Week 10: Repetition

This is the last official post that I am making for this blog that is related to this art class that I've taken. I will still continue to use this blog to discuss what I'm working on and new art-related insights. Without the limitations placed upon me by the academic context of this blog, I will have more flexibility to discuss purely what interests me.

The theme that I am focusing on with this entry is the idea of repetition. If we address repetition in history, we can see that all history consists of are the same mistakes repeated infinitely throughout all civilization. If one day all human beings are wiped off the planet by some natural disaster and are replaced millions of years later with different sentient beings, chances are that they will make mistakes and repeat them, too.

But I am referring to repetition as it relates to contemporary art, not history (which could be discussed in that context ad infinitum). To me, repetition is a characteristic that is distinctive to contemporary art. It indicates the separation art has made between modern and contemporary. Having multiples of one product eliminates the exclusivity of a work, allowing art to become more accessible to the masses, a sharp detour from the exalted status that art has occupied for the last thousand years or so. In other words, multiples democratize art collection. Though these classifications of modern and contemporary may seem arbitrary, I only refer to them so as to distinguish multiples apart from other ways of doing art.

Brian Gillis, a professor from the ceramics department, gave a lecture to the class on Tuesday about multiples. A multiple is the result of repetition. He also continued on to discuss what a multiple was. He provided the definition of a multiple from Webster's dictionary:

mul·ti·ple: containing more than once, or more than one; consisting of more than one; manifold; shared by many; repeated many times; having several, or many, parts.

-Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1998

A dictionary definition is always a good place to start if you want to know the meaning of a word. However, a more concise definition as it relates to art would be an editioned original.
Multiples can come in many mediums, such as clay, metal, glass, and print, but it has to be part of a set.

Perhaps the most famous application of this idea was in the work of Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp's Readymades were simply constructed by attaching mass-produced, ordinary objects in an unusual composition and by doing so, rendering them unfunctional. His first ands most well-known readymade was Bicycle Wheel, which was basically a bicycle wheel attached to a stool. By doing so, the artist detracted the value of the work as art and sought to embrace the reaction of the viewer. What makes this a multiple is the fact that the Bicycle Wheel currently in the Museum of Modern Art collection is not the original version made in 1913 but is in fact a reproduction manufactured in 1951 after the first one was lost. Knowing this information emphasizes the idea that the work itself was not as important as preserving the idea or the experience it creates for the viewer, thus subverting the notion of hierarchy.


(Note: I personally feel that in art theory discourse, the word, "subvert" gets used far too often to the point of cliche. However, sometimes it is the most appropriate word to describe something. However, I care about your feelings, so I will attempt to use it sparingly.)

There are many more examples of multiples in contemporary art that I can't even begin to provide as many examples as I would like, but some other work that really caught my attention was Merda d'Artista by Piero Manzoni. The name of his work translates to English as "Artist's Shit," which is exactly what it is. It is pretty self-explanatory what this work is: Manzoni took his own shit and sealed it in a can then sold each can as an edition priced the same as gold. There's nothing more obvious that can be said of this work except that by doing this he draws attention to the artist as creator instead of the work. For a high price, you can have a piece of the artist ('s shit) in your collection.


One more work from Professor Gillis' lecture that I would like to distinguish is a work by Antony Gormley titled Field. In this series, he recruited help wherever from the local population wherever the project took place to manufacture simple clay figures and when finished placed these figures throughout the gallery space, overwhelming the space it occupies but leaving the viewing space completely empty.

Artist Gabriel Orozco is also fascinated with the idea of multiples and the mechanical process of producing one. One of his works called La D.S. is an automobile, one of the strongest symbols of manufacturing, whose center has been removed from the vehicle and the sides reattached. The result is a hybrid of characteristics that make the car seem both manufactured and original in this form and is recognized as both familiar yet foreign. His engagement in working with this manufactured product opens new understanding into the creation of multiples.



Orozco also addresses this notion of multiples in his photographs. In his photograph, Cats and Watermelon, his juxtaposition of manufactured objects with organic ones creates a strange tension, as though they are not supposed to be seen together. However, it's their out-of-place-ness that generates a fresh way of seeing.



Finally, the last artist that we are looking at is Justin Novak. Novak is a former professor in the ceramics department at the University of Oregon but has moved onto teaching at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, B.C. We did not talk about Novak very often in class, but one of his works that interests me the most is 21st Century Bunny. The ceramic bunny figure stands vigilantly erect with paranoid eyes, reflecting a common sentiment of suspicion that is pertinent to 21st century feelings toward the future. Choosing to mass-produce this figure and make it available to the public further asserts its modernity by using manufacturing as a form of communication to the masses.





The lectures this week were the most inspirational for me because they resonated so well with how I already approach my art. I have always been interested in the idea of manufactured objects and multiples, as well as my own responses toward manufactured goods. I have always been disenchanted with the impersonality of galleries and the inherent hierarchy that the art world seems compelled to preserve. I am not so avid in the idea of preciousness, and having worked in an art gallery, was the manner in which any work we handled was treated. Having your very own piece of an artist's work eliminates the inclination to treat it preciously (though if you appreciate the work and you own it, it serves you well to treat it respectfully) and connects you not only with the artist but also with the process in a most intimate way. I would like to leave you with a quote from Gabriel Orozco, which isn't related very much to multiples, but who inspires me nonetheless to emulate his way of viewing the world, especially when I am about to embark on a trip to Cuba. Advice like this will prove essential to my outlook when journeying across unfamiliar territory:

I like to work here, I like to walk. Wakes me up. Just a few blocks of walking can happen many things, and I like to observe these things, to enjoy them. The camera is an instrument I like to use, an excuse for looking at these things. So the camera is a way of awareness.

I don't have a studio, so I don't have a specific place of production. I found that sometimes the studio's an isolated place and an artificial place, like a bubble, but i'm not so interested because i think it gets out of reality. What happens when you don't have a studio is that you have to be confronted with reality all the time, you have to be in the streets, you have to walk around, you have to be outdoors.

I try to be intimate with everything i can. To be intimate you have to open yourself, and you have to trust what is around you, and then you generate signs of intimacy with these things, and then all the other people can have that same relationship with the world.

I don't have a technique. I have many different ways to work, but when i finish something i need to invent something else, in a different medium, in a different place.

-Gabriel Orozco, Art21

Thank you for reading,
Best Wishes,

Andrew Grant

P.S. On an unrelated note, junk mail has started arriving at my apartment addressed to "Andre LaGuire." Maybe it's for the previous occupant, or perhaps it's a typo in some computer database. Either way, it sounds pretty cool and would make a great artist name for myself. Don't steal it, it's mine.