Camberwell library adds another one:
Archive for the ‘Making Connections’ Category
Dot Dot Dot (Dot) and other additions
Friday, May 14th, 2010Ilya Prigogine: Chaos, Order, Time, John Cage
Saturday, May 8th, 2010Robert Morris Three Mile Long Mausoleum
Friday, May 7th, 2010I have been planning to write something more about dark humour, and then I discovered quite a gem today. Robert Morris’ proposal for his own Mausoleum:
‘A sealed aluminum tube three miles long, inside which he wishes to be put, housed in an iron coffin suspended from pulleys. Every three months the position of the coffin is to be changed by an attendant who will move along the outside of the tube holding a magnet. On a gravel walk leading to the entrance are swooning maidens, carved in marble in the style of Canova’. Quoted in Barbara Rose, ‘ABC Art’, Art in America, October-November 1965.
(For example, The Three Graces by Antonio Canova 1814-1817)
Smithson, Breton, and Black Humour
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010Robert Smithson on laughter in his ‘Entropy and the New Monuments’ essay:
‘Fuller was told by certain scientists that the fourth dimension was “ha-ha,” in other words, that it is laughter. Perhaps it is… Laughter is in a sense of kind of entropic “verbalization.” How could artists translate this verbal entropy, that is “ha-ha,” into “solid-models”? ‘
I found Smithson’s alignment of minimalist sculpture movement with laughter surprising, as are his references to horror and science fiction. The latter is more easily explained by the difference in time and context. Of course, to see the work he refers to in 1966 would be a completely different experience than seeing them now. However, the idea that these sculptures have could have a humorous reading is an unexpected and welcome reminder that art, and art criticism does not need to be po-faced.
(more…)
Entropy and the New Monuments Part 2
Monday, April 12th, 2010
Entropy and the New Monuments Part 1
Monday, April 12th, 2010This morning I read ‘Entropy and the New Monuments‘, an essay by Robert Smithson from 1966. ‘Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments cause us to forget the future.’ The essay is filled with references, some familiar, such as to the ‘Jabberwocky’ and the work of Flavin, Le Witt, Judd etc, but there are also many others that are rather more obscure, I though I would collect some of these here. Firstly, the ‘Park Place Group’, a group of artists working together in New York from 1963 onwards. These included: Anthony Magar:
Snared Die Cut Plug Wiring
Sunday, January 31st, 2010Mark Pawson makes books, badges, t-shirts, and other collectible multiples. These include road maps with weather symbols overprinted on them, and a book of plug wiring diagrams. Finding inspiration in the everyday and making what would otherwise be junk into something approaching outsider art is something great. It makes me wish I was more of a hoarder. Maybe if I had a garage or a shed, I like collecting things to use in my work, but too much of it and I start to feel slightly panicky, all that stuff. The artist Daniel Spoerri possibly had the solution, making his ’snare’ pictures. These objects which could have described as sculptures, consisted of all the detritus left on a table, usually after a meal, being attached to a board, or a real table top, and mounted on the wall.
Art Piles
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010Why would an artist use the form of a pile? Contemporary artists Daniel Eatock, Martin Creed and Katerina Šedá all have recent work involving piles of humble objects. For example Work 878, 2008, by Martin Creed.
Endless Knight
Monday, December 7th, 2009An interesting connection: I’m interested in the ‘Oulipo’ group, and their ideas about ‘constrained writing’, and it turns out there is a link back to Orozco, who is relevant to this research project due to his use of games. The wikipedia entry on Oulipo mentions the mathematical problem of the Knight’s Tour, it does not specify exactly how this has been used by Oulipo however. The Knight’s Tour involves plotting a route for the knight to move around the chess board using the normal method of movement, one square in one direction, two squares in another, but the piece must land on every square, and only once. The tour is know as closed if the knight ends attacking the position it started from otherwise it is and open tour. Apparently the amount of possible open tours are unknown, and the problem is sometimes extended by using irregular shaped or sized boards. Visualise all the positions of the knight as it moves around the table, and an image very similar to Horses Running Endlessly, 1995, by Gabrielle Orozco would be the result.
Workshop of Potential Literature
Saturday, December 5th, 2009There are few different threads of ideas that I want to bring together in this post. Relating to the use of restrictions and rules in the creative process, and the use of language in art. Raw War, the title of a Bruce Nauman neon sculpture is a palindrome, a word or phrase that can be read in either direction. This form is not new, and a quick look at wikipedia will show that there are ancient examples in hebrew and latin from at least 79 A.D. The word is a combination of greek words for “again” and “way direction”. Palindromes are also used by the literary movement known as Oulipo, writers and mathematicians who use constrained writing techniques.
