Chance in art

From Stumbling over / upon art by Dario Gamboni

One classical interpretation of “chance in art” is that of the “image made by chance.”2 The phenomenon is documented across times and cultures and can be understood as a particularly explicit manifestation of the active, cognitive (or “projective”) nature of visual perception. In fact, the earliest known “image” associated with humans—or rather pre-humans—, the pebble found at Makapansgat in South Africa, is supposed to have been selected, transported, and preserved some three million years ago because it happened to look like a face.3 Rather than the first work of art, it can claim to be the first Readymade, as one commentator facetiously remarked.4 Depending on the current views of the origin and working of the universe, such “images” have been attributed to the gods, God, or some other supernatural beings; to Nature acting as an artist or to her blind mechanical laws; or to man’s own eye and mind, the human imagination, or the “unconscious.”




Ferrous pebble of reddish color found in 1925 at Makapansgat, South Africa. Bernard Price Institute of Paleontology, University of Witwaterrsand, Johannesburg. Photo Robert G. Bednarik.

The last group of interpretations, which could be labeled “endogenic,” first gained prominence in Late Antiquity and the Renaissance, and has dominated the Western understanding of this question from the late eighteenth century to the present.5 Despite its apparently monistic character, it does retain a crucial element of the earlier “exogenic” interpretations: for the accidental image to be perceived as an image, a “sender” must be at least implicitly postulated by the receiver.6 If this sender is situated in the receiver, it becomes an Other within the subject. This explains the connection between chance images and Freud’s notion of “the uncanny” (das Unheimliche) and the fascination they have exerted upon the Surrealists.


From Chance in art - The indeterminacy aesthetic 2 by Andrew Bogle

Crucial to all forms of divination, including those involving indeterminate configurations, is the empirical concept of acausal synchronicity - the orderedness of events which has no intelligible cause. This holds that all things are interconnected by a complex web of relations - from the smallest blade of grass to the remotest star; and that any given moment, any event is inextricably related to every other event. The significance of such an attitude is that it accepts multiple perspectives of events in place of a narrow one-point perspective. Consistent with such a premise is the use by contemporary artists of oracular, ludic and other aleatoric techniques as a means of relinquishing some cognitive control over the creative act, thereby bringing some 'magical' contingencies of the transient moment into play.

The Christchurch artist John Hurrell by using dice to select permutations of prescribed set of geometric shapes and colours within an over-all grid structure for his Dice Pieces paintings, is literally working in an aleatoric mode. The stark geometry, hard edges and flat unmodulated colours of Hurrell's Dice Pieces belie their fortuitous composition. First the artist sketched his grid plan on paper; then ran off a series of duplicates. Next he decided on a range of variables (triangle lozenge, diamond, assorted colours) with which to 'flesh out' the skeleton structure. By ascribing numbers to the variables, tossing dice and recording the results on the paper plans, a final composition was divined. Only later was the design scaled up, transposed to canvas and painted in, The indeterminate part of the process was relegated to the plotting of the composition, not to the execution. In the final stage the use of masking tape and unmodulated colours minimised gestural irregularities. Any two or more paintings produced by this process, all conditions being equal, will look fundamentally similar, but differ in detail, in the same way that dalmatian pups from a litter or assorted snow crystals are at once homogeneous and yet unique.


From Chance and Necessity - Selections from the Kentler Flatfiles by Isabelle Dervaux

Several drawings in the exhibition are based on nature, not as a source of observation and transformation, but through a process involving direct contact with a natural element. Thus Martin Zet's Sea Drawings are literally produced by the motion of waves washing over the sheets of paper that he places on the sand or stones near a body of water, while Florence Neal's large, evocative charcoal drawings are rubbings of tree bark. Such methods recall surrealist practices, including coulage and frottage, which gave an important role to chance in artistic creation. But unlike the surrealists, for whom such practices were often a starting point to stimulate their imagination and develop new imagery, Zet and Neal preserve the drawings as they first emerge from the random process. With the precision of scientists making an experiment, both artists carefully record the geographical spot where each drawing was created, as well as, in the case of Neal, the species of tree from which the rubbing was made.

Rather than a specific style, what unites all of these works are the notions of process and chance. The result may suggest spontaneity and raw impulse, but the carefully planned methodology and the systematic recording of the conditions in which they were executed also relate these works to the kind of abstraction more obviously based on structures and systems. It is significant that several of the artists in this exhibition have mentioned the importance of John Cage in their development. Cage’s revolutionary introduction of the element of chance in art, as well as the priority he gave to process over structure, opened the door to a wide range of new possibilities, in the visual arts as well as in music. Richard Howe, for example, acknowledged the influence on his drawings of his experience working on Cage’s scores in the 1960s. Howe’s teeming compositions call to mind the ambiguous relationship between order and chaos that was central to Cage’s theory and practice.

Turning to artists whose drawings rely more directly on the codified language of geometric structures, one notices that their predetermined order is often balanced by some element of indetermination. Thus Mary Judge’s elegant symmetrical patterns derive their organic quality from the medium--powdered pigment--which is applied in such a way that each line, made of irregular dots, acquires a life of its own. Despite the regularity of the motifs, the drawings are vibrant with a sense of unpredictability--a feature that is alluded to in a title like Automatic Drawing, with its reference to another surrealist device involving chance.