Painting is usually something that happens in the studio, away from the eyes of the audience that will eventually gaze on the finished work. However, in the history of modern art through the contemporary moment there have been artists who choose to present their painting practice as a performance which can then be recorded on video. One such piece, Magdolene Dykstra’s Beyond Visible (2022), was recently displayed at Toronto’s A Space Gallery. In it, Dykstra methodically presses wet earthen pigment onto a glass pane with her finger, as the performance progresses the prints cover the glass and create a veil or barrier between the artist’s face and the viewer of the work. The performance is reminiscent of one of the most famous instances of painting as performance – Jackson Pollock as documented by Hans Namuth in 1950. While the shots of Pollock stooped over a large canvas on the floor are perhaps the most recognizable from the film, the last several minutes place the camera under a glass pane as Pollock towers above the viewer and slowly covers our view with collaged elements and dripped paint. It is this shift of perspective, from Pollock standing over the camera to Dyksra looking into it, that moves the tone of the performance for me. The relationship between the artist, their work, and the viewer then characterize the ways that the concerns of all these participants have changed in the 70 years between Pollock and Dykstra – moving towards a more collaborative process that prioritizes shared experiences through the performance rather than the purported genius of the artist.

Abstraction seems to lend itself better to painting as performance, and both Pollock and Dykstra worked in abstract forms which emphasized the gesture of the artist. Magdolene Dykstra describes her work as a practice of mark making, using her finger prints in earth based pigments that provide a through line to her sculptural practice in unfired clay. Her work explores the interdependence and connection of people and the earth while also recognizing that as a racialized Egyptian woman, dominant social structures seek to exclude her body and her voice. In her artist statement she writes, “… I continue to assert my right to take space and make space for others to join me in transforming white spaces by recording our presence. My extremely individual mark is a universal one, shared among all humans” and this comes through strongly in Beyond Visible. Even as her face becomes obscured behind the piece as she works, the grid of fingerprints signal the labour of an individual without enabling the identification of that person. As viewers we are then able to imagine the artist behind the prints, to think about what our own individual mark might look like and the materials we rely on to make that mark, even if it is less tangible than Dykstra’s work. While the performance and video elements of Beyond Visible are new for Dykstra, the piece fits clearly into her larger body of work and suggests a new register for viewers to engage her work from.

 In contrast, Jackson Pollock’s incredibly famous abstract expressionist work are the product of wild drips and splatters of paint which the artist laid down in a gestural expansion on Surrealist automatic drawing. His works speak to his inner experience as an artist, an experience which was often filled with strife, and was characteristic of the male dominated movement which valued individualism and the prominence of artists who pushed the boundaries of artistic expression. Pollock was also as close as one gets to being a pop-culture icon as an artist, being widely celebrated in the press of 1950s as an iconic American figure who challenged Euro-centric visions of the art world. While his work is sometimes the butt of jokes today about the lack of skill required in abstract painting, the development of his process relied on both inner reflection and a willingness to push existing boundaries in the arts, facts which can be glimpsed through his narration in Pollock ‘51. From his place in the artistic cannon, Jackson Pollock represents a time where the vision of singular (usually male) artists was celebrated as the limits of painting were stretched and because of this we as contemporary viewers come to Pollock’s work with preconceptions about his practice and the period it emerged from which inevitably shape the interpretation of these works.

Through both Beyond Visible and Pollock ‘51 the work ultimately comes between the viewer and the artist. As the paint accumulates and the work moves towards completion the viewer is no longer able to see the artist’s face, reasserting the traditional paradigm of art viewing where the artist exists in shadow behind their work. It is interesting though to think about the stature of the two artist’s as they are hidden from our gaze. While Dykstra, and most female artists past and present, are not given the opportunity for superstardom, Pollock’s style is held up as defining a period of art and even a casual audience would be able to identify the drip style as his work. In many ways, Pollock’s legacy also paints over the work and vision of artists like his partner Lee Krasner whose work was seen as peripheral to the male dominate abstract expressionist movement and through this lens the choice to have Pollock stand above the camera gains another meaning beyond the practicalities of Pollock’s method. The sense of painting over other voices is challenged by the vertical plane of Beyond Visible as when displayed in the gallery the viewer is able to stand at equal eye level with Dykstra throughout the performance, placing us as participants rather than passive viewers. While the uncut nature of Dykstra’s video documentation ask us to spend time with the work with the same kind of methodical attention that the artist is applying through her finger prints. When looking back across these differences in formal qualities and interpretations of the two performances, my goal is not to hold one artist up as superior, rather I want to think about the move from the modernist tortured artist to the participatory emphasis of contemporary art. To think about what is gained (a diversity of voices) and what is lost (the artist as cultural icon). 

The final point I want to note when making this comparison between Beyond Visible and Pollock ‘51 is that there is an element of artistic agency that must be taken into consideration. Magdolene Dykstra has made the choice to expand her practice through the incorporation of the glass panel and performance element. Jackson Pollock on the other hand was not the author of the video, rather it was directed by Hans Namuth and his goals and vision for how he wanted to present Pollock inevitably impact the final work. In fact, the completion of Namth’s filming coincided with Pollock returning to heavy drinking after nearly two years of sobriety and his struggle with alcoholism would eventually lead to his early death at the age of 44. We see hints throughout Pollock ‘51 that this is far from an authentic presentation of Pollock’s work – he acknowledges that he has never worked on glass before and later accounts emphasize that Namuth had his own artistic vision for the short film. With this context, the documentation of Pollock’s work also picks up the more colloquial understanding of the term performance, beyond just being an artistic medium this piece was artificial and put on for the camera. Ultimately the film is not a part of Pollock’s oeuvre, although the two pieces that are created throughout the film are. In contrast, Beyond Visible fits into the ongoing narrative of Dykstra’s body of work as she builds up a web of relations and connections between her mark making and the dynamics of viewers and galleries. Not only has the piece been exhibited at A Space in the Disruption exhibition where it was by far the strongest piece but it is also placed into a different conversation through the online exhibition When you cut into the present, the future leaks out where it can speak with the video documentation of other clay based artists. 

Through a consideration of these two performance painting works, separated by 70+ years and a vast shift in artistic trends, we can see the possibilities of materials and the importance of larger practices in framing the interpretation of a particular piece. The act of painting on glass for a camera is situated very differently in the practices of Jackson Pollock and Magdolene Dykstra, reflecting the desire or lack there of to invite a viewer into the artistic process. By bringing famous pieces from art’s history into discussion with the contemporary art scene I think these important shifts can be traced which in turn enables us to think more deeply about the ideas or emotions that works like Beyond Visible bring up. Dykstra pushes notions of mark making and the relationship between artist and viewer but she does so in relationship to the longer history of artists who used similar methods. So perhaps the conclusion here is about how we think about art as being in relationship with its own history, and the importance of historical study even when we want to talk about the here and now. 

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To learn more about Magdolene Dykstra’s work you can check out her website here, or view the When you cut into the present the future bleeds out exhibition here. For more information about Pollock ‘51 you can watch the short film itself here, or read other critical opinions of it here and here.