Claes Oldenburg

[Selections from I Am for an Art) 1961

I am for the art that grows in a pot that comes down out of the skies at night, like lightning, that hides in the clouds and growls.
I am for art that is flipped on and off with a switch.

I am for the art that comes up in fogs from sewer-holes in winter. I am for the art that splits when you step on a frozen puddle. I am for the worm’s art inside the apple. I am for the art of sweat that develops between crossed legs.

I am for the art of bar-babble, tooth-picking, beer-drinking, egg-salting, in-sulting. I am for the art of falling off a barstool.

I am for the art of fat truck-tires and black eyes.

I am for the white art of refrigerators and their muscular openings and closings.

I am for the art of rust and mold. I am for the art of hearts, funeral hearts or sweetheart hearts, full of nougat. I am for the art of worn meat hooks and singing barrels of red, white, blue and yellow meat.

I am for the art of things lost or thrown away, coming home from school. I am for the art of cock-and-ball trees and flying cows and the noise of rectangles and squares.

I am for the art of teddy-bears and guns and decapitated rabbits, exploded umbrellas, raped beds, chairs with their brown bones broken, burning trees, firecracker ends, chicken bones, pigeon bones and boxes with men sleeping in them.

I am for the art of slightly rotten funeral flowers, hung bloody rabbits and wrinkly yellow chickens, bass drums & tambourines, and plastic phonographs.

I am for the art of abandoned boxes, tied like pharaohs. I am for an art of water tanks and speeding clouds and flapping shades...

...satan's graffiti?

Course description of the Foundry: Hybrid Objects class I am taking in the spring:

Contemporary culture reflects a confluence of identities, histories, and disciplines as global integration motivates the synthesis of ideas and experience. Hybrid images and objects can be an effective strategy for exploring and expressing complexity. Students explore historical and contemporary examples of this strategy - from hybrid characters in early mythologies and the disjunctive juxtapositions of surrealism to the pluralism of postmodern expression. The convergence of racial, gender, and social identities, the manipulation of life forms via bio-engineering, and the assimilation of body and machines (cyborgs, prosthetics) are topics students may choose to explore. The casting process readily lends itself to the creation of composite imagery and materials. Students can combine and manipulate modeled and `found' forms utilizing a range of molding and casting techniques. Computer scanning, data manipulation and rapid-prototyping technologies are introduced in conjunction with basic metal casting skills. Students are encouraged to pursue individual or collaborative research projects. [[So Excited!!!]]

Marc Quinn

Marc Quinn’s wide-ranging oeuvre displays a preoccupation with the mutability of the body and the dualisms that define human life: spiritual and physical, surface and depth, cerebral and sexual. Using an uncompromising array of materials, from ice and blood to glass, marble or lead, Quinn develops these paradoxes into experimental, conceptual works that are mostly figurative in form.

Quinn’s sculpture, paintings and drawings often deal with the distanced relationship we have with our bodies, highlighting how the conflict between the ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’ has a grip on the contemporary psyche... Other key themes in his work include genetic modification and hybridism. Garden (2000), for instance, is a walk-through installation of impossibly beautiful flowers that will never decay, or his ‘Eternal Spring’ sculptures, featuring flowers preserved in perfect bloom by being plunged into sub-zero silicone. Quinn has also explored the potential artistic uses of DNA, making a portrait of a sitter by extracting strands of DNA and placing it in a test-tube. DNA Garden (2001), contains the DNA of over 75 plant species as well as 2 humans: a re-enactment of the Garden of Eden on a cellular level. Quinn’s diverse and poetic work meditates on our attempts to understand or overcome the transience of human life through scientific knowledge and artistic expression.

via http://www.marcquinn.com



Zombie Boy (Rick Genest) // Bronze




Self Portrait // 4.5 liters of artist's blood




The Selfish Gene // patinated bronze



Moment of Clarity // Orbital-sanded and flap-wheeled lacquered bronze



Another Angel // patinated bronze



Rabbit // bronze and black patina





Buck & Allanah (lifesize) // Orbital sanded and flat wheeled lacquered bronze

Umberto Boccioni

[Italian futurist painter and sculptor]

'Unique Forms of Continuity in Space' bronze 1913

Nancy Grossman: heads

I haven't posted anything in a long time, but I saw this exhibition at Ps1 in New York recently and it was mind blowing. I thought it would go nicely next to the Messerschmidt busts. Here is the description from Ps1's site:

While Grossman regularly refers to the heads as self-portraits, they are not made to resemble the artist herself. They speak to the malice and subservience of both psychology and worldly conflict. Though the works are often rendered blind and mute, they still allude to the role of the silent witness amid cruelty and disorder. The creation of the sculptures was inspired in part by the liberation movements of the late 1960s and the Vietnam War, responding to the violence and social upheaval of the era. Today, Grossman's heads continue to address the anxiety and turmoil that weigh upon the individual and contemporary society. Each head was carved from a block of wood and overlaid with sections of found leather-often sourced from articles of clothing or even boxing gloves-which are sewn, nailed, or zippered together. The life-size sculptures are startling for what they obscure as much as for what they expose. Eyes, ears, and mouths are typically covered, bound, sewn shut, or otherwise restrained. Some heads incorporate found objects that result in horns and other protrusions.

source: Ps1

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt

Messerschmidt became mentally ill in the later years of his life (1771-1784) the period during which he had created the 69 busts. He was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, and during analysis told doctors he was persecuted by demons at night who visited and tortured him at night. Most of his disturbances centered upon the mouth, and he was very troubled that men, unlike animals display the red of the lips. His preoccupation with the mouth seems to be the result of his associating it directly with the anus. While working on the sculpted heads he pinched himself repeatedly in certain areas of his body. Combined with violently contorted facial expressions, both aimed at gaining control over the demons. His image making activity was largely confined to self portraiture based on the distorted facial expressions as seen in a mirror. The busts function as masks and guardian images in a desperate but intensely focused attempted to ward them off.





The above piece, according to him, actually depicts the ‘demon of proportion’ (as he called it) and can be understood as an illustration of his hallucination. The mouth is dealt with as a strange beak-like shape with no indication of lips.