Multiples!

This week started off with a presentation by Brian Gillis. He discussed multiples. Before this week, if I were to be asked what multiples in art were my answer would probably be, “I dunno… something that has copies?” But now I have a real answer! Multiples are pieces of art where the artist makes several of the same things. They can vary slightly in design, but are typically the same thing. I think this is interesting. I hadn’t ever really learned or heard about multiples before, so learning about it now was fun for me. For some people, like Marcel Duchamp, a multiple consists of taking an everyday object, somehow altering it, and then putting it in a gallery. By doing this to an object, a new meaning can be placed behind it.

Justin Novak has created his own multiple, the 21 Century Bunny. All of the bunnies are generally the same with some slight changes differencing them, like color or objects they hold. I would really like one of these bunnies. I enjoy how odd they look. You don’t typically see a bunny with giant eyes. Or one holding a gun for that matter. He takes something that everyone generally knows, like ceramics, and changes it into something new and fun. He has also changed the idea of ceramics with his Disfigurines collection. Ceramic figurines are normally nice, simple people, like angels or shepherds or something. Novak takes this idea of simple beauty and drastically changes it with his disfigurines. They are ceramic people that have some sort of injury or are mutilating themselves in one way or another. At first glance, I didn’t really notice anything special about them. But when I took another look, I realized that the figurine was cutting her skin open with scissors. I then proceeded to hold my wrists for fear of this happening to me. I find it very interesting that he can take something that is considered so precious and turn it into this mutilated object. I imagine that he has a lot of fun with what he does.

Gabriel Orozco is another artist we looked at this week. I bet he has fun with what he does as well. Similar to Novak, Orozco also takes objects that are widely known and changes them into something new and unique. His ping-pong table is a perfect example. He took something that everyone is acquainted with and turned it into something new. The piece is two tables put together with a pond in the space left between them. This looks really fun, and I want to try it so very badly. I enjoyed the video about him placing products in stores in areas where they don’t belong. I have a friend who does this sometimes. The one I remember the most is he balanced a cat food can on a laundry detergent top. I had never before considered this as art, just as something funny to do. I also liked the car that Orozco manipulated. I think it’s interesting that you can look at it from the side and it looks like a regular car, but when you start to move around it, you realize that it is most definitely not a regular car. My boyfriend is 6’ 3”. I really want to see him try to get in this car. Once again, Orozco has taken an everyday object and turned it into something out of the ordinary.

I think dice could probably be considered a multiple. There are so many different types.

Sculpture.

We started this week with a lecture by Amanda Wojick. She discussed sculptures. I found her lecture very interesting. The way she approached it, by talking about nine women sculptors, was very intriguing to me. I had never thought of some of the sculptures shown as sculptures before, like some of Louise Bourgeois’ works. Obviously the spiders would be considered sculptures, but I wouldn’t have considered some of her works made of fabric as sculptures. I can’t really say what I would categorize them as, but sculpture wouldn’t be the first thing that came to mind. Out of all the artists covered, the one I found most interesting was Yayoi Kusama. I found it fascinating that she took her hallucinations and turned them into artwork. Instead of purely being frightened of her hallucinations, she recreated them and shared them with the world. It’s hard to say whether her art is representational or abstract. Obviously, to her, it would be representational because it is a recreation of her hallucinations. However, to others, it could be seen as abstract, because other people haven’t experienced what Yayoi has.

The first artist we looked at this week was Louise Bourgeois. I would really like to see one of her spider sculptures in real life, instead of just portrayed on a screen. I want to experience the ominous object hovering above me. It is kind of hard to talk about works like that that haven’t been seen in person. In her work “Cell (Glass Spheres and Hands),” objects are placed in a ‘cell’ and viewers have to look through shattered glass to view what is inside. I thought this was really interesting. It creates a delicacy between the viewer and the objects. The viewer has to look through this dangerous broken glass to view the beauty inside. Bourgeois thoroughly thought through how space interacted with her piece. If the piece could be viewed from any angle, it wouldn’t have carried as much meaning. She also must have thought through the space left open with the spiders. The spacing and placement of the spiders plays an important roll on how they are viewed. If the spider were placed in a corner, it would just be viewed. It wouldn’t really be experienced. Because the spider is covering the majority of the room, the viewer has to experience it. They have to walk under it and through its legs. Also, if the spiders were smaller in scale, they would be much less effective than a giant spider.

Another artist who thinks about the space of his works is Richard Serra. His work consists of giant pieces of steel placed so that people can walk in between the steel. Serra puts much thought into how the steel pieces will interact with each other to create a sort of feeling between them. In one piece, he talks about how someone can walk through one area and feel perfectly normal, but when they walk through another area, they feel as though they need to reposition themselves as to balance out the steel. I really want to experience this. I can’t really imagine what this feels like. The only thing I can possibly compare it to would be a fun house, where the floor is tilted. I imagine it would feel kind of like this, except there would be no tilted floor.

Our reading for this week was “Just Looking” by James Elkins. I was intrigued with it. I liked how it read kind of like a train of thought. He started just talking about looking, then moved to hunting, then moved to love and emotions, and it all flowed together perfectly. I can’t say I had thought about looking at things in this manner before. Now that it has been pointed out that basically everything that we look at elicits thoughts of other things, I have been noticing it more frequently. For instance, in class today, I found myself staring at Ty’s drink and it made me thirsty, which I immediately noticed. I feel like I wouldn’t have made that connection as quickly without this reading. Ideas like this are necessary in relation to art. If someone were to look at one of Bourgeois’ spiders, they wouldn’t just think “hey look, there’s a big spider above me.” Initially, maybe that would be their thought, but after that they would think of other things like maybe a spider attacked them so they are taken back to that time. Feelings and thoughts from when that happened would be brought up, just by looking at this piece of art. I find that really interesting.