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An Essay on Colander, Łukasz Guzek
In 1960 Józef Robakowski created a piece, entitled simply Colander (it remains in the artist's possession).
Description
Technically speaking, Colander is a photographic object. It consists of the original item's photograph glued onto a board. There is a nail piercing the photograph, it goes through the hanging hole on the colander's handle.
In the photo, the colander is presented vertically, with its handle upwards and the convexity of the bowl outwards, facing the viewer - in the manner we usually see it hanging in our kitchens. The colander was photographed without context. It is shown on a plain black background. The photograph, therefore, conveys an image of the object itself, removed from reality, deprived of interaction with the surroundings. Its hanging on the wall is also merely suggested by the vertical orientation of the photograph's composition. The artist refers here to the common, everyday experience. That is why, he could chose to photograph just the object, removing all other details.
The photograph
The photograph very precisely reproduces all physical features of the colander. The author applied the principle of brutal photographic realism here. Achieving this effect was only possible thanks to the artist's mastery of photographic technique. All details have been precisely reproduced: the bending sheet metal on the edges of its strainer bowl, chips and abrasions on the handle. The direct, frontal light (flash) was equally precisely selected to show the physical features of the object - it is undoubtedly made of aluminum sheet, and the black, enamel-coated handle is surely metal.
All these details were carefully highlighted in the photograph in order to obtain a purely factual representation of the object, without any allusions or metaphors. The same motivation stands behind isolating it from its surroundings. Thanks to this method of photographic presentation, an ordinary kitchen object becomes distinguished, extracted from its banality, yet, at the same time, not deprived of it. And referring to the repertoire of avant-garde practices - it has been pointed out. It resembles, on the one hand, a Dada-Surrealist objet trouvé, a readymade, on the other hand - a conceptual, indexical photograph, many of which Robakowski made later, in the 1970s (e.g. photographs from the series Mine and Indications). Comparative analyses are provided in the following paragraphs of this essay.
Marcel Duchamp selected his readymades on the basis of similar assumptions - he chose anaesthetic objects (anesthétique, from anaesthesia, i.e. lack of sensory experiences). Namely those that do not provoke any emotions in us, or cause any impressions. In this sense, they are somewhat imperceptible, even though they are around us, and we use them every day. Robakowski chose his colander based on the same grounds as Duchamp. It is the same method of artistic dealing with an object.
It would be tempting, at this point, to adopt a line of interpretation derived from Rene Magritte's canvas depicting a pipe - equally isolated from its context: "This is Not a Pipe" (Ceci n'est pas une pipe). And going historically deeper - from a collection of texts by Denis Diderot: "This is Not a Story" (Ceci n'est pas un conte). One would like to say: "This is Not a Colander". But in the colander's image that suggestion of multiple perspectives and interpretations is absent, it does not seem to stratify meanings, finally, there is no "betrayal of the image", since the image does not promise anything to the viewer, it remains silent. Colander is a colander, and nothing more than that. What you see is what you get. Therefore, the interpretation should not be prolonged, as Jan Białostocki taught. Comparing Colander with the pipe painted by Magritte suggests a difference from the Surrealistic way of employing an object's image, rather than a similarity.
Moreover - the piece does not consist solely of the colander's photograph.
For the photo is glued to a board. However, the artist decided to leave clear traces of tearing the photographic paper on the edges. Accepting such imperfection, denying care to this detail combined with the meticulousness of the image's technical production, stems from the artist's intention to draw attention to the photograph's physicality. Whereas, the viewer is thus reminded that they should not succumb to the superficial attractiveness of the hyperrealistic representation. This is also a way, as is removing the context (surroundings) of the presented object from the image, to question the notion of photography creating an illusion of reality, in favour of examining its structure. On the one hand, the artist cares about the realism of the subject, but on the other, he does not allow us to forget about the fact that we are dealing with a photographic image possesing specific technical parameters. This approach to photography was still unknown in 1960. It would only appear with conceptual art - before that, photography had been a homogeneous area, a competition for painting. Conceptual art broke this wholeness in the field of photography and found a new role for it in the process of redefining art (photography understood as representation); and thus, it separated artistic use of photography from other ways of practising it.
The board
The photo of the colander is attached to a board - another element indicating the desire to emphasize the photograph's physicality. As in the case of the photo, the board's format is vertically elongated, but overall, it is larger than the photo is. There remains, therefore, a substantial margin around the image, a kind of passe partout. This allows one to inspect the physical features of the board. There are no traces of intervention performed by the artist (such as painting or cleaning), which proves it to be just an ordinary object, found somewhere, perhaps a part of wooden furniture. Therefore, in the structure of Colander as a work of art, it is a readymade component. On the one hand, the board complements and emphasizes the photograph's physicality; on the other, however, it deepens the illusion of reality within the representation - old kitchen furniture with a colander hanging there. The coarseness of the board is intended to match the crude representation of the colander. Here again the artist refers to the viewers' common experience, memorised cadres of similar kitchen interiors.
It would be tempting to compare the meaning of the board in Colander to the one in the set design for Tadeusz Kantor's war drama The Return of Odysseus (1943). An old, badly damaged board was hung above the stage - the Odysseus's room. According to Mieczysław Porębski's interpretation (following Kantor's own suggestions), due to its physicality, it became an emblematic representation of existence for Kantor and, as a "low-rank" symbolic object, it accompanied him for the rest of his life (Mieczysław Porębski, Deska, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Murator, 1997). However, in Robakowski's piece, neither the board nor the photographic image of the colander are intended to encode a meaning. They exist in this work purely materially, they represent their objectivity and are deprived of context - all this to avoid evoking meanings. Interpretations result from our habits and associations, and not directly from the piece being suggested by its creator. This comparison, again, allows us to point out the difference between the meaning of the two boards - in Kantor's scenography and in the piece by Robakowski. A comparison that would more accurately illustrate the sense of using this object by Robakowski sets his work next to the door from Duchamp's Etant Donnes. It is true that the history of the door is associated with the artist's memories from holidays in the French Pyrenees, but in New York (currently at the Philadelphia Museum of Art) it is only an object of certain physical characteristics - visibly old and damaged, but isolated from its original context - and therefore it is now devoid of the above associations.
The nail
The nail is another element of the work, driven into the board in the upper part of the photograph, through the hanging spot on the colander's handle - in line with the logic of its practicality. The nail protrudes from the board at a slight angle, pointing upwards, as if it were indeed ready for something to be hung. It is solid, long, thick, much too large to perform the function of holding the quite light colander on it. This is also a readymade - finished, industrially produced, utilitarian object, used in accordance with its technical function, i.e. fixed within a surface. Undoubtedly, the nail contributes to increasing the illusory character of the representation. However, its selection results to a greater extent from the intention to expose it and mark its existence in the composition. The nail is this element of the piece that viewers pay most attention to. It remains the most unusual component of the entire work. Its use proves the artist's courage to make a risky gesture without precedent. It's about doing something that the audience is not familiar with, and their reactions may be critical. Indeed, this was just the case - anecdotes describing reactions of the "photography gurus" have been eagerly quoted by Robakowski himself. Employing the nail was contrary to what was at that time the standard concept of photography, since it violated the integrity of the work. It was, therefore, perceived as a foreign element in the structure of the piece, and as such unnecessary. At the same time, it was the nail that has made Colander an innovative artwork. This is the type of discovery which - made intuitively - occurs to be significant after a time, only then it begins to bring artistic benefits and pave new paths for creativity. Around 1970 conceptual art appeared in Poland and in Robakowski's work, providing notions that would justify the use of the nail.
The nail attracts attention. And more than the title colander, it is of key importance in the process of understanding or interpreting this work. However, among documentations of exhibitions where this work was presented, I have not found any where the curator would decide to showcase the nail. For instance, by providing appropriate lighting, so that it casts a strong and clear (not accidental) shadow. Meanwhile, the use of light, the play of light and shadow, as a means of arranging a display of a photographic object, is exceptionally appropriate; moreover, it highlights structural aspects of the employed new media in a work of art. Light can also draw the viewer's attention to the nail as the key element of the piece. It may as well cause a different shadow in each case.
The nail acts as a certain link between Colander and the history of avant-garde art. Another nail, painted illusionally, with a shadow suggesting three-dimensionality (as in trompe l'oeil painting), played a key role in the Cubist revolution - a breakthrough moment in the development of modern art. In the midst of this revolution, one of its initiators, Georges Braque, painted two (at least) paintings with a nail, illusionistically (by means of optical illusion) protruding from the surface of the canvas. For instance, Violin and Palette, from 1909 (currently at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York), where the title palette hangs on a nail. Then there is Violin and Pitcher, from 1910 (currently at the Kunstmuseum Basel), where sheets of paper (musical sheets?) are attached to the wall with a nail. Both paintings' formats have vertically elongated proportions, and in each of them the nail is located at the very top of the composition. In the first case it is slightly moved to the left, in the second - placed centrally, and in both cases it is directed slightly upwards - naturally, in accordance with its practical function. Applying the principles of the illusionistic technique means that in both cases the nail casts a shadow - in the first painting to the left, in the second to the right, slightly downwards. The shadow is placed in accordance with the possibilities of the Cubist value composition, as it must be presented on a lighter background.
During the period mentioned above Braque painted several other paintings where the object illusionistically "protrudes" from a mosaic of geometric forms (e.g. Candlestick, at least two versions). In the development of the Cubist form this was the moment when Picasso and Braque reached the brink of abstraction in their artistic analyses. However, it was not abstraction that they sought for, but bringing reality - landscape, figures or still life - into accord with the flat surface of a painting. According to them, a three-dimensional solid should be distributed on a two-dimensional plane. They achieved this by observing the play of light and shadow on a given object. Then they reflected it on canvas through an arrangement of triangular forms, painted chiaroscuro, in extreme contrast, and complete omission of colour. This was realism, but without imitation. Still, consistent with the nature of painting on canvas. So, when a motif in a painting became almost completely illegible, they strove to restore its connection to reality. One of Braque's methods was the use of illusionism with one element incorporated into the system of geometric forms. That's why a nail that casts a shadow appeared in Cubist art. Braque was more prepared to employ such means than Picasso, since he was a decorator by profession, able to illusionistically imitate veneers or marble. He was also more willing to subject his painting to a certain discipline than the exuberant, expressive Picasso was.
The nail, representing traditional methods of painting representations of reality, seems to be a retreat from the cubist experiment. However, this return to realism in the painting manners of Braque and Picasso led to another invention whose creation would revolutionize contemporary art, i.e. collage. Its true beginning lies with a nail that is fixed into a wall, casting an (illusory) shadow.
The nail driven by Robakowski into the colander's photograph has a similar potential to revolutionize art. Technically, it is about increasing the brutal and uncompromising realism of the colander's representation, but at the same time the colander is a readymade.
Duchamp used this effect in the painting Tu m' from 1918 (currently at the Yale University Art Gallery). This is a unique image for several reasons. Firstly, it is the last canvas painted by the artist. It was commissioned by his sponsor and lover – Katherine S. Dreier. Its format was to fit a certain space in her bookcase - filling its upper compartment. Moreover, the painting serves as a review of Duchamp's readymade pieces, since it depicts shadows of certain objects. From the left: there is a bicycle wheel, then a corkscrew (though, it was not included in Arturo Schwarz's catalogue raisonné; still, we know that most of the artifacts were lost while moving studios, and Duchamp himself would not pay much attention to specific objects, remaining true to his own readymade assumptions). In any case, Duchamp certainly did have a corkscrew, and what is more, as a useful object it fits the anaesthetic criteria. Further on the right a shadow of a hat rack was painted - sideways which corresponds with the way it was hung at the artist's New York studio (as evidenced by documentary photographs). In its center the canvas is torn and held together with safety pins - literally. A bottle cleaning brush - a readymade - grows out of the hole in the painting's surface at a right angle. There is no painted shadow here. Though, it could always appear - with appropriate lighting - since the painting was placed high up, and in the photo of Dreier's office there is a ceiling lamp, so the shadow would be projected downwards. There is also a painted patch of light colour, as if a background prepared for such an illusory effect.
The readymade shadows are composed in the canvas in such a way that they touch each other, creating a sequence which suggests their connection - a semantic connection. Without moving into further interpretation here, let us pay attention to two factors only. Firstly, the painting was created for a person with whom Duchamp had a personal, even intimate relationship. In the photograph of Dreier's office interior, we can see that Tu m' is adjacent to the Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, the Great Glass, which was then in her possession, and which is full of erotic allusions, but also of illusionistic solutions. Secondly, the bottle brush protruding from the painting is located in the area of Duchamp's well-known metaphor: the bottle dryer is a "hedgehog" of rods to stick bottles on (absent here as a shadow, it was lost in France). Instead, we have the corkscrew for opening them (tire-bouchon) with a painted streak extending the screw so that it connects, on the one hand, with the bicycle wheel (originally a mobile), and on the other - through a crack or opening in the surface of the canvas - with the brush for cleaning them inside. The image of the object and the readymade element complement each other in order to create the most evocative representation.
Duchamp was fascinated by games with linguistic etymologies, so here the interpretation cannot be prolonged - language leads us through the thicket of meanings, and their erotic overtones are brought to the fore. The title Tu m' - You... me... - also hints towards the artist's relationship with Dreier (there are other readings suggested in the literature on the subject, but this one seems most consistent with the situational context of the work in question). In her collection Dreier had another of Duchamp's readymades with erotic overtones: Why Not Sneeze, Rrose Selavy? from 1921. These are sugar cubes made illusionally of marble, closed in a bird cage. Dreier, as well as her sister, did not like this piece by te artist very much.
There is no direct evidence that Duchamp was familiar with Braque's paintings featuring nails. However, he knew perfectly well the problem that Braque solved with the use of them. Duchamp was maturing artistically in an environment that attempted to continue the Cubist experiment after the first (analytical) phase. Although Braque and Picasso did not participate in collective Cubist exhibitions, their achievements were closely observed. Since around 1911, Parisian Cubists gathered at the studio of Duchamp's older brother Gaston (Jacques Villon) in the suburb of Puteaux. Cubism was already a broad trend or school of painting at that time. In this so-called Puteaux school there mixed two main approaches to Cubism: the metaphysical, poetic one (Orphism - following Apollinaire or Section d'Or) where Cubist analysis was a new method of creating perfect (ideal) art, and the parascientific one, issuing speculations on theories and models of space - this line was represented by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, authors of the book On Cubism (1912). Duchamp presented his solution to the post-Cubist question in the painting Nude Descending a Staircase (1912), with reference to photographic experiments of Eadweard Muybridge. He decided to connect painting with new media, which was quite far-sighted. His older colleagues from the Puteaux group found the canvas to be overly relaxed when it came to the orthodox Cubist form that they were creating. This criticism discouraged Duchamp, once and for all, from both modern painting and theory of art. He watched Dadaists and Surrealists fall into the trap of doctrine as well (like Andre Breton), which is why he wanted nothing to do with them, even though they considered him their master. In 1913, Duchamp met Man Ray, who considered the shadow effect to be the essence of photographic experiment, and began working closely with him. Duchamp's artistic maturation occurred at that moment in the process of modern art development when various aspects of chiaroscuro were temporarily of great importance. Therefore, colour never played a role in his work.
History of Art
At the time of its creation, in 1960, Colander had no analogies in art or photography, neither in Poland nor worldwide, not even in the work of Robakowski himself.
According to Robakowski's own categorization, Colander is considered a "first gesture" (see the artist's home page www.robakowski.eu). Other photographs of this time include informel works presenting painterly effects obtained with the use of photographic means, as well as photographs whose compositions are highly analytical, and thus revealing the artist's focus on structural questions which in the conceptual decade would bring extremely interesting artistic solutions. Still, these works were lined with metaphorical thinking, intended to create impressions, a more emotional reception - before conceptual art this was how photography was typically understood in Poland and around the world. An object did not appear in a photograph as an independent subject, but as a symbol supporting a certain metaphor. There is no metaphor in Colander, and the photo is completely free from non-formal, non-artistic references. To be entirely honest, the artist did admit in a private conversation that it was a colander from his mother's kitchen, but nothing in the work itself suggests this personal, emotional relationship. It remains concealed by the visual form (as in another piece from this period, rooted in the relationship with his mother: Feet from 1959). Objects presented so independently, in the style of brutal realism, could be seen as photographic works at the retrospective exhibition of the Zero-61 photographic group, at the so-called Old Forge in Toruń, in 1969 - so almost a decade later.
Whereas in avant-garde trends artistically developing photo-film media, as in Surrealist photography, objects appeared as reference to content typical of the trend - suggesting unexpected encounters, possible in one's imagination, in dreams, or in the state of mental illness. An object does not exist here on its own, without a metaphorical "ground". The same applies to Dadaist and Surrealist objects. Here again, it would be tempting to compare Colander with them in order to build an interpretation. Indeed, in terms of appearance they are similarly complex compositions, but by definition they emphasize the absurdity and illogicality of combinations more strongly than Robakowski's work. An in-depth analysis indicates a more important difference - Dada-Surrealist objects seem to always have a suggestion of content, while Colander is perfectly contentless. They even impose on viewers an obligation to decipher meanings whose existence one can be certain of thanks to their titles, for instance, or certain texts. It is true that Duchamp declared complete openness to even the strangest interpretations (like Schwarz's), but at the same time his suggestions for the viewer were either non-existent or very enigmatic, e.g. contained solely in the title. Some of his readymades were combinations of objects (he called them "assisted") and these seem to be closest in form to Colander. At the same time, they are most often accompanied by an aphoristic comment suggesting how to decipher their meaning (like the notes in The Green Box). Man Ray as well created Dada-Surrealist metaphorical objects. Objects appear also in his photographic and film experiments, but there they serve as models for studying lighting and achieving abstract effects, so no object has an independent role there.
Colander was created in the exact same year that New Realism was founded, the latter being the leading trend of the European avant-garde throughout the entire decade of the 1960s. Within it readymades played a very important role. Yet, New Realists found their point of reference in popular culture which was developing dynamically at that time, inspiring art in a more or less critical way. In Polish art such references can be observed in the work of Kantor and Włodzimierz Borowski. As for other leading trends of the 1960s, in Arte Povera objects played a similar role as they did in New Realism. Fluxus was based on post-Dada-Surrealist patterns and focused mostly on its creators self-presentation. American pop art was more closely linked to the iconography of mass production and culture than New Realism. In Colander we will not find references to any of the above-mentioned artistic questions of the decade. It presents an object and a photographic image without context - it does not refer to the discourse of popular culture, neither does it highlight the artist. Though, it raises a question concerning the definition of art itself, answered much later by conceptual art which redefined the status of an object in a work of art.
In the Polish history of new media art, the wardrobe in Themersons' film The Adventure of a Good Citizen (1937) appears as an object-metaphor (political), as it does in the famous etude - the remake directed by Roman Polański, Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958). Steam locomotives photographed by Witkacy in the years approx. 1899–1900 remain souvenirs of situations observed at the railway station in Zakopane, accompanied by factual descriptions which make the work a kind of information art - based, among others, on creating a database (indexing); therefore, it brings to mind artistic strategies of conceptual artists and contemporary ways of employing photography in art.
Before conceptual art no one in the history of artistic photography would radically separate an object from its context. Neither in the history of international avant-garde nor in Poland.
Characteristics
Colander as a photographic object is a coherent piece in terms of selected elements and their interconnection within the composition. At the same time, each of them – the photo of the colander, the board and the nail – has its own characteristics. Thus, they belong within the broadly drawn corpus of readymades, as they serve no other function than self-representation. They were deprived of the context that could have been used to describe them - only the relationships existing between the objects forming the piece remained. Robakowski entered a dialogue with Duchamp's readymades in works which the author called - according his categorization - "photo-objects" (www.robakowski.eu). Such as: Bicycle Wheel, 1969 and Comb (Interactive), 1971 - created about a decade after Colander, so already at the time when Duchamp had been proclaimed by Kosuth - in his article "Art after Philosophy" (1969) - the patron of conceptual art.
Colander has its second version - under the same title, created in 1968 (currently at the Centre of Contemporary Art in Toruń), but more photographic and less object-oriented. It is a photograph of another colander, glued onto a board adapted to the photo format, with a nail set in the same manner as in the first version. So the board is not a readymade here. The colander photographed for this piece can be seen in its natural surroundings in Robakowski's film After a Person (1969) which documents rooms in the apartment of the artist's deceased aunt. Employing the same strategy of pointing to an object in connection with a film about objects proves the constitution of the readymade's role as a solid artistic means. Colander 1 foreshadows Colander 2, strengthening the work's truly pre-conceptual position in art. After eight years, Colander (an object and the object) reappears as a herald of the conceptual breakthrough - the trend that will soon dominate the art scene for nearly two decades.
The object is technically a collage, and as a collage it combines a photographic image with real objects (things) or their elements. Still, they retain their autonomy because their physical nature is maintained. The components of Colander were brought together into a composition with the use of the dialectical method. That is, they became a new entity, different from the parts comprising it. The means used to create some illusion of reality - the nail driven into the board, on which the colander is hung - were decided on so that the whole became incoherent. The photograph and readymade components do not harmonize with each other, but rather constitute counterpoints. They are perceived independently, and the whole is neither homogeneous nor heterogeneous. Their perception is not holistic (as in gestalt) - instead, it is a combination of points, different parts of the object.
Exposition
Colander leads us, on the one hand, to Cubism as a source of avant-gardes, on the other hand, it looks ahead to conceptual art. Cubism started an artistic revolution in painting, and thus in modernist art. Conceptual art concluded the era of modernism and avant-gardes, opening new paths of development - postmodern and post-avant-garde, leading to post-conceptual modernity. One can imagine the nail, enhanced by light in such a way that it casts two shadows in two opposite directions, maundering the image like the shadows of readymades in Duchamp's Tu m'.
Colander could hang, properly lit, neighbouring paintings by Braque and Duchamp, and a Joseph Kosuth's piece from the One and Three series, from 1965 (many versions). Or, for instance, between In Advance of the Broken Arm (Shovel) by Duchamp (1915) and One and Three (Shovel) by Kosuth (unfortunately, there is not a piece in the series that features a nail). In this series of Kosuth's works, any object appears independently, self-referentially, without context, purely factually, as both a readymade and its photographic image. It is a conceptual form of representation. The chair used by Kosuth in the first One and Three realization is also the first object set in this role in a work of art. Thus, it became the sign of contemporary time, a point of reference observed by many artists. And Colander has finally been placed in the history of art.
Such a virtual exhibition (after the COVID-19 pandemic, we are already accustomed to them) can be imagined as a short course in art history. In this narration Colander takes the position of a "pivot" - while creating it, Robakowski takes over the ideas and artistic means of the historical avant-garde, then passes them on and places them in the present day. And still, they set the paths followed by art today. In the conceptual 1970s, Robakowski had to "catch up with his own work", since - to paraphrase Kosuth's statement about Duchamp - all art after Colander is conceptual.
Łukasz Guzek, summer 2023
Translated by Katarzyna Podpora