MA Digital Arts 2012 -14, Research Paper
Title: KINETIC DRAWING WITH LIGHT
Student: Terry Long / LON13380834/ Course Leader: Jonathan Kearney
Camberwell College of Arts / University of the Arts London
SAMADI / Light Drawing / 1940 / Barbara Morgan
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Abstract
Our first perception of any artwork can change over time as we discover
and gather more information about the art piece, it’s creator or creators,
the medium, and also the influences surrounding it. In the mid 1960s while
an art student in London, I made a profound personal discovery which
opened a door to a new kind of drawing and painting medium and
technique. It was the photograph of Picasso drawing a centaur with light
which was featured in Life Magazine in1950, and was taken by the
photographer Gjon Mili. Within this last year, my opinion of that
photograph and its’ creators has changed after discovering a series of
relatively unknown photographs by the artist and photographer Barbara
Morgan.
This paper examines a pivotal point in art history, when drawing, painting,
sculpture and photography came together to create a new art medium,
Kinetic Drawing with Light.
Key Points
 Two exceptional and outstanding photographers, Barbara Morgan and
Gjon Mili, both working in the same area of photography and in the
same time frame.
 Both are interested with light and capturing movement, and both are
conducting experiments with it.
 They both choose to collaborate with famous artists, Morgan with
Martha Graham, Mili with Picasso.
 Morgan creates and photographs her first kinetic drawings with light in
1940, the same year she captures her iconic image of Martha Graham.
 Publication in Life magazine of ‘Picasso’s drawings with light’,
taken by Gjon Mili 1950. Picasso is seen by most to be the inventor of
this relatively new art medium.
Key Words and Artists: Light, Drawing, Kinetic, , Movement & Dance,
Barbara Morgan, Gjon Mili, Pablo Picasso, Martha Graham, Man Ray, Life
Magazine,
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Picasso Drawing with Light / Madoura Pottery,1949 / Gjon Mili
Introduction: Picasso’s Drawing with Light
There is something very magical about the photograph of Pablo Picasso
which first appeared as part of a three-page spread in the Life Magazine on
the 30th of January, 1950. It captures the very second of a drawing’s
creation by the artist, a drawing that appears to be conjured up out of thin
air! Picasso’s intent gaze is directed to, and through his levitating drawing
of light towards the viewer. It is an outstanding and captivating image that
increased Picasso’s international pop-star status to a much greater and
grander level, an iconic artist appearing in a iconic magazine. But the true
wizard behind this image was not Picasso.
It was the creative and innovative photographer Gjon Mili who had been
experimenting with lighting since 1927, and had proved to be a genius with
it. Life Magazine, which Mili worked for, sent him to the South of France
to meet Picasso at his home, and capture some photographs of him.
Arranging a meeting with the world famous artist turned out to be more
problematic for Mili, as he wrote…
‘When I asked how I could meet Pablo Picasso, everyone who knew him
had one answer, “Go to the beach”’. The beach they were referring to was
within walking distance of Picasso’s home on the Riviera, France. On the
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way to the Riviera, Mili stopped to pay a visit to Picasso’s nephew, Javier
Vilato, who was also a painter. It was here that Mili conceived of his idea
for the drawings with light, after hearing Vilato remark ‘My uncle says, “If
you want to draw, you must shut your eyes and sing”. I deliberated: why
not have him draw in the dark, but with a light as a pencil?’ Mili does not
mention what Vilato’s reply was to this idea, but continued his
remembrances about when he finally arrived at his destination close to
Picasso’s home and studio: ‘I settled near the beach where Picasso swam
daily. I observed him from a distance for a full morning until I got his
routine. The next day when he was about to leave the beach, I stepped in
front of him. “Excuse me, I’m a photographer and I would like to do your
portrait”. “Oh? Go ahead”. Picasso replied, making a face. “No, serious,
Serious” I replied. At that point I confronted him with a photograph taken
in darkness, but showing a skater’s leap traced with lights attached to the
points of the skates. Before I could utter a word, Picasso reacted instantly,
intrigued, sparkling with excitement, he started drawing through the air,
one shape after another, with his bare finger’.
(Mili,G,1980,p110,Photographs & Reflections) (Mili,G,1970, p13,16,Picasso’sThird Dimension)
When they both arrived at Picasso’s studio, Mili was given just 15 minutes
to try out one experiment with the relatively new and unusual drawing
medium. Using two cameras mounted on very stable tripods, Mili placed
them in the studio, which was then darkened, one camera for the front, and
the other one for the side, so as to capture the entire action. Picasso stood
in front of both cameras and began his very first drawing, which was of a
centaur in the air created with a small electric light. It took just seconds to
complete. Mili kept both lens shutters open for the entire duration of the
drawing, and just as Picasso finished the drawing, Mili fired his flash,
capturing both drawing and artist on the same negative on both cameras.
Picasso appears in the photographs to be thoroughly taken with the
process. On seeing the finished results, he agreed with Mili to do four more
light drawing sessions together. Mili was event)ually able to take a total of
30 photographs of Picasso
drawing more centaurs, bulls, Greek profiles, and his signature.
The series of photographs has become known as ‘Picasso’s Light
Drawings’. I first came across the photograph of Picasso drawing the
centaur in the mid-sixties, while I was an art student in London. Mili’s
spellbinding photograph was an epiphany for me; one of those rare
revelations in life that opens a door for you, and compels you to explore a
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new and exciting direction. My view and understanding of the photograph
was to change many years later.
Drawing with Light: Beginnings.
Light has a great importance to art and creativity. The first artists required
light to enable them to create and view the drawings and paintings inside
the cave walls. Some of the earliest builders in history became aware of how
light could be utilized within their structures for aesthetic, spiritual and
religious reasons. A good example of this would be Newgrange in County
Meath, Ireland. At Winter Solstice the inner chamber and the passage way
leading up to it are lit up by the morning sunrise. Newgrange was
constructed around 3,200 BC and outdates both the Egyptian Pyramids
and Stonehenge in England, which would also be another example of an
early structure utilizing natural light for possible ceremonial reasons.
Stonehenge was built from around 2,600 to 2,000 BC and has a similar
occurrence to the one at Newgrange when at Summer Solstice the rising
sun lines up with the Heel Stone at Stonehenge. This year there were more
than 20,000 people to witness this event. Alas! It was cloudy. Sunlight,
when it does deicide to shine, can play an intrinsic part in creativity, in both
drawing, painting, sculpture and architecture, revealing the form, and
becoming something inspirational. It was certainly so for the
Impressionists, it was the main subject of their work. William Turner’s
paintings, which also inspired Monet, and the rest of impressionists, border
on the mystical and sublime.
The real story of drawing with light begins with the advent of photography
in the 1800s. The word photography comes from two ancient Greek words,
‘phos’ meaning light and ‘graphis’ meaning stylus. Combined they mean
‘drawing with light ‘.Thomas Edison’s ‘Carbon Filament Lamp’ in 1879
gave photographers, film makers, and theatre companies a more
convenient, affordable and controllable light source compared to the earlier
versions of electric lights.
In 1889, while making studies of human movement, Etienne-Jules Marey
and George Demeny in France made, what is considered by many, to be the
first drawing with light, by attaching several lights to their photographic
assistant, whose movements across the studio were tracked by a still
camera.
Frank Gilbreth and his wife, Lillian Moller Gilbreth, developed these same
techniques further in 1914 to assist American manufacturers in increasing
production by tracking workers’ movements, and to try and improve on
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their efficiency. I would argue with the premise that this should be called
drawing. These photographs were really the beginnings of the visual
surveillance systems that we now have installed around our cities,
roadways, and that sometimes track us from above. The assistants and
workers who appeared in these early photographs by Marey, Demeny, and
the Gilbreth’s were not consciously trying to create a drawing, no more
than a firefly would, if you tracked it’s light and flight! A better term for
this method of photography would be light trailing.
Man Ray /1935
Lazlo Moholy-Nagy / 1930
It is not until we see the work of Man Ray and Laslo Moholy-Nagy in the
late 1920s, and into the mid 1930s do we see the real beginnings of artistic
creation with using light to draw and paint with. Although these two
artists made the initial move into using light as a flexible art medium, I
believe the real break through in drawing with light came in 1940 with the
work of Barbara Morgan.
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Pure Energy and Neurotic Man / 1940 / Barbara Morgan
It was while doing the research into drawing and painting with light for
my masters degree in digital art during 2012 that I first discovered
Barbara Morgan’s drawings with light, including the image above, ‘Pure
Energy and Neurotic Man’, which was created using very similar techniques
to Mili for his photographs of Picasso. I was familiar with Morgan’s
photographs of dancers, but I was not aware of her drawings with light, so
I decided to re-examine Mili’s photograph again while comparing and
researching Morgan’s, and on doing so discovered that Mili had taken his
photograph 9 years after Morgan took hers. This led me on to discover
more about Barbara Morgan.
Pure Energy and Neurotic Man
‘Having made many rhythmic light drawings, which seemed lyrical and
idealistic in contrast to so much of the ego-power struggle in our world, I
planned this light drawing with upper right empty space in which to
receive the second negative image of the ‘grabby’ hand.’
(Morgan,B,1980 p.4, Montage)
Morgan’s description of her photo is interesting, with her mention of the
power struggle in the world, which fits the world we live in today, but I see
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the hand as not grabby. It looks more like hand of someone who has just
performed a magical mystical trick.
Barbara Morgan’s beginnings
Morgan who was born in 1900, grew up on a peach farm in Southern
California, knowing from the age of 4 that she wanted to be an artist. At
the age of about 5 or 6, she was told something by her father that would
influence her and have a strong bearing on her art for the rest of her life,
‘Everything is made of dancing atoms, and the whole world and everything
in it is whirling and dancing, even if it looks still’,
.(Morgan B,1980,p5,6, Photomontage)
She studied at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1919
to 1923. Her art training was based on ‘Arthur Wesley Dow’s Principles of
Art’. These principles were part of the foundations for Morgan’s career and
life. Abstract design was considered fundamental to all art structure, styles
and media, and was taught along side realistic drawing and painting right
for the whole of the the four years. One other key artistic idea and
component that Morgan used throughout her work was ‘rhythmic vitality’,
a concept that she discovered while studying the ‘The Six Canons of
Chinese Painting’ which was written by Hsieh Ho in the 5th Century A.D.
and is the basis of the traditions of Chinese brush painting. The six canons
are:
!. ‘Circulation of the Ch’I’. (Breath, Spirit, Vital Force of Heaven).
2. ‘Brush Stroke Creates structure Combination of stronger and lighter
brushstrokes, which you can see in Morgan’s ‘Samadhi’ on the front
page.
3. ‘According to the Object, Draw its Form
4. ‘According to the Nature of the Object, Apply Colour
5. ‘Organize Compositions with the Elemenrs in Their Proper Place
6. ‘In Copying, seek to pass on the essence of the master’s brush &
methods.
Barbara Morgan’s Drawing With Light’
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Morgan was a friend of Laslo Moholy Nagy, who was one of the first
artists to experiment with artificial light as a art form, and like him
experimented with light too, using multiple exposures, and montage, and
later becoming a leading exponent of it. Morgan is best known for her
iconic black and white image of Martha Graham from the ballet ‘Letter to
the World’, and it is without doubt her most famous photograph, and
maybe the most published photograph of Martha Graham, or of any
American dancer, but her drawings made with light, which she was
creating at the very same time as the dance series, has been mostly
overlooked, including just recently in the unique and lavish publication of
‘Light Show’, which accompanied the Hayward Gallery’s show in London
by the same name. The show ran from the 30th of January to the 28th of
April this year (2013), and featured 22 contemporary artists who use
sculptural light as their medium of choice. Books on the subject of light as a
creative artistic medium are rare, so this publication is a very valuable
contribution and addition to literary genre, but it comes as a big surprise to
find that not only is Barbara Morgan not mentioned, but also Picasso and
Mili are absent from this book, with Man Ray getting the very slightest
mention, whereas the impressionists and work of J. M. W. Turner who
inspired them is discussed and shown. Turners paintings of light border on
the mystical and sublime. It could be argued that the Hayward show was
about artists using ‘sculptural light’ to create their art, which should leave
out Turner and the impressionists, but Morgan’s, Picasso’s, and Man Ray’s
drawings with light were created in a three dimensionally space. The
omission from the book prompted me to take a further look at all three
artists work, and after spending some considerable time studying and
comparing Morgan’s, Picasso’s, and Man Ray’s drawings made with
artificial light. I became aware that Morgan had discovered something that
Picasso and Man Ray did not display, or maybe they were aware of, but
chose not to utilize it in their own work. Morgan’s drawings with light
appear to have more and sensitivity, diversity, and dynamics. In order for
her to have achieved this, she would have had to create her drawings three
dimensionally, so as to increase, or decrease the intensity of the gestural
luminous lines, by not standing in the same spot throughout the whole
photo recording process , which I believe is what Picasso and Man Ray did.
I also suspect that Morgan would have moved around the studio, as if
dancing with the light, to and from the fixed camera. When you consider
that she had been working at that time for five years with some of the
major dancers of the American modern dance movement, such as Martha
Graham, Merce Cunningham, Jose Limon, and Pearl Primus, it would make
perfect sense that her work would reflect some influences from her close
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connections to the movement of dance when she would be capturing the
dancers gestural and flowing movements with her camera.
‘Whether my work is large or small, abstract or realistic, the one thing
that must be present is rhythmic vitality. Sometimes I find it logical to keep
the realistic or external form of things and other times I find it meaningful
to eliminate certain details while preserving others. In photomontage I go
clear over into fantasy and in my light drawings into total abstraction. It
doesn’t matter if is dance or montage or people or nature. There always has
to be the presence of energy’.
(Morgan,B,1998 p13Prints,Drawings,Watercolours & Photographs)
In Morgan’s letter to Beaumont Newhall, who was an important person in
the photographic community, and was the author of ‘The History of
Photography’, she was hoping that he would help her by writing and
publishing that she would be recognized rightfully for her contribution to
the advancement of photography and art. I tend to agree with Morgan’s
description of Mili and Picasso’s joint photo session…
“Just for the record, I want this foregoing material to be known, because it
was first a labor of love doing it, but I think it was a genuine contribution
at its period. I have several quite good compositions that can be used with
text. I wondered if you would care to do an article on it. I think of you first,
partly because I think you are the best, but also because you showed that
Light Design before the Picasso things of Mili. If you don’t want to I will
do it myself, but I don’t want to sound either boastful or mad, but just
straight historical fact. There is another aspect too. I drew and painted
before photographing, and designed, so it really was an incorporation of
media. While with Picasso, Mili was just steering him along in a superficial
fling, as a stunt. Actually I had almost an almost religious sense of the
communion with the cosmic force of light’.
Conclusion
If Picasso had been a woman, I very much doubt that there would have
been the same kind of recognition for his drawings of light that he received.
Barbara Morgan was mostly excepted by her peers, including a number of
notable friends, Ansel Adams, Beaumont Newhall, Minor White, Joseph
Cambell and Buckminster Fuller, but being a woman, and being in an area
of the art world mostly dominated by men must have been difficult at
times.
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We should also remember that both Morgan and Mili worked in the predigital time, and the analog photographic process was very time consuming
and more difficult, especially for Morgan’s and Mili’s who were using
advanced photo techniques, plus polaroid cameras were not available until
1948, so Morgan was not able to take advantage of being able to make
instant tests to check exposures and lighting balance for her series of
drawings with light, but by the time Mili took his photos of Picasso, it was
available. To some extent, Morgan and Mili have shared very similar
situations, that of partnering and photographing famous artists, and in
terms of fame, being outshone by them and their super star charisma. Even
today, many people assume that Picasso created the photographs of himself
drawing with light, But charisma soon fades, and great art and artists stand
the test of time.
Morgan describes creating images, and how she was inspired to do them.
‘As I read these photographs which I had illuminated for specific
kinesthetic meanings, as well as for their function in a book, I began to feel
the pervasive, vibratory character of light energy as a partner of the
physical and spiritual energy of dance and as the prime-mover of the
photographic process. Suddenly I decided to pay my respects to Light, and
create a rhythmical light design for the book tailpiece. As early as 1940 ‘ I
started much flashlight swinging in my darkened studio, in front of an open
shuttered camera, to build up images in time on a single negative.
Technically, my idea was sparked by having seen scientific work-efficiency
movement studies photographed. Afterward I also incorporated other
negative elements in photomontage’.
(Morgan B,1964, p.22,Aperture)
In conclusion, although I still consider Picasso’s drawings with light to be
an important contribution to the history of art, with Picasso, Mili and Life
Magazine bringing a new and exciting kind of art medium to the attention
of the public and, but it was Morgan’s series of drawings that took it into
three dimensions to become the pivotal point where drawing, sculpture,
photography, and maybe dancing came together.
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BARBARA MORGAN
Bibliography: Picasso’s Drawing of Light
Information and reference photographs for drawing with light:
[book] Light Show, with essays by Cliff Lauson, Anne Wagner, and Philip
Ball/ Hayward Publishing, Southbank Centre, London (2013).
Information and reference photographs for Barbara Morgan:
[Youtube] live interview by Barbarlee Diamonstein-Spielvogel with
Barbara Morgan, 1981, Visions & Images, ABC Video, Enterprizes.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=#D10AB3
[Paper] Barbara Morgan’s Photographic Interpretation of American
Culture, by Knappe Brett, 2008. University of Kansas, United States.
http://search.proquest.com//docview/304631738
[book] Title: Barbara Morgan: Masters of Photography, essay by Deba
Patnaik, Aperture, 1999.
[book] Title: Barbara Morgan: Prints, Drawings, Watercolors &
Photographs, by Curtis L. Carter & William C. Agee, The Patrick &
Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art, 1988.
[book] Title: Barbara Morgan, by Barbara Morgan, Aperture, 1964.
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[book] Title: Barbara Morgan Photomontage, by Barbara Morgan, The
Morgan Press, Dobbs Ferry, New York, 1980.
[online] Smithsonian - http://www.smithsonianmag.com/artsculture/An-Unforgettable-Photo-of-Martha-Graham.html
[on-line] The Jewish Museum Collection,
http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/onlinecollection/collection_results.php
?artistlist=1&aid=7408
[online] A Gallery, New Orleans, New York.
http://www.agallery.com/Pages/photographers/morgan.html
[online] Holden Luntz Gallery, Palm Beach, Florida.
http://www.holdenluntz.com/artists/barbara-morgan
[online] Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York.
http://www.brucesilverstein.com/galleries.php?gid=226&i=2&page=next
{online) http://www.luminous
lint.com/app/photographer/Barbara__Morgan/)Information and reference photographs for Gjon Mili:
[book] Picasso’s Third Dimension, by Gjon Mili, Triton Press Publication.
[book] Gjon Mili: Photographs & Recollections, by Gjon Mili, New York
Graphic Society.
[online] New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/16/obituaries/gjon-mili-lifemagazine-photographer-dies.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/21/stonehenge-summersolstice-2013_n_3477050.html
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