I don't want this to become one of those blogs that just throws out links all the time, but I did find this one link over at Woospace which I had to comment on, so here it is.
Richard Sweeney's folded paper work is exactly the kind of thing which makes it even clearer to me why people like Tara Donovan annoy me. Galleries could be showing work by artists who really kill themselves making unique and beautiful objects instead of showcasing artists who stack cups. Richard's work -- at least judging by the photographs -- is elegant, obsessive, graceful, amazing -- I'm out of superlatives. This is truly art. Someone give him a show already!
very interesting, beautiful forms. From the photos, I can't really get a feel for the size of these pieces, but whatever the scale, they're still beautiful
Chris,Are you equating the amount of effort an artist expends on a work with quality and importance? If so, I'd love to hear you defend that position.I might be misinterpreting your statements...
Those darn cups seem to be such an issue for some people. I wish I could go and see for myself. I can't help and wonder if the installation is lacking in craft. I remember reading at someone's blog that the beauty/illusion seemed to break down the more "on top" of the cups the viewer got. This seems different than the wonder one receives when they get closer to Tom Fiedman's continuous ring of plastic cups, one inside of the other from the early 90's. Pleasing precision. "He does things the hard way, even when he makes it look so easy" (Adrian Searle). Friedman uses the smallest number of cups possible in order to create the greatest possible affect. Is there no craft in Tara Donovan's cups? Slacker aesthetics are difficult to accept. I have my favorite practitioners. I wish I could see these darn cups.
J.T., you should know me well enough by now to know what I'm going to type. Of course you know that to me, in art all that matters is the final object. By that measure it doesn't matter how much work a piece takes. I look for heart and soul in a work of art.Of course, if that's lacking -- and it usually is -- then I'm interested in craft. When we talk about the work that goes into a piece of art, we're really talking about many different kinds of effort. For example, let's take my drawings. The drawings on my site each take about five minutes, maybe ten. There's very little actual physical effort involved. But it did take me thirty years before I could draw them. So there's the work of the idea of the art, and there's the work of creating the art, and there's the work which is the foundation under the creation of the art.I think, to start, Richard's folded paper sculptures have more heart and soul than Tara's cups. (Of course I haven't seen Richard's work in person.) And then on top of that I think they take more craft. I think the only thing Tara's sculpture has going for it is the fact that gluing 3 million cups to the floor takes a while.
Steve,I think you read that at my blog, but I may be wrong. I doubt I'm the only one to say that.Chris,I hear you. I disagree, but I hear you.