Funny how your critique of the Degas dancer sculptures is similar what
they were panned for originally -- as being ugly, and their content
mundane. Plus, phallic... That is not to say you are being
conservative in your critique since they are so entrenched in
mass-aesthetics, as you say safe icons...
I've always seen these as perverse mannequins -- to be dressed and
undressed. And, considering that only one was cast in bronze during
Degas' lifetime, this seems to play as true.... a bunch of wax
fetishes filling degas studio....
maybe they are safe, because the backstory is missing... I remember
seeing people greeting one of these sculptures at SFMOMA with a "ain't
that cute" sort of "ahhhhhhh." which always kinda made me laugh....
As to macro photos of art in museums... got kicked out of the National
Gallery in London for doing this.... of course, they didn't tell me
'never come back' so I did... in like 10 minutes. Of course, zero
photography is allowed there.
believe it or not, this is exactly what I was thinking when I was
working
on the series. The Degas dancers are bronze, sometimes with wire
netting
for the tutu, but always phallic, as if the legs were falling apart,
tumored. I have no idea why they're as popular as they are, but then
Degas
leaves me cold personally. In any case, they seem 'safe' icons in an
odd
way, and I wanted to present otherwise. It was difficult shooting at
the
Norton Simon - you're allowed to without flash, but not exactly that
close. -- Alan
On Fri, 29 Jul 2005, Lanny Quarles wrote:
this is interesting alan. my sense is that the rough frayed
topology, and
really its gridding,
of the head covering is a kind of analogy for mappings; libidinal,
aesthetic,
sensory, personal, linguistic, etc.
also in the sense of a weaving, mappings as weavings or vast
constructionist
integrals in a calculus
of embodiment, and the sense that the rough edges, the "severed' or
'cross-sectional' (sampled?) topology,
as it were, is a reflection of coding practices, or the praxis of
instantiation by/within the individual agent,
an imperfect "imaging" of larger vectors, dogmas, genetics, beliefs,
etc. am
I even close?
And even the idea of the physicality of topology as a kind of
'filter'
(re:perception) is reflected
in the synthetic pixel filtering beneathe the shroud-topology. as if
the
coding of the filter produces
not only inner instantiations but external ones as well, which of
course is
the abolition of the
subject/object dichotomy in any deconstruction which in this case
seems to
point to "constructionism"
as it universal agent.. perhaps the frayed edges define the
deconstructive
agency, as if this particular
individual or object has been wrenched from the grid, and these
loose fibers
represent a kind of
annoyance to the smoothness of the artifice of "culture" or
"perception" as
an institution of the socium.
lq.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Sondheim" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, July 29, 2005 9:13 AM
Subject: Degas' Dancer, deconstruction, the west
deconstruction of
deconstruction of Degas
deconstruction of Painting
deconstruction of Impressionism
deconstruction of The West
deconstruction of Culture
deconstruction of Perception
deconstruction of The Real
http://www.asondheim.org/degaslegs3.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/degaslegs4.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/degasribbon.jpg
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