First up, a stunning Fallen Angel sculpture, from Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, who always produce phenomenal work, even when it does enter disturbing territory.
I love this piece, the one disturbing aspect for me are the chicken wings. In my head, chicken wings belong on a chicken, not a person, angel or no. The rest of it is so beautifully done, and the angel being netted for public consumption is terribly poignant. I put this down as another win for Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. Visit their gallery.
For Angel, however, they left the controversy for the piece itself, and worked with mainly fiberglass, silica gel, and stainless steel to create the startlingly realistic body.
Via The Creators Project.
Moving on to the irritation: Christo. I’m not sure what it is exactly, that leaves me cold and highly irritated with most everything Christo has ever done, but his latest is no exception. It’s been making art headlines all over, all with the same stupid fucking theme: Walking on Water, Oooh! Aaargh. No. It’s walking on fucking piers, not walking on water. It’s a big, expensive, temporary bridge. Perhaps this is the core of what bugs me about Christo’s stuff – it’s all a cheat.
Not impressed. Via The Creators Project (and every other art site).
Maybe the feathers fell off when the angel was caught.
With Christo, my feeling is while the idea in all his big projects is sort of neat, the sort of simple, temporary, huge and expensive stuff he’s done should never be done again, a saturation point has been reached.
Christo doesn’t know how to do anything else.
Yeah, the chicken wings were a bit… nauseating is too strong, I suppose uncanny-inducing. But I love the concept, too -- very well done, good emotional impact. And I like how the angel is old, angels are usually young-looking/ageless and smooth-skinned, this one looks like your ordinary elderly neighbour. Plus giant chickenwings, of course.
I’m left a little bit confused about the Christo piece. I’ve never run across him before, and I’m thoroughly confused as to why a set of giant boardwalks on water are notice-worthy art (rather than a nice-yet-expensive access to a lake surface). Is it the proportions? A Pythagorean thing? A specific wood he uses? I mean… it’s boring and it says nothing any ordinary pier can’t say (and besides, it’s on a lake -- build me another one of those historical floating bridges across a swift river, and I might be more excited).
rq:
Oh. Well, prepare yourself to be underwhelmed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christo_and_Jeanne-Claude
rq:
Yes, I liked the age aspect as well. There was a sense that falling wasn’t entirely unwelcome. What struck me immediately was the angel being white. That speaks to me of a much larger message in regard to Western colonialism and the imprimatur of Western religion.
I already am, haha, thanks for underwhelming me even more. :)
Upon looking into that link, I have had an ‘Aha!’ moment -- wrapped buildings and giant umbrellas! No wonder I am so uninspired. I know art is subjective and all that, but frankly… The massive curtain in the Rockies might have been a neat idea, if the point was to have it ravaged by nature (but that doesn’t seem to have been the point). Anyway. Yay for them, I suppose.
Yes, very much peace after lenghty exhaustion in that face. Relief, even, if that is possible from the angle of the photos. I did not see the aspect of whiteness, but now that you point it out, that certainly seems worth considering, too. Very interesting.
Fucking Christo.
Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes summed it up perfectly in Spaced, episode 2. Daisy has, in a weak attempt to jazz up the flat for a party, foil-wrapped a lampshade. Brian, the conceptual artist who lives in the basement (he does anger, pain, fear, aggression, although it’s a bit more complex than that) says he sees it as a “tribute to Christo, the artist”. Tim replies that he sees is as “a waste of Baco, the foil”.
(Simon Pegg also delivered (and I’d be prepared to bet wrote) the immortal line “Sure as day follows night, sure as eggs is eggs, sure as every odd-numbered Star Trek movie is shit”, and then went on fifteen years later to actually write a Star Trek movie, having already starred in an odd-numbered one. I love that man, although I might never forgive him for “Run Fat Boy Run”. Ugh.).