touch: 2013

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Henry Moore

Henry Moore and AGO

TORONTO

The Art Galery of Ontario is the home of largest public collection of Henry Moore's work.
141 sculptures, 75 drawings, and 712 prints.
According to Michael Parke-Taylor, long time associate Curator of Modern Art Galeries of AGO,
Moore's first appearence in Toronto was 1938, the first two sculptures to be acquired in 1951, and 1955. In 1966 marked by the controversial events surrounded Moore's bronze statue The archer placed in front of City Hall. The conservative critics labeled the sculpture as radical example of Modern Art.
In 1974, The Henry Moore Sculpture Center opened.

"To know one thing, you must know the opposite.”
― Henry Moore

"In my opinion, long and intense study of human figure is the necessary foundation for a sculptor."*

"Simplicity alone, just leaving things out, will not produce monumentality; it may only produce emptiness."*

"..And for me, I collect odd bits of driftwood-anything I find that has a shape that interests me- and keep it around in that little studio so that if any day I go in there, or evening, within five or ten minutes of being in that little room there will be something that I can pick up or look at that would give
me the start for a new idea" *

What I found disappointing was, after seen all wonderfully displayed great sculptures, I run dowstairs to Museum shop hoping to buy the exhibition catalog, instead I 've been offered various Henry Moore publications which did not have anything common with the pieces in the place. Hope curators of the Center feels the void and bring together well documented record of their collection as well as smaller

size pamplets for the indivudual exhibitions. Out of large collections of Moore publications, I found John Hedgescoe's book as most informative, well organized, extensively surveyed, and thoughtfully photographed.

* Quotes, are taken from the Book; Henry Moore, A Monumental Vision, John Hedgecoe.

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Double Poke In the Eye

DOUBLE POKE IN THE EYE
&

The Poetic Fallacy of Animality
(G.Bataille)

I think that the point where language starts to break down as a useful tool for communication is the same edge where poetry and art occur. (B. Nauman)

Froehlich Collection, Stuttgart

Dia:Beacon

.....
'There was no landscape in a world where the eyes that opened did not apprehend what they looked at, where indeed, in our terms, the eyes did not see. And if, now, in my mind's confusion, stupidly contemplating that absence of vison, I begin to say: " There was no vision, there was nothing- nothing but empty intoxication limited by terror, suffering, and death, which gave it a kind of thickness..."I am only abusing a poetic capacity, substituting a vogue fulgaration for the nothing of ignorance. I know:the mind cannot dispense with a fulgaration of words that makes a fascinating halo for it: that is its richness, its glory, and sign of sovereignty. But this poetry it is only a way by which a man goes from a world full of meaning to the final dislocation of meanings, of all meaning, which soon proves to be unavoidable. There is only one difference between the absurdity of things envisaged without man's gaze and that of things among which the animal is present; it is that the former absurdity immediatly suggets to us the apparent reduction of the exact sciences, whereas the latter hands us over the sticky temptation of poetry, for, not being simply a thing, the animal is not closed and inscrutable to us. The animal opens before me a depth that attracts me and is familiar to me. In a sense, I know this depth: its my own. It is also that which is fartest removed from me, that which deserves the name depth, which means precisely that which is unfathomable to me. But this too is poetry..."
Theory of Religion -Georges Bataille

Saturday, March 16, 2013

GAUDI

CITY THAT DOES NOT SLEEP

In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.
The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,
and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the
street corner
the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the
stars.*

*Federico Garcia Lorca