Tag: juxtaposition

Hans Holbein the Younger, The Dead Christ in the Tomb, 1521-1522

Ron Mueck, Dead Dad, 1996. 

Paul McCarthy, Horizontal, 2012, platinum silicone, fiberglass, aluminum, stainless steel, natural hair, pigment, paint, wood door with laminate, wood sawhorses, 102.9 x 268 x 90.5 cm / 40 ½ x 105 ½ x 35 5/8 in

Sam Taylor-Johnson, Sleep, c-print, 70 x 240.8 cm, 2006

Gavin Turk, Death of Marat, waxwork in glass vitrine, 200 x 170.2 x 250 cms,
1998

Gavin Turk, Death of Che, waxwork & concrete, 130 x 120 x 255 cms, 2000

“In Saïs, the statue of Athena, whom they equate with Isis, bore the inscription: ‘I am all that has been, and is, and shall be; no mortal has yet raised my veil.’

—Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris, § 9 (354 C).

“Christ did not hide truths in order to prevent them from being communicated, but in order to provoke desire for them by this very concealment.”

—Saint Augustine: Sermons, 51, 4, 5.

“The more these things seem to be obscured by figurative words, the sweeter they become when they are explained.”

—Saint Augustine: On Christian Doctrine, iv, vii, 15.

“But in order that manifest truths should not become tiring, they have been covered with a veil, while remaining unchanged, and thus they become the object of desire; being desired, they are in a way made young again; with their youth restored, they enter the spirit gently.”

—Saint Augustine: Letters, 137, V, 18.

“The plain fact is that not
all facts are plain…’The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi,’ said Heraclitus referring to Apollo the god
and symbol of wisdom, ‘neither speaks nor conceals but gives signs.’… There are
meanings of high, sometimes of very high importance, which cannot be stated in
terms strictly defined….Plain speech may sometimes have conceptual exactitude,
but it will be inaccurate with respect to the new thing that one wants to say, the
freshly imagined experience that one wants to describe and communicate.”

— Philip Wheelwright, The Burning Fountain: A Study in the Language of Symbolism
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), p. 86.

“These things are veiled in figures, in garments as it were, in order that they may exercise the mind of the pious inquirer, and not become cheap for being bare and obvious … For being remote, they are more ardently desired, and for being desired they are more joyfully discovered.”

—Saint Augustine: Against Lying, X, 24.

“Vielleicht ist nie etwas Erhabeneres gesagt oder eine Gedanke erhabener ausgedrückt worden als in jener Aufschrift über dem Tempel der Isis (der Mutter Natur): ‘Ich bin alles was da ist, was da war und was da sein wird, und meinen Schleier hat kein Sterblicher aufgedeckt.’”

“[Perhaps nothing more sublime has ever been said or a thought has been expressed more sublimely, than in that inscription on the temple of Isis (Mother Nature): ‘I am all that is, that has been, and that shall be, and no mortal has raised my veil.’]”

—Immanuel Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1790. (§ 49, footnote.)

Left: Ann Hamilton, still life, 1988

“Tables are my blank paper, my landscape, my figure, a plane that implies the
solitary figure and all that is social … two people sitting face-to-face, working
together, eating or speaking… . All tables inherit a history of their use as a site of
communion and sacrifice.
This work was conceived specifically for the home of a landscape designer, volunteered
for use for the exhibition. still life was situated in the living room, the space
that occupies a central physical and social position within the house. Eucalyptus
leaves sourced from the outside the house were encrusted in paraffin and covered
the room’s walls. An attendant sat in front of a dining table which was engulfed
by a stack of 800 men’s white shirts that were each laundered and folded, then
singed and gilded on the edges. A smaller table, placed against the wall, displayed
empty velvet jewelry forms. The metal fireplace which occupied the opposite end
of the room was removed; its bed of ashes remained as it was replaced by a 20’
live eucalyptus tree. Placed in and near the windowsill, two vaporizers scented
with eucalyptus oil filled the environment with moisture and a medicinal scent,
creating within the living room the feeling of something or someone askew. From
an unseen source, recorded excerpts from Carmen and The Magic Flute played in
the background.”
–Ann Hamilton

Right: Janine Antoni, “Slumber” (1993): “During “Slumber”, Antoni made the gallery her bedroom, where she recorded her brainwave signals of rapid eye movements (REM) on an electroencephalograph (EEG) as she slept. The following morning, she would use strips torn from her nightgown to weave patterns into a blanket corresponding to the resulting pattern on the REM graph. The entire process took place over an 8-day period. In her 2000 rendition of the performance at MASS MoCa, she wore a nightgown made from textiles printed at the mill when it housed Arnold Print Works from the 1860s to the 1940s (MASS MoCA is a renovated factory building from the industrial era). Visitors were allowed access to the gallery during the day when Antoni was weaving, but the museum was closed to the public at night while Antoni did her ‘dream work.’”—-Categorized Art 

Mona Hatoum, Slicer, 1999, Egg Slicer, stainless steel and marble.

“With this sculpture, Hatoum has turned an ordinary domestic object into something menacing by enlarging an egg slicer to measure four feet in length. The artist began to use kitchen utensils such as graters and colanders in her work during the 1990s, describing them as ‘exotic objects.’ They represented the traditional feminine domain of the kitchen, objects which traditionally kept the housewife tied to the home, yet greatly enlarged they assume a threatening aspect. ‘Slicer’ has been made on a human scale, with its slicing blades raised menacingly. This darkly humorous work is influenced by Surrealism – Magritte is one of Hatoum’s favourite artists and his paintings which distort scale are a predecessor of this work”

–National Galleries Scotland

vs.

Ann Hamilton, (privation and excesses • grinders), The Carol and Arthur Goldberg Collection1988/1991

“A component of the installation privation and excesses, 1989, was a pair of wall-mounted mechanized mortars and pestles, one of them grinding teeth, the other one grinding pennies. The dematerializing teeth were in contrast to the overriding element of that installation, a 45 x 32 foot field of 750,000 copper pennies-laid into a surface coating of honey on the building’s concrete floor. As Hamilton notes, “Where the installation juxtaposed the animal economy of honey to the human economy of money, these grinders similarly juxtapose the biologically produced and the human made.” For her earliest mechanized tables, as well as her most recent spinning speakers, Hamilton has tinkered with existing industrial equipment for sculptural and audio effect. The pulverizing sounds of these two grinders within the installation, as Hamilton notes, were ‘the background to the lathering movement and sloshing sound of hands in honey.’”Photo credit: Ben Blackwell
Text excerpted from Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects. New York: Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2006. Joan Simon