Week 10

This week our presenter, Brian Gillis, talked about investigating multiples. He started off the lecture by asking, “what is a multiple?” He gave us 3 different definitions for a multiple, one by Webster’s dictionary, one by Duchamp, and one by Albright-Tomb. Combining all 3 of those ideas, I came up with a master definition. I believe multiples to be a three-dimensional object that is repeated many times. The repetition could be exact, a thought, idea, or characteristic of the original.

I really enjoyed the way Brain set up his lecture. It flowed very well and was easy to follow. He broke it down into 4 parts. The first part he talked about how the ideas of multiples have dated all the way back to 200,000 B.C with the Venus figurines. Then he moved on to talk about Duchamp and how he basically came up with the idea of readymade art. Readymades are when the idea behind the object is more important than the object itself. An example of this would be Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ piece. The third thing he talked about was pop art where we looked at pieces done by Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol. My favorite was the piece with Andy Warhol and a few other artists where they mimicked the American Supermarket. In this exhibit, viewers could actually interact with the art and purchase items.

Finally, Brian broke down the question of “what is a multiple?” He came up with 5 different solutions. They were anything mass produced, readymade, industrial processed, repetitive action, or repetitive process.  

 The next artist we looked at was Justin Novak. I was not quite sure how to handle some of his work because when I first looked at his collection of ‘Disfigurines,’ I was a little grossed out. But once I got over the initial shock, I realized how beautiful the collection really was. The way he made the figures look so light and soft with their solemn expressions and the porcelain look of the ceramics was a great contrast to the actions of the figurines. He also created a collection of 21^st century bunnies. I thought that these bunnies were very cute until you see them with machine guns, which kind of ruined the cute factor for me.

The final artist we looked at was Gabriel Orozco. I liked his work because it was so clever. My two favorite pieces were the ‘Ping Pond Table’ and the ‘La D.S’ car sculpture. One thing I noticed that he has in common with all of his pieces is that they make you want to interact with them. If I was walking through a gallery and saw his ‘Ping Pond Table,’ I would hope that there would be a paddle and ball there for me to play a game. It is fun to see these types of work because they go against the traditional gallery set up. We are all conditioned not to touch anything in an art gallery because we could break or damage the piece of art, but Gabriel challenges you with his artwork. He makes it so you are fighting back temptation to go and interact with his work, which I find very intriguing.

All the artists and ideas we have studied this week relate to one thing, multiples. You see the idea of multiples with Gabriel Orozco’s car. The car is probably one of the most mass produced objects in the world today. Gabriel took the idea of a mass produced object and modified it. Another connection that I made was a more literal connection. It would be between ‘The American Supermarket” and another Gabriel Orozco piece where he rearranged a supermarket. Basically the connection is that they both had to do with Supermarkets and both pieces incorporated the viewer. A third connection goes back to the idea of multiples and Justin Novak’s work. In my definition of multiples, I defined a multiple as something that follows a pattern of ideas or characteristics. In his collection of 21^st century bunnies and the ‘Disfigurines,’ they both follow a similar idea or characteristic within their own collection.

Brian Gillis gave me this idea for an image when he used the Mona Lisa to show that even though the picture is distorted in a certain way, you still know that it is the Mona Lisa. I took this idea and did it with another famous piece of work, Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.”