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Posted by Farid (Guest) farid@faridparhadart.com - Monday, October 6 2003, 13:56:07 (EDT)
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This is what the poor bastard who opens my bags at the airport is
gonna see...stuffed into a pine box no less.

Jose Posada, the Mexican artist who made the print of Don Quixote that
I adapted, used the skeleton the way I was beginning to...before I
ever heard of him. Some currents run deep and find outlets here and
there.

Sculpture by its very nature is "radical", in the true meaning of the
word. Put simply to be radical means to go to the root of
something...not to get side-tracked or hung up in externals...not to
remain at the surface, skin-deep, but to burrow up the arse of Life if
need be.

Unlike painting, in sculpture you're "limited" in subject matter...you
can make the human form, or the animal and that's about it...of course
that's hardly any sort of limit, just the direction you follow.
That's before pillows cast in cement came to be "art". From it's
inception, among people squating around a fire at the mouth of a cave,
sculpture was all about interpreting those two things, people and
animals. Much later when art dealers and agents realized there were
no budding geniuses anywhere because, as my one sculpture prof at Cal
Berkeley told me the one and only day I attended classes..."things
like Honor, Truth, Justice, the Human Condition, have all been
answered...we're off to new territory now" (this from a guy who threw
pots)...the definition of what could be offered for sale as sculpture
had to expand to cover just about any damn thing you could make.

Modern Art, sculpture particularly, has more to do with marketing
genius than artistic...that's the real art form. The sculptor is
merely the Prop man...or woman...whose job it is to come up with
something "new"...or that dull old phrase, something on "the cutting
edge". If that can be managed...stand back and watch the gallery
owner/agent perform. Of course the greatest performers of all are the
art critics who invariably wind up alcoholics from the strain of
heaving that much bullshit out of themselves weekly. "Oh Fuck
ME...how the hell do I describe this thing"!

Can you imagine how taxing it must be to review a show in which the
artist presents twenty canvasses all done in one shade of white? It
would take at least two bottles of Scotch, one dog-eared Thesaurus as
well as the Oxford English Dictionary, double volume, to come up with
a column. And you HAVE to come up with a column or two at least. Who
wants to admit we can't produce any more "geniuses"?

In painting you have portraits...and crowd scenes...landscapes,
seascapes, still lifes...bowls of fruit, buildings and bridges and
boats... vases of flowers, dead rabbits hanging next to dead
turkeys...all sorts of subject matter. In sculpture...real sculpture
not "thing-making", you're limited to the human and animal form plus a
few doo-dads.

The violin is older than the electric guitar...nothing wrong with
either of them...but you don't see people calling the electronic
upstart a violin...to give it class and gravitas. The thing is what
it is...it has its legitimate uses...but it ain't no violin. Likewise
all the flotsam and jetsam that washes up in galleries may be
legitimate as "sculptred things"...but it gives them far too much
credit to call them Sculpture. It just sells better if you do.

The delightfully radical thing about skeletons is that they're about
as much pared down to the bone, so to speak, as a sculpture can be.
Gone are skin and muscles ...organs, hair, eyeballs, lips etc.
Instead you get the superstructure...the underpinning...the girders
that hold the thing up. It's Posada's way of saying, "this idea has
been reduced to its radical roots...the bare and naked truth of the
thing". You can do it in painting too...it's just that this is ALL
you can do with sculpture...or what you should attempt if you would
show people you understand your medium. Using the skeleton without
the outer covering is just a way of peeling down to even rawer
essentials...for the fun of it.

I've got a head full of ideas of things to do with this skeleton and
his/her entire tribe...all dancing around upstairs. This fellow is
the prototype. I need one to make a mould from...after that I can cast
several wax duplicates and play around with them. And it's as far from
morbid as you can get...oddly enough. I couldn't stop laughing just
at the sight of this guy flying out of his coffin to give Life one
last embrace.

---------------------
-- Farid

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