Covering | Informed wrapper Obscure detail Divulge entirety |
W
henever I find an object or scene that incorporates a large flexible drape-like cover or large fabric material I photograph it. These subjects remind me of the environmental art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who make temporary art on a grand scale by wrapping objects or stretching fabric across large areas.
Before actually building a large-scale altered landscape, Christo always makes preparatory sketches, collages, drawings and scale models. Then the project is funded, permits approved, supplies acquired, and the installation is initiated. After completion of the wrapping or stretching or whatever, the actual art is only in existence for a short time. As this work is impermanent, photographs are made of the work prior to disassembly.
I simply skip all the preliminary planning and execution labor and go straight to the photography representing found conditions of analogous experience.
“You see, what is it that we do? We want to create works of art of joy and beauty, which we will build because we believe it will be beautiful. The only way to see it is to build it. Like every artist, every true artist, we create them for us.”- Jeanne-Claude
Comments
Drapery and package-like coverings result in a temporary reduction in stimuli, a protection from sensing devices and from various forces of nature. Sometimes packages are used to transport contents from one place to another, but Christo usually presents his packages as immobile sculptures. Instead of packaging or covering items to move them from one place to another, he contains places and transports them from one point in time to another.
Christo strives to cover and bind buildings, structures and features on an astronomical level. This act of reductionism transforms the package contents into an idea. The bigger the space covered, the bigger the idea.
The most common use and form of packaging for humans is clothing.
In clothing humans, "Fashion" is borne out of a desire to embellish the human package to stimulate ideas about his or her contents.
This packaging idea can be taken in all directions. Plastic surgery is simply re-packaging. The styles of new car models are also. Packages are supposed to be temporary (as illustrated by the artists mentioned above in Wilson's article). As we grow older, our mind containers (bodies)change and eventually prove that our packages are temporary also.
Posted by: richard nichols | April 14, 2006 10:48 AM