Studio Notes

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Repair and Death

The act of repair reminds us of our own mortality.

Miss Havisham, the brooding, aged and rejected bride-to-be in Dicken's Great Expectations leaves her home to ruin and rot, because she does not want to admit the passage of time. Repair would indicate defeat; in not attempting to prevent the decay of her home and her person is, in essence, an attempt to stop time.

Martita Hunt as Miss Havisham in 'Great Expectations'

by Cecil Beaton
bromide print on white card mount, 1945
9 1/2 in. x 7 1/2 in. (239 mm x 189 mm)
Given by Cecil Beaton, 1968

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Collection of Objects

I've been thinking about a collection of objects, relating the act of bodily repair to the act of building repair. I'm imagining them laid out side by side on a long white table, like a sentence. Some of the objects I'm considering are:

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Artists recommended in my many critiques

John Mcqueen, Asleep at the Wheel, sticks and string

Jennifer Pollock, elecrical wire (haven't been able to find info online)

Martin Creed, Work No. 925, 2008

Martin Creed, Work No. 918, 2008

Martin Creed, Work No. 796, 2007

Lisa Norton, System for Habitable Spaces

Orly Genger, Big Boss, 2010, Rope with latex paint

Orly Genger, Len, 2008

Arte Povera Movement

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Mapplethorpe, Opie, Jo Spence, Zhang Huan, Glenn Ligon

Catherine Opie

Zhang Huan, My America (hard to acclimatize), 1999
Slideshow

Schneemenan, Abromovic

Schneeman, Meat Joy, 1964

"Meat Joy has the character of an erotic rite: excessive, indulgent, a celebration of flesh as material: raw fish, chickens, sausages, wet paint, transparent plastic, rope brushes, paper scrap. It's propulsion is toward the ecstatic-- shifting and turning between tenderness, wilderness, precision, abandon: qualities which could at any moment be sensual, comic, joyous, repellent."

Abromovic, Imponderabilia, 1977

Interview with Abromovic, taken from magazine New York Art, "Provocateur: Marina Abramovic", Karen Rosenberg, Published Dec 4, 2005

How would your work be different if a man performed it?
I really think there’s no difference between an art piece made by a man and one made by a woman. Is it a good art piece or a bad art piece? Of course, if you’re female, you’re maybe dealing with different issues.