Saying Nothing

In a historic passage Mallarmé describes the terror, the sense of sterility, that the poet experiences when he sits down to his desk, confronts the sheet of paper on which his poem is supposed to be composed, and no words come to him. But we might ask, why could not Mallarmé, after an interval of time, have simply got up from his chair and produced the blank sheet of paper as the poem that he sat down to write? Indeed, in support of this, could one imagine anything that was more expressive of, or would be held to exhibit more precisely the poet’s feelings of inner devastation than the virginal paper?

— Richard Wollheim, “Minimal Art,” in Minimal Art, ed. Gregory Battcock, 1968

| Art · Literature

Ground Zero

There is at Columbia University’s Arden House Conference Center a statue of a cat in bronze. It stands on a floor at the head of a stairway that leads into a common room at a lower level. Presumably it is of some value, or believed to be … inasmuch as the managers have chained it to the railing — to forestall theft, I suppose, as if it were a television set in a squalid motel. Such might be the obvious interpretation. But I am open to the suggestion that it is not a chained sculpture of a cat but a sculpture of a chained cat, one end of which is wittily attached to a piece of reality. … Of course what we take to be a bit of reality can in fact be part of the work, which is now a sculpture of a cat-chained-to-an-iron-railing, though the moment we allow it to be a part of the work, where does or can the work end? It becomes a kind of metaphysical sandpit, swallowing the universe down into itself.

— Arthur Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, 1981

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Tree Mountain

http://www.flickr.com/photos/amymyou/518300581/
Image: Flickr

Twenty years ago, 11,000 people planted 11,000 trees on an artificial mountain near Ylöjärvi, Finland. The trees were planted in a mathematical pattern based on the golden section; in time they will grow into a virgin forest each tree of which has a designated custodian. The trees can change ownership, but they can never be removed from the forest, and the mountain itself can never be owned or sold.

Artist Agnes Denes conceived the project in 1982, and the Finnish government undertook it 10 years later. The site is legally protected for the next 400 years.

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Moving Images

By turning the traditional rules of perspective inside out, the paintings of British artist Patrick Hughes induce a compelling illusion in three dimensions.

“Reverspectives are three-dimensional paintings that when viewed from the front initially give the impression of viewing a painted flat surface that shows a perspective view,” he writes. “However as soon as the viewer moves their head even slightly the three dimensional surface that supports the perspective view accentuates the depth of the image and accelerates the shifting perspective far more than the brain normally allows.

“This provides a powerful and often disorienting impression of depth and movement. The illusion is made possible by painting the view in reverse to the relief of the surface, that is, the bits that stick farthest out from the painting are painted with the most distant part of the scene.”

See Termespheres.

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Time Series

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oct_31,_1973_(Today_Series,_%22Tuesday%22)_On_Kawara.JPG

Since 1966, Japanese artist On Kawara has been producing paintings that depict only the date of their creation, executed in liquitex on canvas in eight standard sizes. If he can’t complete a painting on the day he starts it, he destroys it. Each entry in the series is painted carefully by hand in the language of the country in which he produces it; to date he’s completed more than 2,000 paintings in 112 countries, and he says he’ll continue until he dies.

Is this valuable? Yes: In 2006 Christie’s sold Nov. 8, 1989 for £310,000.

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The Little Man

In 1525, more than 100,000 German peasants demanded an end to serfdom and were massacred by the well-organized armies of the ruling class. After observing the ornate memorials with which the aristocrats congratulated themselves, Albrecht Dürer proposed a similarly baroque monument to the slain peasants:

Place a quadrangular stone block measuring ten feet in width and four feet in height on a quadrangular stone slab which measures twenty feet in length and one foot in height. On the four corners of the ledge place tied-up cows, sheep, pigs, etc. But on the four corners of the stone block place four baskets, filled with butter, eggs, onions, and herbs, or whatever you like. In the centre of this stone block place a second one, measuring seven feet in length and one foot in height. On top of this second block place a strong chest four feet high, measuring six and a half feet wide at the bottom and four feet wide at the top. Then place a kettle upside down on top of the chest. The kettle’s diameter should be four and a half feet at the rim and three feet at its bottom. Surmount the kettle with a cheese bowl which is half a foot high and two and a half feet in diameter at the bottom. Cover this bowl with a thick plate that protrudes beyond its rim. On the plate, place a keg of butter which is three feet high and two and a half feet in diameter at the bottom. Cover this bowl with a thick plate that protrudes beyond its rim. On the plate, place a keg of butter which is three feet high and has a diameter of a foot and a half at the bottom, and of only a foot at the top. Its spout should protrude beyond this. On the top of the butter keg, place a well-formed milk jug, two and a half feet high, and with a diameter which is one foot at its bulge, half a foot at its top, and is wider at its bottom. Into this jug put four rods branching into forks on top and extending five and a half feet in height, so that the rods will protrude by half a foot, and then hang peasants’ tool on it – like hoes, pitchforks, flails, etc. The rods are to be surmounted by a chicken basket, topped by a lard tub upon which sits an afflicted peasant with a sword stuck into his back.

What would that look like?

durer peasants memorial

| Art · History · Society

Think Piece

In 1953 Robert Rauschenberg obtained a drawing from Willem de Kooning, erased it, and presented the blank paper in a gilded frame titled Erased de Kooning Drawing, Robert Rauschenberg, 1953.

“I wanted to create a work of art by [erasing],” he said. “Using my own work wasn’t satisfactory. … I realized that it had to be something by someone who everybody agreed was great, and the most logical person for that was de Kooning.”

Rauschenberg said de Kooning was annoyed at first by the request, but “would not have wanted to hinder me in my work, if that’s what I wanted to do.” But he chose a particularly dark drawing in charcoal, ink, pencil, and crayon, saying, “We might as well make it harder for you.”

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A Beautiful Belt

Completed in 1997, German artist Jo Niemeyer’s 20 Steps Around the Globe installed 20 high-grade steel columns on a great circle around the earth, establishing the distances between them using the golden ratio φ, 1.61803398875.

The first poles, shown here, were erected in Finnish Lapland, north of the polar circle. The first two were placed 0.458 meters apart; the third was placed 0.458 × φ = 0.741 meters beyond the second; and so on, marching off in a beeline toward the horizon. The first 12 poles are in Finland; the 13th and 14th in Norway; the 15th, 16th, and 17th in Russia; the 18th in China; and the 19th in Australia. The 20th coincides with the first back in Finland.

In this way the project models the golden section and the Fibonacci sequence, tailoring them to our planet. Niemeyer calls it “an interdisciplinary expedition into the secrets of the power of limits.”

| Art · Science & Math

Paper Chase

http://www.flickr.com/photos/48816143@N00/8575942327/in/photolist-e4PWSB-e4VpHd-e4Vp4m-e4VtBE-dzeULg
Image: Flickr

Neil Dawson’s Horizons invites a double-take — what appears to be a discarded piece of paper is actually a sculpture of welded steel 10 meters high.

Commissioned in 1994, it occupies the highest hilltop in businessman Alan Gibbs’ private art park in New Zealand.

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Shadow Play

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute art professor Larry Kagan “hides” two-dimensional images in seemingly chaotic three-dimensional sculptures. The images are revealed when light is applied from the right angle.

“The shadows are a condensation of something that exists in more dimensions,” he says. “Behind them, there can be an awful lot going on.”

A few more playful sculptures from Japanese artist Shigeo Fukuda:

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