True Process Art to me is something a bit different then what I feel art really is. I imagine it as being something all about the making no matter what the artist decides to create. Imagine someone collecting stones from places in their life that meant the most to them then crushing them all up and creating a new stone from that. The new stone could be put next to any other one and look just the same. The end product means nothing whereas the process means everything. Some artists have taken this idea and used it in ways that will give them an end product that looks nice and can draw a crowd. The crown and the attempt at making this process come out with something beautiful is where the art comes into play. So really process art is a combination of meaning, action, and aesthetics. I feel that there are many different types of process artists. From what I have seen some use this new activity to try to get the audience to look at the world a different way, others use it as a meditative art, even more attach deep meaning to their piece. There are many that combine these different approaches. Two of the process artists who I admire the most are Gabriel Orozoco and Richard Serra. I like them the most because their techniques end up with odd artistic pieces that make me like how they think. Gabriel Orozoco intrigues me because he has always lived his life a bit differently. In the movie we watched in class about him I remember him walking around looking for beautiful pieces of trash or a really cool crack in the sidewalk. He said he still remembered all sort of things from his walks as a kid. He has formed his mind to see a pretty picture or a nice sculpture that can be made wherever he goes. The picture or sculpture isn’t necessarily there but the pieces he finds around him get made into how he views the world. I admire people who see the world differently and form their own. His piece called the mobile matrix is absolutely bizarre and I would never think of making it. He decided he needed a whale put in the national library of Mexico. On the whale he and his team drew dark circles of graphite along the whole body coming from different points. The project started with an image in his head, continued with excavating the whale skeleton, cleaning it, putting it together, coloring it, and hanging it in the library. It was very process intensive and ended up beautiful. I like his pieces like this and I like him because I feel that even though he does process art he really makes it artistic. Richard Serra is more of an architect who makes structures that confuse your mind a bit. I wish he made playgrounds because they would be fantastic. As a kid he drew things around him all the time. Not because he wanted it to be art but because it is how he functions and thinks about objects. Serra’s art pieces are mostly made from huge pieces of large metal sheets. He gets large groups of people and machines to help him set up his pieces. Before he does this he models them on a small scale and researches the shape he wants the piece to be. I like that his work means so much to him in the sense that he wants it to be walked through, around, and thought about. One of his pieces called The Band is a good example of the process art he makes. It was made for the space it was placed in and really engages the viewer. He explains that every part is different but still similar and you can continuously walk around it while feeling like it never has an end. It is not a circle but is tricky in that it makes you feel like it never ends. The process of making this piece for him is modeling an interesting form then taking it to the steel mill where he finds ways to make the piece. He also talks about the changing of color that happens to his pieces over time as being part of the art. The viewer of a piece like The Band can walk throughout the piece and just think while still being stimulated by his or her surroundings. The other aspect of this art being about the process is not just making it himself but bringing others in the building of it. I believe the reason I like both of these artists because they seem reasonable to me. The works they do are definitely process art but they turn out looking great. A lot of work went into the projects and you can tell the projects all needed skill and an interesting view on the world before they could be thought up. The process art that I am not so fond and seems unreasonable to be considered art is the type that gets displayed out for the public even though it is a pile of paint or splattered walls. To me this is like displaying the stone we talked about making earlier as some great piece of artwork. It isn’t anything special to anyone else but the creator. It’s silly to go admire someone else’s rock instead of making your own.
Sources Richard Serra http://moma.org/exhibitions/2007/serra/ http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/serra/index.html# http://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag02/oct02/serra/serra.shtml
Sculptor Cai Gup Qiang is a Chinese born artist whose choice of medium ranges from gunpowder, fireworks, to full scale automobiles(1). His artwork covers a range of work that has been described as both violent and gorgeous, and contemporary and traditional (1). Before diving into the conceptual basis of Qiang’s work there are a few aspects of his life that provide a foundation for better understanding his work. Qiang was born in China, however he has spend a large amount of time in both Japan and New York(1). This migration from Non-western to Western is best described in an interview with Qiang, who states that he considers himself “in self-imposed exile from both countries”(1). With that mental state in mind, it is also important to know that Qiang studied stage design within college, and specifically focused on a medium that emphasized space, light, time-based effects, and audience response(1). With that as a foundation for understanding both Qiang’s cultural roots and educational foundation the conceptual basis for his artwork will be explored. Qiang’s sculptural artwork, as well as gunpowder paintings, contain a duality between violence and beauty. His artwork, at first glance, could seem unnervingly violent, and hyper masculine, yet there is an undercurrent of beauty and control(2). Conceptually, Qiang’s artwork explores the relationship between destruction and creation, ancient tradition and contemporary society; specifically the entanglement of the past with the materiality of the present, and the interface between the external stimulus and the internal intelligence.(4) His concepts are complex and the depth that they created within each artwork is unnervingly vast. Through the exploration of three artworks, Light Cycle, Inopportune, and a Series of Self Portraits, the complex conceptual dually that Qiang creates within his art will be explored. Specifically looking at his firework artwork, Light Cycle, the exploration of time, tradition, and material verses spiritual can be addressed. Light Cycle is a fireworks show that was so vast in size and scale that Qiang intended it to be seen from outer space(1). Light Cycle was a 1,000 foot long show that occurred over a reservoir(1). The entire show was over in five minuets.(1) One of the key aspects within some of his larger works, such as Light Cycle, is the relationship between the bird’s eye and the man’s eye(3). Qiang creates work with the intention for the best view to be from the sky/outer space(3). His work intentionally incorporates a celestial visibility that the artist believes is equally important as the view from the ground.(3) This acknowledgement of his art being created and appreciated by a higher audience, both literally and figuratively, shows what a large raneg of audiences his art is able to tap into. His work explores the duality between destruction and creation, beauty and violence. Gunpowder has strong cultural importance within Qiang’s work. Gunpowder was invented by the Chinese while monks were trying to create an elixir of immortality(3). Within western culture gunpowder equals violence, power, and technology. Qiang uses gunpowder to create a series of self-portraits, as well as many other works of art. Specifically looking at his self portraits, these artworks are created from residue of a series of small explosions where the outline of the body is the only thing that remains intact(3). Within the process of creating these artworks the duality of subject and object, culture and violence can be seen(4). There is a strange clashing of interaction and removal that occurs within the self portraits. While the subject is the artist himself the object left behind is simply an explosion marking what was once there(4). The process of exploding gunpowder allows the artist to be an invisible object, a negative subject. Furthermore, by using gunpowder as a means to mark his place on the paper, Qiang is entangling the cultural origins of the past with the materiality of the present(4). He is exploring a violent means to make a mark but not a violent means to mark something, or someone. The melting of non western and western culture, as well as past tradition and present society, within his artwork can be seen through the sculpture titled Inopportune. The sculpture consists of ten cars(3). The first car sits on the ground, the next two cars raising up into the air, followed by 6 other cars which are tumbling and turning throughout the sky. While these cars appear to be acting out a violent accident, the final car within the series sits on the ground with no damage. Within the cars roped light stems out from every direction, as if lighting bullet holes. The format of the sculpture is in direct connection to ancient Chinese scroll paintings. The cars are arranged in a long horizontal format with four parts that can be seen separately but also make key visual connections(3). There is a clear duality of violence and serenity within the piece. It has been described that the sculpture appears to be a Hollywood car crash, yet does not come through at the end of the piece(2). The series of cars, much like the self-portraits, are not acts of violence ending in destruction, but violence as a means to depict the transition of 10 cars suspended in the air. It has been described that his artwork shows direct signs of suffering without incorporating any signs of blood, and that it is able to convey the struggle of violence through artistic form(3). These cars are a prime example of that suffering without hurt. It is a crash with a happy ending; a disaster that turns out just fine. The artists himself has been reported as seeing his art as a tool for wiping the slate clean and starting over(3). Looking at his firework artwork it is interesting to think about such an act of powerful violence as a means for starting over. His firework artwork lasts for a moment in time and its celestial volume is over in a matter of minuets. There is no visual means to come back and revisit the artwork unless through looking at a photograph. However a photograph does not capture the smell of the powder, the noise of the blast, or every different perspective that this artwork could be seen. It is interesting to consider that his artwork is a means to start fresh through violence. Western thinking usually associates violence with endings and destruction, yet Qiang flips that concept on its side by creating beauty and life through his artwork. Qiang’s process is interesting when thinking about his material use and the product of the process. Qiang’s is a process artist, but something that would be interesting to explore is how vast that process connects his work to different cultures, societies, and traditions. His artwork is the product of fireworks and gunpowder, but those processes have cultural and social stigmas attached to them, and his artwork is also the product of the process of those stigmas. Gunpowder and war and death are all socially constructed to be linked with one another and so his artwork plays with the social destructive power of gunpowder as well as the process of creating something out of gunpowder. His ability to be removed from cultural traditions and values, as well as flirt with them, creates a strange relationship for the viewer and audience. He is using violence in a normally non-western way and using Chinese tradition in a non traditional manner. It allows for his work to remain free from interpretive constraints because it is so conceptually malleable.
Janine Antoni
Janine Antoni is a contemporary sculptore and performance based artist who has been categorized as an embodied autobiographical sculpture(1). Her work concentrates on issues of consumerism, contemporary society, and femininity(1). Her main medium of choice is her own body, which creates a very personal and literal means of creating works(2). It has been described that her main intentions for creating art is to take the compulsive practices of femininity and reflect it back on society through the use of her body(2). Within her work, the compulsive practices that she attempts to criticize become the obsessive actions and rituals that she must perform. The relationship that Antoni creates with the audience is removed and distant(1). The audience is permitted to see only what Antoni wishes them to see, and the amount of interactivity that they have with the work is also clearly controlled by Antoni. Her work ranges from video, performance based, sculptural, to textile work(3). Looking at four of her works, Lick and Lather, Gnawed, Slumber, and Loving Cair, the conceptual layering within Antoni’s work will be addressed. Antoni has been quoted as saying that there are two forces that define our society, the desire to consume and the desire to discard, and we are a society of bulimics(2). Bulimia, in Antoni’s terms, is our societies constant and compulsive consuming and discarding of the products of our culture(2). Her artwork is a way to use her self to expose the compulsive practices of society, specifically concerning female compulsive action(2). Gnaw is a multi-dimensional sculpture consisting of one 600lb block of chocolate and one 600lb block of lard that were set up in a gallery for the audience to view through a glass wall. After gallery hours were over, Antoni would gnaw away at both blocks, but when gallery hours occurred the blocks would remain stagnant. From the chunks of lard and chocolate that she gnawed away, 130 lipsticks were made, from the lard, and 27 heart shaped candy boxes were made, from the chocolate(1). Antoni believes that this work represents the two fundamental forces that define our society, the desire to consume and the desire to discard(4). By gnawing at the blocks only when there is no audience she is engaging with the bulimic habits of our society; she is consuming only to create objects of synthetic beauty(4). Furthermore, her body, and the desire to eat, remain invisible to the audience(2). It is only the markings left behind that suggest the process of gnawing away at the blocks(2). Antoni has taken on bulimic tendencies, such as eating only when no one can see and eating in massive amounts simply to discard the food, all for the sake of creating synthetic symbols of beauty and femininity. All the gnawing and biting away at the chocolate only creates lipstick and empty chocolate boxes. The process of gnawing, and the unseen reality of time spent gnawing, is what creates the feminine symbols for the audience to see. Therefore, much like a bulimic throws up to remain skinny and “beautifull”, Antoni gnaws to create objects of “beauty.” Another artwork of Antoni that plays with the duality of both the removal of the body as well as use of the body is Lick and Lather(2). Within this work the artist has created 14 classical busts of herself from chocolate and lard. She then washed and licked the busts until she has obliterated her facial features(2). Common threads of conceptual ideas run through this artwork as well as Gnawed. Within this artwork, the body, and the compulsive acts of the body, are only visible by the marks that are left behind. The work that went into washing and licking away the features of each face are hardly seen, and it is only the effortless product that is left for the audience to view(2). Much like the ritualistic beautification of females within contemporary society, the work and time that was spent on altering the face and body is never exposed, and only the effortless product remains. Within the piece Slumber, a loom extends throughout the whole space of a room(4). Antoni slept in the room, while being hooked up to a polysomnograph, which recorded her REM patterns(4). She then used those dream patterns to weave a blanket, in the morning, using the nightgown from the night before as her weaving material(4). It has been discussed that this piece represents the bodies hungers and desires as invisible and illegible, except as disappearing traces(2). In other words, the dreams and desires that Antoni’s brain is playing out are not acknowledged or addressed, but are simply consumed to be made into a blanket. The artist is simply turning her thoughts into a product for consumption. Again this artwork adds another dimension to the bulimic tendencies of societies consuming and discarding. While the other artworks involved physicality as a means to consume and digest beauty. This artwork uses physical work, the weaving, to consume and digest mental activity. Loving Care, another performance based work, involved more direct engagement with the viewer(2). Within this work Antoni painstakingly washes a floor with her hair, which is dipped in black paint. As the piece begins, the audience is permitted to be in the room with her, but as she mops across the floor, the audience is pushed back until they are eventually forced outside the room(2). Antoni is again obsessively exaggerating a domestic chore at the price of her own body. Unlike Gnaw however, the audience is forced to interact with her painstaking activity(2). The audience must watch as Antoni washes the floor, and they are pushed out of her ritualistic world as her chore builds up. The separation that divides the audience from the act gives Antoni’s actions power and aggression. She obsessively mops, un-fazed by the people around her, only engaging with them in order to successfully finish her domestic chore. Her body is the tool for creation, the tool that exposes the obsessive aspects of the chore, and the tool that cannot disengage with the very act that she is trying to expose(2). Within all of these artworks the process of creation allows for familiar acts of femininity and society to become de-familiarized and analyzes. By using her body to gnaw, mop, and weave, she is transforming her body into a process(1). One aspect of her work that has not been fully addressed by critics of her work is the issue of preservation. Antoni wishes to expose societies bulimic obsession with consumption and discarding, yet the aftermath of her process is preserved in galleries nad museums. Within an interview about Slubmer, Antoni described how one day the loom she was using was becoming weak(4). She needed to re-sand it and replace a few parts to be able to continue weaving her blankets. When she called for supplies, she was informed that she could not alter the work without permission from the museum and assistance from the conservation team(4). Due to the gallery setting, her work did not belong to her anymore and she was not allowed to alter it without permission. What this situation addresses is the transformation that her work takes from an obsessive act for society to reflect on to a preserved moment in time. The 600lb block of chocolate will not be gnawed on anymore, it sits for all to see, and I wonder how that changes the intention of her artwork? Would she see galleries and museums as another means of societal consumption; they are always there waiting to be viewed and then tossed aside for the next exiting thing? Or does having her art within a gallery or museum change the way it is understood by the audience? As time passes and the artifacts of her performances remain how will her art change?
Bibliography for Janine Antoni
1.) http://www.artandculture.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/ACLive.woa/wa/artist?id=902. Accessed January 30th- February 2nd.
2.) Smith, Sidonie. Watson, Julia. “Interfaces-Women/Autobiography/Image/Performance.” Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2002.
3.) http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/antoni/index.html. Accessed January 30th-February 2nd.
4.) Coddington, James. New Materials, New Ideas: Issues in Conservation. MOMA, vol. 4, no. 6 (August 2001) p 2-6.
Bibliography for Cai Guo Qiang
1.) Cotter, Holland. "Public Art Both Violent and Gorgeous". New York Times (New York) Sep. 14, 2003.
2.)Cameron, Dan. "Blinded by the Light", Cai Guo-Qiang: Head On, Frankfurt am Main: Deutsche Bank AG, 2006, pp. 19-24.
3.) Glueck, Grace. "The Cars Aren't Really Exploding, but the Terrorist Metaphor Is". The New York Times (USA) Feb. 18, 2005: E33, E39.
4.)Ross, David A. "Fear of Remembering", Cai Guo-Qiang: Transparent Monument, Milan: Edizioni Charta, 2006, pp. 10-13.
Process Research Paper – Ana Mendieta & Joseph Beuys
In the work of Ana Mendieta, the most distinguishing aspect of her process is her unavoidable placement within the work. To many, her work seems to be an extension of herself, where the meaning of her form is exploded to encompass a human engagement with the environment as well as the perceived nature of the female. Working out of the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, Mendieta’s work is grouped with earth and body works, as wells as performance art and film. Of her own medium, she states: I have thrown myself into the very elements that produced me, using the earth as my canvas and my soul as my tools. (Michael Duncan)”
Mendieta’s work eliminates intermediary materials between the artist and the world being engaged with. The visceral quality of her work is explained through her materials: blood, earth, paint, ash, and body. The process for the creation of her art pieces is inextricable from the process of gaining an awareness of herself. This is seen through pieces such as those in “Siluetas, (1973-1977)” where Mendieta’s own form, or the silhouette of her form, is transplanted onto the landscape. In one piece, she is seen lying down covered in grass; in another she is seen standing naked in front of a tree, coated in mud. In these, there is always a physical contact occurring between the individual and the earth – even to the point of ambiguity, where the two are hard to differentiate. Of this series, Melanie McGanney writes: “The series becomes increasingly evanescent; at times the audience sees just a trace of the being that stood there, transient images of the body, or merely a silhouette. The focus of the art is always on the presence or absence of the artist herself, and her relationship with the canvas of nature. (1)” The irony in these pieces is that the image of the body is so intensified that it is ultimately lost. Mendieta undergoes such a compelling investigation of her person as a female artist and as a product of the earth that she allows herself to be subsumed into those things, becoming a motif.
In another series, titled “Body Tracks,” Mendieta smears a mixture of tempera paint and animal blood onto a canvas in gestures taking her from the standing arms-spread pose to the floor. These pieces evoke the sense presence gone, yet meant. McGanney states: “In itself, this gesture acted as an affirmation of femininity, but it also referenced and denounced the sexist male artistic establishment.” In this work is seen allusions to the female menstrual movements and, at times, evocations of the uterus, with hands sweeping outstretched downward in a “V” shape. The mark is made with blood and paint by Mendieta’s arms, and it is to be noted that the product is not simply the mark left, but the video or photograph of the mark being made. In this way, her work is constant expression, not artifact. Michael Duncan comments on such work: “The blood pieces are crucial works in Mendieta’s development; purgative self portraits that seem psychologically to prepare for the artist’s shift into the ‘Silueta’ series. (2)” Considering this, Mendieta’s personal path consistently mirrors that which her artwork takes. This self consideration is never compromised for her artwork, but rather propels it.
The emphasis on process in the work of Joseph Beuys is perhaps the central reason for its effectiveness in engaging the audience. What facilitates this is Beuys’ careful alignment with himself as an artist and himself as an individual. The “actions” that Beuys conducted throughout the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s of the artist’s ideas even in their name. As an “action,” there is an assumed subject performing the action. Beuys draws attention to himself as a person, dismissing the attributed title of artist.
In his work: “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare,” Beuys, face covered in honey and gold leaf, cradles a dead hare across his chest, whispering to him in a room filled with pictures. This work is made effective in the time the artist is personally present in the work. The facial coverings generalize his figure, allowing him to substitute for man at large, and the intimacy between him and the hare becomes a social act. Henry Garner comments on this work and the impact of the photography: “The photographs are not secondary to the action, they exist in themselves and serve to emphasize the action. In their perpetuation of Beuys’ life they inevitably draw attention to death and continue the theme of the piece. (3)”Because these are still images of a moving action, the sense of life in the photograph is laid squarely beside the death of the hare, and a more expansively felt sense of death. What Beuys truly felt was that everyone was an artist. He sought to understand more deeply the role of art in society by stripping away the structure that surrounded artwork, and allowing it to spill into greater society, much in the same way he allowed his artwork to spill into his own personality. Beuys’ theory of social artwork included notions of art’s direct impact on the economic and culture welfare, aligning the creativity of the individual with the progress of a population. These views are reflected well in Beuys’ 1988 piece “7000 trees,” wherein he worked alongside a great number of people to plant trees throughout the city of Kassel. Later, some of these trees were paired with stone monuments, invoking a sense of the figure once present to plant them. In all Beuys’ pieces, the body is present, or an assumed space of the body, showing that there can be no separation between the person and world we engage with.
Process has become a major part of art today. Though process has always been an integral part of art making, today process has become the focus in some works. Process in basic form is the way in which something is made. There are many artists whose art focuses on process, such as Richard Serra and Cai Guo-Qiang. Both use process in ways to draw longer and more enhanced experiences of their work.
Richard Serra works with process I two ways. First is his exploration the materiality and physicality of metal. The second is the viewers consideration and reaction to the work. For Serra, it has been years of different works that have slowly lead him to creating subtle, but still monumental changes through the use of steel. In his earlier works, he works with the physicality of balanced steel, that seems extremely precise. He seems to be working with as many different possible ways of dealing with issues of balance and space in those early works. By exploring multiple executions, the making of each work becomes an investigation for the next work. This constant building up and reaction to previous work becomes his process.
In interviews, Serra reviles that he works in a pretty specific way. His process of creating works goes through several phases; an idea, models, construction, installation, and then sketching. What I found interesting as far as his process went was that he starts with making models, and then uses sketching as a way in the end of the process to keep his mind in constant dialogue with the work, and works to come. With looking at his retrospective work, he really shows this progression of form and space. You can go through chronologically and see that throughout his carrier, his work is constantly building upon itself. The work Sight Point, Serra has three vertical plates of steel that lean against each other, was built between 1971-1975. Twenty-five years later, he revisits the similar form, but takes new forms, like a slight curvature in the center of the work, which reinforces this direct relationship to the past.
Cai Guo-Qiang works are heavily involved with history. In most every work of his, he is relating the work back to Chinese history. Many of his works deal with fireworks, which have a very long and involved history. What becomes interesting about his firework projects, is that they are so temporal. They can only be viewed by being there for the presentation, or through documentation. The work is heavy involved with process by going through the tradition of using fireworks, but using documentation as a way to present the work. He also uses the elements of fireworks, gunpowder, as a art making medium. This work then becomes a direct representation and documentation of the process and progress of history.
Many of his installations are heavily involved with the viewer. The works for me, are hard to understand because there is so much built into the history that we are generally disconnected from. Though I am able to connect to them on a physical and visual way. This is what I find intriguing about his work, is that it is so visually appealing and compelling, that it immediately draws me in. This initial draw is what makes me want to investigate the work and go into the history that he so heavily builds up.
Process is a very important part of art making. I feel that today, it becomes a more integral part of the work by inviting the viewer to have more of a role in the investigation of the work. It in turn, causes the viewer to not take the work at face value, but look at it in terms of the artist and his/her context. By doing this, you are able to draw multiple conclusions that bring you to a better state of understanding. However, good work should still have an initial draw that invites the viewer in without having to be so indebted to the work.
Brown, Julia. Richard Serra Sculpture 1985-1998. Comp. Richard Koshalek. Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, 1999.
Friis-Hansen, Dana, Octavio Zaya, and Serizawa Takashi. Cai Guo-Qiang. New York: Phaidon, 2002.
Guse, Ernst-Gerhard, ed. Richard Serra. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1987.
"MoMA.org | Exhibitions | 2007 | Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years." MoMA | The Museum of Modern Art. 7 Feb. 2009 http://moma.org/exhibitions/2007/serra/>.
Felt and lard may not seem like the most powerful materials to incorporate into a piece by an artist, but not to Joseph Beuys. He claims that they were literally used to save his life when he crashed his plane in Russia fighting for Germany in World War II. Beuys considers them to have healing qualities, and uses them to “[come] to terms with his involvement in [World War II]” (Rothfuss). Beuys and his work embody the very essence of process based art. As a conceptual artist, Beuys’ ideas were brought to the forefront of each piece, and these were more important than a narrative elicited by a piece. His pieces “blurred boundaries between music, visual art and everyday life”(Tate museum). The concept or the way a piece can influence or challenge the audience’s pre-existing values, shine through in each of Bueys’ pieces. Beuys was personally involved in all his pieces, often visible in them, as a performer in the pieces. He was one of the artists beginning to tear down the walls between where work starts, and where the art begins. He saw art as the process on the whole, not just the final product, but all the energy that went into the pieces before they were finished. Beuys’ project, 7000 Oaks is a powerful piece, not only in terms of magnitude, but in the fact that it echoes his lifelong fight for social betterment and equality. He saw art as something that could, and should be done by everyone; not something to be merely placed on a pedestal. He was fired from several institutions, and met by dissent from purists, who often practiced in non-process based approaches to art. The project brought together people to be involved in a piece (and in a sense be artists) and to improve the town of Kassel, Germany, and was finished after his death (Dia Art Foundation). This exploration in both materials and subject matter comprises a large part of Beuy’s artistic process. Through the experimentation with materials, he constantly relates himself to the process of building. Through exploring these events in his past, he learns about himself, and can communicate personal revelations through his art. Any artist that dresses up in felt, plants trees, and tries to explain art to hares may initially sound odd, but inevitably bring a new spirit to art.
Rothfuss, http://www.walkerart.org/archive/4/9C43FDAD069C47F36167.htm Unknown, Tate Museum, http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/beuys/room_beuys.shtm Unknown, Dia Art Foundation, http://www.diabeacon.org/ltproj/7000/
Richard Serra
Richard Serra’s process consists of looking back and reflecting on his previous works of art and then posing a question or problem for him to fix, learning from the challenges overcome and lessons made evident from the past. While working on a piece, Serra create models at various scales of the final piece, and meticulously plan out how to construct the piece on a super-human scale. Serra will only make sketches of a piece during or after construction, as he does not want to allow the lack of a third dimension to stunt his work. At first, Serra constructed small pieces, which employed the use of metal shapes. Cylinders and squares of iron are the most commonly used objects. These pieces are experiments in the physical balance of the forms, the visual-spatial and bodily-spatial balance created by the forms. From these human sized forms, Serra moved on to further pushing the way that he reframed the audience’s sense of volume and space with larger pieces of shaped metal. Serra’s process is apparent in the transformation of his pieces over the years, and there is a clearly identifiable timeline progression from old to new; from small to huge. Serra has a knack for being able to reorient an individual and shape their spatial awareness. It could be said that his work is an interpretation of space. Serra does not want to assign a specific or personal interpretation to his work; he leaves it up to the audience to read the sculpture. Serra’s work is interesting in that he is so against incorporating his sculpture with architecture, or building a piece commercially for a building, but arguably shares more concerns and aspects of his process with architects than other sculptors. He must worry about how the audience will view the surrounding environment as frames by his piece, and about the physical challenges of maintaining a piece of several stories and making sure that it withstands nature and the laws of gravity. He must also get his materials to adhere to his will on the large scale. Once a material reaches a certain size, it must be reinforced or kept up with buttresses in order to remain standing. Richard Serra is an artist who really embodies the process driven approach to art. His experiments in form and function allow art to be created, while continuing to remain an investigator of the rules of the natural world and the challenges that they offer.
Ebony, David. “Infinite Passages: Serra in Bilbao” Art in America. November, 2005 Serra, Richard. PBS, Art 21 video Serra, Richard. "Rigging" Process
Rebecca Horn Rebecca Horn is a performance based artist who works with film, sculpture, spatial instillations, drawings, and photographs. Her work revolves around issues of the body and its relation to space. Avant-garde in multiple ways, each of Horn’s individual work is in dialogue with the next, creating a continuous stream of thought throughout her collective body of work. Her work stems from highly influential personal experiences that have allowed her to break the normative boundaries of the body and its environment(1). Specifically examining two of her performance based artworks, Spirit di Madreperia and Concert Riverse, the connection between body and space, time and environment will demonstrate how Horns work uses audience interaction to create a world all her own. Sprirt de Madreperia is an outdoor instillation located in the Italian city square of the Piazza del Pelbiscito. The instillation is charged by magnetic energy. Light rings made of mother of pearl hover high above the square. Beneath the cobble stone ground, cast iron is buried, which creates a charged magnetic energy field. When the viewer walks through the instillation they instantly become a part of the magnetized environment, and the space becomes activated due to the human interaction(1). It has been stated when critiquing this artwork that “each single instillation is a step towards breaking down the boundaries of space and time- that it opens up a crevice to a universe, the existence of which we can only see.(1)” Horn is creating a charged space that becomes engaged when the audience interacts with it. It creates a visceral space where the senses of the body are charged within the world the Horn has created. Horn is not constructing a passive environment to look at but she is creating an actively charged environment for the audience to become submerged in. Interaction is the activator within this instillation. Without the audience directly entering the space the charged environment is not activated. That is not to say that it does not exist without the dependency of the audience, for it would still be a magnetically charged space with or without the audience, but it is to say that the work is directly affected by interaction. It is interesting to take a pause for a moment and examine an aspect of Horns personal history in order to better understand her artistic creation. Horn, as a young art student, worked with fiberglass. Unaware of the safety precautions that working with fiberglass entails, Horn became ill because she spent too much time inhaling the shards of class. Horn was force to leave school and spend a year in a sanatorium(6). This time in quarantine made Horn very aware of her body’s frailty, and of what long term confinement can do to one’s mental state. Within a New York Times critic of Horns’ work it was stated that, Horn found herself thinking in terms of images of confinement and became obsessed with healing after her stay at the sanatorium(5). This experience occurred at the beginning of Horn’s artistic career and so it is an important element for consideration when examining the work that Horn creates. Going back to the first artwork, Spiriti di Madreperia, it is interesting to explore how confinement and healing, as well as body and space, play a role within the interaction of the artwork. Horn has created a space removed from the world, a quarantined space in the middle of a city that allows for isolation from all that surrounds her. Yet at the same time, her space is in dialogue with the city; mimicking the “charged” city that the piece is within. Furthermore she invites the audience to directly engage with this contained space. There is a duality between removal and invitation, interaction and isolation, which creates an interesting tension within her piece(2). Without the audience interaction, Horns work would not be activated, yet it would still be active. Just like Horn in quarantine, she was not actively engaged with the world, but she was still active and existing. She was still within the world just in a different space. It is as if she creates a space much like the time she was quarantined, but within her created space the audience is asked to engage and directly enter, something that could not occur while she was in quarantine. Another artwork that engages with the audience in a monumental way is Concert Reverse. Concert reverse is located in Germany in Der Zwinger, which is an ancient tower in Munster that has a long history of uses. First used as a shelter in WW1, it was then allocated to Hitler Youth. Later it was used by Gestapo for holding and torturing Russian and Polish prisoners. After the war it was boarded up and never used again, until Horn was introduced to it. Horn re-ignited the historically loaded sight. The sight begins at a center corridor, which was lit by kerosene lamps. The walkways echoed the noise of small steal hammers hitting the walls, and were also lit by the kerosene lamps. The different cells were treated the same. The central area was over run with vegetation, and the architecture had begun to break down and crumble. Located at the highest point of a tree within the central area was a glass funnel. The funnel dropped one drop of water, which fell on placid surface of water, located in a circular basin below the funnel. The final cell contained an egg pierced by needles and a cage perched on a table. The cage held a pair of snakes, which it has been made clear in all documentation, were feed weekly(6). This artwork takes a historic environment, a space full of destruction and shames and brings it back to life(6). It pierces the veins of history which bleeds out the infected moments of humanity. It has been reported that the egg alludes to the killing of prime reason and that the snakes are the dark reason. Again, Horn is taking a space of isolation and quarantine, a removed place from society, and she is re-opening it for visitation. She is dualistically re-claiming the space while at the same time maintaining the history found within it. It is not that by re-engaging with this space that Horn is transforming it, but she is personally marking the space with her own artistic voice. Furthermore, she creates an environment for the viewer to interact with and travel through becoming completely submerged within the work and space(3). She is permitting a historical conversation between those who enter the space to become re-engaged. This tower, at one time injected with human life, suffering, and heritage, was castrated and removed from society. Yet, the people that this place affected have not been removed; they have not been boarded up and pushed aside. Horn creates a means to reenter that area, a back door into the historical perils of the time. Without the audience moving through the work, through the environment, there would be no connection, no direct interaction. The work is dependent on people to enter the building and explore its crevices; it encouraged the audience to become engulfed by the environment and everything that it stands for(4). It is within that element that her work creates enigmatic interaction between audience and work. Neither one element is dominated over the other, but both need each other to fully translate the conceptual idea that Horn has attempted to create. Her work ranges from interactive to image based, but the commonality between all of them is undeniable. As an artist her conscious decision to make each work in dialogue with the next, to create a constant flow of ideas, allows for her conceptual ideas to take many shapes and forms(6). Her interactive work engages space and the audience, but at the same time creates an intriguing sense of isolation and removal.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Felix Gonzalez-Torres is a Cuban artist who was born in 1957 and died in 1996 of AIDS. He is represented by the Andrea Rosen Gallery and his works range from photography, video, sculpture, to interactive environment pieces. His works often asks for direct interaction with the audience and tends to be centered around the complex questions of public and private space(4). Torres, through his interactive pieces, broke many of the early traditions of museum and gallery etiquette. An artistic pioneer, Torres used his art to submerge the gallery environment with personal experiences and political issues(1). The infiltration of the personal into the public environment allows for the audience to have an intimate relationship with Torres’ work. Torres’ work, at times, directly engages with the audience by allowing the audience to take a part of the work with them. It has been written “that the artist becomes the goods offered of sale to be consumed by recipients”(1). Looking at two works, Untitled, 1991, Printed Billboard, and Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA) 1991, 175 lb of fruit flasher candy, the duality between public and private, immortality and time, allows for the audience to have a heavy hand in the life and solidity of Torres’ work. Torres had a grounded reality of his mortality that is much stronger then most of those in the world. He knew his death was imminent, he knew what would kill him, and he had witnessed death directly through the loss of his partner Ross(3). This is a crucial aspect when understanding some of the conceptual choices that Torres made within his work. It has been stated that “The nature of his work, in general, subtly yet emphatically intensifies ones own self-awareness, subjectivity, and sense of personal history-it sets up a conflation of public and private and the personal with the professional(3).” The two works selected allow for the two main dualities of his work, the pubic and private, and the immortality verses mortality, to be discussed. The first work, Untitled 1991, consists of a printed billboard that depicts the top half of a white bed which is unmade. The sheets and pillows of the bed depict the imprints of two bodies that once laid in the bed. Displayed on a city street corner, this billboard pushes a physical symbol of the private life into the public sphere. It has no descriptive symbols to suggest who laid within the bed, but is simply the markings of an act, the physical blueprint of a moment. Furthermore, this artwork directly engages with the duality between public and private spheres of life(1). The highly intimate image is publically displayed for all to see; it takes the personal and pushes it out into the public. This work, which depicts such a generic image of an imprinted bed, allows for all who see it to connect with the work because each one of us can identify with the image(3). What is further interesting is that it creates an androgynous image, because there is no suggestion of specific genders. The bed is intimate, the lack of figures allows for any person to transplant themselves with the work, creating an intimate connection with the work. The audience interacts with the work because it invades their space. By being a billboard, the artwork is transforming itself into a symbol of communication. If this image were in an art gallery the dependence on interaction would be drastically different. The audience would simply look at the image, interpret it, and move on. But, by blowing the image into enormous size and placing it in a public space, this artwork is interacting with the community that it invades. It pushes the public to view this image, which stems from the private domain, and it asks them to interact with the context of the image in their public life. In a sense, this is an image of absence; an image where a human interaction should occur, and yet there is no human visible. The second artwork that will be examined is the Untitled (Portrait of Ross in La) which contains 175 lbs of Fruit Flasher Candy. This Piece consists of brightly wrapped candy which is compiled in a corner of the room in a mound on the floor. The audience members are encouraged to take pieces of the candy as they please. This artwork, and many others like it, completely interacts with the audience by allowing the audience to take a part of the artwork into the personal life of the audience(3). It is a sensory driven object; visually pleasing candy which can be touched, removed, held, eaten, smelt, and saved all by the audience. Both figuratively and literally, the work could be consumed by the audience without the artist having any say in the matter. It is an interesting analogy compared to the personal situation of Torres. AIDS was slowly eating away at Torres, just as the audience slowly eats away at his work. Furthermore, once Torres was finally gone from the world, his memories and influences within the art community are left in the hands of those still alive. Much like once the candy is gone, it is in the hands of the audience who interacted with the piece to chose how they wish to have the artwork integrated into their lives. Even pushing this further, one could argue that Torres is entering into the personal domain of each individual that takes the candy, because they are taking a piece of him with them. The interplay between personal and public is vast within the work of Torres. On a more broad scope, the work pushed for a break in the museum mold by encouraging an unconventional use of gallery space(4). Not only is the artist encouraged to take the work with them, but the work is constantly in flux, moving and shrinking based on how much the audience chooses to interact with it. Without the audience interaction this piece would be a stagnate object, but because of the audience, it is an ever evolving work of art. Torres’ work is vast in medium choice and conceptual ideas. It addresses a broad spectrum of issues, from AIDS awareness to the loss of a lover(2). But within the two specifically examined works there is a push for the audience to make artwork something more. What I mean by this is that Torres lays out an artwork, be it an image of a bed or a pile of candy, and then he asks the viewer to bring something more to the table. He encourages the viewer to take his work to the next level and allow it to invade their lives. Ether through walking to work and interacting with a billboard of ghost lovers, or by eating a piece of the artwork, he is pushing the responsibility of the audience within his work.
Bibliography of Rebecca Horn
1.) www.Rebecca-Horn.cle/pages/biography.html. Accessed Between February 22-25th. 2.) www.medienkunstnetz.de/artist/Horn/biography/. Accessed Between February 22-25th. 3.) www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?Cgroupid=99999961&aristid.org . Accessed Between February 22-25th. 4.) Cooke, Lynne. “Rebecca Horn New York Guggenheim Museum.” The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 135, No 1086 (Sept 1993.) 5.) Hugher, Robert. “Mechanics Illustrated.” Time Magazine. Monday, September 13, 1993. 6.) Morgan, Stuart. Celant, Germano. Rebecca Horn. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1995.
Biography of Felix Gonzalez-Torres
1.)www.Queerculturalcenter.org/pages/FelixGT/FelixIndex.html. Accessed Between February 22-25th.
2.) Storr, Robert. T. “Felix Gonzalez-Torres Interview” Art Press. January 1995, p24-32.
3.) Elger, Dietmar. Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Ostfildern-Ruit : Cantz ; New York, N.Y. : Distribution in the US, Distributed Art Publishers, c1997.
4.) www.Andrearosengallery.com/artist/felix-gonzalez-torres.com. Accessed Between February 22-25th.
Process Art
ReplyDeleteKate Brown
True Process Art to me is something a bit different then what I feel art really is. I imagine it as being something all about the making no matter what the artist decides to create. Imagine someone collecting stones from places in their life that meant the most to them then crushing them all up and creating a new stone from that. The new stone could be put next to any other one and look just the same. The end product means nothing whereas the process means everything. Some artists have taken this idea and used it in ways that will give them an end product that looks nice and can draw a crowd. The crown and the attempt at making this process come out with something beautiful is where the art comes into play. So really process art is a combination of meaning, action, and aesthetics.
I feel that there are many different types of process artists. From what I have seen some use this new activity to try to get the audience to look at the world a different way, others use it as a meditative art, even more attach deep meaning to their piece. There are many that combine these different approaches. Two of the process artists who I admire the most are Gabriel Orozoco and Richard Serra. I like them the most because their techniques end up with odd artistic pieces that make me like how they think.
Gabriel Orozoco intrigues me because he has always lived his life a bit differently. In the movie we watched in class about him I remember him walking around looking for beautiful pieces of trash or a really cool crack in the sidewalk. He said he still remembered all sort of things from his walks as a kid. He has formed his mind to see a pretty picture or a nice sculpture that can be made wherever he goes. The picture or sculpture isn’t necessarily there but the pieces he finds around him get made into how he views the world. I admire people who see the world differently and form their own. His piece called the mobile matrix is absolutely bizarre and I would never think of making it. He decided he needed a whale put in the national library of Mexico. On the whale he and his team drew dark circles of graphite along the whole body coming from different points. The project started with an image in his head, continued with excavating the whale skeleton, cleaning it, putting it together, coloring it, and hanging it in the library. It was very process intensive and ended up beautiful. I like his pieces like this and I like him because I feel that even though he does process art he really makes it artistic.
Richard Serra is more of an architect who makes structures that confuse your mind a bit. I wish he made playgrounds because they would be fantastic. As a kid he drew things around him all the time. Not because he wanted it to be art but because it is how he functions and thinks about objects. Serra’s art pieces are mostly made from huge pieces of large metal sheets. He gets large groups of people and machines to help him set up his pieces. Before he does this he models them on a small scale and researches the shape he wants the piece to be. I like that his work means so much to him in the sense that he wants it to be walked through, around, and thought about. One of his pieces called The Band is a good example of the process art he makes. It was made for the space it was placed in and really engages the viewer. He explains that every part is different but still similar and you can continuously walk around it while feeling like it never has an end. It is not a circle but is tricky in that it makes you feel like it never ends. The process of making this piece for him is modeling an interesting form then taking it to the steel mill where he finds ways to make the piece. He also talks about the changing of color that happens to his pieces over time as being part of the art. The viewer of a piece like The Band can walk throughout the piece and just think while still being stimulated by his or her surroundings. The other aspect of this art being about the process is not just making it himself but bringing others in the building of it.
I believe the reason I like both of these artists because they seem reasonable to me. The works they do are definitely process art but they turn out looking great. A lot of work went into the projects and you can tell the projects all needed skill and an interesting view on the world before they could be thought up. The process art that I am not so fond and seems unreasonable to be considered art is the type that gets displayed out for the public even though it is a pile of paint or splattered walls. To me this is like displaying the stone we talked about making earlier as some great piece of artwork. It isn’t anything special to anyone else but the creator. It’s silly to go admire someone else’s rock instead of making your own.
Sources
Richard Serra
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2007/serra/
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/serra/index.html#
http://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag02/oct02/serra/serra.shtml
Gabriel Orozco
http://blog.art21.org/2008/09/18/gabriel-orozco-mobile-matrix/
http://www.artmag.com/museums/a_usa/auslamc/orozco.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Orozco
Sculpture Research Project 1
ReplyDeleteCai Gup Qiang
Sculptor Cai Gup Qiang is a Chinese born artist whose choice of medium ranges from gunpowder, fireworks, to full scale automobiles(1). His artwork covers a range of work that has been described as both violent and gorgeous, and contemporary and traditional (1). Before diving into the conceptual basis of Qiang’s work there are a few aspects of his life that provide a foundation for better understanding his work. Qiang was born in China, however he has spend a large amount of time in both Japan and New York(1). This migration from Non-western to Western is best described in an interview with Qiang, who states that he considers himself “in self-imposed exile from both countries”(1). With that mental state in mind, it is also important to know that Qiang studied stage design within college, and specifically focused on a medium that emphasized space, light, time-based effects, and audience response(1). With that as a foundation for understanding both Qiang’s cultural roots and educational foundation the conceptual basis for his artwork will be explored.
Qiang’s sculptural artwork, as well as gunpowder paintings, contain a duality between violence and beauty. His artwork, at first glance, could seem unnervingly violent, and hyper masculine, yet there is an undercurrent of beauty and control(2). Conceptually, Qiang’s artwork explores the relationship between destruction and creation, ancient tradition and contemporary society; specifically the entanglement of the past with the materiality of the present, and the interface between the external stimulus and the internal intelligence.(4) His concepts are complex and the depth that they created within each artwork is unnervingly vast. Through the exploration of three artworks, Light Cycle, Inopportune, and a Series of Self Portraits, the complex conceptual dually that Qiang creates within his art will be explored.
Specifically looking at his firework artwork, Light Cycle, the exploration of time, tradition, and material verses spiritual can be addressed. Light Cycle is a fireworks show that was so vast in size and scale that Qiang intended it to be seen from outer space(1). Light Cycle was a 1,000 foot long show that occurred over a reservoir(1). The entire show was over in five minuets.(1) One of the key aspects within some of his larger works, such as Light Cycle, is the relationship between the bird’s eye and the man’s eye(3). Qiang creates work with the intention for the best view to be from the sky/outer space(3). His work intentionally incorporates a celestial visibility that the artist believes is equally important as the view from the ground.(3) This acknowledgement of his art being created and appreciated by a higher audience, both literally and figuratively, shows what a large raneg of audiences his art is able to tap into.
His work explores the duality between destruction and creation, beauty and violence. Gunpowder has strong cultural importance within Qiang’s work. Gunpowder was invented by the Chinese while monks were trying to create an elixir of immortality(3). Within western culture gunpowder equals violence, power, and technology. Qiang uses gunpowder to create a series of self-portraits, as well as many other works of art. Specifically looking at his self portraits, these artworks are created from residue of a series of small explosions where the outline of the body is the only thing that remains intact(3). Within the process of creating these artworks the duality of subject and object, culture and violence can be seen(4). There is a strange clashing of interaction and removal that occurs within the self portraits. While the subject is the artist himself the object left behind is simply an explosion marking what was once there(4). The process of exploding gunpowder allows the artist to be an invisible object, a negative subject. Furthermore, by using gunpowder as a means to mark his place on the paper, Qiang is entangling the cultural origins of the past with the materiality of the present(4). He is exploring a violent means to make a mark but not a violent means to mark something, or someone.
The melting of non western and western culture, as well as past tradition and present society, within his artwork can be seen through the sculpture titled Inopportune. The sculpture consists of ten cars(3). The first car sits on the ground, the next two cars raising up into the air, followed by 6 other cars which are tumbling and turning throughout the sky. While these cars appear to be acting out a violent accident, the final car within the series sits on the ground with no damage. Within the cars roped light stems out from every direction, as if lighting bullet holes. The format of the sculpture is in direct connection to ancient Chinese scroll paintings. The cars are arranged in a long horizontal format with four parts that can be seen separately but also make key visual connections(3). There is a clear duality of violence and serenity within the piece. It has been described that the sculpture appears to be a Hollywood car crash, yet does not come through at the end of the piece(2). The series of cars, much like the self-portraits, are not acts of violence ending in destruction, but violence as a means to depict the transition of 10 cars suspended in the air. It has been described that his artwork shows direct signs of suffering without incorporating any signs of blood, and that it is able to convey the struggle of violence through artistic form(3). These cars are a prime example of that suffering without hurt. It is a crash with a happy ending; a disaster that turns out just fine.
The artists himself has been reported as seeing his art as a tool for wiping the slate clean and starting over(3). Looking at his firework artwork it is interesting to think about such an act of powerful violence as a means for starting over. His firework artwork lasts for a moment in time and its celestial volume is over in a matter of minuets. There is no visual means to come back and revisit the artwork unless through looking at a photograph. However a photograph does not capture the smell of the powder, the noise of the blast, or every different perspective that this artwork could be seen. It is interesting to consider that his artwork is a means to start fresh through violence. Western thinking usually associates violence with endings and destruction, yet Qiang flips that concept on its side by creating beauty and life through his artwork.
Qiang’s process is interesting when thinking about his material use and the product of the process. Qiang’s is a process artist, but something that would be interesting to explore is how vast that process connects his work to different cultures, societies, and traditions. His artwork is the product of fireworks and gunpowder, but those processes have cultural and social stigmas attached to them, and his artwork is also the product of the process of those stigmas. Gunpowder and war and death are all socially constructed to be linked with one another and so his artwork plays with the social destructive power of gunpowder as well as the process of creating something out of gunpowder. His ability to be removed from cultural traditions and values, as well as flirt with them, creates a strange relationship for the viewer and audience. He is using violence in a normally non-western way and using Chinese tradition in a non traditional manner. It allows for his work to remain free from interpretive constraints because it is so conceptually malleable.
Janine Antoni
Janine Antoni is a contemporary sculptore and performance based artist who has been categorized as an embodied autobiographical sculpture(1). Her work concentrates on issues of consumerism, contemporary society, and femininity(1). Her main medium of choice is her own body, which creates a very personal and literal means of creating works(2). It has been described that her main intentions for creating art is to take the compulsive practices of femininity and reflect it back on society through the use of her body(2). Within her work, the compulsive practices that she attempts to criticize become the obsessive actions and rituals that she must perform. The relationship that Antoni creates with the audience is removed and distant(1). The audience is permitted to see only what Antoni wishes them to see, and the amount of interactivity that they have with the work is also clearly controlled by Antoni. Her work ranges from video, performance based, sculptural, to textile work(3). Looking at four of her works, Lick and Lather, Gnawed, Slumber, and Loving Cair, the conceptual layering within Antoni’s work will be addressed.
Antoni has been quoted as saying that there are two forces that define our society, the desire to consume and the desire to discard, and we are a society of bulimics(2). Bulimia, in Antoni’s terms, is our societies constant and compulsive consuming and discarding of the products of our culture(2). Her artwork is a way to use her self to expose the compulsive practices of society, specifically concerning female compulsive action(2). Gnaw is a multi-dimensional sculpture consisting of one 600lb block of chocolate and one 600lb block of lard that were set up in a gallery for the audience to view through a glass wall. After gallery hours were over, Antoni would gnaw away at both blocks, but when gallery hours occurred the blocks would remain stagnant. From the chunks of lard and chocolate that she gnawed away, 130 lipsticks were made, from the lard, and 27 heart shaped candy boxes were made, from the chocolate(1). Antoni believes that this work represents the two fundamental forces that define our society, the desire to consume and the desire to discard(4). By gnawing at the blocks only when there is no audience she is engaging with the bulimic habits of our society; she is consuming only to create objects of synthetic beauty(4). Furthermore, her body, and the desire to eat, remain invisible to the audience(2). It is only the markings left behind that suggest the process of gnawing away at the blocks(2).
Antoni has taken on bulimic tendencies, such as eating only when no one can see and eating in massive amounts simply to discard the food, all for the sake of creating synthetic symbols of beauty and femininity. All the gnawing and biting away at the chocolate only creates lipstick and empty chocolate boxes. The process of gnawing, and the unseen reality of time spent gnawing, is what creates the feminine symbols for the audience to see. Therefore, much like a bulimic throws up to remain skinny and “beautifull”, Antoni gnaws to create objects of “beauty.”
Another artwork of Antoni that plays with the duality of both the removal of the body as well as use of the body is Lick and Lather(2). Within this work the artist has created 14 classical busts of herself from chocolate and lard. She then washed and licked the busts until she has obliterated her facial features(2). Common threads of conceptual ideas run through this artwork as well as Gnawed. Within this artwork, the body, and the compulsive acts of the body, are only visible by the marks that are left behind. The work that went into washing and licking away the features of each face are hardly seen, and it is only the effortless product that is left for the audience to view(2). Much like the ritualistic beautification of females within contemporary society, the work and time that was spent on altering the face and body is never exposed, and only the effortless product remains.
Within the piece Slumber, a loom extends throughout the whole space of a room(4). Antoni slept in the room, while being hooked up to a polysomnograph, which recorded her REM patterns(4). She then used those dream patterns to weave a blanket, in the morning, using the nightgown from the night before as her weaving material(4). It has been discussed that this piece represents the bodies hungers and desires as invisible and illegible, except as disappearing traces(2). In other words, the dreams and desires that Antoni’s brain is playing out are not acknowledged or addressed, but are simply consumed to be made into a blanket. The artist is simply turning her thoughts into a product for consumption. Again this artwork adds another dimension to the bulimic tendencies of societies consuming and discarding. While the other artworks involved physicality as a means to consume and digest beauty. This artwork uses physical work, the weaving, to consume and digest mental activity.
Loving Care, another performance based work, involved more direct engagement with the viewer(2). Within this work Antoni painstakingly washes a floor with her hair, which is dipped in black paint. As the piece begins, the audience is permitted to be in the room with her, but as she mops across the floor, the audience is pushed back until they are eventually forced outside the room(2). Antoni is again obsessively exaggerating a domestic chore at the price of her own body. Unlike Gnaw however, the audience is forced to interact with her painstaking activity(2). The audience must watch as Antoni washes the floor, and they are pushed out of her ritualistic world as her chore builds up. The separation that divides the audience from the act gives Antoni’s actions power and aggression. She obsessively mops, un-fazed by the people around her, only engaging with them in order to successfully finish her domestic chore. Her body is the tool for creation, the tool that exposes the obsessive aspects of the chore, and the tool that cannot disengage with the very act that she is trying to expose(2).
Within all of these artworks the process of creation allows for familiar acts of femininity and society to become de-familiarized and analyzes. By using her body to gnaw, mop, and weave, she is transforming her body into a process(1).
One aspect of her work that has not been fully addressed by critics of her work is the issue of preservation. Antoni wishes to expose societies bulimic obsession with consumption and discarding, yet the aftermath of her process is preserved in galleries nad museums. Within an interview about Slubmer, Antoni described how one day the loom she was using was becoming weak(4). She needed to re-sand it and replace a few parts to be able to continue weaving her blankets. When she called for supplies, she was informed that she could not alter the work without permission from the museum and assistance from the conservation team(4). Due to the gallery setting, her work did not belong to her anymore and she was not allowed to alter it without permission. What this situation addresses is the transformation that her work takes from an obsessive act for society to reflect on to a preserved moment in time. The 600lb block of chocolate will not be gnawed on anymore, it sits for all to see, and I wonder how that changes the intention of her artwork? Would she see galleries and museums as another means of societal consumption; they are always there waiting to be viewed and then tossed aside for the next exiting thing? Or does having her art within a gallery or museum change the way it is understood by the audience? As time passes and the artifacts of her performances remain how will her art change?
Bibliography for Janine Antoni
1.) http://www.artandculture.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/ACLive.woa/wa/artist?id=902. Accessed January 30th- February 2nd.
2.) Smith, Sidonie. Watson, Julia. “Interfaces-Women/Autobiography/Image/Performance.” Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2002.
3.) http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/antoni/index.html. Accessed January 30th-February 2nd.
4.) Coddington, James. New Materials, New Ideas: Issues in Conservation. MOMA, vol. 4, no. 6 (August 2001) p 2-6.
Bibliography for Cai Guo Qiang
1.) Cotter, Holland. "Public Art Both Violent and Gorgeous". New York Times (New York) Sep. 14, 2003.
2.)Cameron, Dan. "Blinded by the Light", Cai Guo-Qiang: Head On, Frankfurt am Main: Deutsche Bank AG, 2006, pp. 19-24.
3.) Glueck, Grace. "The Cars Aren't Really Exploding, but the Terrorist Metaphor Is". The New York Times (USA) Feb. 18, 2005: E33, E39.
4.)Ross, David A. "Fear of Remembering", Cai Guo-Qiang: Transparent Monument, Milan: Edizioni Charta, 2006, pp. 10-13.
Process Research Paper – Ana Mendieta & Joseph Beuys
ReplyDeleteIn the work of Ana Mendieta, the most distinguishing aspect of her process is her unavoidable placement within the work. To many, her work seems to be an extension of herself, where the meaning of her form is exploded to encompass a human engagement with the environment as well as the perceived nature of the female. Working out of the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, Mendieta’s work is grouped with earth and body works, as wells as performance art and film. Of her own medium, she states: I have thrown myself into the very elements that produced me, using the earth as my canvas and my soul as my tools. (Michael Duncan)”
Mendieta’s work eliminates intermediary materials between the artist and the world being engaged with. The visceral quality of her work is explained through her materials: blood, earth, paint, ash, and body. The process for the creation of her art pieces is inextricable from the process of gaining an awareness of herself. This is seen through pieces such as those in “Siluetas, (1973-1977)” where Mendieta’s own form, or the silhouette of her form, is transplanted onto the landscape. In one piece, she is seen lying down covered in grass; in another she is seen standing naked in front of a tree, coated in mud. In these, there is always a physical contact occurring between the individual and the earth – even to the point of ambiguity, where the two are hard to differentiate. Of this series, Melanie McGanney writes: “The series becomes increasingly evanescent; at times the audience sees just a trace of the being that stood there, transient images of the body, or merely a silhouette. The focus of the art is always on the presence or absence of the artist herself, and her relationship with the canvas of nature. (1)” The irony in these pieces is that the image of the body is so intensified that it is ultimately lost. Mendieta undergoes such a compelling investigation of her person as a female artist and as a product of the earth that she allows herself to be subsumed into those things, becoming a motif.
In another series, titled “Body Tracks,” Mendieta smears a mixture of tempera paint and animal blood onto a canvas in gestures taking her from the standing arms-spread pose to the floor. These pieces evoke the sense presence gone, yet meant. McGanney states: “In itself, this gesture acted as an affirmation of femininity, but it also referenced and denounced the sexist male artistic establishment.” In this work is seen allusions to the female menstrual movements and, at times, evocations of the uterus, with hands sweeping outstretched downward in a “V” shape. The mark is made with blood and paint by Mendieta’s arms, and it is to be noted that the product is not simply the mark left, but the video or photograph of the mark being made. In this way, her work is constant expression, not artifact. Michael Duncan comments on such work: “The blood pieces are crucial works in Mendieta’s development; purgative self portraits that seem psychologically to prepare for the artist’s shift into the ‘Silueta’ series. (2)” Considering this, Mendieta’s personal path consistently mirrors that which her artwork takes. This self consideration is never compromised for her artwork, but rather propels it.
The emphasis on process in the work of Joseph Beuys is perhaps the central reason for its effectiveness in engaging the audience. What facilitates this is Beuys’ careful alignment with himself as an artist and himself as an individual. The “actions” that Beuys conducted throughout the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s of the artist’s ideas even in their name. As an “action,” there is an assumed subject performing the action. Beuys draws attention to himself as a person, dismissing the attributed title of artist.
In his work: “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare,” Beuys, face covered in honey and gold leaf, cradles a dead hare across his chest, whispering to him in a room filled with pictures. This work is made effective in the time the artist is personally present in the work. The facial coverings generalize his figure, allowing him to substitute for man at large, and the intimacy between him and the hare becomes a social act. Henry Garner comments on this work and the impact of the photography: “The photographs are not secondary to the action, they exist in themselves and serve to emphasize the action. In their perpetuation of Beuys’ life they inevitably draw attention to death and continue the theme of the piece. (3)”Because these are still images of a moving action, the sense of life in the photograph is laid squarely beside the death of the hare, and a more expansively felt sense of death.
What Beuys truly felt was that everyone was an artist. He sought to understand more deeply the role of art in society by stripping away the structure that surrounded artwork, and allowing it to spill into greater society, much in the same way he allowed his artwork to spill into his own personality. Beuys’ theory of social artwork included notions of art’s direct impact on the economic and culture welfare, aligning the creativity of the individual with the progress of a population. These views are reflected well in Beuys’ 1988 piece “7000 trees,” wherein he worked alongside a great number of people to plant trees throughout the city of Kassel. Later, some of these trees were paired with stone monuments, invoking a sense of the figure once present to plant them. In all Beuys’ pieces, the body is present, or an assumed space of the body, showing that there can be no separation between the person and world we engage with.
Research
ReplyDeleteProcess has become a major part of art today. Though process has always been an integral part of art making, today process has become the focus in some works. Process in basic form is the way in which something is made. There are many artists whose art focuses on process, such as Richard Serra and Cai Guo-Qiang. Both use process in ways to draw longer and more enhanced experiences of their work.
Richard Serra works with process I two ways. First is his exploration the materiality and physicality of metal. The second is the viewers consideration and reaction to the work. For Serra, it has been years of different works that have slowly lead him to creating subtle, but still monumental changes through the use of steel. In his earlier works, he works with the physicality of balanced steel, that seems extremely precise. He seems to be working with as many different possible ways of dealing with issues of balance and space in those early works. By exploring multiple executions, the making of each work becomes an investigation for the next work. This constant building up and reaction to previous work becomes his process.
In interviews, Serra reviles that he works in a pretty specific way. His process of creating works goes through several phases; an idea, models, construction, installation, and then sketching. What I found interesting as far as his process went was that he starts with making models, and then uses sketching as a way in the end of the process to keep his mind in constant dialogue with the work, and works to come. With looking at his retrospective work, he really shows this progression of form and space. You can go through chronologically and see that throughout his carrier, his work is constantly building upon itself. The work Sight Point, Serra has three vertical plates of steel that lean against each other, was built between 1971-1975. Twenty-five years later, he revisits the similar form, but takes new forms, like a slight curvature in the center of the work, which reinforces this direct relationship to the past.
Cai Guo-Qiang works are heavily involved with history. In most every work of his, he is relating the work back to Chinese history. Many of his works deal with fireworks, which have a very long and involved history. What becomes interesting about his firework projects, is that they are so temporal. They can only be viewed by being there for the presentation, or through documentation. The work is heavy involved with process by going through the tradition of using fireworks, but using documentation as a way to present the work. He also uses the elements of fireworks, gunpowder, as a art making medium. This work then becomes a direct representation and documentation of the process and progress of history.
Many of his installations are heavily involved with the viewer. The works for me, are hard to understand because there is so much built into the history that we are generally disconnected from. Though I am able to connect to them on a physical and visual way. This is what I find intriguing about his work, is that it is so visually appealing and compelling, that it immediately draws me in. This initial draw is what makes me want to investigate the work and go into the history that he so heavily builds up.
Process is a very important part of art making. I feel that today, it becomes a more integral part of the work by inviting the viewer to have more of a role in the investigation of the work. It in turn, causes the viewer to not take the work at face value, but look at it in terms of the artist and his/her context. By doing this, you are able to draw multiple conclusions that bring you to a better state of understanding. However, good work should still have an initial draw that invites the viewer in without having to be so indebted to the work.
Brown, Julia. Richard Serra Sculpture 1985-1998. Comp. Richard Koshalek. Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, 1999.
Friis-Hansen, Dana, Octavio Zaya, and Serizawa Takashi. Cai Guo-Qiang. New York: Phaidon, 2002.
Guse, Ernst-Gerhard, ed. Richard Serra. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1987.
"MoMA.org | Exhibitions | 2007 | Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years." MoMA | The Museum of Modern Art. 7 Feb. 2009 http://moma.org/exhibitions/2007/serra/>.
PBS. 30 Jan. 2009 http://www.pbs.org/art21/arists/cai/index.html>.
PBS. 30 Jan. 2009 http://www.pbs.org/art21/arists/serra/index.html>.
30 Jan. 2009 http://www.caiguogiang.com/>.
Ben Casto
ReplyDeleteJoseph Beuys
Felt and lard may not seem like the most powerful materials to incorporate into a piece by an artist, but not to Joseph Beuys. He claims that they were literally used to save his life when he crashed his plane in Russia fighting for Germany in World War II. Beuys considers them to have healing qualities, and uses them to “[come] to terms with his involvement in [World War II]” (Rothfuss).
Beuys and his work embody the very essence of process based art. As a conceptual artist, Beuys’ ideas were brought to the forefront of each piece, and these were more important than a narrative elicited by a piece. His pieces “blurred boundaries between music, visual art and everyday life”(Tate museum). The concept or the way a piece can influence or challenge the audience’s pre-existing values, shine through in each of Bueys’ pieces.
Beuys was personally involved in all his pieces, often visible in them, as a performer in the pieces. He was one of the artists beginning to tear down the walls between where work starts, and where the art begins. He saw art as the process on the whole, not just the final product, but all the energy that went into the pieces before they were finished.
Beuys’ project, 7000 Oaks is a powerful piece, not only in terms of magnitude, but in the fact that it echoes his lifelong fight for social betterment and equality. He saw art as something that could, and should be done by everyone; not something to be merely placed on a pedestal. He was fired from several institutions, and met by dissent from purists, who often practiced in non-process based approaches to art. The project brought together people to be involved in a piece (and in a sense be artists) and to improve the town of Kassel, Germany, and was finished after his death (Dia Art Foundation).
This exploration in both materials and subject matter comprises a large part of Beuy’s artistic process. Through the experimentation with materials, he constantly relates himself to the process of building. Through exploring these events in his past, he learns about himself, and can communicate personal revelations through his art. Any artist that dresses up in felt, plants trees, and tries to explain art to hares may initially sound odd, but inevitably bring a new spirit to art.
Rothfuss, http://www.walkerart.org/archive/4/9C43FDAD069C47F36167.htm
Unknown, Tate Museum, http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/beuys/room_beuys.shtm
Unknown, Dia Art Foundation, http://www.diabeacon.org/ltproj/7000/
Richard Serra
Richard Serra’s process consists of looking back and reflecting on his previous works of art and then posing a question or problem for him to fix, learning from the challenges overcome and lessons made evident from the past. While working on a piece, Serra create models at various scales of the final piece, and meticulously plan out how to construct the piece on a super-human scale. Serra will only make sketches of a piece during or after construction, as he does not want to allow the lack of a third dimension to stunt his work.
At first, Serra constructed small pieces, which employed the use of metal shapes. Cylinders and squares of iron are the most commonly used objects. These pieces are experiments in the physical balance of the forms, the visual-spatial and bodily-spatial balance created by the forms. From these human sized forms, Serra moved on to further pushing the way that he reframed the audience’s sense of volume and space with larger pieces of shaped metal. Serra’s process is apparent in the transformation of his pieces over the years, and there is a clearly identifiable timeline progression from old to new; from small to huge.
Serra has a knack for being able to reorient an individual and shape their spatial awareness. It could be said that his work is an interpretation of space. Serra does not want to assign a specific or personal interpretation to his work; he leaves it up to the audience to read the sculpture.
Serra’s work is interesting in that he is so against incorporating his sculpture with architecture, or building a piece commercially for a building, but arguably shares more concerns and aspects of his process with architects than other sculptors. He must worry about how the audience will view the surrounding environment as frames by his piece, and about the physical challenges of maintaining a piece of several stories and making sure that it withstands nature and the laws of gravity. He must also get his materials to adhere to his will on the large scale. Once a material reaches a certain size, it must be reinforced or kept up with buttresses in order to remain standing. Richard Serra is an artist who really embodies the process driven approach to art. His experiments in form and function allow art to be created, while continuing to remain an investigator of the rules of the natural world and the challenges that they offer.
Ebony, David. “Infinite Passages: Serra in Bilbao” Art in America. November, 2005
Serra, Richard. PBS, Art 21 video
Serra, Richard. "Rigging" Process
Research for Project 2
ReplyDeleteRebecca Horn
Rebecca Horn is a performance based artist who works with film, sculpture, spatial instillations, drawings, and photographs. Her work revolves around issues of the body and its relation to space. Avant-garde in multiple ways, each of Horn’s individual work is in dialogue with the next, creating a continuous stream of thought throughout her collective body of work. Her work stems from highly influential personal experiences that have allowed her to break the normative boundaries of the body and its environment(1). Specifically examining two of her performance based artworks, Spirit di Madreperia and Concert Riverse, the connection between body and space, time and environment will demonstrate how Horns work uses audience interaction to create a world all her own.
Sprirt de Madreperia is an outdoor instillation located in the Italian city square of the Piazza del Pelbiscito. The instillation is charged by magnetic energy. Light rings made of mother of pearl hover high above the square. Beneath the cobble stone ground, cast iron is buried, which creates a charged magnetic energy field. When the viewer walks through the instillation they instantly become a part of the magnetized environment, and the space becomes activated due to the human interaction(1). It has been stated when critiquing this artwork that “each single instillation is a step towards breaking down the boundaries of space and time- that it opens up a crevice to a universe, the existence of which we can only see.(1)” Horn is creating a charged space that becomes engaged when the audience interacts with it. It creates a visceral space where the senses of the body are charged within the world the Horn has created. Horn is not constructing a passive environment to look at but she is creating an actively charged environment for the audience to become submerged in. Interaction is the activator within this instillation. Without the audience directly entering the space the charged environment is not activated. That is not to say that it does not exist without the dependency of the audience, for it would still be a magnetically charged space with or without the audience, but it is to say that the work is directly affected by interaction.
It is interesting to take a pause for a moment and examine an aspect of Horns personal history in order to better understand her artistic creation. Horn, as a young art student, worked with fiberglass. Unaware of the safety precautions that working with fiberglass entails, Horn became ill because she spent too much time inhaling the shards of class. Horn was force to leave school and spend a year in a sanatorium(6). This time in quarantine made Horn very aware of her body’s frailty, and of what long term confinement can do to one’s mental state. Within a New York Times critic of Horns’ work it was stated that, Horn found herself thinking in terms of images of confinement and became obsessed with healing after her stay at the sanatorium(5). This experience occurred at the beginning of Horn’s artistic career and so it is an important element for consideration when examining the work that Horn creates.
Going back to the first artwork, Spiriti di Madreperia, it is interesting to explore how confinement and healing, as well as body and space, play a role within the interaction of the artwork. Horn has created a space removed from the world, a quarantined space in the middle of a city that allows for isolation from all that surrounds her. Yet at the same time, her space is in dialogue with the city; mimicking the “charged” city that the piece is within. Furthermore she invites the audience to directly engage with this contained space. There is a duality between removal and invitation, interaction and isolation, which creates an interesting tension within her piece(2). Without the audience interaction, Horns work would not be activated, yet it would still be active. Just like Horn in quarantine, she was not actively engaged with the world, but she was still active and existing. She was still within the world just in a different space. It is as if she creates a space much like the time she was quarantined, but within her created space the audience is asked to engage and directly enter, something that could not occur while she was in quarantine.
Another artwork that engages with the audience in a monumental way is Concert Reverse. Concert reverse is located in Germany in Der Zwinger, which is an ancient tower in Munster that has a long history of uses. First used as a shelter in WW1, it was then allocated to Hitler Youth. Later it was used by Gestapo for holding and torturing Russian and Polish prisoners. After the war it was boarded up and never used again, until Horn was introduced to it. Horn re-ignited the historically loaded sight. The sight begins at a center corridor, which was lit by kerosene lamps. The walkways echoed the noise of small steal hammers hitting the walls, and were also lit by the kerosene lamps. The different cells were treated the same. The central area was over run with vegetation, and the architecture had begun to break down and crumble. Located at the highest point of a tree within the central area was a glass funnel. The funnel dropped one drop of water, which fell on placid surface of water, located in a circular basin below the funnel. The final cell contained an egg pierced by needles and a cage perched on a table. The cage held a pair of snakes, which it has been made clear in all documentation, were feed weekly(6).
This artwork takes a historic environment, a space full of destruction and shames and brings it back to life(6). It pierces the veins of history which bleeds out the infected moments of humanity. It has been reported that the egg alludes to the killing of prime reason and that the snakes are the dark reason. Again, Horn is taking a space of isolation and quarantine, a removed place from society, and she is re-opening it for visitation. She is dualistically re-claiming the space while at the same time maintaining the history found within it. It is not that by re-engaging with this space that Horn is transforming it, but she is personally marking the space with her own artistic voice. Furthermore, she creates an environment for the viewer to interact with and travel through becoming completely submerged within the work and space(3). She is permitting a historical conversation between those who enter the space to become re-engaged. This tower, at one time injected with human life, suffering, and heritage, was castrated and removed from society. Yet, the people that this place affected have not been removed; they have not been boarded up and pushed aside. Horn creates a means to reenter that area, a back door into the historical perils of the time. Without the audience moving through the work, through the environment, there would be no connection, no direct interaction. The work is dependent on people to enter the building and explore its crevices; it encouraged the audience to become engulfed by the environment and everything that it stands for(4). It is within that element that her work creates enigmatic interaction between audience and work. Neither one element is dominated over the other, but both need each other to fully translate the conceptual idea that Horn has attempted to create.
Her work ranges from interactive to image based, but the commonality between all of them is undeniable. As an artist her conscious decision to make each work in dialogue with the next, to create a constant flow of ideas, allows for her conceptual ideas to take many shapes and forms(6). Her interactive work engages space and the audience, but at the same time creates an intriguing sense of isolation and removal.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Felix Gonzalez-Torres is a Cuban artist who was born in 1957 and died in 1996 of AIDS. He is represented by the Andrea Rosen Gallery and his works range from photography, video, sculpture, to interactive environment pieces. His works often asks for direct interaction with the audience and tends to be centered around the complex questions of public and private space(4). Torres, through his interactive pieces, broke many of the early traditions of museum and gallery etiquette. An artistic pioneer, Torres used his art to submerge the gallery environment with personal experiences and political issues(1). The infiltration of the personal into the public environment allows for the audience to have an intimate relationship with Torres’ work. Torres’ work, at times, directly engages with the audience by allowing the audience to take a part of the work with them. It has been written “that the artist becomes the goods offered of sale to be consumed by recipients”(1). Looking at two works, Untitled, 1991, Printed Billboard, and Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA) 1991, 175 lb of fruit flasher candy, the duality between public and private, immortality and time, allows for the audience to have a heavy hand in the life and solidity of Torres’ work.
Torres had a grounded reality of his mortality that is much stronger then most of those in the world. He knew his death was imminent, he knew what would kill him, and he had witnessed death directly through the loss of his partner Ross(3). This is a crucial aspect when understanding some of the conceptual choices that Torres made within his work. It has been stated that “The nature of his work, in general, subtly yet emphatically intensifies ones own self-awareness, subjectivity, and sense of personal history-it sets up a conflation of public and private and the personal with the professional(3).” The two works selected allow for the two main dualities of his work, the pubic and private, and the immortality verses mortality, to be discussed.
The first work, Untitled 1991, consists of a printed billboard that depicts the top half of a white bed which is unmade. The sheets and pillows of the bed depict the imprints of two bodies that once laid in the bed. Displayed on a city street corner, this billboard pushes a physical symbol of the private life into the public sphere. It has no descriptive symbols to suggest who laid within the bed, but is simply the markings of an act, the physical blueprint of a moment. Furthermore, this artwork directly engages with the duality between public and private spheres of life(1). The highly intimate image is publically displayed for all to see; it takes the personal and pushes it out into the public. This work, which depicts such a generic image of an imprinted bed, allows for all who see it to connect with the work because each one of us can identify with the image(3). What is further interesting is that it creates an androgynous image, because there is no suggestion of specific genders. The bed is intimate, the lack of figures allows for any person to transplant themselves with the work, creating an intimate connection with the work.
The audience interacts with the work because it invades their space. By being a billboard, the artwork is transforming itself into a symbol of communication. If this image were in an art gallery the dependence on interaction would be drastically different. The audience would simply look at the image, interpret it, and move on. But, by blowing the image into enormous size and placing it in a public space, this artwork is interacting with the community that it invades. It pushes the public to view this image, which stems from the private domain, and it asks them to interact with the context of the image in their public life. In a sense, this is an image of absence; an image where a human interaction should occur, and yet there is no human visible.
The second artwork that will be examined is the Untitled (Portrait of Ross in La) which contains 175 lbs of Fruit Flasher Candy. This Piece consists of brightly wrapped candy which is compiled in a corner of the room in a mound on the floor. The audience members are encouraged to take pieces of the candy as they please. This artwork, and many others like it, completely interacts with the audience by allowing the audience to take a part of the artwork into the personal life of the audience(3). It is a sensory driven object; visually pleasing candy which can be touched, removed, held, eaten, smelt, and saved all by the audience. Both figuratively and literally, the work could be consumed by the audience without the artist having any say in the matter. It is an interesting analogy compared to the personal situation of Torres. AIDS was slowly eating away at Torres, just as the audience slowly eats away at his work. Furthermore, once Torres was finally gone from the world, his memories and influences within the art community are left in the hands of those still alive. Much like once the candy is gone, it is in the hands of the audience who interacted with the piece to chose how they wish to have the artwork integrated into their lives. Even pushing this further, one could argue that Torres is entering into the personal domain of each individual that takes the candy, because they are taking a piece of him with them. The interplay between personal and public is vast within the work of Torres.
On a more broad scope, the work pushed for a break in the museum mold by encouraging an unconventional use of gallery space(4). Not only is the artist encouraged to take the work with them, but the work is constantly in flux, moving and shrinking based on how much the audience chooses to interact with it. Without the audience interaction this piece would be a stagnate object, but because of the audience, it is an ever evolving work of art.
Torres’ work is vast in medium choice and conceptual ideas. It addresses a broad spectrum of issues, from AIDS awareness to the loss of a lover(2). But within the two specifically examined works there is a push for the audience to make artwork something more. What I mean by this is that Torres lays out an artwork, be it an image of a bed or a pile of candy, and then he asks the viewer to bring something more to the table. He encourages the viewer to take his work to the next level and allow it to invade their lives. Ether through walking to work and interacting with a billboard of ghost lovers, or by eating a piece of the artwork, he is pushing the responsibility of the audience within his work.
Bibliography of Rebecca Horn
1.) www.Rebecca-Horn.cle/pages/biography.html. Accessed Between February 22-25th.
2.) www.medienkunstnetz.de/artist/Horn/biography/. Accessed Between February 22-25th.
3.) www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?Cgroupid=99999961&aristid.org . Accessed Between February 22-25th.
4.) Cooke, Lynne. “Rebecca Horn New York Guggenheim Museum.” The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 135, No 1086 (Sept 1993.)
5.) Hugher, Robert. “Mechanics Illustrated.” Time Magazine. Monday, September 13, 1993.
6.) Morgan, Stuart. Celant, Germano. Rebecca Horn. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1995.
Biography of Felix Gonzalez-Torres
1.)www.Queerculturalcenter.org/pages/FelixGT/FelixIndex.html. Accessed Between February 22-25th.
2.) Storr, Robert. T. “Felix Gonzalez-Torres Interview” Art Press. January 1995, p24-32.
3.) Elger, Dietmar. Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Ostfildern-Ruit : Cantz ; New York, N.Y. : Distribution in the US, Distributed Art Publishers, c1997.
4.) www.Andrearosengallery.com/artist/felix-gonzalez-torres.com. Accessed Between February 22-25th.