Archive for the "Fine Art; Sculpture" Category

Nike of Samothrace

I am developing a tiny obsession with Greek & Roman myths and especially the Gods appearing in it! I’ve recently stared reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses and despite never having a full interest herein and initially expecting myself to get bored of it quite soon I am completely addicted and I’ve stared Googling like mad (my favourite pas time, I must say!). So I decided to share my all-time favourite sculpture since I haven’t updated in such a long time.

Here’s a wonderful hymn to Nike, the Greek godess of victory:

Orphic Hymn 33 to Nike (trans. Taylor) (Greek hymns C3rd B.C. to 2nd A.D.) :
“To Nike (Victory), Fumigation from Manna. O powerful Nike, by men desired, with adverse breasts to dreadful fury fired, thee I invoke, whose might alone can quell contending rage and molestation fell. ‘Tis thine in battle to confer the crown, the victor’s prize, the mark of sweet renown; for thou rulest all things, Nike divine! And glorious strife, and joyful shouts are thine. Come, mighty Goddess, and thy suppliant bless, with sparkling eyes, elated with success; may deeds illustrious thy protection claim, and find, led on by thee, immortal fame.”

This is by far my favourite Greek sculpture! Oh, I still remember when I first saw it! It was -rather cheesily put- as if time stopped for me and all I could do was stare with an open mouth. It’s as if this marble Nike is about to fly off into some mysterious Greek myth, suddenly come alive and be the most gorgeous woman of all times. Even is she is headless! She seems completely weightless and so full of life and energy, I could stare at this all day! Aaah, I need to visit the Louvre one of these days!

Thierry De Cordier

What pisses me off mostly about Thierry De Cordier is his ostentatious loneliness. He shouts out his wish for others to be silent, he seeks out an audience to tell that he’d rather be alone. His personality seems so artificial because of this to me and I find it hard to take his art seriously. He is so outgoingly depressed that I nearly feel his suicidal tendencies come upon me. De Cordier also uses images heavenly laden with mythology and meaning. He uses his bilingualism to show that every person is basically split, and his refuse to use one or another language should show us that no one really knows who one is. Now, I don’t disagree with Thierry’s thoughts and images but the layers and layers of “meaning” and his strange attention seeking irritates me. And that makes me sad because I truly appreciate some of his work.

With this he invites his audience to come and sit in this box of loneliness. Truth be told, I’d like to recluse myself in this for some minutes, and I find this a nice representation of a deep-rooted sense of loneliness.

This, Trou Madame, is once again a representation of the aforementioned solitude and he depicts to us a primitive desire to return to our mother’s womb and the Sadness Of Birth. (Yawn, vulvas!)

Here a nice quote is applicable: “De Cordier stages in his writings and images the figure of a walker who dresses to leave, like a snail who wears its house on his back, who travels in a landscape or in his head, to finally end up in a tent, a box, house, or inside one’s own skull and repeatedly relives the Great Sorrow of Birth.” Thierry takes these thoughts and literally makes them or draws them. And it’s gorgeous at times yet…

… some things he does or says make me want to burn his entire oeuvre. But most of all I loathe what some others get out of his work.

Here I can attach a lovely anecdote. In an exposition in ’88 in a small town in Southern France he put the sculpture of this drawing, De Lijdensvanger, next to the church. At night the villagers threw it down a cliff because they felt a repulse of the human body in it, they felt it was unclean. Bart Verschaffel, a Dutch journalist, says ‘Because the villagers know nothing of art they understood precisely the archaic meaning of De Cordier’s work.’
But what might enrages me so much about this pretentiousness and artsy fartsy-ness is that I actually agree and relate to it. And I simply don’t want to be affiliate with such thoughts. It’s sad to realise I’m still confused and averse to modern art.

Louise Bourgeois

Portrait of Louise Bourgeois holding Filette by Robert Mapplethorpe

I was a little dumbfounded on how to start writing something about Louise Bourgeois, sculptural artist and feminist du jour, because I neither like nor hate her work. Something about her phallus sculptures bore me and I do not care for her struggle with her femininity. But then I went through an article that began about woman in art. Obviously some strong feminist points of view were written down and as always in an article that mentioned being a woman it enraged me. There is one quote that is so bafflingly sexist that I can’t help but sharing it here. Coming from Schopenhauer “…women could be called the unaesthetic sex. Neither for music, nor poetry, nor the plastic arts do they possess any real feeling or receptivity: if they affect to do so, it is merely mimicry in service of their effort to please.” (Read more baffling sexism here.)
One thing men (and women!) keep bringing up is the lack of “true great artists” in history. Well, weren’t we denied all the privileges of boys? Weren’t we allowed only by 1861 in academies? And even then were we not ridiculed if we aspired to achieve more than to be a loyal wife and excellent mother? Woman artists have always been looked down upon and men claimed them to be inferior. But aren’t Camille Claudel sculptures sometimes superior of Rodin’s works? Isn’t Hannah Höch one of the best Dadaists? Aren’t Käthe Kollwitz’ Works breathtakingly beautiful? Don’t you just adore Frida Khalo’s emotion and strength? And what about Françoise Gillot, Marie Cosway, the previously mentioned Cindy Sherman and Marina Abramovic? Don’t they deserve recognition too? Where are the love-anthems in art history for them?

Good, I got that out of my system; now let’s look into Louise Bourgeois feminist art. What’s most important in Louise’s work is her hate-relationship with her father. An anecdote of her childhood easily sums it all up. When preparing dinner her father cuts out a girl-shaped figure out of a mandarin peel and says ‘This is Louise and she has nothing between her legs.’ Louise then revenges herself, sculpts a man-figure and chops off his legs and arms! She saw this as her first sculptural solution. She has always felt her father would have preferred a boy over her and this frustration is seen clearly throughout her work.

Personally I am tired of all these penises and vaginas in modern day art. Penis vagina, penis vagina, penis vagina, blah blah! I think the only works of Bourgeois that actually say something about the stereotype of female behaviour and what men expect of us is the Femme Maisons series.

In these she clearly criticises a woman’s place in this world by showing us that being a house-wife is what is expected of us. (Although it’s a little to literal for my taste.)

While this, two testes with a vagina stuck in the middle, means nothing to me. Perhaps it’s simply a matter of personal taste.