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!