Manifesto
Scale and Context
MACRO
Pop Art emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain
and in parallel in the late 1950s in the United
States.
It refers to Popular culture.
It is characterized by themes and techniques
drawn from advertising and comic books.
Like pop music, Pop Art aimed to employ
images of popular as opposed to elitist culture
in art, emphasising the banal (everyday) or
kitschy elements of any given culture.
Claes Oldenburg’s “Apple
Core” (?)
Claes Oldenburg was
a famous Pop Artist,
best known for his
public art installations
typically featuring very
large replicas of
everyday objects.
"I am for an art
that is politicalerotic-mystical,
that does
something else
than sit on its ass
in a museum." -Claes
His sculptures, though quite
large, often had interactive
capabilities. One such
interactive early sculpture
was a soft sculpture of a
tube of lipstick which would
deflate unless a participant
re-pumped air into it.
Many of Oldenburg's giant
sculptures of mundane
objects elicited public
ridicule before being
embraced as whimsical,
insightful and fun additions
to public outdoor art.
"The main
reason for the
colossal objects
is the obvious
one, to expand
and intensify the
presence of the
vessel -- the
object,"
Oldenburg has
said. "Perhaps I
am more a stilllife painter -using the city as
a tablecloth."
The artists who participated in the
Pop Art movement took ordinary
objects from daily life and forced us
to look at them in a new way.
They made the objects bigger than
life and/or repeated the images so
that we couldn't ignore them.
“Soft Toilet”,
1966
In the case of Claes Oldenburg, the
completed artwork was also placed in a
particular environment. . . sometimes an
unusual one.
Oldenburg often used images of food,
such as hamburgers, French fries, an
apple core, a baked potato, etc., to name
just a few.
“100 Cans”,
Andy
Warhol, oil
on canvas,
1962
Warhol
tended
toward items
massproduced in
the
commercial
art world.
“Marilyn Monroe”, 1962
“Knives”, Andy Warhol,
1981-82, acrylic and
silk screen ink on
canvas
What do you see as the popular images of today that could be celebrated
in a Pop Art sculpture?
What might a modern-day
pop artist living in a
Middle Eastern country
select for a pop art image?
What is the Australian obsession with BIG all about?
Sublime:
adj
1: inspiring awe
2: worthy of adoration or reverence
3. lifted up or set high
4. that which is grand in nature or
art, as distinguished from the
merely beautiful
“Sublime” refers to an aesthetic value in which the primary
factor is the presence or suggestion of transcendent vastness
or greatness, as of power, heroism, extent in space or time.
It differs from greatness or grandeur in that these are as such
capable of being completely grasped or measured. By
contrast, the sublime, while in one aspect apprehended and
grasped as a whole, is felt as transcending our normal
standards of measurement or achievement.
Two elements are emphasised in varying degree by different
writers:
1) a certain baffling of our faculties by a feeling
of limitation akin to awe and veneration;
2) a stimulation of our abilities and elevation of
the self in sympathy.
(Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
•Show “scale” email presentation here.
The two philosophers most associated with the sublime are Edmund
Burke and Immanuel Kant.
Burke said, “Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and
danger, that is to say, whatever is any sort terrible, or is conversant about
terrible objects, or operated in a manner analagous to terror, is a source
of the Sublime, that is, it is capable of producing the strongest emotion
which the mind is capable of feeling”.
(http://saucyjack.phys.columbia.edu/sjk/node7.html)
Burke believed vastness and uniformity could produce a sense of the
sublime. He believed delight was closely related to the sublime but
differentiated between delight and pleasure.
Pleasure=beauty=society
Delight=sublime=personal
John Singleton Copley, 1778, “?”
Copley’s painting depicts the rescue of Brooke Watson, who was a
young orphan working on a trading vessel when the attack took place.
He was repeatedly bitten by the same shark before being rescued, and
his leg had to be amputated below the knee. It was rare to survive such
traumatic episodes back in the eighteenth century, but Watson
survived. In fact, Watson survived long enough to actually see Copley’s
1778 painting. Nor was he a poor trader at the time either. He had
moved to London in 1759, become a successful trader, and eventually
a Member of Parliament. (All of this after his early life in Cuba, trips to
the American colonies before the Revolutionary War and forays into
Canada.) Almost a decade after Copley’s painting was finished,
Watson went on to his most prestigious post: in 1796, the man known
to the world as a young orphan so near death in Copley’s painting
served as Lord Mayor of London.
For Immanuel Kant, the sublime could not apply to objects, only to the
mind. He felt the sublime represented a force larger than a human, so
that in its presence a person experienced a state of awe.
He felt:
•The sublime is something which arouses enjoyment but also horror
•Beauty is different from the sublime. It is a pleasant sensation making
one feel joyous
•The sublime must always be great but simple e.g. a vista that moves
one
•Beauty on the other hand must be small but ornate e.g. something
which charms one like a field of daisies
•The sublime is that which is great. It moves a person with elation,
terror, delight and awe.
•Night, according to Kant, is Sublime, while Day is Beautiful. Tall oaks
and lonely shadows are Sublime while flower beds, low hedges and
shaped trees are Beautiful.
Caspar David
Friedrich’s “Wanderer
Above the Sea of Fog”,
1818
Caspar David Friedrich, “Arctic Shipwreck”, 1824
It has been said that Friedrich’s work symbolises the “inaccessible majesty of
God”. The persistent existence of ice in the Polar sea signifies God’s eternal
being, while the wrecked ship denotes man’s impotence and mortality.
Romanticism was an 18th century artistic and intellectual movement that
grew in part as a revolt against the aristocratic, social and political norms
of the Enlightenment period and the rationalisation of nature. In art, it
stressed:
•Strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience placing new
emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror and
the awe experienced in confronting the sublimity of nature.
It was influenced by ideologies and events of the French Revolution.
It elevated the achievements of what it perceived as misunderstood
heroic individuals and artists who altered society.
It legitimised the individual imagination as a critical authority which
permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art.
(Wikipedia)
Theodore Gericault, “The Raft of the Medusa”, 1819
Jacques-Louis
David, “Napoleon
Crossing the Alps”,
1801
Francisco
Goya,
“The Third
of May”,
1814
Eugene Delacroix, “Liberty Leading the People”, 1830
John Constable (Eng.), “Wivenhoe Park, Essex”, 1816, oil on canvas
Constable used atmospheric conditions as allegories for his emotions.
At the time of this work he was rushing off to marry his fiancee of 7
years.
John
Constable,
“Hadleigh
Castle”, 1829,
oil on canvas
At this time, Constable’s young wife (of 12 years) has died of consumption and Constable has fallen into
a black hole of despair.
Constable’s work can be seen as an epitomy of Benedict Spinoza’s belief in the oneness of Man and
Nature. Constable wrote to a friend, “Painting is but another word for feeling… I am fond of being an
Egoist in whatever relates to painting”.
Constable is a landscape painter, but a human presence is still indicated by tiny figures, indicating the
unimportance of humanity in terms of the sublime nature of nature itself.
William Turner, “Snow Storm – Steamboat off a Harbour’s Mouth”, 1842
“We were making the world’s first measurements of underwater turbulence
in a lake at the foot of a Patagonian glacier. Every three or four minutes,
there was this huge explosion and ten million tonnes of ice sheared off the
face of the glacier and came crashing down. It’s scary when there’s two of
you in a rubber dinghy two metres long. You wait in deathly silence for the
noise, then a 300m wall of ice drops into the water, creating two-metre
waves you have to ride over at full speed to get to the face of the glacier.
We’d drop our instruments into the water, record our measurements and get
the hell out of there. You never knew when the next bit of glacier was going
to drop and you didn’t want to be under it.
The first day, we were terrified and only got to within half a kilometre; on the
last day, we’d go within 20m of the glacier face. It’s all part of the global
warming jigsaw – we need to know how fast the glacier is moving and
measure the heat transfer.
Venice is at the opposite end of the work spectrum. We sail into the lagoon
at 5am, when the sun is coming up and the fog is lifting and it’s
unbelievably beautiful. And then after measuring water flows, we go back
and have wonderful meals in the most civilised place in the world.”
Jorg Imberger, “Life Lines”, The Australian, January 8-9th, 2000
Lorenzo Bernini, “The
Ecstacy of St Theresa”,
1647 – 1652
I saw in his hand a long
spear of gold, and at the
iron's point there seemed
to be a little fire. He
appeared to me to be
thrusting it at times into my
heart, and to pierce my
very entrails; when he
drew it out, he seemed to
draw them out also, and to
leave me all on fire with a
great love of God.
The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing
was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be
rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain
is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a
caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul
and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it
who may think that I am lying.”
Mark Rothko’s “Orange and Yellow”,
1956
“Rather than using the representational
models of (19th century Romantic
painters, Rothko created sublime
experiences for the viewer through
seemingly simple combinations of
abstracted colour, light and space.
Many have hailed Rothko’s work as
transcendental, creating spiritual work
for secular times. Rothko’s canvases of
the 50s and 60s engender a sense of
sublimity through their size, space and
light. Painted with think layers of paint
that allow the colour beneath to show,
the saturated canvases seem to radiate
an inner light source. Rothko’s floating
rectangles vacillate between figure and
ground, focused and hazy, creating a
tension within the composition and
perhaps within the viewer.
The German photographer, Andreas Gursky, takes pictures
of enormous spaces – stock exchanges, skyscrapers,
mountain peaks – in which crowds of people look tiny
and relentless, making their presence felt in the world,
like a minute, leisurely colony of ants. Also like ants,
these people appear to spend little time examining their
own encroachment – architectural, technological and
personal – on the natural world. In their determined,
oblivious way, the people in his photographs make clear
that there is no longer any nature uncharted by man. In
place of nature we find the invasive landmarks of a
global economy. Taken as a whole, Gursky’s work
constitutes a map of the postmodern civilised world.
Andreas Gursky,
“Bundestag”, 1998
The vision is not a
comforting one. Many of
Gursky’s pictures, though
beautiful, intensely
colourful and wonderfully
composed, leave the
viewer with an uneasy
feeling. Whether because
of the spread of
architectures or the
bustling crowds they
show, or because of the
equalising treatment given
to all subjects, from the
Dolomite Mountains to a
car show in France, the
pictures are both aweinspiring and disturbing.
“Library” by Andreas Gursky, 1999, Cibachrome print, mounted to plexiglass,
Edition 2/679 x 142 inches
Chuck
Close,
"Big SelfPortrait",
19671968,
acrylic on
canvas
Chuck Close, “Bob”
Ron Mueck (born 1958) is an Australian hyperrealist sculptor working in Great
Britain. Mueck's early career was as a model maker and puppeteer for
children's television and films, notably the film Labyrinth for which he also
contributed the voice of Ludo.
Mueck moved on to establish his own company in London, making photorealistic props and animatronics for the advertising industry. Although highly
detailed, these props were usually designed to be photographed from one
specific angle hiding the mess of construction seen from the other side. Mueck
increasingly wanted to produce realistic sculptures which looked perfect from all
angles.
In 1996 Mueck transitioned to fine art, collaborating with his mother-in-law,
Paula Rego, to produce small figures as part of a tableau she was showing at
the Hayward Gallery. Rego introduced him to Charles Saatchi who was
immediately impressed and started to collect and commission work. This led to
the piece which made Mueck's name, Dead Dad, being included in the
Sensation show at the Royal Academy the following year.
Dead Dad is a rather
haunting silicone and
mixed media sculpture of
the corpse of Mueck's
father reduced to about
two thirds of its natural
scale. It is the only work of
Mueck's that uses his own
hair for the finished
product.
Mueck's sculptures
faithfully reproduce the
minute detail of the human
body, but play with scale to
produce disconcertingly
jarring visual images. His
five metre high sculpture
Detail of the foot in “Boy”
Boy 1999 was a feature in
the Millennium Dome and
later exhibited in the
Venice Biennale.
In 2002 his sculpture
Pregnant Woman was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia for AU$800,000.
“A Girl” by Ron Mueck, 2006
“Red Canna”, Georgia
O’Keefe, 1923
Georgia O’Keefe, “Morning Glory”
Australian artist, Tim Maguire’s, “Untitled”
Tim Maguire,
“Shadows, Tulip”, 2002
MICRO
Ron Mueck, “Dead Dad”
Yuken Teruya
Golden Arch Parkway
Mcdonald's (Japanese)
2005
paper, glue
9 x 15.3 x 26.5 cm
Yuken Teruya, Golden Arch Parkway
McDonald's (brown)
2005
paper, glue
8.3 x 12.7 x 24.2 cm
Yuken Teruya
Forest Inc
2005
22 paper rolls,
painted steel,
magnets
6.3 x 6.3 x 10 cm
For Notice Forest, Yuken Teruya creates enchanting dioramas within
products made from paper such as a take-out bag or the cardboard
tube inside a toilet paper role. Carving detailed, miniature trees in
each, Teruya makes fragile, magical sculptures about nature, craft,
and consumerism.
Yuken Teruya is adept at transforming objects using very modest,
intimately-scaled gestures. In Notice Forest, the artist subtly draws
our attention to the effects of consumerism and globalism -- alluding
to the depletion of fragile natural resources, the disappearance of
cultural traditions and identities, and the distribution of wealth in the
new world order. Working with discarded paper bags from takeout
joints such as McDonald's and Krispy Kreme, commercial gift bags
and post office packages, Teruya creates delicately rendered
shadowboxes in which the sculptural form cut out from the container
is shaped by the container itself. Using photography as the starting
point, Teruya photographs trees he encounters in his daily life and
then painstakingly recreates the form of the individual trees as paper
cutouts that are suspended inside the bags. Light filters down
through the holes to illuminate the tiny tree within each bag's
miniature interior landscape in what the Teruya describes as his
attempt to return a spent consumer product back to the forest.
Yuken Teruya
LVMH - Louis
Vuitton
2005
paper, glue
14.5 x 40 x 33.5
cm
Fiona Hall, “Cell
Culture”, 2002,
Adelaide
glass, silver, plastic,
vitrine (wood,
glass)
vitrine 157.0 x
247.0 x 90.0 cm
(vitrine) legs 44.8
cm
Fiona Hall, details from “Cell Culture”, 2002, variable
glass, metal, pvc, beads in vitrine
dimensions variable
(Detail)
Cell Culture is a collection of animals and plants
constructed out of clear glass beads and white
Tupperware containers, all housed within a large
museological display case. Again, here, Hall has
conflated two different economies, two different
systems of trade, socialisation and exchange by
subjecting them to the neutralising force of science:
collection of specimens, systematic classification,
objective display. The wondrous complexity of
biological diversity is frozen like a display of
precious diamonds rendered curiously sterile in an
institutional context.
Fiona Hall, “Plumeria acutisolis,
frangipani, araliya, malliya poo”, 1999
Aluminium & steel
Paradisus Terrestris, 1999
Albrecht Durer, “The
Large Turf”, 1503,
watercolour and
gouache on paper
It is thought that there is little symbolism in “The Large Turf” and that Durer
drew this collection of plants largely because he was interested in their medicinal
properties and healing powers.
Durer was born in Nurnberg, Germany in 1528 and is generally regarded as the greatest
German Renaissance artist. He is famous for being skilful with many media, including
landscape watercolours of the Alps of Tirol in Italy. These watercolours are admired for
their careful composition, broad strokes with some areas left relatively roughly sketched
in and amazing harmony of detail. All these comments could also be made about “The
Large Turf”. Perhaps Durer used some of the techniques he developed in his earlier
watercolour landscapes for its execution as well.
It is rather unusual that Durer chose to draw “The Large Turf”. He is best known for his
etchings and copper engravings of biblical stories and his large oil portraits. “The Large
Turf” was most probably completed almost as a quick sketch in an idle moment when he
had nothing else pressing to complete – almost like a doodle. Evidence has been found
of a notation beneath one of his best known highly detailed drawings that it was
completed in five days. The level of expertise and minute detail in the drawing is
evidence that Durer had exceptional skill to complete it in only five days. This in itself is
proof that “The Large Turf” would have taken him very little time indeed and it is a
wonder that such a quick sketch ever survived. The most likely explanation for its
existence is that Durer had a healthy interest in a wide range of subjects, as so many
Renaissance artists did. The drawing is most likely to be a record of the plants
themselves – perhaps to remind him of which was which in case he needed to use them
medicinally in the future – rather than a proper artwork.
What other ways
are there to
reinforce a
message?
DISTORTION
John Brack, “Portrait of
Kim Bonython”,
Brett Whiteley
Mike Parr, “Zastruga Self Portrait”, 1986
Colour
Andy Warhol, “Marilyn
Monroe”, 1963
Lin Onus, “Fish and
Storm Clouds”, 1994
Shape
TONE
Nick Mourtzakis,
“Nature Insects plants
flowers. shell fish
corals. the microscopic
creatures. dreams.”
Winner of the 2006
Dobell Prize for
Drawing
LINE
Daisy Andrews,
“Pamarr
(Secondary
Crossing”
TEXTURE
Susie Colquitt,
Permanence,
2000; nylon
zippers, perm
rods; 5.5 by 6
by 6 inches