Walking through a museum is always overwhelming. There is so much to see and observe. The Cantor Center is full of every genre of art. I was specifically drawn to the Native American Collection. When I stand before these works I am mesmerized by the simple line work, and of the beautifully painted animals and patterns so simple and elegant.I appreciate that these pieces tell a story, recording their past. It is like deciphering code. The longer I gaze at the work I start to notice the smaller things, where the fire licked the side of the pot, small chips and wear and tear.. I am continually reminded how beautiful and timeless they are. For me this experience is embodied more that visual, mainly because I relate so closely with clay, I know the process in which the piece was made and what the steps were to finish it. While observing the work I want to sear the images in to my memory, but I generally end up sketching them, trying to capture the strong simplicity of line and design.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Walking through a museum is always overwhelming. There is so much to see and observe. The Cantor Center is full of every genre of art. I was specifically drawn to the Native American Collection. When I stand before these works I am mesmerized by the simple line work, and of the beautifully painted animals and patterns so simple and elegant.I appreciate that these pieces tell a story, recording their past. It is like deciphering code. The longer I gaze at the work I start to notice the smaller things, where the fire licked the side of the pot, small chips and wear and tear.. I am continually reminded how beautiful and timeless they are. For me this experience is embodied more that visual, mainly because I relate so closely with clay, I know the process in which the piece was made and what the steps were to finish it. While observing the work I want to sear the images in to my memory, but I generally end up sketching them, trying to capture the strong simplicity of line and design.
Perhaps I'm Being Too Literal...
So, perhaps I'm being a bit literal but Duane Hanson's Slab Man is a piece that has caught my eye every time I have been to the Cantor and could, perhaps, be the literal embodiment of embodiment...(?) Now, I am an object maker so it makes sense that I might be drawn to Hanson's piece due to it's display of technical mastery, or perhaps it's the fact that I have done my fair share of manual labor and can relate to this disheveled, rough, depiction of working-class fatigue. While these things may be true there's more to it than that. The most intriguing thing about Slab Man is that no matter how much I know that he is an artificial construction of synthetic polymers and everyday clothing, the fact remains that he constantly startles me! During my time in the gallery he remains in my peripheral field as a member of the general museum goers and then I turn to focus on him and I am startled once again! Is there a problem with my short term memory? Do I fear manual labor that much? Or is it the instinctual reaction to the perceived physical presence of a large human in my vicinity that causes this reaction. I do empathize with him; the apparent fatigue, the dirt, the disheveled appearance, all reminders of a past life that I honor, but have made great efforts to enrich in other ways. There is honor there and pathos... Yet I am still impressed by my repeated physical reaction to the piece. Though I value a controlled perspective in my own work I think Hildebrand got it wrong with this one; it's the fact that we can interact with this work, that it does come into our space as an equal member of the crowd and that we appear to have no control over it except our ability to retreat from it that gives it its power. Plus, I'm pretty sure he had B. O. ...
Gender and Embodiment at the Cantor
The work of Tom Rippon, Women Finishing a Novel, 1982, is an excellent example of an embodied experience, as well as the embodiment of a woman. While it appears to be a painted wooden chair, the piece is porcelain with glaze on a wooden base. The size is approximately large enough for an average ten year old to sit comfortably. If it weren’t for the raised position of the piece displayed, the thin legs of the chair and the size, one would assume it was a utility piece. Additionally, the familiarity of the object, the physical openness of the chair and the open book resting on the arm of the chair draws the viewer into the work.
Society has established colors which are more closely associated with each gender; this includes the pink for girls, blue for boys and yellow for gender neutral. The gender associations are often established from birth. The use of colors of pink, light orange and green seem to have the sparkle of fingernail polish, instead of the deep colors of red, blue or brown, which are often considered masculine colors. Colors contribute to gender performance from an early age. The artist also suggests feminine qualities in the use of lines, curves and the pattern on the floor, which seems similar to kitchen tile-again references presumed gender associations.
The experience of viewing this piece in the museum setting, provides a different result than had I viewed the image in a book. The supporting text further leads the viewer to the same conclusion of the importance of gender and embodiment.
Society has established colors which are more closely associated with each gender; this includes the pink for girls, blue for boys and yellow for gender neutral. The gender associations are often established from birth. The use of colors of pink, light orange and green seem to have the sparkle of fingernail polish, instead of the deep colors of red, blue or brown, which are often considered masculine colors. Colors contribute to gender performance from an early age. The artist also suggests feminine qualities in the use of lines, curves and the pattern on the floor, which seems similar to kitchen tile-again references presumed gender associations.
The experience of viewing this piece in the museum setting, provides a different result than had I viewed the image in a book. The supporting text further leads the viewer to the same conclusion of the importance of gender and embodiment.
Empathy, Embodiment and Abstract Art
My first experience of an empathetic response to a work of art happened in the second floor galleries of SFMOMA when I encountered Mark Rothko’s prosaically entitled No. 14, 1960. I was magnetically drawn to this 9 x 9 foot painting that seemed to project its presence from across the room. I felt compelled to enter the gallery and seat myself on the bench in front of it. What happened next was totally unexpected and slightly unsettling. After I calmed my mind and focused on what was directly in front of me, I experienced the sensation of literally falling, tumbling directly into the artwork. It wasn’t that the art had become an extension of myself or that I had disappeared and had merged with it, it was more that I had entered the universe that the painting had opened up to me and that I was experiencing this new world from within the frame.
Reproductions of this work do it no justice. I was aware of myself sitting on the bench but at the same time I felt enveloped, almost smothered, by the hot stickiness of Rothko's glowing golden rectangular. I was inside this fiery mass looking out through its orange-red skin. I could smell the dusky, smoky, sweetness of honey in beeswax and could feel the sensation of heat, like the hot summer sun, on my body. I felt as if I could explore the outer contours of this viscous but fluid mass by swimming through the channels created by the artist’s brushstrokes until I slipped through one of them and plunged into the deep indigo blue below. I hit the cold, brown bedrock beneath it that silenced all sensations and I continued to slide right out of the painting. I could imagine that the drips and splashes on the surface of the work were the traces, the visible evidence of my presence.
.
What came to mind immediately was Icarus of Greek mythology who was able to fly using wings made of wax and feathers. In his exhilaration with flight he ventured too close to the sun, his wings melted, and he plunged to his death into the sea below. Icarus became my own personal title for this painting. I learned later that in an earlier Surrealist and more figurative stage of his career, Rothko’s interest was in developing an art based on myth. It was later that he began to create softly contoured rectangles of luminous color that seemed to float within their monumental canvas enclosures of which No. 14, 1960 is a prime example.
I didn't realize it at the time, but in a contemporary art museum, I was creating my own narrative that connected an ancient Greek myth, 19th century German aesthetic theory, and an American abstract painting. Robert Vischer and his theory of empathy has given me a framework for understanding my own experience. I've learned that the experience of an artwork does not have to be limited to the intellectual and visual, but can be fully embodied in unanticipated and rewarding ways that can open us to a greater understanding of the world beyond our limited view of self.
feeling of death
The most interesting work to me was "Splendid Grief: Darren Waterston and the Afterlife of Leland Stanford Jr". At beginning, I didn't know that closed black gate was a gate could lead us to a exhibition. I only found some black paper butterflies decorated on a small room outside. I followed these butterflies and then I pushed the gate and entered into the Ruth Levison Halperin Gallery, which has been transformed into a mourning parlor that serves as a memento mori to the late Leland Jr. Well, be honest, I didn't plan to stay in this gallery for long. I started from the left side. When I pass by some oil paintings on the wall, felt some communication with the paintings on the wall. I stop in front of the panting. I felt something is surreal.
The first one that got my attention was a painting about Leland and an angle. This is one of the museum collection. In this painting, the size of leland and angle is in an interesting contrast: the angle is in front but she is small. Leland is behind the angle but the size is much bigger. The angle is crying and Leland is staring at the lens. The color is in contrast too. The crying angle hide her face in her arms, the overall color is dark and brown. Leland is standing straight behind wearing light blue, and everything is in details. As all of his other portraits, Leland looks proud and no face. I felt some connection because I know this life (Leland) was exist, and this panting was painted after his death. It was a strange feeling. Every time when I take a walk in a cemertary park, I feel I have some connection with these passed people, especially if i see their black and white photos on the stone. Does Darren Waterson had the same impression when he saw Leland's portraits in the museum? Does he has some special interest of "death"? The first time when I saw his water color painting, the flowers were beautiful and inspiring, but they remind me the dying flowers. And then I start to think why Waterson use "after life" on his title. From a Buddhist perspective, the current life is a continuation of the past life. Does Waterson want to build up a connection by making this show? In eastern philosophy, we should not bother lives in the other world. It is all about "feeling", I realize I cannot explain too well.
I have to pass by a large installation that placed on the center of the gallery. It was from the ground to the ceiling. The bottom was designed a circled couch that allowed the visitors to sit and rest. A The installation was fully decorated with black butterflies. They were elegent but it was a little bit too pretty and too busy to my taste.
"What makes my Thinker think is that he thinks not only with his brain, with his knitted brow, his distended nostrils and compressed lips, but with every muscle of his arms, back, and legs, with his clenched fist and gripping toes."
Auguste Rodin
Finding myself in a big room filled with more than 50 sculptures by Auguste Rodin I felt as if he put them there temporarily if to say; “ I be right back”. It seems overwhelming and creates some sort of a “presence”. I can feel the emotions reflecting off the sculptures. The forms and lines of the sculptures playing with the light create a magical harmony in this room. Although as fascinated I am in this room, Le Penseur, or The Thinker, mesmerized me most.
Photo © Hedwig M. Heerschop 2009
The immense figure sitting in the middle of the room created quite a focal point. I could sit here for hours and see myself in the same position in unguarded moments when I am drifting away in my own thoughts. I drift back for a moment to my home country where seven bronze sculptures were stolen last year January from a Dutch Museum near my hometown in the Netherlands. One of the bronze works was The Thinker. It was found but was badly damaged by the thieves who were probably after the bronze for money. They had already taken off one leg and made a start on the head.
Photo ANP
The museum decided to exhibit The Thinker in damaged state to show the public how these thugs managed to ruin something so irreplaceable. But is it irreplaceable? What is not replaceable is it’s unique place in the line of reproduction. The image could be replaced the provenance can not. After Rodin’s death in 1917 the state of France inherited all his works and molds with no restrictions on quantity. Rodin made all his sculptures out of clay and then made plaster molds. Rodin poured the first sculpture of The Thinker in 1902 and after that there were twenty more replica’s made. The one in the Dutch museum was one of the earlier ones. So is this one than considered an original, or the one here in Stanford’s Cantor Museum, or all the other ones spread around the world? Each one is unique as unique as our individual responses to it.
Rodin created The Thinker originally for his monumental Gates of Hell also to be seen at Stanford University. They are a pair of bronze doors intended for a museum of decorative arts in Paris. He didn’t cast The Gates of Hell during his lifetime, but it gave Rodin a rich source of ideas for individual figures and groups that he worked and reworked for the rest of his career.
The theme for Gates of Hell was taken from Dante's Inferno, and The Thinker was Dante himself. The initial plan was to put the figure on top of The Gates of Hell. It was not until 1880 that Rodin started to exhibit The Poet/Thinker. Many more were cast in a smaller size made from the original hand-made clay model.
Here I sit overwhelmed by the powerful emotions created by being surrounded by such incredible work. It makes one think.
Photo © Hedwig M. Heerschop 2009
Auguste Rodin
Finding myself in a big room filled with more than 50 sculptures by Auguste Rodin I felt as if he put them there temporarily if to say; “ I be right back”. It seems overwhelming and creates some sort of a “presence”. I can feel the emotions reflecting off the sculptures. The forms and lines of the sculptures playing with the light create a magical harmony in this room. Although as fascinated I am in this room, Le Penseur, or The Thinker, mesmerized me most.
Photo © Hedwig M. Heerschop 2009The immense figure sitting in the middle of the room created quite a focal point. I could sit here for hours and see myself in the same position in unguarded moments when I am drifting away in my own thoughts. I drift back for a moment to my home country where seven bronze sculptures were stolen last year January from a Dutch Museum near my hometown in the Netherlands. One of the bronze works was The Thinker. It was found but was badly damaged by the thieves who were probably after the bronze for money. They had already taken off one leg and made a start on the head.
Photo ANPThe museum decided to exhibit The Thinker in damaged state to show the public how these thugs managed to ruin something so irreplaceable. But is it irreplaceable? What is not replaceable is it’s unique place in the line of reproduction. The image could be replaced the provenance can not. After Rodin’s death in 1917 the state of France inherited all his works and molds with no restrictions on quantity. Rodin made all his sculptures out of clay and then made plaster molds. Rodin poured the first sculpture of The Thinker in 1902 and after that there were twenty more replica’s made. The one in the Dutch museum was one of the earlier ones. So is this one than considered an original, or the one here in Stanford’s Cantor Museum, or all the other ones spread around the world? Each one is unique as unique as our individual responses to it.
Rodin created The Thinker originally for his monumental Gates of Hell also to be seen at Stanford University. They are a pair of bronze doors intended for a museum of decorative arts in Paris. He didn’t cast The Gates of Hell during his lifetime, but it gave Rodin a rich source of ideas for individual figures and groups that he worked and reworked for the rest of his career.
The theme for Gates of Hell was taken from Dante's Inferno, and The Thinker was Dante himself. The initial plan was to put the figure on top of The Gates of Hell. It was not until 1880 that Rodin started to exhibit The Poet/Thinker. Many more were cast in a smaller size made from the original hand-made clay model.Here I sit overwhelmed by the powerful emotions created by being surrounded by such incredible work. It makes one think.
Photo © Hedwig M. Heerschop 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)