Week 10

            Before I heard this week’s guest lecture I had never heard of the term “multiple” before. Brian Gillis showed a lot of interesting work and illustrated exactly what the term multiple meant to him. I really liked how he formatted his presentation. It was like he took us on a journey through his thought process of determining what a multiple is and what a multiple could be. One piece of work that stood out to me was Piero Manzoni’s Merda d’Artista. Manzoni actually canned his feces and sold it at the price of gold. At first I found this odd and didn’t really know what the meaning behind it was. Then I started thinking about it in terms of a multiple and more about the process. Brian said a multiple could be defined as a “repetitive process used to make original pieces”. Maybe in this piece/pieces it is more about the repetitive process that contributes to the idea behind this work. Another work that I liked was the drilled chair by Tom Friedman. I liked this piece because in looking at the actual work you can see every detail of the process that went into making it. You can see every individual hole that when combined make up this shell of a chair. Another thing I liked about this piece was that Freidman pushed it so far that if he had drilled another hole it would have collapsed. It creates a very delicate yet eerie feeling that is quite beautiful at the same time.

            This week’s multimedia was really cool to look through. I found Gabriel Orozco’s work pretty funny and playful. The Supermarket work that he did at first made me laugh and then as I looked at it more I began to understand what he was asking, or at least what I think he is asking. I think he is raising the question of order in our society. By placing cat food on watermelons he is asking “why not?”. Why don’t we sell the cat food on top of the watermelons? From a rational standpoint it doesn’t really make sense but still, why not? The craziest thing to me that I saw was the Ping-pong pond by Gabriel Orozco. I liked it because it was an elegant take on the empty or unusable space of the table that is normally created by the net. To me it is a much more visually appealing solution and is something I would definitely want to use. One work I found unusual of Justin Novak is the sink with the confessional walls attached to it. This is a bizarre concept that combines an everyday task with a religious action. I personally have never visited a confessional but I don’t think I would want to use this sink.

            In making connections this week there is the apparent connection of multiples. All of the work Brian showed us were multiples and the multimedia for this week could definitely be seen as multiples. The ping-pong pond table is made of industrial parts that are manufactured in bulk. The supermarket work is made up of individual pieces that are also produced in bulk. The sink with the confessional is also comprised of a mass made object, the sink. All of these objects also interact with space and the idea of the certainty of one and the possibility of many. The pop art Brian showed us can be compared to the super market work of Orozco. A big picture theme that I think also can apply to all of the work we looked at this week is the idea of interacting with the world. All of these works interact with the world is their own way and ask questions about the world and the way things are.

The image I am including this week is one that mostly sums up the term for me!

            

Week 9

            This week’s guest lecturer was Amanda Wojick and she presented the media of sculpture. The format of her presentation was very interesting and really showed the progression of sculpture in the past century. She presented a woman sculptor who was born in each decade. The majority of the sculptures were very odd and raised a lot of questions. One artist that I found particularly interesting was Yayoi Kasuma. Her fascination of dots and patterns and surreal spaces translated into some very strange but beautiful work. I especially loved the white room that was covered in different sized red dots with large circular objects that were also covered in the dots. It really made me want to go and visit the space because I cannot even imagine what it would feel like to inhabit in and experience it in that powerful of a way. Another artist I was particularly struck by was Ursula Vonrydingsvard. Her work is absolutely beautiful. She makes these amazing wood sculptures that she carves and cuts into beautiful, gigantic, organic shapes that almost represent objects in nature. One thing Professor Wojick talked about with all the artists was the idea of abstraction and it was very interesting to me to compare these nine artists, who are all so different, and how they deal with the idea of abstraction.

            I also found this week’s multimedia to be very interesting. Richard Serra creates these massive sculptures that I can only imagine would feel very overpowering while standing in front of one. I also found it interesting that he started out working in a steel mill when he was a young adult. He turned something that was a way of paying bills into something creative and an exciting career. It must have been very beneficial to him as an artist to have such an extensive knowledge of the material that he uses for his work and it I would imagine that it shapes and pushes his creativity in a very unique way. The reading this week was a little hard for me however as I was trying to understand it a line stood out to me. The line read “But vision, I think, is more like the moments of anxious squinting than the years of effortless seeing.” Here Elkins is contrasting “seeing” with “vision”. He is saying that seeing is something we do everyday without even thinking about it. We look at things that don’t particularly strike our attention or make us think twice. But vision is something much more. Vision is when we look at something and want to look deeper. When we see something that strikes us or intrigues us and I think that art definitely helps us use vision as opposed to sight.

            One overarching theme that I noticed in this weeks media was the idea and sensation of scale. A majority of the work we looked at had a large sense of scale. From the monumental spiders of Louise Bourgeois to the 36 large people that Magdalena Abakanovicz erected in Chigaco to Richard Serras large steel sculptures, there is an overwhelming feeling of scale. These sculptures bring much more to the table than a two-dimensional object ever could because of the way they make you feel as you stand next to or below them. Another idea that extended through all of the media this week was, as I said before, the idea of abstraction vs. realism. In my opinion the work that used more abstract ideas and visuals are the more successful ones because they make you think. They push you to project your ideas onto them rather than handing you the meaning on a platter. In abstraction there is more room for interpretation and thus more room for the viewer to be creative as well as the artist.

            The piece of art I chose to share this week goes along with the theme of large sculptures!