I just came from sculpture class, the current project for which involves taking apart a found object and reassembling it. I chose a sweater. I'm unraveling a sweater. By hand. Thread by thread. It's probably the most insane thing I've chosen to do with my time, and I'm pretty sure it's ruining my eyesight, but it's also fascinating to spend hours making my way through all of the minute details of an ordinary object that was probably woven by a machine in mere minutes. So anyway, I've built a couple of armatures out of wire in the interest of wrapping the unraveled thread (the reassembly portion of the assignment) once I've done the slow work of taking it apart. My professor characterized what I'm doing as "making 3D paintings," which makes me really happy. Still no images of new stuff to post yet--I should be building at least one 5'x8' stretcher this weekend, as well as finishing my wood relief painting and some more paper cutout pieces, so it shouldn't be too long. But in the meantime, let's take a break from the overwhelming sea of captivating paintings on The List and look at some sculptural work, shall we?
Hans Arp:
A lot of the shapes in this work actually remind me of Matisse's later abstract drawings. Arp did paintings too, but I've been looking a lot at his reliefs.
Richard Tuttle:
Hans Richter:
Kurt Schwitters:
Schwitters' work is pretty dominated by collage, but this piece, Merzbau, is one of the coolest things I've ever read about. He essentially turned his living space into a collage. He just accumulated stuff and formed it into an aesthetic space, and
lived inside his art. Yeah.
Constantin Brancusi:
For me, no discussion of sculpture is complete until I've brought up Bird In Space. It's just so exquisitely simple! There's a gorgeous room at the PMA (Philadelphia Museum of Art) filled with Brancusi sculptures and Mondrian paintings. It'll change your life.
I guess that's all for today. I could mention Giacometti or Rodin, but my love of them is not really directly related to anything I'm doing right now, so I'll resist.
That last image, the one right above this text...I stood in that room. It was fantastic. (It's at the PMA, so you can stand there too the next time you're in Philly!)
Just for the sake of comparison/ full disclosure, Guston also made work like this:
I know, crazy right?
I was in New York this past weekend with my senior painting class (we saw SO MUCH! It was fantastic). We went to the Met to see the John Baldessari exhibit (fantastic), and had some time to roam around afterward, and I stumbled upon an entire room full of Clyfford Still paintings! It was pretty epic. I similarly freaked out at the Abstract Expressionism show at MoMA, where there was an entire room of Rothko paintings. Unfortunately, by the time we got to MoMA I only had 20 minutes before I had to leave to catch the bus, so I was basically short-circuiting...I need to go back and bask for an appropriate stretch of time.
He's featured in the Ab Ex show...
