STUDY #9UNTITLED

ETEL ADNAN

STUDY IS THE GENERIC NAME for a series of focused case-studies of works from the David Roberts

Collection. It involves a single work, displayed in a gallery. The work is studied in depth, from its

techniques, origin and history, to its position in the artist’s practice and the contemporary debates.

The study is made available, in a folder on the bench.

AN ARTWORK IS A SYSTEM that cannot be reduced only to an object or an index (certificate,

instructions, etc.). It also includes the histories (material and conceptual), the trajectories (physical

or virtual) and the narratives (past or to come) generated by the artwork: this is what this programme

will research.

TO STUDY IS TO DEVOTE TIME and attention to a particular subject, to acquire knowledge. It can also

refer to a piece of work done for practice or an experiment. It is this sense that we would like to

pursue – not the transmission of knowledge or the act of contemplation, but rather an invitation to

act.

STUDY IS NOT AN ATTEMPT to capture or seize but a methodology of encounter and the insistence on

the provisionality as both form and content within the process of research. It is an exercise to respond

to the infinite demand of the work. Not to bring forth any historical truth but to enter into a dialogue

with the work.

IN THIS SENSE THE STUDY IS NOT FINITE, but demands the reader to take up multiple positions and

viewpoints. More than anything, it asks the viewer to engage with the artwork by, at least, spending

some time with it.

INTRODUCTION

UNTITLED is a painting by poet, artist and writer ETEL ADNAN (b. 1925 in Beirut, Lebanon) from 2000.

It is painted in oil on canvas, and its unframed dimensions are 22.9 x 30.5 cm. The work was acquired

for the David Roberts Collection in December 2014 from Calicoon Fine Arts, New York, having been

loaned for an exhibition at DRAF, Curators’ Series 7. A Special Arrow was Shot in the Neck (13 July –

2 August 2014) curated by Vivian Ziherl and Natasha Ginwala.

THE PAINTING is part of a large series (thousands of drawings and paintings) of works by Adnan

representing Mount Tamalpäis, known as ‘Mount Tam’, which is a peak in California, United States,

often considered symbolic of Marin County. Visible from the windows of her home, since 1960s

Mount Tamalpais has been an immutable reference point, compositional agent and an enduring

presence within Adnan’s painting. The mountain is captured in swiftly-executed strokes, rendering its

geological body in vibrant colours. Adnan’s 1986 book, Journey to Mount Tamalpäis is a meditation

on the relationship between nature and art. Mount Tamalpais has since the nineteenth century been a

popular subject in California landscape painting.

THROUGHOUT ADNAN’S OEUVRE land- and sea-scapes recur as compositions of persistent being and

political endurance, marking essential presences within a poetic contingency. Adnan’s major literary

works include the renowned Sitt MarieRose, 1977 (a novel set before and during the 1975–1990

Lebanese Civil War), The Arab Apocalypse, 1989, and Seasons, 2008. Her work has been included

in dOCUMENTA (13) (Kassel, Germany, 2012) and the Serpentine Gallery Map Marathon (London,

2010).

STUDY

Etel Adnan is a Lebanese-American poet, writer and artist who lives in Paris. Inspired to paint by

a colleague, Ann O’Hanlon, at Dominican College in San Rafael, California, where she taught

Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics from 1958, her popularity in the fine art world (it swoons at her)

rises in her eighties, aided by the inclusion of 36 of her untitled, abstract canvases in Carolyn

Christov-Bakargiev’s dOCUMENTA(13) in Kassel, Germany.

A favorite thing I’ve seen at DRAF so far is “CAConrad & The Future Wilderness: A Performance and

Workshop” on March 14, 2015. What really stuck in my mind is the story of the naming of Yosemite,

which in indigenous language means “they are killers.”

August was a struggle

September was a struggle

October was a struggle

November was a struggle

December was a struggle

January was a struggle

February was a struggle

Jun was nice.

Etel Adnan lived near Yosemite; Mount Tamalpais is near Yosemite. Corina Copp writes about color. Ariana

Reines writes about the world. Martine Syms writes the colour purple. People in love, everywhere.

On Crete poem

U put the “Ex” in text, jeez.

In May the art world goes to some parties and some openings.

In June 2012, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev opens dOCUMENTA(13) in Kassel, Germany. Aside from

showing, celebratedly, paintings – small abstractions that the artist had been working on since the

1950s that were hung, about head height, on the white gallery walls, and one larger painting, placed

horitzontal on a low (shin height) plinth – the gallery ceiling is HIGH – Etel Adnan also publishes a

short text as part of the 100 Notes / 100 Thoughts notebooks series commissioned by dOCUMENTA

(13) Director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev to coincide with the 2012 exhibition in Kassel, Germany,

and published by Hatje Cantz. Number 6/100, Adnan’s argues that the lack of affection for nature

in our culture leads (has lead) to ecological catastrophe. What is affection, what is nature, what is

culture, we –the earth– know catastrophe. Love is the lack with which we address this, or rather, the

positive force that invents itself in face of this lack.

- I think text is successful when at any point it could finish and you would be ok, so too love.

- Like, you have to understand that just when u are getting in to this love it’s over, and that’s what made it

so good. You have no right to having it back.

- Love, like text, doesn’t owe u, nothing. Adnan speaks in the language of colour, and the colour of language,

and the nature that makes (us) love.

Planet Earth is old news. It’s the house we are discarding. We definitely don’t love her. We almost believe

we don’t

need her.

Because the

price for the

love that

will save her

would reach

an almost

impossible

level. It

would

require that

we change

radically our

ways of life,

that we give up many of our comforts, our toys, our gadgets, and above all our political and religious

mythologies. We would have to create a new world (not a Brave New World!). We’re not ready to do

that. So we are, very simply, doomed.

- Etel Adnan, The Cost for Love We Are Not Willing to Pay, p.6

[A house]

In his 2015 book Digital Shift: The Cultural Logic of Punctuation, author Jeff Scheible, assistant professor

of cinema studies at Purchase College, State University of New York, argues that some of the primary

impacts of digital media upon language are occurring in the realm of not so much language as

punctuation. Language ≠ punctuation, but still language can = punctuation.

His argument runs roughly as follows:

- With the emergence of digital media, the roles of textuality in media culture have undergone a series of

shifts. - Punctuation was invented with the invention of printing press, and expresses certain nuances

(for example, breath) that are lost in the shift from oral to printed media. - Punctuation signs are,

we might say, reading tools, not writing tools. - Yet in the period of the emoticon, the sms, and the

dot-com boom, punctuation underwent, itself, a shift – from structural to aesthetic phenomenon.

- No longer on the margins of language – even, on touchscreen devices, not relegated to the edges

of the keyboard, but simply an alternative keyboard – punctuation is thrust into the limelight as a

(just one?) primary site of language’s contestation – Indeed, in the example of emoticons and other

pictographic developments in contemporary

language, by which we communicate using

punctuation as text, text can be thought of less

as cerebral and immaterial code, and more as

affective and radically plastic image. We write

using punctuation as well as read using it.

–>

:*

The image with which Scheible begins his book is that of the Human Rights Campaign logo: the equals sign.

On March 26, 2013, 2.7 million (120%) more Facebook users than usual (over a million a day) updated

their profile picture. A majority of these updated it to a red and pink version of the HRC logo. The

equals sign was rendered image, before being rendered avatar. The equals sign no longer represented

a fundamental objective equality, but rather it represented some sort of transcendent – everyone is

equal – yet accumulative – this movement is growing – equality.

Of course, not everyone is equal – to say so is to negate materially deterministic factors such as class, race

and gender. But every typographic sign can be made into an image that represents a person.

:

Why not put a poem in an art gallery. Why not put an artwork in a chapbook. Why put a poem in a book, at

all. As punctuation leaves the page, so too do words follow, and we recognise the mobile mutability of

the page, too. If text becomes an image, why can’t it become an object. Why draw borders and how.

What’s a poem if you can’t live in it.

The first time I travelled to New York I saw Etel Adnan’s paintings in the New Museum. These are paintings

that don’t exist without airplanes.

In solidarity with the Algerian war of independence (1954–1962), Etel Adnan stopped writing in French: the

language of her colonists, although her mother tongue. In a sense, the movement of the philosopher

into painting is an attempt—one which, like every foray into language, is bereft, incomplete—not to

abandon language, but to move from text as we traditionally understand it and into something closer

to pure image. Yet, just as her work and life bridges the Arab and American worlds, leaving, yet being

drawn back, attempting to find a radically critical voice against the problems and potentials of both,

so she bridges text and image. “There is no possibility for the possession of colour” – Adnan, 1986.

One could say this in solidarity with the war made between the world and love. Another conflict she

translates.

In Beirut, the You Stink protests go on, against the on-going trash crisis and government corruption. Love,

language, colour, which do you try to possess more?

Scraping on paint in thick, viscous layers – scraping on the earth, the sky and the soil (I mean soul), she

is constructing a language of the world, a language of colour and material, in unity. Once text has

become an image, it need no longer resemble text. This paint is the literal action of creating a new

world. It is, nonetheless, one that looks like the old.

Which is to say, where does language end and the world begin.

Etel Adnan not only moved beyond (without ever fully abandoning) her mother tongue, but she moved

beyond (without ever fully abandoning) the form of her mother tongue, the form of her language, too.

As we tumble into increasingly pictographic communication (if we tumble), or if we begin to build

bridges beyond (even if we cross them to come back again) modernity’s textual conventions, so too we

might start to realise Adnan’s lifelong statement that this transition is a political move.

Texting on your phone. Your fingers are dirty, and your loved one not around.

Harry Burke

Harry Burke is a writer and is Assistant Curator & Web Editor at Artists Space, New York. He has published

an ebook of poetry, City of God (Version House, 2014), in collaboration with the architect Alessandro

Bava, and has edited the poetry anthology I Love Roses When They’re Past Their Best (Test Centre,

2014).

SELECTED IMAGES

Untitled, 2000. David Roberts Collection, London.

Installation view, Curators’ Series #7. A Special Arrow Was Shot In The Neck…

Curated by Vivian Ziherl and Natasha Ginwala (13 Jun – 2 Aug 2014) DRAF

Etel Adnan, Journey to Mount Tamalpais, 1986. Cover of the essay.

Mount Tamalpais in Marin County.

CONDITION REPORT

Artwork (2) Untitled, 2000-2005 by Etel AdnanOil on Canvas, 22.9 x 30.5 cm, framed

Condition In general the picture is in good condition (Fig.1).

It is clean and without any surface dirt.

The artist has applied his paint in an even and medium thickness. Some of the colours are dull, some have retained an even sheen. There is a system of cracks which must have happened soon after the artwork was painted (Fig.2 & 3). It appears that it is as a result of the artists process.

The structure is sound, the canvas has an even tension and the painting is framed.

There is no cause for concern with regards to the conservation of the artwork.

13th August 2015

Fig.1: Artwork (recto)

Simon Gillespie Studio104 New Bond StreetLondon W1S 1SU

info@simongillespie.com+44 (0)20 7493 3900simongillespie.com

Fig.2 & 3: Details showing system of cracks.

Simon Gillespie Studio104 New Bond StreetLondon W1S 1SU

info@simongillespie.com+44 (0)20 7493 3900simongillespie.com

ABOUT

DRAF (David Roberts Art Foundation) is an independent, non-profit space for contemporary art in London

founded in 2007. It is directed and curated by Vincent Honoré. DRAF presents an international programme

of exhibitions, commissions, live events, discussions and projects. DRAF is located at Symes Mews, 37

Camden High Street, Mornington Crescent, London NW1 7JE.

The David Roberts Art Foundation Limited is a registered charity in England and Wales (No.1119738). It is

proudly supported by the Edinburgh House Estates group of companies.

For more information see www.davidrobertsartfoundation.com

ADDRESS

DRAF

Symes Mews

London NW1 7JE

+44 (0)20 7383 3004

The nearest tube stations are Mornington Crescent and Camden Town.

DRAF is a 15 minute walk from Kings Cross St. Pancras.

Buses: 24, 27, 29, 88, 134, 168, 214, 253

OPENING TIMES

Thu - Sat, 12 - 6 pm

Tue - Wed by appointment

FREE ADMISSION