The Meditative Constructivism of Ellie Vossen
Art as Experiential Model
The basis of 20th century modernism, that clear rational order
is a condition for freedom, requires discussion. Nowadays, law
and order have become a means for curtailing that freedom as the
Antwerp architect Luc Deleu ruefully pointed out at a recent
presentation of his work that is based on constructivist
principles. As one of the last representatives of the sixties
mentality, he is still trying to combine order with the
imaginative. However, that mental legacy has been discredited.
Today, individual freedom is a law unto itself and it exists
without principles or structure. The conservative call for law
and order is no solution and the Left has also lost its
credibility. In architecture, left-wing modernism has led to the
failure of Amsterdam’s Bijlmer district, a synonym for the
uninhabitable. Bureaucracy has destroyed the great utopia of a
world that can be made. In practice, left-wing ideology is no
match for the new world order of American origin, where the
market rules and freedom is restricted to consumerism.
What’s more, none of it matters for post-modern relativism.
But things used to be different. In the 1960s, a young generation
rebelled en masse against the conventional, which it
wanted to replace with an anti-authoritarian order that embraced
freedom and the imagination. This was combined with a revival of
both modernism and the avant-garde movements from the beginning
of the 20th century.
After the Second World War, the need for freedom and a dislike
of the conventional had already erupted on a small scale in the
spontaneous expressiveness of the Cobra movement, with Karel
Appel’s Freedom Scream as its icon. Through
theoreticians such as Constant and Jorn, Cobra referred to a
Marxist social vision that provided space for each
individual’s creativity. Constant felt that painting was
too limited and sought a greater degree of social relevance.
Deploying the constructivist idiom from the era of the Russian
Revolution, he attempted to achieve this in his New Babylon
project: a maquette of the environment where the homo
ludens of the future would be able to thrive like a new
nomad. The rebellious young people of the 1960s, such as the
Dutch Provos, recognised themselves in Constant´s vision and
considered him to be their spiritual father.
Alongside this youthful revolt, many avant-garde movements
were developing in Europe, which were known collectively as the
New Tendencies. Their objective was to create a fresh
consciousness along with unprecedented visual experiences. Just
like the historical avant-garde, they generally operated as an
international network of like-minded individuals. Fundamental
visual research was a mutual goal. They mostly deployed an
elemental, geometric language of forms that used a minimum of
means. The serial and aleatoric were preferred to the classical
composition method, which was felt to be too hierarchical. In
other words: these artists opted for structuring principles that
involved chance. At the same time, much value was attached to the
object’s level of reality and there were high hopes for
interaction and public participation. This trend was represented
in the Netherlands by the Zero Movement with artists such as
Armando, Schoonhoven, Henk Peeters and Jan Henderikse. In
addition, a number of artists connected to Riekje Swart’s
gallery in Amsterdam, including Ad Dekkers, Peter Struycken,
Bonies and myself, were working on a new systematic form of
constructivism. This meant that we aimed at an impersonal product
as based on a systematic programming that excluded the arbitrary.
Contacts between the Netherlands and Belgium were established
through the Pluskern gallery in Ghent.
These alternative rules were just as important for the
Happenings, which were currently popular in both Amsterdam and
Antwerp. Here too, freedom was mostly based on the option of
aleatoric structuring.
The Stijl movement paved the way for Systems Art in the
Netherlands, and here the great inspirers were Van Doesburg and,
to a lesser extent, Mondriaan. New developments in science and
technology also played a major role. Social conditions had
altered radically from the era between the two World Wars so that
social change continued to be important, just as it had been for
the historical avant-garde. In the Netherlands, a Maoist artists
union called the Bond van Kunstarbeiders, which included Bonies
amongst its activists, explicitly propagated this revolutionary
role. Members were convinced that a clear and systematically
structured visual language would help the people in disadvantaged
neighbourhoods to improve their living conditions. However,
little would be achieved in practice.
The visual diversity and the enormous increase in the amount
of information that is available to everyone through the
computer, has resulted in a greater freedom of choice that has
not actually contributed to the individual’s
self-determination. In short, the power relations remain
unchanged and the opportunities for unbridled consumption simply
reinforce passivity
Yet the art of the 1960s derives its power from the future
expectations that also formed its basis. The revolution failed in
May 1968, but the euphoria that the imagination could come to
power would continue to exert its influence. A new generation had
entered the spotlight and the power of the established order
waned everywhere. In the Netherlands, the University of
Amsterdam’s administration centre was occupied. The
feminist Dolle Mina´s took to the streets. There were
all kinds of factors that influenced female emancipation –
starting with the pill – but art certainly contributed to a
change in mentality that was spread through the media to every
living room in the land. Dutch television programs such as
Hoepla undermined the old norms and values such as when
the woman artist Phil Bloom became the first person to appear
nude on TV or when Wim Schippers emptied a lemonade bottle into
the sea as an art project. The pop magazine Hitweek, which
was edited by Fluxus artist Willem de Ridder, was the much-read
communicator of a new sense of life. Vast numbers of young
people, who were labelled longhaired, work-shy scum, could now
expand their minds either with or without the help of drugs. This
led to a circuit of like-minded people who recognised each other
through a shared code for clothes, music and art. Flower Power
was the popularisation of a liberated lifestyle that was prepared
in the art world and imbued with form.
Provincialism could not survive in this climate. Young
artists, who were born after the Second World War, now had every
opportunity to free themselves from the pressures of their
environment. The world was open to them. Above all there was a
generation of young women who were able to break free from the
stereotypical role patterns that applied at home.
Ellie Vossen, who was born in 1948, was typical of a
generation for whom ‘the sky seemed to be the limit’.
She came from an average, middle-class Catholic family who lived
in Bunde, a small, southern Dutch village in Limburg. She
initially studied fashion at the Stadsacademie art school
in Maastricht where she learned to design trendy clothes as
demonstrated by the coverage of her creations in the Dutch
magazine Panorama.
At the age of 18, she entered the Textile Art Course at
Antwerp art school, which was followed by her admission to the
Monumental Department of the Hoger Instituut. Although
this art school had a reputation for being traditional, she was
given every opportunity to develop and to find her own way. Art
was flourishing in Antwerp and she was exposed to the most
advanced works of the day. Annie de Decker’s Wide White
Space Gallery was a leading avant-garde centre. In a building on
the Beeldhouwersstraat, Kaspar Koenig presented the top
international artists including Joseph Beuys. The ICC, under
Floor Bex’s directorship, was just as prominent. He brought
James Lee Byars to Antwerp and made it possible for Gordon Matta
Clark to saw through the floors of a building on the River
Scheldt. De Zwarte Panter created opportunities for
Antwerp artists including Fred Bervoets. Outsider artists such as
Panamarenko, Hugo Heyrmans and Wout Vercammen held happenings on
the Conscience Square. Ludo Mich organised and filmed the
swinging fashion happenings of An Salens, the uncrowned queen of
hip fashion. Singer Ferre Grignard performed at the Muze,
the centre of the underground, and there were also the activities
of the Gardsivik group and the Pink Poets. All this and far more
clearly provided a young artist with plenty of inspiration.
Ellie Vossen was already making her own contribution while
still at the Hoger Instituut. She became known for her
monumental installations such as the Variable Situations
that went beyond the boundaries of the textile art for which she
had been trained and were related to Minimal Art. 7 plus 1
was a typical work and was made in transparent plastic, which was
a new material at that time. It was shown at the Biennale de
la Tapisserie in Lausanne. With pioneers such as Magdalena
Abakanowicz and Sheila Hicks, Lausanne was dominated by the
emancipation of textile art as a form of sculpture. Ellie also
had the emphatic presumption to present her work as fine art
although she continued to use crafts techniques. Experimenting
with new synthetic materials in sculpture was a hot issue at that
time. When the Rijksacademie art school was occupied in
Amsterdam, the leaders’ demand was that laboratory research
into plastics should be included in the curriculum. It was only
then that research into synthetic materials and products was
properly initiated despite the fact that Moholy Nagy had been
pioneering similar materials on his own in the
1930s.
Apart from 7 plus 1, Ellie Vossen was making other
works in transparent, synthetic materials that included two
diamond-shaped wall reliefs. These involved suspended elements
that just asked to be played with and which the viewer could set
into motion. The works had a strikingly delicate, Eastern
crafting that contrasted with the modern choice of materials. In
fact, they were some of the first examples of Ellie’s
interest in Japanese refinement that was to continue to influence
her work.
Although on the basis of her education she was automatically
included in the circuit of women textile artists, with whom she
regularly exhibited at the invitation of Jan Walgrave, Ellie
Vossen emphatically positioned herself in the world of the fine
arts. Her first one-man show in Antwerp at De Zwarte
Panter was awarded the Belgian Association of Art
Critics’ Prix de la critique. Here, she exhibited a
series of systematically structured number tape weaves
along with the variable diamonds and 7 plus 1, the
installation that had been shown at Lausanne.
The weaves involved the simple technique of plaiting, which
every child learned at kindergarten, so as to create regular and
sometimes relief-like structures that were typical of the New
Tendencies. In fact, the traditional plaiting method of
horizontals and verticals had been upgraded to create a visual
language that reflected Dutch systematic constructivism. The fact
that she had contact with artists from this movement is proved by
the two drawings by Ad Dekkers that he had given her and that she
cherished as being models of simplicity. They consist of just two
vertical and two horizontal lines, which had been drawn in pencil
inside of a square.
In anticipation of the computer, the number tape weaves
were produced in every possible variation of a single structuring
principle. She intuitively felt that the technique of weaving,
with its regular alternation of warp and weft, fundamentally
resembled the digital computer language that was to be introduced
to art by artists such as Peter Struycken. In terms of materials,
Ellie Vossen opted for common, readymade number tape as used in
the clothing industry, a choice that was typical of the 1970s
avant-garde. Once she succeeded in tracing the company that
manufactured this tape on an industrial scale, she commissioned
it to produce her own texts. This was a case of ‘Made by
Industry’ – and it also reflected the working method
of such Minimal artists as Don Judd and Sol Lewitt with whom she
felt an affinity.
Processing common, ready-to-use products remained a constant
factor in Ellie Vossen’s work. Here, she distinguished
herself from the world of the applied arts that emphasises a
traditional, crafts-based treatment of materials. There is also a
difference in her conceptual approach. She tackled a particular
issue by formulating a program and by taking it to its logical
conclusion. Every variation is possible within the rules of the
game.
Ellie Vossen was never afraid of monumental dimensions. In
Bernard Blondeel’s gallery, she exhibited an installation
of large, diamond-shaped number tape weaves that were
suspended in the space and where the words
‘positive-negative’ were treated visually so that
they formed a positive and a negative image. The words
‘circle’ and ‘square’ were also depicted
in several small works. The critics suggested that this was a
form of concrete poetry, a mixture of language and symbol, which
was very topical at that time.
Ultimately a program has only a limited number of variations
although this applies more in terms of quality than quantity.
Computer art also has to confront the issue that choices need to
be made that are visually satisfying. Moreover, the eye cannot
distinguish between all the variations within a homogenous field.
Small differences go unnoticed, and a program is exhausted at a
certain point.
Ellie Vossen introduced a new element into her work once the
number tape plaits had reached that point. She had become
interested in the way in which dyes soak into absorbent
materials. The dye method and the dye bath feature in techniques
such as Batik, and Ellie Vossen began to subject this textile
process to systematic research concerning its fundamental
characteristics. Here, the simplest example consists of blotting
paper that absorbs ink. This involves osmosis, a process that is
capricious and difficult to monitor yet is subject to the laws of
physics. It can be demonstrated by mixing dyes in the fluid that
is to be absorbed, and this leads to interesting visual results.
The structuring systematics of the research, which was performed
in a laboratory, produced a wide organic diversity. This was what
she was interested in. She wanted to break through the cool
regularity of constructivism while still maintaining an objective
method. Moreover, nature was introduced into her work as a
process rather than as a depiction – an approach that is in
the spirit of Spinoza’s concept of natura naturans.
This opened up new vistas. During the 1970s, various Systems
artists had turned their attentions to natural processes. The
systematic constructivist Gerhard von Graevenitz organised an
exhibition on this theme in the Netherlands. Ellie Vossen also
tried to let nature take its course under laboratory conditions
that were as objective as possible. She carefully noted the
amount of dye that was used in the fluid. As always, she
preferred ordinary, domestic substances such as coffee and tea
but also used the polluted waters of the River Scheldt, a choice
that naturally contained a critical note at a time when the
ecology movement was just beginning. Standard, square disposable
paper handkerchiefs were used as absorbers. When tied into
stacks, they absorbed the coloured dyes unevenly so that each
separate handkerchief bore the imprint of a gradually changing
image.
The statement ‘I love paper because it sucks’
accompanied one of her exhibitions and proves unequivocally that
Ellie Vossen was concerned with the materials’ properties
rather than with their beauty.
Osmosis is a slow process. Ellie Vossen demonstrated this in
public with an installation at the ICC in Antwerp. This event
– where a large quantity of paper handkerchiefs was
drenched in coloured dye for the exhibition’s duration
– resulted in a series of cubes that reflect this process.
She was also able to group the individual handkerchiefs
separately according to various systems. Initially Ellie Vossen
opted for a regular repetition of squares that had been carefully
stitched onto a rectangular surface, which could be exhibited as
a freely suspended wall hanging. She later concentrated on
revealing the changes that occurred as a result of the various
stages of osmosis. Hence, she arranged the packets of dyed
handkerchiefs into sequences that were up to three metres long
and showed a filmic progression. Their measurements had not been
chosen arbitrarily, rather they had been determined by the number
of handkerchiefs that showed traces of the absorption process
within a given time. Sometimes this resulted in large-scale works
that measured up to two by three metres, such as the pieces that
she showed at the Merchandise exhibition in
Antwerp’s Montevideo.
Constricting the paper packets during the drenching process created three-dimensional distortions that changed progressively along with the colouring. Unfortunately the material is so fragile that the original subtlety of these distortions may eventually be lost. But Ellie Vossen loved this temporality, and the vulnerability of existence is reflected in her work. She did not worry that her art would ultimately turn to dust, for each piece is simply the documentation of a process that continues and can be repeated.
Nonetheless, she devoted much attention to the precise
realisation of her work. She regarded it as being a ritual that
could be compared to the Japanese tea ceremony. Nature has to be
handled with respect, and here her attitude relates to the
culture of the Far East, for which she had great regard. A
journey to Japan, where she visited Nara and Kyoto, provided her
with a shock of recognition, with a confirmation of the working
method that she had developed intuitively. Without having much
intellectual knowledge of Zen, she had come up with a similar
approach to reality. She felt that she was simply an intermediary
who revealed the forces of nature that would remain otherwise
hidden. The ‘dye-absorbing images’ have a meditative,
non-Western character, and this was also the impression that they
made on the artists around her. Her friend Wout Vercammen viewed
her work as being pure Zen. Yet that is not entirely true,
because it is also the product of a typically Western scientific
curiosity and discipline. This combination of the concept’s
rationality and the sensitivity of its realisation makes it
unique, and distinguishes it from most Conceptual Art where the
work’s realisation is generally unimportant.
It is also the reason why her legacy continues to be topical.
In an era when information technology produces quantity, there
remains a real need for quality, for the extraordinary that
cannot be created by machines. A robot will never have an
imagination and so machines should never come to power as is
proved by the story of Frankenstein. However, there is
certainly a future for a fusion of Western rationality and
Eastern spirituality, a spirituality that is not viewed as
something vague or woolly but is down to earth and relates
directly to experience, much in the way that Zen does. We must
hope that globalisation will create an opportunity for this,
provided that it is not under the colours of the United States or
falls into the hands of a few multi-nationals. Come what may, the
small but refined oeuvre of Ellie Vossen provides a model for
this fusion.
The modernist adage that order is a condition for freedom,
only applies if that order, if the rules of the game, include a
human dimension.
An important part of Ellie Vossen’s work was made in a
short period that lasted for ten years in the aftermath of the
euphoria of the 1960s.
The fact that she had little more to add, apart from
occasional experiments, can be initially explained though her
increasing dissatisfaction with the course of history that was
heading towards the triumph of the consumer society. The
imagination was now anything but powerful. Instead we were
presented with the ultimate societé du spectacle.
Constant’s New Babylon was perverted into endless shopping
malls with Utrecht’s Hoog Catharijne as an early example.
Ellie Vossen did not feel at home in this world. She loathed
post-modernist eclecticism and could not endure the fact that
modernist ideals had been abandoned. As an art school teacher,
she fought the bureaucracy that dominated everything around her.
She wanted to preserve the art school as one of the few
sanctuaries for the imagination, as a place where the
extraordinary is encouraged and cherished.
The gap between ideal and reality also proved to be paralysing
for her on a personal level. She found it increasingly difficult
to fulfil the high demands that she made of herself in a society
that had little understanding of this.
In a way, Ellie Vossen was also one of the 'beautiful
losers’ of the 1960s, a term that is used for Marianne
Faithfull and for other survivors of the sixties. In contrast to
Ellie’s contemporaries from the Antwerp scene, such as An
Salens and her best friend the film-maker Nicole van Goethem,
both of whom were destroyed by alcohol, she managed to maintain
control over her life despite suffering from bouts of severe
depression. Perhaps it was that excessive need for control that
also ultimately blocked her creativity. So far as the outside
world was concerned, she remained an impressive and strong woman
who was critical of the way things were going.
She had nothing to add to the essence of what she had to say:
that a sensible and imaginative order is the condition for
freedom. For the rest, she tried to come closer to nature. In her
small Zen garden in Antwerp, which measured just a few square
metres, she discovered a counterbalance for the negative powers
both in herself and in the world. In the Pyrenees, by the rapids
of the River Tech, she hoped that isolation and the confrontation
with this breathtaking, mountainous landscape would help her to
resume her work. The studio that she planned to use was never
completed within her lifetime.
In 1998 Ellie Vossen died at the age of 50, the victim of the
disordered ravages of cancer.
In accordance with her final wish, the Golden Boulder Prize
has been instigated to encourage talented, young women artists at
the beginning of their careers by giving them the opportunity to
work in the studio in the Pyrenees.
However, her finest legacy is her oeuvre that attests to a
conviction that has lost none of its topicality. In this computer
age, the meditative constructivism that she strove to achieve is
especially valuable as a signal that carefully nurtured quality
will always be more important than quantity.
franck gribling, Le
Tech, 2004.