I am disturbed by the pronounced dissatisfaction of viewers with unpopular materials. On the one hand, I hear words of incomprehension and unaesthetic about works by, for example, Phyllida Barlow or Camille Henrot, and on the other, numerous exhibitions of these authors in the most acclaimed museums in Europe. There is a clear discrepancy in understanding and attitude towards the objects shown in these museums.
But the fact is that I was both there and there. On the one hand, when I just started studying contemporary art, I had clearly defined negative emotions, for example, in relation to the works of Joseph Beuys.
The unpleasant sensation caused by fat smeared on the chair. Perhaps because cleanliness and order are important to me, and then something unnecessary, dirty and not intended on a wooden chair came into conflict in my mind.
Joseph Beuys, Fat Chair, 1964-1985, wood, glass, metal, fabric, paint, fat and thermometer, 183 x 155 x 64 cm (Tate Modern) [online] At: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/post-war-european-art/postwar-art-germany/a/joseph-beuys-fat-chair (Accessed 01.03.2023)
And on the other hand, now I myself work with "similar" art. What's happened? How exactly did this change come about?
In this part of the course, I would like to focus on a detailed study of the issue of materials choice. I want to achieve an understanding of human aesthetic choice through the analysis of artists working with "repulsive", unconventional materials and through the creation of several works that in my opinion correspond to my level of complexity of art understanding and aesthetics.
Phyllida Barlow, installation view of “glimpse,” with undercover ii, 2020. Photo: Zak Kelley, © Phyllida Barlow, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth [online] At: https://sculpturemagazine.art/phyllida-barlow-5/ (Accessed 28.02.2023)
The choice of materials for Phyllida Barlow was shaped by her family history. Her mother sewed and did needlework. Working in haste, using everything that was at home, taught the artist to see resources for creative expression in everything. Homemade, Phyllida Barlow [online] At: https://art21.org/watch/extended-play/phyllida-barlow-homemade-short/ (Accessed 28.02.2023)
Phyllida Barlow, for example, speaks of the banality of simple materials. This allows her to break the rules by which these materials exist. Wooden timbers, for instance, intended for construction can reveal idiosyncratic nature of their own. It turns out that here the physical interaction with the object, the search for duality and originality of the object dominates the aesthetic aspect. “Maybe I don’t think enough about beauty in my work because I’m so curious about other qualities, abstract qualities of time, weight, balance, rhythm…” (Wilmes, 2021, p.137) The artist also talks about the opposition to the foundations and customs of that time in the educational institutions of the country. These prohibitions and taboos motivated Barlow to go not in the direction of what is right or wrong but to follow her own path.
After the presentation of the idea, and the exposure of the essence, Barlow reworks large objects, paying special attention to recycling and ecology, and talking about respect for materials. Artist Phyllida Barlow on Sustainability in Art | Louisiana Channel [online] At: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZzTAXGQxmQA&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE (Accessed 28.02.2023)
Thus, for Phyllida Barlow, the choice of materials was determined by family traditions, and then by the developed interest in experiencing the world through these objects and the process of work.
That is probably why this artist is so close to me. I grew up surrounded by pieces of wood, old craft items, broken iron tools, and my father's workshop and unlimited access to it. At the same time, in my first institute in Moscow, there were prohibitions on the implementation of certain activities. This left an indelible imprint on me in comparison with the freedom of other educational institutions. This confrontation formed the basis of my interest in what is forbidden. I wanted to try to understand why it is so bad and corrupts the culture in the understanding of my former institute, while in the leading museums of the world, it is recognized as a masterpiece. But does a simple confrontation make me see beauty and aesthetics in these materials?
Barlow studied art from 1960 to 1966, when the rules in England were old-fashioned. I entered the institute of Arts in 2013. And what has changed in 60 years in this part of the world? I was told to leave my "abnormal ideas of working with the canvas material itself" and continue to better study classical painting and drawing, which I was bored with. What does such an imposition lead to, forcing the artist to do what he/she is not interested in? This state of society, in which the learning process imposes norms and rules on you, for me feels stiff and frozen. Can I embody these feelings in the material?
For example, Joseph Beuys, after his miraculous rescue (which is not a true episode of his life) while serving in the Luftwaffe after a plane crash in Crimea, “where, he claimed, he was saved by Tartar tribesmen, who wrapped him in insulating layers of felt and fat to keep him from freezing to death.” Fat, felt and a fall to Earth: the making and myths of Joseph Beuys, Olivia Laing, Sat 30 Jan 2016 [online] At: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jan/30/fat-felt-fall-earth-making-and-myths-joseph-beuys (Accessed 28.02.2023) Since that felt and wax became materials that personified healing and rebirth for the artist. Here the choice of materials may have been based on the fact that the artist wanted to be a doctor in his youth and the created myth successfully coincided with his idea of a cure for trauma.
In 2022, I visited the Isamu Noguchi exhibition in Cologne at the Ludwig Museum, where the works of the entire creative path of the American artist with Japanese roots were presented. What attracted me was that Noguchi was between two worlds. He was born in America, which attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and his father was a famous writer born in Japan, where in August 1945 the only time in history atomic bombs were used. This is a similar situation for me when emotions are in Europe and with relatives in Russia.
After the war, Noguchi returned to Japan where he began working with clay, explaining it:
"...working with clay was further connected to his relationship with the land of his father's birth ... as a close embrace of the earth as seeking after identity with some primal matter beyond personalities and possessions" Nasher Sculpture Center, 2013 Relating to Nation, Relating to Earth: The Ceramics of Isamu Noguchi in Return to Earth [online] At: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ud7hh_7Mv6I&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE (Accessed 01.03.2023)
For Noguchi, the clay connected his emotional state with Japan. Through this material, the artist resonated with the events that traumatized him, and in doing so, the clay culturally and historically connected Japan and his work with it.
Isamu Noguchi, My Mu, 1950, Seto-Keramik, 34,3 x 24,1 x 16,8 cm, Foto: Kevin Noble, The Noguchi Museum Archives, 00212 © INFGM / 2021, ProLitteris, Zurich [online] At: https://www.zpk.org/en/exhibitions/review/2022/isamu-noguchi-2410.html (Accessed 01.03.2023)
After the war, there was a serious life shock for Noguchi. Just as for Beuys involved in the Nazi regime, the shock of seeing murder, torment and suffering needs the artist's reflection through the material.
Beuys created a story centred on fat and felt, Noguchi turned to the roots of Japanese culture and ceramics.
Reflecting on my work, it seems to me that a mixture of all of the above attracts me. This is my own story of a family with work in the workshop with materials that come to hand, like Phyllida Barlow. This is a myth folded with reality, like Boyce. The myth of reading newspapers as an informational propagandistic carrier influenced the support of the war by the majority of the Russian population.
And this is the use of the traditional culture of my country, like Noguchi. Wood processing is one of the most demanded industries in Russia to this day.
N. K. Roerich, "The city is being built" (1902) [online] At: https:// ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ремёсла_в_Древней_Руси#/media/Файл:Building_of_town_by_Roerich.jpg (Accessed 01.03.2023)
In the examples considered, the choice of materials occurred for reasons of everyday life, a developed habit, a myth created around some objects, and historical belonging to a certain nation, but what makes me, as a viewer, like some objects/materials, admire or find them unattractive?
"Although Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment is incontestably the great Enlightenment text on the aesthetic values of that era, dealing as it does with taste and the judgment of beauty, it must for that reason seem to have little to say about art today, where good taste is optional, bad taste is artistically acceptable, and “kalliphobia”—an aversion to if not a loathing for beauty—is at least respected." (Danto, 2013 p.116)
Indeed, the boundaries of the beautiful and the sublime are not blurred, but somehow turned upside down. And now we need to change the question, not why is it attractive to me, but how objects are attracted to me. Philosophers put forward several ideas in this regard. For example, the Argentine-Canadian philosopher Mario Bunge says that such connections arise due to the presence of a third event that provokes such connections.
“We start by making the usual if sometimes tacit assumption that the causal relation obtains between events (changes of state in the course of time), not between things or their properties. … Things do not cause processes: they undergo processes; and these in turn cause changes (events or processes) in other things. Shorter: the causal relation holds only among changes (events and processes).” (Bunge, 2006 p.90-91)
On the other hand, there is an opinion that objects are attracted due to the presence of another third sensible object. “…the only place in the cosmos where interactions occur is the sensual, phenomenal realm.” (Harman, p.195) “The sensual tree is a phantasm surviving only at the core of some intention, and takes up no independent relations even with its contiguous phantoms. They are only related vicariously, through me, insofar as I am sincerely absorbed with both.” (Harman, p.200)
But even these judgments have their critics. Therefore, I will focus on exploring my interest in building and recycling materials.
Why exactly are these materials, and how do I choose them? How do they fit together? How do I feel the balance in the finished work? What does a finished art object give me? Why do I like it? What kind of reaction does it evoke in the audience? How does the size of the work affect it? Do I start interacting with objects because of events in my life or because of my aesthetic aspiration?
Bibliography and references
1. Phyllida Barlow 2021 Frontier. Damian Lentini. Haus der Kunst Munich. Hirmer
2. COLLAPSE II On Vicarious Causation, Graham Harman [online] At: https://community.stjohnscollege.edu/file/chapter/chapter-readings/harmanvicarious-causation.pdf (Accessed 28.02.2023)
3. Graham Harman 2017 Object Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything Publisher: Penguin Random House
4. Boris Klyushnikov - I. KANT "Criticism of the ability of judgment" [online] At: https://youtube.com/watch?v=hEIJN5aUCPc&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE (Accessed 01.03.2023)
5. Arthur C. Danto 2013 What Art Is Publisher: Yale University Press
6. Mario Bunge 2006 Series: Chasing Reality: Strife over Realism Toronto studies in philosophy. University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division
7. Graham Harman: Anthropocene Ontology https://youtube.com/watch?v=cR1A4ILPmjE&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE (Accessed 01.03.2023)
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