3D Art Gems

[Dee]

Thanks for the update on PERSIST, and describing your increased appreciation and understanding of this intriguing sculpture, Mz NR. As a direct consequence, I feel it is growing on me and I'm beginning to see it as relief is taking her over, rather than tangled into the sheets that suffocate her. Freeing/healing herself.
Have fun with Lori...

[NurseRatched]

Another few lines about "Persist", as the artist was interviewed on TV this week. The subject is MALE. Oop, my mistake! (His parts really just looked like an amorphous blob---could be female IMHO) Cameron is hoping that Persist is the first of a trio of sculptures. The subject will slowly be revealed as the cloth "burden" flies away and he's set free. Cameron works as a waiter & is hoping to sell Persist to pay for his "sculpture habit"----a steal at $120,000---LOL

[NurseRatched]

Portland, OR---I'm heading back "home" this week!

[Dee]

Thanks for further info on Persist, NR. The more I look at it, the more I like it. And now that we know, of course he's male.

I'm really quite excited to see what the other two sculptures will look like in the trilogy.

The angry fish in the wall? Brilliant!

[Dee]

Jeff Koons' Puppy at the Guggenheim museum, Bilbao.

In Puppy, Koons engages both past and present, employing sophisticated computer modeling while referencing the 18th-century formal garden. A behemoth West Highland terrier carpeted in bedding plants, Puppy combines the most saccharine of iconography—flowers and puppies—in a monument to the sentimental. Its size—seemingly out-of-control (it is both literally and figuratively still growing) but carefully constructed and tightly contained—can be read as an analogue of contemporary culture. Dignified and stalwart, this work fills us with awe, and even joy, while standing guard at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. In keeping with themes in his past work, Koons has, by combining elite references (topiary and dog breeding) with those of the masses (Chia Pets and Hallmark greeting cards), designed this public sculpture to relentlessly entice, to create optimism, and to instill, in his own words, "confidence and security".

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/48

[Dee]

Maman by Louise Bourgeois, 1999, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

Almost 9 meters tall, Maman is one of the most ambitious of a series of sculptures by Bourgeois that take as their subject the spider, a motif that first appeared in several of the artist's drawings in the 1940s and came to assume a central place in her work during the 1990s. Intended as a tribute to her mother, who was a weaver, Bourgeois's spiders are highly contradictory as emblems of maternity: they suggest both protector and predator—the silk of a spider is used both to construct cocoons and to bind prey—and embody both strength and fragility. Such ambiguities are powerfully figured in the mammoth Maman, which hovers ominously on legs like Gothic arches that act at once as a cage and as a protective lair to a sac full of eggs perilously attached to her undercarriage. The spider provokes awe and fear, yet her massive height, improbably balanced on slender legs, conveys an almost poignant vulnerability.

https://www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/works/maman/

[Dee]

Fog Sculpture, 1998, by Fujiko Nakaya, Bilbao, Guggenheim Museum

Nakaya's work with fog, which she sees as a medium for the transmission of light and shadow, much like video, initially arose from her interest in what she calls "decomposition" or "the process of decaying." As an art student in the United States (where she moved with her family from Japan in the early 1950s), she painted dying flowers, and a series of cloud paintings made after her return to Japan later that decade express her fascination for natural phenomena that "repeatedly form and dissolve themselves."

A "permanent sculpture" composed of artificially induced water droplets in a constant state of dissipation into the atmosphere, Fog Sculpture #08025 (F.O.G.) is "both a phenomenon and an artifact," Nakaya remarks, "a precarious dynamism . . . of nature's balance."

https://www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/wo ... 025-f-o-g/

[Moonchime]

What amazing sculptures - all.
The dog one is endearing and I find it staggering that they manage all those flowers without them all dying or getting out of hand; maybe close to they look different but it's an impressive feat.

The Spider brought a shiver of horror when I first saw it but after reading the description about its vulnerability I felt a little differently. I still don't think I like it, but I do think it's interesting - its comparison to motherhood and all that entails is certainly food for thought. I have to say it's one of the more disturbing comparisons I've come across - the thought of mothering being both protective and predatory gives me an uneasy feeling which I haven't yet unpicked. The spinning of a cocoon that can protect and yet bind is, I think, easier to understand and a clever parallel.

I love the Fog sculpture because it is so beautiful and ethereal and I would never have thought of it being created as a piece of art. Yet I suspect it is the wretched spider that I am going to be puzzling over. Thank you Dee for these new and exciting discoveries.

PS - you're not posting as Will drives to Somerset are you?

[Dee]

Hi Cupcake, I am posting this in the car, but did the three sculptures above in the morning, having researched them last night. I love how different they are and yet all seem to fit so well where they are.

I shall report back on the state of flowers on the puppy, I am curious myself. Very much intrigued by the Fog Sculpture, there are some stunning shots in that video.

Now the Spider... I think the protector/predator duality is not so much applicable to motherhood... I mean, how's a mother a predator? I think this image is much more about what you said:

The spinning of a cocoon that can protect and yet bind is, I think, easier to understand and a clever parallel.

The fine line between protective and overprotective. The wanting to nurture and shield versus holding back and inability to let go. I think in this sense the spider protecting its eggs is a great metaphor.
I also like the idea of something seemingly large and presumedly scary being actually delicate and fragile.
Yeah, I don't get the predatory thing here at all. It works much better if we forget about that.

[Moonchime]

In Salzburg I noticed this sculpture near the cathedral and I realised that it was virtually the same as one I have seen outside the theatre in Prague.



The sculpture is replicated in many cities and is by the Czech sculptor Anna Chromy.

[Dee]

This is a very powerful statue, but if I hadn't watched this video, I'd have never come to interpret it as it was apparently meant: an empty coat encompassing positive ideas to move the world forward to a better place. As something that's supposed to stand for change, I find the statue lacks the necessary energy and inspiration that I associate with change. This figure (or coat of a figure) is very still, and peaceful. It stuggests inward looking, resilience, and some level of resigniation and realism to me. I find it very interesting, but find it quite hard to embrace it with its intended meaning.

What did you feel personally, when you saw it, Moonchime? And did both reincarnations make you feel the same way, or does the location alter the perception somewhat?

[Moonchime]

This is a very powerful statue, but if I hadn't watched this video, I'd have never come to interpret it as it was apparently meant: an empty coat encompassing positive ideas to move the world forward to a better place.

I agree with you Mz Dee - I too would never have interpreted it as a harbinger of change. I only discovered that when I was researching it on line.
When I first saw it - which was in Prague - it made quite an impact on me; it is quite dominant there in the space they have installed it in and I was struck by the power of a sculpture that was basically cloth in the shape of a person. It felt quite dark emotionally and I couldn't stop staring at it.

In Salzburg, however, it is a little bit hidden away in the square that it is in which is dominated by the installation of "Alone on a Golden Globe"

Spoiler:

Indeed it doesn't create the same impact there at all.
The background to it is quite interesting though and goes some way to explaining how it came to be.

Wiki:
Following Anna Chromy's presentation of the "Heart of the World" sculpture to Pope John Paul II in 2002, in recognition for his role as protector of peace in the world, she also gave a small version of the Cloak in bronze.[5] Shortly afterwards she was approached by The Abbot of the Holy Convent and Papal Basilica San Francesco in Assisi. He wanted to know if she could build the Cloak as a place of spirituality and meditation, following the teaching of St. Francis who considered one's own body or cloak to be a cell in which to find the deepest dimensions of the self.[6] The first brochure, printed to assist creation of the Cloak, had a foreword from John Paul II: “Violence never again! War never again! Terrorism never again! In the name of God, may every religion bring upon earth Justice and Peace, Forgiveness and Life, LOVE!”.[7] So begun, in 2005, the search for a block of marble large enough to accommodate people in prayer inside it. It was found on 24 December 2005 in the Michelangelo Quarry, Carrara.



The unfinished "Cloak of Conscience" showing entrance to hollow center to allow people to enter and reflect.