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❉ This is the third in a series of blogs that discuss diagrams in the arts and sciences. I recently completed my PhD on this subject at Kyoto city University of the Arts, Japan's oldest Art School. Feel free to leave comments or to contact me directly if you'd like any more information on life as an artist in Japan, what a PhD in Fine Art involves, applying for the Japanese Government Monbusho Scholarship program (MEXT), or to talk about diagrams and diagrammatic art in general.  Figure 1: Mark Manders, view of artist's studio with works in progress The Dutch Artist Mark Manders describes himself as “a human being who unfolds into a horrifying amount of language and materials by means of very precise conceptual constructions”. (1) However unlike the literary self portraits of James Joyce in prose, or Dylan Thomas in poetry, Manders' self portrait is architectural. Manders began his career as a writer, before gradually shifting from writing with words in sentences and paragraphs, to sculpturally writing with objects in installations and buildings.  Figure 2: Mark Manders, Inhabited for a Survey (First Floor Plan from Self-Portrait as a Building), 1986 / writing materials, erasers, painting tools, scissors / 8 x 267 x 90 cm Since 1986, Manders been constructing a 'self-portrait as a building', and uses this conceptual framework to represent the fictional artist 'Mark Manders', a distinct alter-ego that he describes as a “neurotic, sensitive individual who can only exist in an artificial world.” (2) Diagrammatic forms are apparent in many of Manders' projects as the means by which he marshals the "horrifying amounts of language and materials" that his mind is capable of producing. The structural logic to his diagrammatic sculptures imbue them with an air of precision and rigor, despite leaving us guessing at their wildly esoteric functions.  Figure 3: Mark Manders, Finished Sentence, 1998-2006, iron, ceramic, teabags, offset print on paper, 336 x 185 x 85 cm Manders' appears to use diagrams and diagramming in his artistic practice in three distinct ways: as a visual aesthetic, as a creative tool for idea generation, and as a means of organising and predicting the ways in which viewers will experience his art works as they pass through his installations. Aesthetically, many of the sculptures are formal constructs presented on top of table and mechanical supports and also within vitrines. They resemble silent scientific models of events frozen in time, or semi-occult experiments and equipment left unattended. Stephen Berg describes these intriguing machines and factory-like constructs as “laboratory constellations for uncertainty and unknowable discoveries, production plants for dissident thoughts, transmitters for contacting the fictional.” (3)  Figure 4: Mark Manders, Study for finished sentence, 2004, Offset lithograph, 25,2 × 35,6 cm The floor plans and delicate pencil drawings show Manders' use of the diagram as a powerful visual and conceptual tool for creation and organisation, whilst the architectural nature of his exhibition installations guide viewers through carefully prearranged objects in a series of constructed environments, which the artist refers to as “memory spaces”. (4)  Figure 5: Mark Manders, Drawing with Shoe Movement / Floor Plans from Self-Portrait as a Building, 2002, Pencil on paper Manders artistic practice is what I refer to as "Romantic-Objective", combining his own highly subjective and existential self-expression with an objective and analytical approach to phenomena mirroring that of science. Writing about his sculpture "Shadow Study (2)", Manders describes the thought processes that underly his choice of objects for the sculpture, and in doing so reveals it to be part exercise in 'material culture' (a kind of ethnography of objects) and part day dream. The visual language however is distinctively diagrammatic, and reminiscent of a highly reduced scientific demonstration or model. " If you think about the evolution of cups, it’s just a beautiful evolution. The first cups were human hands: folded together, they took the water out of the river. The next cups were made from things like hollowed pieces of wood or folded leaves, and so on. The last beautiful moment in the history of the cup was when it got a handle. After that, nothing really interesting happened with cups, just small variations, mainly ornamental. Many generations worked on it, and now you can say that the cup is finished in terms of evolution. A few times a day there is a cup very close to my upper leg bone, and I slowly discovered that if you turn an empty cup upside down there is a shadow falling out of the cup, falling upon my leg. I wanted to keep this shadow, have it and own it, so I turned it into an image. " (5)  Figure 6: Mark Manders, Shadow Study (2) 2010, Metal, porcelain, painted epoxy, and wood / 151 x 65 x 65 cm "Shadow study (2)" subtly references the transparency of bone china, sunlight and shade, and creates a three part visual haiku of upturned cup and the 'pouring of shadow' upon the thigh bone, amplified by the pyramidal structure of the support suggestive of the conical rays of the sun. Mander's heightened awareness of the details of everyday life and the inherent paradox of both their importance and insignificance brings to mind an Eden Phillpotts' quote, often mistakenly attributed to such greats as W.B. Yeats and Bertrand Russell: " The Universe is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper. " (6) In the case of Romantically Objective Art, that heightened awareness and sharpness of focus is due in a large part to the use of the diagrammatic format, in all its guises.  Figure 7: Mark Manders, Shadow Study (2) 2010, Metal, porcelain, painted epoxy, and wood / 151 x 65 x 65 cm Selected drawings by mark Manders:  Drawing with Vanishing Point / Drawing with Cemetery Horse, 1998-2002, Pencil on paper, 50 x 65 cm  Drawing with Vanishing Point, 2003, Pencil on Paper, 50 x 65 cm
 Mark Manders, Drawing with Vanishing Point, 2017, pencil on paper, 30 x 40 cm
References:
1) Manders, M. (2010) Parallel Occurrences / Documented Assignments. Aspen Museum of Art, Aspen Art Museum and The Hammer Museum. p.11 2) van Adrichem, J., Bouwhuis J., Dölle M. (2002) Sculpture in Rotterdam, 010 Publishers, p. 60. 3) Berg, S. (2007) Like the night creeping into a shoe. In: In the Absence of Mark Manders. Berg. S. (Ed.) Hatje Cantz. p. 14. 4) Manders, M. (2003) Quoted in: Koplos J. Mark Manders at Greene Naftali - New York, Art in America, April 2003. 5) Manders, M. http://www.markmanders.org/works-a/shadow-study-2/2/ 6) Eden Phillpotts, 1991, A shadow Passes. [OXEP] 2004, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [Online], Entry: Eden Phillpotts (1862–1960) by Thomas Moult, rev. James Y. Dayananda, Oxford University Press.
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Dr. Michael WhittleBritish artist and Posts:
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