Arts Visuels >> Classics >> Brancusi

In seventh grade, Ms. Hearey, my art teacher, showed our class this piece and immediately and forever changed my understanding of Modern art.  

Bird in Space, 1923.  

She put up a slide of this sculpture on the first day of class, without telling us the name or giving any introduction, and asked what we thought of it.  As twelve and thirteen year-olds with no particular artistic leanings, we stared dumbly and were unable to offer anything of substance.  I remember actually thinking the classic non-Modern-art-lovers' comment, "I think I could have done that." 

Then she told us the name, and showed us more examples of Brancusi's style of reducing and abstracting ideas to their simplest form-- in this case, a flying bird represented not by beak and wings and feathers, but by a fluid, graceful form encapsulating the essence of a bird in flight-- and it all clicked. 

The Kiss, 1916

Brancusi (and these two pieces in particular) became a favorite, and Katy Hearey, if you're out there, I think I have you to thank as starting me on a path that would result in my majoring in art history and generally loving art history for life.

An Introduction >> Jaume Plensa

Jaume Plensa's Nomade at Antibes.

By constructing figures out of letters, Plensa's work explores not only the human form, but also the role of language in the human experience.  The figures are literally made out of the building blocks through which we communicate and describe emotion, both expressing the importance of language in the human experience and giving a physical, tangible form to language. 

Many of his pieces, like Nomade, above, are built so that the viewer can walk inside of the piece.  Very different from viewing a three-dimensional sculpture from afar, the viewer is now inhabiting the piece, having his experience of the work shaped both by the shape of his physical environment and by the language it is made out of, incomprehensible though it is.

The contemplative poses of many of his figures also suggests the artist's interest in the role of language in reflection.  While true meditation may be thought of as the absence of thought, by quite literally forming shapes out of letters, Plensa seems to emphasize the importance of language in giving shape to our inner monologues.

In the Midst of Dreams, above, in which three ambiguously-gendered and race-less forms appear illuminated from within while in sleep, was described by the artist as an exploration of the centrality of dreams to the human experience and his own interest in the concept of a universal human race, democratized by common experiences like dreaming.

In Song of Songs, the artist constructed "walls" out of letters that, when read from top-to-bottom, form the classical poem of the same name, walls that guide the movement of and form "rooms" around the viewer as he experiences both his environment and the poem.  

Interestingly, the letters are suspended rather than laid against an impermeable surface, meaning that while the sheets of letters form "walls" around the viewer, the walls are transparent, allowing a visual interactivity with the entire room while the viewer reads the poem that mimics the way one also brings outside experiences and reference points to the reading of poetry in more traditional mediums.

If you want to check out more of Plensa's work, read about his Crown Fountain project in Chicago here.

[Jaume Plensa website]

Looking Back At >> Alexander Calder's Wire Sculptures

Le Cavelier, 1930

 Edgar Varese, 1930

 Hercules and Lion, 1928

Toothpicks + Glue.

Sculptures made of millions (literally, up to 6 million per) and hundreds of liters of glue by Stan Murno.

via Lost at E Minor
Stan Murno website.

Torsos, with a twist >> Federico Uribe

Artist Federico Uribe reimagines the torso, a classical art staple, simply by switching up the medium.  It's amazing how the medium not only changes the visual effect, but also the connotations of the form.  

Whether intentional or not, it's difficult not to imagine what a female form made of bullets, or locks, or lips, might mean...

Click through for more images...

Have you ever seen art like this before? Meet Theo Jansen.

You MUST watch this video.  It's very short, and it will add a lot of wonderment to your day.  I'm enthralled.

 Theo Jansen explores the boundaries between art and engineering, creating these "kinetic sculptures." 

These "animals" move.  Or I should say, they walk.  They're wind-powered.  It's amazing.  They look like a cross between an exoskeleton and an erector set, which is basically what they are, and then they start moving and they become so anthropomorphic, you wonder if they're alive in some way.

Many of his creatures are so "evolved" that they are now capable of "living" on the beaches on their won-- the wind powers their "walking," and they have sensors that tell them to stop and turn around when they hit either water or dry sand, keeping them permanently on the wet sand.

They even have sensors that tell them when a storm is coming, and their "brain" tells them to start pounding a stake into the ground so they don't fall over in the storm.

Can you imagine having a brain that dreamed up stuff like this?

In the video above, you see the "rhinoceros"-like sculpture walking.

If you want to learn even more about Jansen and his work, click here for a ten minute video presentation by Jansen that shows more animals walking and an explanation of how they work.

It's also extremely interesting to hear how he talks about the animals-- he doesn't discuss them as art, or really as machines or product prototypes either-- he talks about them as though they are animals that he is looking after, and he doesn't seem to feel any need to explain the "purpose" of them, which I think is an amazing insight into the brain of someone this creative. 

I think that science and art are going to continue to merge in this way, in the minds of people like Jansen who are capable of seeing their relation to each other, and have a desire to explore their intersection without the desire to make a practical product or advancement in technology.  While in art, it seems sometimes that "we've seen it all," and there's nothing new under the sun, science is continually evolving and pushing boundaries in material ways, and through the integration of science and art, art could do the same.

via Uppercase