This morning I saw that the subtitle of the Mark Morris book is A Celebration. Its photographs are vividly expressive: all color, light, and motion. Yet the dancers I'm choosing aren't the ones celebrating; they are still, turned inward, contemplative, even when celebration is going on all around them. I make them into shadows, without color. They're also alone; I can only tolerate multiple figures in an image when they are replicas (many of one) or when two are alone together (together but not together).
I've been watching Art:21 in preparation to teach Contemporary Art. I want my students to hear different artists' voices, and didn't foresee how good it would be for me to hear them. Fred Wilson saying he's not that interested in making anything but in creating relationships between existing things, Do-Ho Suh's longing for home, Layla Ali's highly organized studio practice and high anxiety about painting. Most of the artists reference their early years' influence on what they've become, without slipping into self-pity or -importance. So perhaps my self-consciousness about feeling like I bring everything back to me-me-me isn't the issue; we're all doing that - or using that - in some way. The issue is whether the work exceeds our personal experience, whether we (I-I-I) can use the particular to tap the universal.
That said, my choice of figures and their placement in demolished or empty homes holds something essential about my relationship to the world, a relationship that's mine but hardly unique.
No comments:
Post a Comment