mikgodley

Photo credit: Graham Lester George

Considering Silesia

“Who do you think you are?”

My personal and historical heritage project is approaching it’s fifteenth year, growing, evolving and offering new possibilities and more aspects to research. I’ve now been investigating the Wałbrzych Mausoleum (1) since 2012 when Michał Wicher, an architectural heritage enthusiast based in nearby Wrocłow, asked me to look at it and I decided to create a visual interpretation from discoveries online — perhaps as a kind of remote digital archeology. The Attenborough Arts Centre of Leicester University have asked to exhibit this in their newly built gallery in 2020.

I thought that investigating the mausoleum — or its online manifestation — acted as a visual metaphor and focus for several layers of experience and questioning. This process grew out of my family connections with Germany, England and Europe that started in the 1960’s. History: personal; family; conflicts of culture and heritage; the idea of ‘forgetting’ “Don’t mention the war”; an interest in propaganda — both historical and contemporary; and new forms of fascism — whether political or corporate, and the qualities of how we learn, see and process both digital information and fictions. Although there is no official information online, images of the much graffitied 1930’s ruin pointed it to being a document recording a century of European history through a piece of architectural propaganda.

NB. Dimensions vary for digital work

Wałbrzych Mausoleum, via Google Sphere View, 11 February 2018 (miss-dated), app Procreate on iPad Pro

Wałbrzych Mausoleum (Lulu #1), via Google Sphere View, 29 January 2018 (miss-dated), app Procreate on iPad Pro

Wałbrzych Mausoleum via Google Sphere View, 21 February 2018 (miss-dated), app Procreate on iPad Pro

Wałbrzych Mausoleum (Waldenburg Totenburg) via Google Sphere View, exterior, 8 December 2017, Concepts app on iPad Pro

Born less than fifteen years after World War 2 with an English Grandfather who was a test engineer on Lancaster Bombers, and a German Opa (Grandfather) who worked for the Reichsbahn (later Deutsche Bahn) all his life, I grew up knowing little more about the war than through watching the British and American war films frequently shown on British television. The confusing message they sent was — half of me was good, and the other half evil. I stopped speaking German once I started school. In the Yorkshire coalfields it was safer to speak like a native. It was only later in life after my kids grew up — unequivocally English — that I began to look at where my Mother came from: research now made possible by the advent of the internet.

Google Earth Watercolour on Fabriano archival paper, approx 150 x 113 cm (58 x 43 inches).

Photo credit: Graham Lester George

“Flying” Google Earth: landscapes and new technologies

Over the years of investigating the mausoleum I’ve gradually found more information and images to work from. The little available online initially consisted of amateur history blogs discussing SS rituals, much of it in Polish, which I don’t speak, wobbly YouTube videos and images from one or two professional photographers. I think the information was scarce partly because the German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge) does not have a relationship with the Polish state — probably the reason it remains abandoned. That and the lack of definitive information lead me to speculate why it had been built on that site in the first place. I therefore looked to the environment for clues — and to the Sudeten Mountains that ‘frame’ the site — through Google Earth before getting closer via Street View.

Politically I could guess that the idea was to place propaganda in the lands Nazi Germany stole from Poland, the Großdeutsches Reich. But why that precise location? That particular foothill of the Sudeten Mountains? Were there cultural reasons?

Photo credit: Graham Lester George

Granite links

Some of the most exciting work resulted from flying around the mausoleum’s wider location using Google Earth. Skimming along the mountains I discovered a glacial bowl of exposed granite on top of a mountain that divided Poland from the Czech Republic and realised that granite as a material and its cultural associations connected the different elements I was looking at. From the mausoleum’s architecture to the Gross Rosen granite quarry. The latter became the central concentration camp supplying Albert Speer with both the labour and materials for his Der Riese project. Something I’d investigated for several years. As well as the building stone intended to contribute to Hitler’s and Speer’s plans for a Thousand Year Reich.

Google Earthscape, c. April 2013, watercolour on archival paper, 1.5 x 1.13 metres

Google Earthscape, c. April 2013, watercolour on archival paper, 1.01 x 0.72 metres

Google Earthscape, c. April 2013, watercolour on archival paper, 1.01 x 0.72 metres

Google Earthscape, c. April 2013, watercolour on archival paper, 1.5 x 1.13 metres

Google Earthscape, c. April 2013, watercolour on archival paper, 1.5 x 1.13 metres

Google Earthscape, c. April 2013, watercolour on archival paper, 1.5 x 1.13 metres

Google Earthscape, c. 8 May 2013, iPad2, app Autodesk Ink

Google Earthscape, c. 8 May 2013, iPad2, app Autodesk Ink

Green screen echoes of Urwald

Having previously looked at ideas of Urwald — primeval forest — I became increasingly interested in how the mausoleum is effectively screened from view if seen via Google Street View. Hidden by surrounding woodland that has grown substantially since the mausoleum was built in 1938, old photographs show that it used to be very visible from the town below. (Incidentally, Speer’s Der Riese was camouflaged by the forests covering the Owl Mountains, a “déjà vu” landscape I felt I somehow inherently ‘knew’ although I’ve never been there). The Polish authorities don’t seem to know what to do with this unwanted alien heritage and would probably rather forget it. The growing trees and thick underbrush help the process of post-war “forgetting”. And it may be for the same reason that Google has deleted Street View imagery at several locations on the perimeter of the site. Perhaps a further act of hiding. This apparent attempt at censoring of the past in the context of today’s politics became key to my investigations: aiming to record it in its present state, and highlight such “aestheticisations of evil”.

25 Słowicza, Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia, via Google Street View, 27 July 2015 – vector app Paintbook on iPad2

off Marszałka Józefa Pilsudskiego, Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia, 22 May 2015, vector app Paintbook on iPod Touch

Stefana Okrzei, 58-300 Wałbrzych, via Google Street View, iPad2 drawing, app Paintbook, 13 March 2015

Marszałka Józefa Piłsudskiego, Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia, via Google Street View, footpath entrance iPod sketch, app Paintbook (vector), 11 May 2015

Near Słowicza 25, Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia, via Google Street View, 23 June 2015, vector app Paintbook on iPod Touch

Słowicza 25 via Street View, 6 August 2015, app Brushes on iPad2

Nowowiesjka, Wałbrzych, via Google Street View, app Brushes on iPad2, 27 March 2015

Near Osiédlénców, sketch 2, 18 December 2015, Autodesk Sketchbook on LG G4 mobile (cell) phone

Off Marszałka Jósefa Piłsudskiego, Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia, via Google Street View, 10 January 2016, Autodesk Sketchbook on LG G4 mobile (cell) phone

Just off Świdnicka, Wałbrzych, via Google Street View, vector app Infinite Design on LG G4 mobile phone, 6 May 2016

Sphere View

Further opportunities for visual research came in Autumn 2017. I discovered little blue dots on the map. Google Maps had posted Photo Sphere images from directly around and inside the mausoleum. Someone had wandered around with a camera taking higher resolution images at various points inside and outside the building that now allow me to pan all around in 360 degrees, up and down, to select compositions to work from. Very exciting!

Wałbrzych Mausoleum via Google Sphere View, 3 August 2017, vector app Concepts on iPad Pro

Wałbrzych Mausoleum via Google Sphere View, 11 August 2017, vector app Concepts on iPad Pro

Wałbrzych Mausoleum via Google Sphere View, 27 July 2017, vector app Concepts on iPad Pro

Wałbrzych Mausoleum (Waldenburg Totenburg) via Google Sphere View, entrance, 28 November 2017, Concepts app on iPad Pro

Wałbrzych Mausoleum (Waldenburg Totenburg) via Google Sphere View, exterior, 8 January 2018, app Procreate on iPad Pro

Wałbrzych Mausoleum (Lulu #2), via Google Sphere View, 26 January 2017, app Procreate on iPad Pro

The iPad Pro

I’ve been delving a good deal further into the potential offered by my iPad Pro and Apple Pencil stylus. The app Procreate offers 4K high resolution, video time lapse play-back of the drawing process. And a new app, Concepts, gives sophisticated vector possibilities to enable a great range of mark-making and very high quality prints. For instance I spent much of last summer testing Concepts with a view to using the vector files to create laser-cut wood engravings.

Osiedleńców, Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia via Google Street View, app Procreate on iPad Pro, 9 April 2018

Osiedleńców, Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia via Google Street View, app Concepts on iPad Pro, 27 March 2018

Un-named road off Świdnicka, number 2 (this one with yellow), Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia, South West Poland, via Google Street View, 17 April 2018, app Concepts on iPad Pro

Un-named road off Świdnicka, Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia, South West Poland, Friday 13th April 2018, app Concepts on iPad Pro

2 Słowicza West side #2, Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia, via Google Street View, 29 May 2018

2 Słowicza, Walbrzych, Lower Silesia via Google Street View, 3 May 2018, app Concepts on iPad Pro

Osiedleńców Number 3 (YG11) via Google Street View, vector app Concepts on iPad Pro, 26 April 2018

Góra Niedźwiadki, Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia, Poland, via Google Photo Sphere, 5th May 2018

Osiedleńców No. 2, mausoleum site perimeter, Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia, 20 April 2018, app Concepts on iPad Pro

2 Słowicza West side #3 via Google Street View, vector app Concepts on iPad Pro, 5 June 2018

2 Słowicza West side #1 via Google Street View, vector app Concepts on iPad Pro, 21 May 2018

2 Słowicza (oblique view) via Google Street View, vector app Concepts on iPad Pro, 12 May 2018

How to look

Because so much of my working life has been teaching art students the rudiments of “how to look” through life-drawing, observation and perception have naturally been at the core of my thinking about these documents of my observations via the internet. I’m fascinated by how our way of seeing is increasingly affected by our use of digital images as source material when working both with traditional media — paper, pencils, canvas, paints etc. And with digital imaging with devices such as smartphones and tablets.

25 Słowicza, Wałbrzych (via Google Street View) Screen Shot 2018-03-13 at 14.17.40, iPad Pro, app Procreate, 16 March 2018

Often impulsive, while drawing my eyes flit around the screen and I’m aware of many “mistakes” I make in creating the drawings. Unlike cameras, for us looking is a process. And the idea is to draw my responses to what I see and learn — both good and bad. Interpretation changes in the perception and the process of drawing, and overall I like my mis-perceptions, or lack of control. It adds to the quality of the marks and image. With the iPad Pro I’m still learning how to use the tools and software, and to be honest, drawing with a piece of plastic onto a glass plate is not the easiest way of working. Sometimes I correct, sometimes I don’t, but there’s always a record of it, especially visible if the process is played back as video.

Psie Pole, Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia via Google Street View, Concepts on iPad Pro, 19 September 2017

Park Góra Niedźwiadki, Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia, Poland, via Google Sphere View, 7 October 2017, Concepts on iPad Pro

Inwalidów Wojennych, Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia, Poland, via Google Street View, 6 October 2017, Concepts on iPad Pro

Park Góra Niedźwiadki, Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia, Poland, via Google Sphere View, 14 October 2017, Concepts on iPad Pro

Park Góra Niedźwiadki, Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia, Poland, via Google Sphere View, 20 October 2017, Concepts on iPad Pro

Park Sudeten Wałbrzyskie, Lower Silesia, Poland, via Google Sphere View, 25 October 2017, app Concepts on iPad Pro

Park Góra Niedźwiadki, Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia, Poland, via Google Sphere View, 14 November 2017, Concepts on iPad Pro

Architecture as propaganda — the art history

I found more information about the mausoleum’s architect, Robert Tischler, recently, on an academic call out to research. In an article written by Christian Furhrmeister (2), for the periodical RIHA (3). Tischler was chief architect of the German War Graves Commission from 1926 until his death in 1959. Both his Munich office and the Berlin office of the Volksbund, containing between them a large archive of photographs and all documents, were bombed during World War Two.

North Plinth, Wałbrzych Mausoleum (Love), via Google Sphere View, 1 March 2018, app Procreate on iPad Pro

‘Ruin value’

However, as a staunch Nazi, by his designs Tischler seems to have agreed with Albert Speer’s ideas on Ruinenwert or Ruin Value in using the permanence of natural building materials for monumental architecture:

‘These immortal monuments or temples of the German Reich were not just a means of “bequeathing to posterity the genius” of Hitler’s age. A far more obvious Totenkult [death cult] aesthetic was also evident in Hitler’s monumental architectural plans. Specifically the construction of miles upon miles of mausoleums along the borders of Germany’s newly expanded empire.’

‘Following The Nazis supposed victory against the Allied powers, colossal citadels for the dead, or Totenburgen, envisaged by Hitler’s “were to glorify war, honor its dead heroes” and at the same time, “symbolize the impregnable power of the German race” as the massive stone structures would stretch “from the Atlantic to the Urals.”’

Meghan O’Donnell (4)

https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/newsletter/posts/2014/2014-12-9-odonnell2.html

‘To this day, therefore, the appearance of numerous German cemeteries at home and abroad is shaped by the artist’s handwriting — by his aesthetic premises and convictions. These include, above all, an almost ostentatious craftsmanship and the use of natural materials, the avoidance of industrially prefabricated building elements and artificial building materials such as concrete or asphalt. For example, Tischler’s emphasis on traditional craftsmanship went hand in hand with elaborate solid construction — instead of cost-saving veneering or wall cladding.’

Christian Fuhrmeister essay, translated from the German via Google Translate

https://www.riha-journal.org/articles/2017/0150-0176-special-issue-war-graves/0159-fuhrmeister

Romantic notions of ruins were born during the Renaissance and later industrialized by artists of The Grand Tour. But I think here Tischler’s grand materials have been disrupted by a history shown by layer upon layer of graffiti, abandoned and screened off from the contemporary world — together a symbol of Europe’s post-war history and turbulent current events seemingly condemned to repeat it by deliberate forgetting.

One wall of the mausoleum has a sprayed image of a black eagle and swastika, with the words “Wir kommen wieder”.

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PS. I am a little aware that Walter Benjamin’s ideas on ruins may be more in line with my own thoughts, but frankly don’t know enough about his work at this time to comment.

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Notes

1. Wałbrych Mausoleum — Waldenburg Totenburg (in German) — Death Castle — the memorial for thousands of Silesians who died in World War One and twenty-three Silesian pioneers of the National Socialist movement.

2. Christian Fuhrmeister — an art historian at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich.

3. RIHA — Journal of the International Association of Research Institutes in the History of Art: Special Issue “War Graves / Die Bauaufgabe Soldatenfriedhof, 1914 – 1989” 2017 (eds. Christian Fuhrmeister and Kai Kappel).

https://www.riha-journal.org/articles/2017/0150-0176-special-issue-war-graves

4. “The ‘Ruin Value’ of Monumental Architecture” (Part II of Dangerous Undercurrent: Death, Sacrifice and Ruin in Third Reich Germany) by Meghan O’Donnell, California State Monterey Bay

Osiedleńców, 10 November 2015, Autodesk Sketchbook on LG G4 mobile (cell) phone

Juliana Falata, 10 November 2015, Autodesk Sketchbook on LG G4 mobile (cell) phone

Ends

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#mikgodley #drawing #contemporarydrawing #contemporaryart #contemporarypainting #painting #art #ipadart #vectorart #androidart #phonedraw #hiddenhistory #anglogerman #silesia #schlesien #germanhistory #hiddenheritage #conceptsapp #autodesksketchbook #propaganda #walbrzychmausoleum #wałbrzych #google #streetview #archeology #documentary #history #historyart #ipadpro #niederschlesien #dolnoslaskie #slask

Audio discussion of my recent exhibit in “Visualising the Network” at the Moss Gallery, Wollaton Street Studios, Nottingham UK – and despite it being my voice, it doesn’t sound too bad!

https://arttheoryreadgroup.wordpress.com/visualising-the-network/mik-godley/

For a field study project I have in mind I want to test the possibility of using iPad vector drawings with laser cutters to create woodcuts or wood engravings, having used vector apps for several years on an old iPod Touch and a couple of iPads. But now having finally got a big iPad Pro most of my old vector apps haven’t been re-configured for the Pro so I had to try some new ones.

Testing Concepts as a vector app to draw towards woodcut printmaking, I discovered that the Fountain Pen “brush” most appropriate for the appearance of woodcut lines didn’t fully support the Apple Pencil (which I’m also learning how to use) so I couldn’t control the thickness of line, often have to re-draw lines several times or else tweak the position or length after drawing by “transforming” individual lines, so that very intense concentration was required to get a drawing of relatively few lines right, though I gradually improved over about a month of use.

I did try Adobe Draw (a kind of Illustrator lite — but this only offered a white background: I wanted black) and Autodesk Graphic for this job but didn’t like the equivalent brush, the way that the app over “smoothed” every mark (a problem with the Concepts Pen brushes but less so: whose drawing is this — the artists or the apps?) or the “user  interface”. Probably fine for the designers well practiced on desktop programs like Illustrator that this app was built for; these vector apps have lots of whistles and bells that I don’t need and the UI often gets in the way. I just want to draw and then use the vector file to print from.

So I got in touch with Tophatch, Concepts developers, through their Facebook page asking if they had plans to make the Pen “brushes” respond to the Apple Pencil, giving a link to the drawings I’d posted to show what I was talking about, and also posted some of them on Instagram using the Concepts hashtag.

The response from the Tophatch Communications Director was “they are gorgeous!” asking if they can “share along your series of sketches with our community” and wanting to keep in touch about how they print. “On the laser engraving, I realize this is new for you, but if you wouldn’t mind keeping me posted on your process… this is exactly the type of application we’ve intended for Concepts, and our team would like to see your progress and hear your feedback as an artist.”

Fine, I’m happy to help, but it’s the summer holidays and the technicians at the art college will be off, so no laser cutting or printing for now, it will have to wait. Besides, I had a long list of things I needed to get on with before teaching starts again, including getting back to “real” painting which I haven’t had time to do since last summer (these days the underpaid over-demanding day-job is killing my art!)

Oh, and I’ve since found out from their Facebook group that the Concepts developers are working on the Pen issue.

So next I thought I’d test Concepts for more conventional drawing, beginning technically very simply by using a fixed width “pencil” brush in black, then white over a mid-to-dark toned ground. I’ve always found it easier to get to know an app — or anything else for that matter — by starting as simply as possible, gradually testing functions cumulatively so that I don’t get lost, wondering how on earth I did something. A few days before I had discovered a set of Google Sphere View postings on Google Maps of the Wałbrzych Mausoleum, a ruin that I’ve been surveying online for my project Considering Silesia for several years. These Sphere Views were photographed in May of this year (2017) so are very new. I thought that Concepts property of enabling an endlessly add-able “infinite canvas” might offer possible ways of ‘documenting’ with Sphere Views’ all round 360 degree panoramas, offer ways of exploring an equivalent way of looking to panning around and zooming in and out on the computer screen, continuing my investigation into our digital “ways of seeing”.

First I had a day out to do some teaching prep in Sheffield galleries including the Ruskin, whose drawings I really enjoy, so did a couple of sketches using Concepts after the Graves Gallery closed earlier than I expected, before visiting the fifth annual show by the Tenderfoot group of our ex-students, now confident graduates of Goldsmiths, Edinburgh, etc., and then also on the train home. I started again in the studio the next day, but I think seeing the Ruskin drawings had a bit of a hangover effect.

The first test drawing seemed promising, though about half way through the three day process I realized that I should have started with a rough overall sketch (again remembering what I teach rather too late!) to get a better idea of the changes of perspective — initially I had been too focused on seeing how the quality of marks I could make might effectively render the image. And then on day three I wondered if I might come across the internal memory limit I’d hit with the other vector apps I’d used on older iPods and iPads — years ago I eventually discovered that the limit of one such app was 40,000 “instructions”. Probably not a problem for most artists, but one I’d hit several times, sometimes having to duplicate drawings at later stages and find ways to re-draw them from earlier stage duplicates with fewer “instructions”. Anyway, I didn’t come across the limit on the first test, so we’ll see.

The next day there was an app update from Concepts which considerably added to the capabilities of the Pencil “brush” I’d just been using and the eraser, so I spent a while playing with those.

My next effort sadly failed because, although I started with an overall under drawing (in red), along with my inexperience on the app I haven’t yet worked out how to “interpolate” my movements around the Sphere View images. I do need to spend more time focusing on this. However, I need that app experience first, so I kept the following drawing simpler — just one perspective and no moving around.

I began again with a straightforward view, indeed I worked from a screen shot of it over the following days as I hadn’t moved perspectives at all, did a light sketch then began to work into it just using the new Soft Pencil brush in black over an ochre ground, gradually adding more detail and tone in two layers — the first at 100% opacity and a second at 28% for lighter tones, only starting the high-lights in white (one layer at 100% opacity, then a second at around 30%) on the third day.

One thing that I was very pleased about was that as the drawing developed I realized that I’d drawn a small section in the wrong position, so I just picked it up and moved the whole section slightly to the left. No having to erase and redraw — result!

I did get to a point towards the end of day three on this drawing when I felt that the app was slowing down (there was a bit of lag after drawing lines and zooming in and out) having spent a lot of time and “instructions” as hatching on the sky, so perhaps I was coming close to its internal memory limit, but I will probably push against this on future efforts. I need fully worked drawings to exhibit, not just sketches. That’s why I’d bought the iPad Pro.

The fourth drawing, on a dark pink ground, followed much the same course, though I felt I gained a little more control over the Pencil. I realized that I was able to make lines of a medium thickness to add to the narrow and broad, though I haven’t yet fully grasped a good range of thicknesses.

I find the limited colors available through the Copic system rather unusual, though designers will be familiar with it, but it may have benefits when the work goes to print — I guess the printers will be able to read the colors from the files. Once again the app slowed later in the drawing, not helped by the Pencil running out of charge, adding time to the process. However, that did show me how much more accurately I could now draw with the Pencil than just my finger, so I’ve evidently made progress.

I’m a long way from being in full control of the Pencil, still using it rather crudely, but to create lighter lines and areas I simply reduced the opacity of some of the layers. However, Concepts’ new “soft eraser” is amazing: as well as erasing it allows you to reduce the opacity of lines or areas really very subtly — knocking back just as you would a real drawing with a good rubber or a brush or tissue. This amount of control in a vector app is tremendous — this is the kind of control it needs to give its Pen brushes.

Will I actually get round to doing any proper painting before term starts?

 

http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/title/mik-godley/id/6780

Just out!