Abstract
Social Consideration, Communication, Observation: From Sculpture to Film and Photography outlines Lange’s adoption of lens-based media coming out of the Royal College of Art in 1971, where he trained as a sculptor. It provides an aesthetic analysis of his sculptures (many of which disappeared and exist only as archival documentation) and establishes a set of influences on his early artistic development: from the large, abstract, hard-edge steel sculptures on his arrival at the RCA to an increased interest in realism and the subject of labour, as reflected in his last environmental sculpture, Irish Road Workers (1971). Lange’s relation to Conceptual Art’s dematerialisation and post-medium condition marks the beginning of his photographic and film studies of people at work, Social Consideration, Communication, Observation (1971). Lange’s aesthetically uninflected way of documenting the working body as the unfolding of an action draws on process and performance art, both ascendant at the time. Meanwhile, his commitment to leaving a memory of the social world distances his work from performance and the ontological exercises redefining and expanding the field of sculpture of his conceptual counterparts.
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Notes
- 1.
Peter Osborne, ‘Survey’, in Conceptual Art, ed. Peter Osborne (London: Phaidon Press, 2002), 22–23.
- 2.
Paul Wood, Conceptual Art (London: Tate Publishing, 2002), 43.
- 3.
Wood, Conceptual Art, 43.
- 4.
From 1969, Lange referred to his sculptures as ‘environments’. Environmental sculpture was a term commonly used in the 1960s. Julia M. Bush uses the term mainly to define non-figurative sculpture that involves the audience spatially in something that verges on architecture, exemplified in works by Louise Nevelson, Tony Smith and David Smith. However, the term has been extended to figurative sculptures by artists such as Edward Kienholz and George Segal that qualify as environmental for not being displayed on a pedestal. Instead, they occupy and sometimes intervene in the space where they are placed, a space also shared with the audience, who experience rather gaze upon them. Julia M. Bush, A Decade of Sculpture: the New Media in the 1960s (Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press, 1974).
- 5.
Darcy Lange, Video Art (Auckland: The Department of Film, Television and Media Studies, Auckland University, 2001), 18.
- 6.
Niamh Coghlan, ‘Peter Kardia: Alternative Pedagogy’, Aesthetica, 2010 <http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/peter-kardia/> [4 January 2023].
- 7.
For an account of the legacy of Peter Kardia’s (né Atkins) art education at Saint Martins and in relation to Anthony Caro’s tenure in the school’s sculpture department, see Malcolm Le Grice, ‘History Lessons’, Frieze, 1 October 2011 <https://frieze.com/article/history-lessons> [23 December 2016].
- 8.
Environmental Media appears for the first time in the RCA prospectus for the calendar year 1972–73, as a ‘syllabus for course in Environmental Media leading to a Master’s Degree’, under the School of Sculpture. RCA Annual Prospectus 1972–73, 53.
- 9.
I am indebted to David Tremlett (RCA, MA Sculpture 1966–69) for this background information regarding the activities at the RCA sculpture department at the time and the influential role Peter Atkins played for some of the students like Tremlett and Lange. Tremlett in conversation with the author, 25 May 2016.
- 10.
David Tremlett quoted in Andrew Wilson, ‘An Art of Searching’, in David Tremlett, Retrospectiva 1969–2006 (Grenoble: Actes Sud/Musée de Grenoble; Prato: Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, 2006), 31–39 (31).
- 11.
Lange, Video Art, 10.
- 12.
Lange wrote: ‘I disagree with art which is carefully geared to be of value to the collector and the dealer. I disagree with this aspect of an institution such as the RCA which tries to make itself a prestige institution of art. I disagree with people who use art for their ego. I disagree with institutional people who, because they happen to be involved in this particular aspect of society, have the conceit to assume a stance of arrogance. I disagree with art being unable to exist for what it is, an instrument for developing the individual perception of the particular participator and for giving something to less naturally and technically suited people. I disagree with the pomp of the leader of our institution, and his need to impress on people his position of administrative elevation. I would hope that people like our particular administrative phenomenon may one day be subjected to a public relations reasonability test. One can only bring to mind, when one thinks of this type of person, the language which Benvenuto Cellini expressed himself. God help the professional, professional art and art education manipulation. I think that if people want to get a great ego kick, they ought to become pop stars, and they should accept art as one of those areas which are not suitable for personal exaltation.’ Darcy Lange, ‘Concerning My Work: Sculpture Department’, unpublished, ca.1970, 1. [This is possibly an artist statement written as part of a school assignment.] Darcy Lange Archive.
- 13.
Lange wrote: ‘In the Sculpture School it was very much more difficult to carry on with a seemingly retrogressive style of sculpture, as there was still prevalent domination of abstraction. There were, in fact, no people in the Sculpture School who could see beyond the need to get past compositional studies within abstraction.’ Lange, ‘Concerning My Work’, 2–3.
- 14.
Unpublished notes. Darcy Lange Archive.
- 15.
Lange taught sculpture at City of Leicester Polytechnic (1971–72), City of Birmingham Polytechnic (1972–73), Central School of Art and Design (London, 1973–74), and The Polytechnic Wolverhampton (1973–74). In unpublished notes titled ‘Instruction’ (ca. 1971), Lange lists technique, observation and production of tangible statements. Darcy Lange Archive. In another art assignment, under ‘People to be consulted’ he lists: Bellini, Van Eyck, Vermeer, Van der Weyden, Velazquez, Cotar, Goya, Manet, Cézanne, Mondrian, Hopper, Wyeth, Colman, Oldenburg, Warhol, Kienholz, Richard Long, Hamish Fulton; filmmakers Eisenstein, Fellini, Pasolini, Czech filmmakers (Forman), Ken Loach, Bergman and Warhol; and photographers Weston, Adams, Cartier-Bresson and Dorothea Lange. Unpublished document, ‘Department of Fine Art’, ca. 1971. Darcy Lange Archive.
- 16.
British sculptor Richard Wentworth (RCA MA Sculpture 1967–70) in conversation with the author, 4 March 2014. Indeed, Lange was close to Rodney Charters (RCA MA Film 1968–71), whom he had known since childhood and studied with at Auckland University. Charters photographed and filmed Lange’s sculptures at the Elam School of Art and the RCA. Richard Woolley (RCA MA Film 1970–73) collaborated with Lange as film cameraman in his A Documentation of Calverton and Pleasley Coalmining Communities, Nottingham, UK (1973).
- 17.
RCA Annual Prospectus 1976–77, as quoted in the press release of the CCA exhibition Shadowboxing held at the RCA in 2011, <http://shadowboxing.rca.ac.uk/artists/marysia-lewandowska/#/exhibition>
- 18.
RCA Annual Prospectus 1974–75 <http://shadowboxing.rca.ac.uk/artists/marysia-lewandowska/#/exhibition>
- 19.
Lange as quoted in Les Montajees, ‘Architectural Sculptor D’Arcy Lange’, Craccum Art Supplement, 2 September 1968, 13.
- 20.
Montajees, 13. New Zealand painter and Lange’s longtime partner (1964–1976), Alyson Hunter explained another inspiration: he used the same colours of the tractors in his family farm. Hunter in conversation with the author, 24 November 2014.
- 21.
Lange, ‘Concerning My Work: Sculpture Department’, 1.
- 22.
Lange, in ‘Darcy Lange: A Conversation with Willoughby Sharp’, 12. When asked about how aware he was of artistic production in New York while a student in New Zealand, Lange replied that, thanks to his tutor Kurt von Meyer who had moved from America’s West Coast to teach at Elam, he had been very well informed. He told Sharp, ‘We knew about Edward Hopper, David Smith, Kline, Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and early Pop Art.’
- 23.
Montajees, 12–13. The same year Montajees travelled with Lange to London, both to pursue their studies: Lange at the RCA and Montajees to study art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art.
- 24.
Lange, ‘Concerning My Work’, 2.
- 25.
‘One cannot draw comparisons between works, for such pieces as Bird in Space and Mademoiselle Pogany are closer to moving forms of sculpture than those of Lange’s but the perfection of the smooth surfaces has influenced Lange a great deal.’ Montajees, 13.
- 26.
Montajees, 13.
- 27.
‘At this time I left my art school environment in New Zealand and had to re-evaluate my position as a producing artist, as it became an impossibility to continue working in steel, as I had done under the protection of an art college with its readily available working space and welding facilities. I had to find a way of working that would be as stimulating and would be less difficult in getting started. I began to model from life, working also from still life, etc.’ Lange, ‘Concerning My Work’, 2.
- 28.
Lange in, ‘Darcy Lange: A Conversation with Willoughby Sharp’, 12.
- 29.
Lange wrote: ‘most of my colleagues were horrified by this seemingly reactionary step’. Lange, ‘Concerning My Work’, 2–3. In this document, Lange describes his influences: Brancusi’s studies of still life; Bernini’s ‘drapery, his virtuosity with marble, his portraiture and his ability to take sculpture much further than figure’; Magritte’s ‘ability to transplant objects into settings which are strangely incompatible’ and ‘transform the objects by their surroundings’ and ‘his frequent use of still life, landscape, architecture, elements, buildings and people’; Bellini, who ‘combine all of what Cézanne and Mondrian offer’ and his ‘relationship of the figure to landscape’; and Cézanne for his realism.
- 30.
Lange wrote: ‘I have often used an element of surrealism in my recent work with particular reference to the coat of the first sculpture I did at the College, and the chromium wine glass and bottle of the next two works; also the use of drapery in the works to date. I have been interested in Magritte but it is not directly to a style of his that I am aspiring. I am trying to make a statement which could be the captured object, the still moment or the feeling achieved from a frozen moment, as in the case of a motion picture that has suddenly stopped. So possibly the feeling would remind one of something slightly ghostly, a spirit perhaps which has just gone, although this element is not to be over emphasized.’ Lange, ‘Concerning My Work’, 14.
- 31.
Lange, ‘Concerning My Work’, 3. Pop Art: An Exhibition was held at Hayward Gallery in London, 9 July–3 September 1969.
- 32.
Lange, ‘Concerning My Work’, 3–4.
- 33.
On the back of one of the photographs documenting this sculpture is written ‘Reality Extended’. This title is listed in the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Young Contemporaries’ where the work was exhibited 6–26 November 1970. Young Contemporaries (London: The Royal Academy of Arts 1970), 9.
- 34.
On the back of a photograph documenting this work is written ‘Social Sculpture, March 1971: Negro and English girl, dead sheep on beach’. Darcy Lange Archive.
- 35.
Lange, ‘Concerning My Work’, 14.
- 36.
Lange dedicated a section to landscape as one of his influences: ‘Firstly, the New Zealand landscape has been important because of its clear light and its variations between sunshine and the heavier more dramatic aspects of its climatic conditions—rains and thunderstorms. This landscape has been a constant source of information for me although until recently it was more emotional. Lately, I have used it for landscape environments which I have been making. The landscape in New Zealand will remain an important background in my work. It has remarkable cloud formations, land forms, mountains, hill country, coastlines, rock, violent seas and dramatic surf, all displayed in dramatic colour.’ Lange found the English landscape ‘too quiet’, ‘boring’, ‘garden-like’ and ‘frequently trodden on’. Lange, ‘Concerning My Work’, 9.
- 37.
‘I feel the need to use English landscape for I think that if I use New Zealand too often my thoughts would be lost and would be branded as nostalgic self-indulgence.’ Lange, ‘Concerning My Work’, 9.
- 38.
The Darcy Lange Archive contains negatives of seascape studies taken by Lange in Taranaki. The photograph for Commentary—Equality was taken by Charters, who also grew up in Taranaki. Rodney Charters in conversation with the author, 11 February 2015.
- 39.
‘Stonehenge has always been an important reference, because of its unique spatial sympathy. In my last work I have used a composition which is quite similar to that of Stonehenge.’ Lange, ‘Concerning My Work’, 11.
- 40.
Commenting on Commentary—Equality, Montajees wrote: ‘It was a very large painted panel in black and white […] depicting a New Zealand rural landscape, with steep, dark hills. In front of it was a sculpture of a man slaughtering a sheep, something Darcy had done many times on the family farm.’ Les Montajees in email correspondence with the author, 13 March 2014.
- 41.
Coincidentally, all three artists grew up on farms: Lange’s family had a sheep and cattle dairy farm; Kienholz was a farmer’s son from Fairfield, Washington; and George Segal’s family moved to a poultry farm in New Jersey where Segal grew up, although he was born in New York.
- 42.
Lange, ‘Concerning My Work’, 4–5.
- 43.
Mark Rothko cited in Graham W. J. Beal, ‘Realism at a Distance’, in George Segal: Sculptures, ed. Martin Friedman and Graham W. J. Beal (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1978), 57–80 (68).
- 44.
Robert L. Pincus, On a Scale that Competes with the World: The Art of Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press, 1990), 73–74.
- 45.
Alyson Hunter explained that Lange made his life-size figures and ‘cast them in sections in plaster and scrim, filled with fibreglass and then joined together. He did a few clay heads as it is hard to cast heads because of the breathing and eyes’. Email exchange with author, 30 April 2015.
- 46.
Darcy Lange, written statement possibly for a school assignment whilst a student at the RCA, [n.d.], ca. 1970. Darcy Lange Archive.
- 47.
Lange, written statement possibly for a school assignment while being a student at the RCA.
- 48.
Stuart Davis as quoted in Pam Meecham, ‘Realism and Modernism’, in Varieties of Modernism, ed. Paul Wood (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 80.
- 49.
Lange, ‘Concerning My Work’, 13.
- 50.
The 1966 Kienholz retrospective at Los Angeles County Museum, which initiated the 11+11 Tableaux, travelled through Europe and was shown at the ICA in London in 1971. In the Darcy Lange Archive, among his books there is a copy of Edward Kienholz’s Tableaux catalogue published as part of the exhibition held at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 28 March–10 May 1970.
- 51.
Lange, Video Art, 20.
- 52.
Lange, ‘Concerning My Work’, 14.
- 53.
Lange wrote ca. 1970: ‘I have a strong intention in my work to achieve a feeling of “superreality”. It is naturalism which, because of its strength of pictorial image, leaves the spectator in a position in which he is unable to think or feel any emotion except that which is described to him directly in the image. He sees and immediately becomes involved in the reconstruction before him. The possible power of realism will be in that everybody enjoys it; it has a history and continues in a natural progression. It is just another aspect of humanity. Not art, but an image for man to see reflections of himself and his environment, and himself within his environment. This superrealism will be used with naturalism, adding force and guts to the naturalism. It must be to do with an objective and searching study of the environment, and that it must involve and use the most suitable devices and techniques available. What I mean by superrealism is realism with an extra boost; overrealism, accentuating the important features of the subject and helping its image to become more obvious and clear. What I mean by naturalism is that quality in anything which makes it seem relaxed, belonging to the environment.’ Lange, ‘Concerning My Work’, 14–15.
- 54.
Lange in, ‘Darcy Lange: A Conversation with Willoughby Sharp’, 12.
- 55.
Guy Brett, ‘Introduction’, in Work Studies in Schools (Oxford: Museum of Modern Art Oxford, 1977), 3–5 (4).
- 56.
Lange, ‘Concerning My Work’, 16–17.
- 57.
John A. Walker, Left Shift: Radical Art in 1970s Britain (London: Tauris, 2002), 59.
- 58.
Darcy Lange in the exhibition flyer Darcy Lange (Birmingham: Ikon Gallery, 1971). This exhibition featured Irish Road Workers, 16 November–4 December 1971.
- 59.
Walker, 35.
- 60.
John Roberts, ‘Art after Deskilling’, Historical Materialism, no. 18 (2010), 77–96, 91.
- 61.
Lange, Video Art, 21–22. These descriptions appear in italics to indicate that they were from notes written around that time, not from 1985 when he wrote his memoirs. However, there is no indication of their provenance. There are no records in the artist’s archive of these film series ever being shown.
- 62.
Lange’s archive contains no photographs for each of the studies of Social Consideration, Communication, Observation, which supports the fact that photography here is not yet used systematically and therefore is possibly perceived only as a supporting medium to film. The archive contains only negatives of the following films: black-and-white and colour negatives of Hardware Store in South Kensington; and black-and-white negatives of A Woman Putting out Her Washing and Cowman Milking. Also, there are black-and-white photographs of the two studies in Studies of Family Groups, as well as colour photographs of the study Basil Cox from the latter series.
- 63.
Lange, Video Art, 18.
- 64.
Darcy Lange, letter to Keith Lucas, director, British Film Institute, [n.d], ca. 1973. Darcy Lange Archive.
- 65.
It includes the following: ‘A study of a woman at her work’ about a woman hanging her washing (which later became A Woman Putting out Her Washing from his series Social Consideration, Communication, Observation); ‘Table film’, about a working class family sitting at the table eating and in conversation (which later evolved into Studies of Family Groups 1972). A third study about three films shot on a farm lists under the heading ‘Concepts’ the following activities: cow milking (Cow Milking also from Social Consideration, Communication, Observation), feeding the animals, tending the animals (cleaning out), operating machinery, general manual work, cropping, harvesting. Lange, unpublished typewritten notes from handwritten drafts c. 1971. Darcy Lange Archive.
- 66.
Similarly, in a funding application for a film documenting the artist’s sculptures, Lange describes the film to place emphasis ‘on using sculpture to its maximum with human participation’, which would imply infusing ‘human life’ in the sculptures through the use of film techniques. The film, to be shot by Rodney Charters, was never made. Darcy Lange in a letter to David Peters, Queen Elisabeth II Arts Grant of New Zealand, 24 November 1970. Darcy Lange Archive.
- 67.
Lange’s synopsis of this study reveals him seeking props and dramatic effects. He wrote, ‘The woman will be filmed from a fixed viewpoint and will be putting her washing upon the line. It is hoped that wind will be blowing and a dramatic effect will be achieved with the blowing of the cloth. On the ground, a cloth basket and possibly a domestic animal, a cat. The film will be begun and finished as the work is begun and completed.’ He also refers to these studies as ‘plays’, implying the notion of theatrical performance. Unpublished artist notes, ca. 1971. Darcy Lange Archive.
- 68.
Lange, Video Art, 18.
- 69.
Lange in, ‘Darcy Lange: A Conversation with Willoughby Sharp’, 13. This is also manifested by the number of negatives in the artist’s archive and the care Lange took to preserve them.
- 70.
Lange in, ‘Darcy Lange: A Conversation with Willoughby Sharp’, 13.
- 71.
Lange, p.12.
- 72.
Darcy Lange, ‘Marcel Duchamp’ (unpublished master’s thesis, Auckland University, 1967), 11–12. Darcy Lange Archive.
- 73.
Rosalind Krauss, ‘Sculpture in the Expanded Field’, October, Vol. 8. (Spring, 1979), 30–44 (p.33).
- 74.
Krauss, 42.
- 75.
Krauss, 42–43.
- 76.
Lange in, ‘Darcy Lange: A Conversation with Willoughby Sharp’, 12.
- 77.
Osborne, 20.
- 78.
André Bazin, ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’, What is Cinema?, trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967) 9–16.
- 79.
Peter Wollen, ‘The Two Avant-Gardes’ (1975), Film Theory: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, eds. Philip Simpson, Andrew Utterson and K. J. Shepherdson (London: Routledge, 2004), 127–37 (131). First published in Studio International, vol. 190, no. 978 (November–December 1975), 171–75.
- 80.
Bazin, ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’, 14.
- 81.
Darcy Lange, exhibition brochure, Darcy Lange and Andrew Turner, Bradford Galleries and Museums, Industrial Museum, 16 May–13 June 1976.
- 82.
Daniel Morgan, ‘Rethinking Bazin: Ontology and Realist Aesthetics’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 32, no. 3 (spring 2006), 443–81 (444).
- 83.
As quoted in Morgan, 444–45.
- 84.
Morgan, 443.
- 85.
Bazin, ‘The Evolution of the Language of Cinema’, What is Cinema?, vol. 1, 23–40 (27).
- 86.
Lange, ‘A Conversation with Willoughby Sharp’, 12.
- 87.
Lange, ‘Concerning My Work’, 5.
- 88.
‘Socialism is a very important part of my thought process. I believe that at all costs I must be honest with myself and with those people with whom I would like to encourage participation. I therefore must have an art form which communicates. The people with whom I wish to communicate, and for whose benefit I wish to make statements, are probably the mundane and underprivileged people of the working classes, also the deprived and lonely people of any other particular group which may exist in this society. Because of my constant frustration with the lack of free speech (class) in this country, and the constant difficulty of achieving physical and mental elevation due to the chronic class structure, I feel a need to say something which will communicate outside the upper and middle class gallery cliché. Although some kind of social structure may be necessary to protect the value of the art market (socially) and its marketers, I can’t help feeling that it would be nice if art could reach more often the ordinary people.’ Lange, ‘Concerning My Work’, 13.
- 89.
A.L. Rees, A History of Experimental Film and Video (London: British Film Institute, 1999), 70–71.
- 90.
Lange, Video Art, 37.
- 91.
Dan Graham, ‘Darcy Lange, Work and Music’, New Observations, no. 29, 1985, [n.p.].
- 92.
Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, ‘Darcy Lange: Paco Campana’, in Darcy Lange: Study of an Artist at Work, ed. Mercedes Vicente (New Plymouth: Govett-Brewster Art Gallery; Birmingham: Ikon Gallery, 2008), 49–64 (59).
- 93.
Lange, ‘Darcy Lange: A Conversation with Willoughby Sharp’, 12.
- 94.
Robert Smithson as quoted in Wood, Conceptual Art, 48–49.
- 95.
Wood, Conceptual Art, 55.
- 96.
Rosalind Krauss, “A Voyage on the North Sea”: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition, 30.
- 97.
Cildo Mireles, ‘Insertations into Ideological Circuits, 1970–75’, in Art and Social Change, eds. Will Bradley and Charles Esche (London: Tate Publishing and Afterall, 2007), 181–86 (183).
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Vicente, M. (2024). From Sculpture to Film and Photography. In: Darcy Lange, Videography as Social Practice. Experimental Film and Artists’ Moving Image. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36903-2_2
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