critical frame of mind. Sometimes one got into a total mess, and
had to rescue the plate by making fairly uncompromising and
drastic changes’. For Hayter such skill and perseverance was
part of a wider philosophy where exploration and mutual exchange
between artists made a difference to the world.
In particular, it is the theory surrounding the spatial
properties of the engraved line, eloquently described by Hayter
in New Ways of Gravure, that appears to have had the most impact
on the work of this early period. Vagabondage and Vue sur la
Montagne are both single plate colour etchings, but black inked
intaglio lines and associated textures drive the directional
movement that dominates these images (1, 2). This becomes the
singular technical vehicle in Fumée, and in PETRA is absorbed
into an irregular and ravaged plate edge and surface (3, 4).
Sorel’s earliest commercial success, with the St George’s
Gallery and then the publishers Editions Alecto in London, and
on selling trips to America, was certainly achieved under the
Hayter label. At the same time it was not difficult to see that
this all embracing doctrine had to be physically distanced and
re-negotiated in order to achieve any semblance of an
independent voice.
Photographic process began to play a role in 1964. This was
significant when both Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi had
begun to use photography, only in their case concentrated on
screenprinting and on working collaboratively with the printer
Chris Prater. Sorel’s preference lay in maintaining technical
control and she acquired her first press and studio/ home base
in Fulham in 1960 3. Photo-gravure was chosen to render a veiled
architectural presence on the title page of Le Balcon. The
ground-breaking production of Jean Genet’s play at London’s
English Arts Theatre in 1957, set again a revolution, had left a
deep impression on the student who had only recently escaped
Hungary. It now became the source for a sequence of images
interpreting Genet’s world of deception and illusion. ‘The use
of embossing, colours, photo-etching and garish applied gold was
invented to underline the theatricality of the scenes. The
plates were punched, drilled and collaged to accentuate the
colour and to suggest an almost three-dimensional quality…’
(34-36). 4
Traditional spatial relationships are completely abandoned in
The Wise and Foolish Virgin, 1966 (27). Here instead of single
plate printing there is a constructivist approach towards
assembling found (set square) and folded (brass) low relief
printed on top of the photographic and the linear base plate. A
two stage, and later four stage, process of printing now seemed
a more practical format for exploring the boundaries of a
constructed space. ‘The base plate is printed first and then
marked up on the bed of the press to register the free floating
cut out pieces to be printed in the subsequent stages’ The
results expanded the possibilities for visualising and
structuring space, as in the interplay between photographed
industrial window and the two dimensional rendering of a
sculpture in Dark Satanic Mill (11).
A new found confidence received a decisive boost in 1966 with
the award of a Churchill Fellowship to work and travel in
America. Plastic had already been used for TAO, a suspended form
of three alphabet letters and accompanying shadow (49). An
introduction to the pioneering plastics manufacturer Charles
Kanev in Philadelphia however opened up a world of industrial
techniques and tools that seemed equally suited to an artist’s
appropriation 5. The Russian constructivist Naum Gabo
(1890-1977) and the Hungarian member of the Bauhaus, László
Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), had both promoted plastic earlier in
the century as a vehicle for moving rather than static
relationships. In the same spirit, Sorel became intrigued by the
spatial possibilities of this transparent material. The engraved
line could now work in tandem with the third dimension, or in
even more suprising ways. Moholy-Nagy had after all listed at
least 44 different perspective systems in 1937 6. It was this
theory that was put into practice in a series of new prints and
sculptures dating from 1967 and 1968.
Biplanes and Catamarans (9) is engraved on cobex, a PVC material
traditionally used as a master for engraved graphs and
instructions, on the backs of radios amongst other things. The
great advantage lay in it being both strong and flexible. The
process of heat branding was employed for a powerful rendering
of structure to emerge in the foreground of this image, in
contrast to the air–borne qualities of drypointed lines set at a
dramatic angle. This same surface re-appears in the related Raft
sculpture, only now the source for intaglio-inked lines
extending like the trajectory of a worm into a tubular tunnel
crossed by six rods. Diffused light provides another translucent
ingredient for activating flow and movement. (50).
Perspex provided Sorel with a physical foundation for projecting
line in space. At the same time, she began to find in modern
science and mathematics a parallel interest in dimensional
dynamics. Specifically, via computer graphics, the work of the
Hungarian geometer and engineer Imre Pál and the American
mathematician Tom Banchoff began to supply her with some
extraordinary configurations. 7,8 ‘Like Banchoff, I was
interested to work with simple geometric shapes to explore all
the possibilities for projection. He would work with complex
figures and equations, I would work in an experimental way…for
example, with a simple transparent cube with shadows cast both
inwards and outwards. I would simply draw around them and later
make a 3-D version of it (Echo Chamber (56) )’. Fifteen years
later another interpretation of the cube reappears as extended
and projected upwards between two vertical windshields in
Hovercube (64). These expressions of continuity and progression
aspire to be both beautiful as sculptural shapes and arresting
as visual discoveries.
Initially plastic off-cuts, mostly tubular, were acquired from
America. The turning point came with the discovery of a plastics
scrap yard in London which has remained a zealously guarded
source for the ready made. ‘I would stand under a crane about to
break something up and shout stop when I saw something
interesting’. As distinct from the constructivist practise of
cutting or moulding acrylic, Sorel was drawn to the surrealist
notion of the found object. Camberwell colleague and friend
Michael Rothenstein had already absorbed existing wooden
textures, and later photography, into his expansive mixed media
prints. She now began to appropriate existing shapes, such as
the arching shell form in Oyster (59), the full cello base of
Titania (68), and forgotten remnants of coiled lumps of extruded
plastic as the basis of an investigatory and engineering process
in the studio.
The choice of a transparent material represented a singular move
for an artist working in the late 1960s and early 70s in
England. At the time, heavy metal sculpture was dominant in the
art college system and receiving international recognition.
Sorel, herself now a college lecturer, appeared to be placing
herself outside of a male tradition of stone carving and
heavy-welding. The term space engravings, even as late as 1989
when adopted as the title for an important exhibition organised
by the Kent Institute of Art and Design, seemed not only
appropriate but necessary, ‘when my work still wasn’t considered
as sculpture’.9 Retrospectively this may be seen to have
backfired, or at least remained unhelpful in the removing of
restrictions commonly associated in this country with the label
of specialist printmaker. Nevertheless it is significantly under
this term, when exhibiting in Europe, that Sorel has received
her widest recognition as a sculptor.
Certainly the creative process for this artist has rarely been
about a purist approach towards materials or techniques, but one
where transparency allows for the cannabilising of any number of
devices suggestive of an expanded space. The arched flatness of
Welcome Arch (54) contradicts its architectural theme, while at
the same time provides a two dimensional surface for
photographic transfers from the architecture of Frei Otto 10.
Elsewhere concrete objects are treated as strangely
self-contained, demanding, for example, that the viewer move
towards a small purple glass container to read a curious Welcome
insignia.
Unlike contemporaries who were drawn to the mechanics of the
kinetic, Sorel has preferred not to make use of electrical
devices. Rather she concentrates on employing the simplest of
spot lights to highlight the projections of her chosen
materials. The flamboyance that makes up Macho the Cock comes
from engraved and welded lines working in tandem with the
outward projections of shadow, a heightened display of colour,
and the actual time spent by the viewer following and moving
around these sculptural lines. In her own words, ‘The movement
comes from solid objects which have a line or lines or scored or
engraved into their surface. When you start walking around, the
lines strengthened by the optical properties of the material,
also start moving’. The inclusion of real (side) mirrors
attached to flat projected shapes only adds to the possibilities
for imaginative interaction with this sculpture (60).
The early concentration on Perspex as a foundation for black
intaglio lines gave way in the 1980s to additional methods to
meet the demands of weight and scale. Works such as Macho the
Cock and Grotto for Torus could no longer be worked on a table,
and Sorel began more ambitiously to work with Camberwell
graduate Mark Stevens on incorporating steel armatures into her
work to achieve a greater stability (11). Lines would then be
engraved by crawling around and on top of the piece. ‘I would
mark up in felt pen, and then engrave on both sides of the
Perspex so that the line became an intergral part of the whole
structure. I was not aiming for a precious line but a vigorous
gestural mark that could be read from a distance’. Millimetres
of difference in depth would be realised with a motorised
router, often combined with hand-worked drypoint and mezzotint,
and the use of the pantograph router for strong geometric
contours. The idea of exposing colour against a neutral surround
also became an increasing concern, so hand-painting with acrylic
or glass paint or stencilling with car spray paint also became
part of the process.
Such increasingly elaborate application of a graphic language
into sculptural form is unusual among contemporary artists. The
American Frank Stella is perhaps the most prominent comparison.
With very different results, both these artists have freely
appropriated devices that move between the graphic and the
sculptural. For Sorel, the 2 and 3 D versions, different as they
are, often reinforce each other as they consider different
manifestations of light and perspective.
The starting point is either small sketches or watercolours on
single sheets of paper, often combining pieces of applied
collage. These fluid drawings are characteristically worked in
figuration rather than abstraction to register the
idiosyncrasies of an observed incident or landscape. For example
a farmyard scene of a goat climbing over a hill rock and a
primitive, cork screw shaped wine press gave rise to the
sculpture Ego the Goat (63). This playing of the figurative
against the abstract has remained a constant feature, and one
which continues to be reappraised.
The most fruitful environment for these vital periods of drawing
and painting has been a second home on the Canary Island of
Lanzarote since the early 1970s. Until recently it has not
provided any access to a press. By extension, it is only when
back in London that there are the facilities to see if initial
ideas can be taken a stage further, either graphically or in a
three dimensional form.
Women in Waves originated as a scene of a man carrying a woman
into the sea, but finally concentrated on a singular female
form. The sculpture is made up of open slabs of Perspex bolted
together at radical angles. At one end a female head with out-
spanned hair extends aggressively into space, while opposite
there is the enlarged contour of a breast. Multi-directional
lines and sections of colour only add to the sense of agitation
as the viewer is encouraged to move and see more but without a
fixed point of contact (67). The associated print of the same
title is, achieved by photocopying the flat parts of the
sculpture, and is by comparison restrained in its physical
display. The focus of attention has shifted to a disjointed
arrangement of perspectival lines evoking the idea of
internalised dimensions in a figurative form that is happily
buffeted by a surface of sea colour (30).
In the selection and repetition of certain geometric shapes
Sorel has established a vehicle for communicating through
archetype. The sources characteristically stand outside the
world of art history, drawn from a select group of scientists
and architects associated with the fourth dimension and with
non-Euclidean geometry. Imre Pál’s intersection of revolving
cylinders appears as a male shape in Amazon (61) and Divine
Proportions (22); the elegiac Titania (68) becomes the container
for extravagant lattice shapes favoured by the architect Frei
Otto, as well as a double spiralling form to be found in Tom
Banchoff; the out spanned form in flight in Birds (19) appears
as a female element in Historic Couple (20). Such deliberate
acts of reiteration across media and function, allows these
forms to take up different roles depending on the character and
narrative of the composition.
It is the archetypal that permeates Catalana Blanca, a book and
large single sheet series of five black and white images
published by Sorel under her own imprint in 1999 (36-38). The
title comes from a cacti species that grew in her garden in
Lanzarote, and is strongly identified with the island. An
infection saw the plants wither and then die, leaving only
ossified fibres, ‘like an elaborate engraving or anatomical
display of veins and nerves’. At the same time, a new shop on
the island provided access to what in effect was the only local
resource for printing, a photocopier. Wrapping a section of
cactus remains in ‘my grandmother’s white damask towel and my
son’s little vest from years ago’, the process began with a
standard machine, and a lengthy phase of cutting up and
collaging the results. The second stage of working with a
powerful digital copier allowed for trials in enlargement,
reversal and manipulation. The results, far from being flat and
dull, were extraordinarily textural, slicing chiaroscuro effects
into figurative life of considerable beauty and authority.
Alongside poems from Sol Absolu by Lorand Gaspar, originally
published in 1972 12, the reader is invited to engage in layers
of invention, ‘perhaps more authentic than the one imagined by
the inhabitants of the island, for whom this may seem an
illusion’13.
Sorel prefers not to elaborate on the differences surrounding
the photocopier and her customised Hunter Penrose press. In both
cases they are faciltators for ideas and intentions, and in
appropriating the digital, or possibly the computer generated in
the future, she is part of an established tradition of artists
who are drawn to the challenges posed by new technology. The
photocopier, as automated printer, remains dependent on the
quality of decisions and input being made at the time of
printing and, in this instance, has been favoured for its
capacity to extend the dialogue with going concerns. ‘You could
call the initial work découpage, which has to do with drawing
even though the drawing is done entirely with scissors, like the
Matisse paper cuts. I generate the source material myself on a
photocopier, often scanning in 3-D objects and textures,
composing and playing around with abstract constructions, using
children’s drawings in the sand (The Book of Sand) or trying to
describe character without recourse to realistic portraiture…’.
Although various museums have acquired the prints and artist’s
books, the most recent work has not been without controversy,
and indeed, in 2003, saw it excluded from the Originals 03
exhibition at London’s Mall Gallery 14. The discussion on
originality that this instigated took place at Sorel’s studio
home in Forest Hill. In an opening address she emphasized that
the facility for obtaining printed objects with digital or
optical technology now available should never be confused with
the difficulties involved in producing good and meaningful art.
This continues to demand ‘training, hard work, time, effort and
ideas’.15
The proposition that the linear imprint can take any number of
forms is eloquently embodied in The Book of Sand (40-42). In the
footsteps of children drawing on Lanzarote’s airport beach,
Sorel began to use a rake to draw in the sand. As she writes in
her introduction, ‘Prints are described as infinitely repeatable
statements and the beach gives a wonderful example of this’.
Rapidly outlined figures, profiles, heads, footprints, and
strange visual coincidences with the real, were then
photographed from several angles. The effects of spatial
distortion were taken on board, and the photocopier employed for
the final intricate stages of reconstruction alongside the
surrealist poetry of David Gascoyne16. Far from abandoning the
engraved line, this artist is relishing using contemporary
devices for new approaches to this most ancient of themes.
Tessa Sidey
Birmingham, March 2004
NOTES
1 A Square (Edwin Abbott Abbott), Flatland, London, Seeley and
Co, new and revised edition 1884
2 Interviews conducted by the writer and the artist at the
artist’s home in Forest
Hill between 2002 and 2004. Unless stated otherwise quotations
come from
this source
3 Sorel and Gábor Sitkey lived at 14 Irene Road, Fulham from
1961, moving
to 34 Wilton Road, Belgravia in 1979, and from 1997 to a studio/
home in
London Road, Forest Hill
4 Agathe Sorel, Introduction to Le Balcon, a portfolio of ten
etchings and title
page, first published in 1964.
5 Charles Kanev was the Director of Laminated Materials
Corporation outside
Philadelphia.
6. László Moholy-Nagy, The New Bauhaus and Space Relationships,
American
Architect and Architecture, 151, New York, December 1937
7 The Hungarian scientist Imre Pál lectured in engineering at
the University of Budapest, and is best known in the West for
his stereoscopic drawing. His titles include: Descriptive
Geometry with 3 D Figures (University of Budapest) and Phase
Equilibria Spatial Diagrams, 1945 and 1970 with Ferenc Tamás.
8 Thomas F Banchoff, former professor of mathematics at Brown
University, Rhode Island, is celebrated for research into the
fourth dimension using computer graphics. He met Agathe Sorel
after she projected one of his images of a cube during a lecture
on her work at Brown University in 1991.
9 Space Engravings & Other Works by Agathe Sorel, Kent Institute
of Art and
Design, Canterbury, 1989; and subsequent tour to USA, France,
Sweden and
Germany.
10 Frei Otto (b. Saxony, 1925) a German writer and architect who
pioneered
the use of mathematical, computer-based procedures to determine
shapes.
11 Mark Stevens became Senior Sculpture Technician at Camberwell
College
of Art, London
12 Sol Absolut by the French poet Lorand Gaspar (b.1925) was
published by
Gallimard, 1972
13 Elsa Lớpez, Catalana Blanca, published by Agathe Sorel,
February 1999
14. Sorel ‘s digital work was rejected on the confused grounds
of not meeting
aesthetic as well as technical criteria for this particular
exhibition.
15 Meeting held at Studio of Contemporary Art, Forest Hill on
27/1/2004.
16 Poems by David Gascoyne are taken from Selected Poems,
Enitharmon
Press, 199
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