From:
Tomas Lipps <tmlipps@zzzzzzzzzzzzz>
Date:
Wed, 31 Mar 2004 07:23:38 -0700
Subject:
cultural relevance?
ahem, said a fly on the wall.
Quoted text begins.Enjoy the childish pleasure
of making something out of a piece of stone.
End of quote.
yes, indeed.
(though I would substitute child-like for childish)
but the pleasure of making something out of a piece (or, with respect
to additive sculpture, pieces) of stone is more than child-like. it
is procreative.
(procreate 1. To beget and conceive (offspring). 2. To produce or
create; originate).
the engendering of form(s).
bringing into existence things which do not yet exist,
whether culturally meaningful or not.
giving life to entities that are, hopefully worthy, of existence.
and some forms though clad in, or even imbued with a particular
culture, transcend it.
for your consideration I pass along the words of yet another stone sculptor:
JEAN ARP'S THOUGHTS ON ART
"We don't want to copy nature. We don't want to reproduce, we want to
produce. We want to produce like a plant that produces a fruit, and
not reproduce. We want to produce directly and not byway of any
intermediary. Since this art doesn't have the slightest trace of
abstraction, we name it concrete art. Works of concrete art should
not be signed by the artists. These paintings,sculptures-these
objects-should remain anonymous in the huge studio of nature, like
clouds, mountains, seas, animals, men. Yes! Men should go back to
nature! Artists should work in communities as they did in the Middle
Ages."
"These works are constructed with lines, surfaces, forms, and colors
that try to go beyond the human and attain the infinite and the
eternal. They reject our egotism.... The hands of our brothers,
instead of being interchangeable with our own hands, have become
enemy hands. Instead of anonymity, we have renown and masterpieces;
wisdom is dead.... Reproduction is imitation, play acting, tightrope
walking."
"The Renaissance bumptiously exalted human reason. Modern times with
their science and technology have turned man into a megalomaniac. The
atrocious chaos of our era is the consequence of that overrating of
reason." The evolution of traditional painting toward concrete art,
from Cezanne by way of the Cubists, has been frequently explained,
and these historical explanations have merely confused the issue. All
at once, "according to the laws of chance," around 1914, the human
mind underwent a transformation:it was confronted with an ethical
problem. When I exhibited my first concrete reliefs, I put out a
little manifesto declaring the art of the bourgeois to be sanctioned
lunacy. Especially these naked men, women, and children in stone or
bronze, exhibited in public squares, gardens, and forest clearings,
who untiringly dance, chase butter-flies, shoot arrows, hold out
apples, blow the flute, are the perfect expression of a mad world.
These mad figures must no longer sully nature. Today, as in the day
of the early Christians, the essential must become known. The artist
must let his work create itself directly. Today we are no longer
concerned with subtleties. My reliefs and sculptures fit naturally
into nature.On closer examination however they reveal that they were
formed by human hand, and so I have named certain of them: Stone
Formed by Human Hand." [1942]
(JeanArp (1887-1966) was first affiliated with the Surrealists and
later with abstract artists. In the 1920 he joined the French
vanguard and the Dada movement. He received international acclaim
from his sculptures in stone.)
- References
- message 00531: cultural relevance? - George Graham (30 Mar 2004)
- Previous by Thread: message 00538: cultural relevance? - John VanCamp (30 Mar 2004)
- Next by Thread: message 00533: cultural relevance? - Don Dougan (30 Mar 2004)
- Previous by Date: message 00547: a ? for JVC - r putnam (31 Mar 2004)
- Next by Date: message 00549: a ? for JVC - John VanCamp (31 Mar 2004)
