last one.

I liked Amanda Wojick’s presentation about sculpture this week because she took a different approach to introducing the material. By showcasing the work of nine women throughout the 20^th century, Amanda really chronicled the history and progress of sculpture. An integral theme she mentioned was the use of abstraction in the different pieces and the extent to which each artist chose to utilize it. The less abstract, the closer it is to a representation of something. Among the works of the artists presented, I found that most of them were of a more abstract nature. When I think of representational sculpture I think of statues commemorating important people: literal depiction. Amanda also talked about the variety of different materials that sculptors have access to. I thought this was an interesting point because when you think about other art forms like painting or drawing, there are a couple of different materials at most to work with but sculpture really allows for a variety of different substances. The most common materials were stone, metal, ceramic and wood but Amanda showed that her work was made mostly of paper mâché and showed us two other artists that use different materials. Petah Coyne used pearls, silk, wax and ribbons to create her sculpture installations while Tara Donovan used Styrofoam cups and straws. I never realized the extent of materials that could make up a sculpture. It’s totally outside of the ancient, conventional view of sculptures made from stone, metal or ceramic. For this reason, I could see myself enjoying working with this medium. The materials are limitless. There is no block to chisel at, unless you want to. The women Amanda talked about really radicalized the way I thought about sculpture and made me think about it in a different way. Somehow it gives me hope that somebody like me could be artistic through a strong reliance of innovation and creativity rather than formal skill. It was no secret that all of the artists Amanda chose to show were women. In some ways, I understand where she was coming from but on the other hand, I think it the presentation could have been more balanced if a few male artists were featured. Women artists are very powerful because historically, women have often been treated like second-class citizens, controlled by men and stifled creatively. The movement of women artists is thus very important because it shows how they have overcome oppression so on the one hand it is important to incorporate women sculptors but is maybe skewing the bigger picture of sculpture as a whole by removing men from the picture. Either way, sculpture is now an art form I will forever think of in a different way. Just thinking about the idea that just about any material could make a sculpture makes me want to create something. It’s inspiring.

Through the Art21 videos, Louise Bourgeois seemed like a really cool old lady. I would be so proud to be related to her. Her art expresses conflicts and disturbances she faced as a child. She says that a work of art doesn’t have to be explained, which I would disagree with, but only on an arbitrary level, because sometimes I don’t want to take the time to figure out a meaning. In reality, she is right because a piece should evoke different emotions among different people and an explanation would rob people of their own creative devices. Her outdoor installation with the hands was great. Not only did I find it to be aesthetically pleasing, but how she talks about it is very sweet. She talks about how the different sized hands are holding one another and how that speaks about help and helplessness. One thing she said that I thought was interesting was that the little hands are like the helplessness of a child and how they are not arrogant or ashamed at their helplessness. Because her work is autobiographical, I thought her installation was very poignant because it reflects how she must have felt as a child.

The reading “Just Looking” was kind of eye opening. James Elkins talks about the concept of vision and seeing, but concludes it to be much more than just one of the five senses. At first he introduces seeing as something we do automatically in a passive unthinking way. What I thought was interesting was how he compared “just looking,” to shopping. He talked about how when shoppers are approached by the salespeople most people just respond that they are “just looking.” We all do it. I do it. And when I worked in retail people used to say that to me all the time. But the truth is, we’re never really “just looking.” He later likens the process of shopping to a hunter prey relationship where the positions are interchangeable so you can go hunting for an object, or the salesperson can hunt and trap you into their web. So Elkins says that when we say we’re “just looking,” we really mean we’re just searching. I think this is so true because, even when I don’t plan on buying anything or go into a store knowing it’s too expensive I still search and keep my “eye out” for something on sale, a certain something that fits my criteria of cool but is also in my price range. If I don’t find that one thing, my searching ends that store and I go on to another to do the same thing. We may think we’re all “just looking,” but we all have constant unconscious desires that are longing to be fulfilled. Another point he made expanded on his further notion of “just looking” as a passive action and said that there really is no such thing. Elkins addresses “just looking” from a much bigger perspective now and moves away from the shopping comparison and talks about how even when we are least interested we remain on the prowl. We are “always looking out, looking for, even just looking around” (21). This is so true. A glance doesn’t come without a purpose. As a passionate writer, I like how Elkins say when he is stuck or searching for words he looks outside at a picturesque scene to gain inspiration. I often find myself doing that, although I usually just look all around as if I’m asking the room I’m in to please help me. We don’t look without purpose is what Elkins is really trying to say and I think that’s something people overlook.

Richard Serra was totally different from any of the artists presented in week 9. I like that kind of contrast because it shows how diverse the art form really is. Serra’s installations are huge. I feel like I would be overwhelmed if I ever came face to face with his sculptures. He says he never starts with an image or a drawing but usually works off of a model. But later in his profile on Art21 they show him drawing his sculptures. So he doesn’t start with a drawing, but he ends with one? He has a very interesting process and I wonder if he gets his artistic rocks off through the challenge of the scale of his work rather than the meaning because he says there is no metaphorical meaning but rather a relationship of the elements. Serra is very matter-of-fact but I sense that he’s got some sort of meaning behind his installations.

One connection between Amanda’s presentation and the reading that I noticed was University of Oregon graduate, Theresa Sterner’s sculpture of doors on campus. She saw elevated, closed doors that led to a mechanical room with slats that you could peer into and reproduced the doors out of cardboard. They were strewn on the ground in front of the real doors looking forlorn and beaten up. I thought this concept played with the idea of sight and “just looking.” The original doors evoke a curiosity to go see what is inside and her reproduction of them highlights that. It goes back to Elkins’ whole idea that we are never “just looking.” Theresa looked in those doors, because she was curious. What resulted from what she saw was art. She was looking for inspiration and material to work with. Beyond why Theresa looked, I might have walked by there and looked in to see if there was an attractive handy man fixing something in there. I would have told myself I was “just looking” to see what was inside but it would have been a lie. The work of Louise Bourgeois and Richard Serra is vastly different but they both play with the idea of scale which affects how they are viewed. Bourgeois’ black marble hand installation is set in a garden in Chicago. She talks about how the space is surrounded by huge buildings but her work is not meant to compete or challenge that. It is discrete and subdued, something you have to really look for it literally. You’ve also got to take into account what it means for it to be on a small scale. The hands are abstract because they aren’t attached to anything but they are molds of real hands so they’re representational in that respect, which connects with Amanda’s presentation about the differences between the two. So you’ve got to question why the hands are no bigger and no smaller and I think that deals with those two themes. Richard Serra on the other hand makes huge installations that seen very easily. However, when I was watching the video I noticed art goers who walked inside the spirals were constantly looking around, trying to place themselves. Serra talks about this, about how such a massive object with hardly any resemblance to everyday objects, affects people who are inside of it. Naturally, they look around trying to make sense of it but everywhere you look in this installation is the same stretch of steel. I thought it was interesting how Elkins says we are always looking for a purpose and the purpose of these people looking at Serra’s work is to try and understand it. Looking at Serra’s massive work, I remembered Rachel Whiteread and the scale of her work, most notably, the house she casted. Here are two artists who have engaged in physically huge undertakings in the name of art, yet their end products are greatly different. I think Whiteread’s work definitely has metaphorical meaning while Serra claims his does not. Whiteread works with domestic everyday objects, while Serra’s work couldn’t be farther from anything recognizable, so again there’s the idea of representation and abstraction that show up. In the Art21 video there are some scenes of Serra, furiously drawing his sculptures. I thought this was a little odd because he said he never starts with drawing but it is somewhat ironic that he ends with it. So he makes abstract sculptures but then creates a representational form of them by literally drawing them. I thought that was interesting. When he comments on his drawings he says he wants to keep his eye and hand in sync and that the eye is a muscle so if you exercise this muscle by drawing you can sharpen your vision, sight and the way you look at things. Obviously, this goes back to the “Just Looking,” reading but further expands on the reading by saying you can in a sense hone the way you look at things. 

A classic example of representational sculpture.