We all remember the moment we fall in love, right? For me and The Anderson, it was here, staring at this piece, a good five minutes after I arrived and made my first fast circuit around the place. This was the piece that got me, the piece that I fell in love with, the piece and made me think about doing this series, writing these pieces, going back again and again and again.
I have a thing for sculptures that use found objects, and more so for things that bring them together in a way that establishes an emotional sensation, which this does in spades. To me, this is a story. A story of disunity, how we are all constructed of bits and pieces, often cast-offs of what we used to be, might have been, wanted to become. We are a disunity of these ideas, these dreams, and when we take that step forward, when we reach for a whole, a cohesion, we are still that muddled whole, that assemblage of pieces disloyal and ill-fitting. But we try. We take that step, just like the Canton woman, and we reach forward. It is likely that once we pull the weight off the back foot and try to take another, we'll still be this inharmonious entity without a singular form, but we will have gone forward, perhaps placed ourselves in a new scenario where our inability to become a single thing is our calling card, our definition, our desired trait. Like maybe an art museum, where these things are celebrated.
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I am learning more and more about ceramics. Between Poncho Jimenez and David Gilhooly, I've come to Jesus on it.
Of course, Robert Arneson, the Patron Saint of Three Minute Modernist and father of the Funk Art movement, has helped on that front. The work in the Anderson Collection, Homage to Philip Guston is just about the perfect reaction to the passing of the legendary artist in 1980. Guston, who famously moved away from Abstract Expressionism into a figurative form that folks have called Cartoony, and I tend to consider as a part of Funk. The work by Arneson is the perfect expression of Guston; it shows his AbEx days and his cartoon style in a single 3D piece... along with a cigarette. The two Gustons just around thew way, show how this work is a synthesis of those ideas, and I am so glad it's there!
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Your HostChristopher J Garcia - Curator, Fan Writer, Podcaster, and a guy who just loves art. Archives
February 2019
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