Page 10 - Michael Ginsborg: Field Notes

This perceptual sliding across dimensions is at the heart of the Field
Note drawings and I am almost tempted to think of the ‘field’ it reports
back from as a cosmic one. In this sense the work they do is to perform
drawing’s function in the marrying of the empirical and the conceptual.
When Duchamp tries to pin down the ‘physical notion of a fourth
dimen sion’ he turns to an implement employed by Michael in his

practice over many years. He continues,
For example, I noticed when I hold a knife, a small knife, I get
a feeling from all sides at once. And this is as close as it can be
to a fourth-dimensional feeling. (ibid)

The drawings’ modesty, including the size of the implements and
materials they are made with, is an active agent in the creation of these
small worlds for us to dwell in. In this work, as in earlier paintings, the
knife becomes an instrument for suture as much as piercing, navigating
rupture, as much as creating it. For me, Duchamp’s ‘fourth dimensional
feeling’ is palpably present in these works.

Rebecca Fortnum
June 2022

Rebecca Fortnum is Professor of Fine Art and Head of School of Fine Art
at the Glasgow School of Art. She is currently Senior Research Fellow at the
Henry Moore Institute, and Editor of the Journal of Contemporary Painting.

Field Notes !%, 4545, ink & collage on paper, 46 x 64.7 cm