This strange looking image by Oppenheim really makes no sense to me. I know I have no artistic or creative ability, but for someone to make something like this furry cup of tea just seems pretty odd to me. It almost creeps me out in a way because I cannot help but imagine filling up that cup with tea and taking a sip out of it and getting tons of hair in your mouth. Obviously it would not be for drinking out of, so I have to look at it in a more artist point of view.
It seems to be just a normal tea cup on a saucer with a spoon next to the cup, but still on the saucer, the only abnormal thing about this is that all three items are covered in fur. So much fur that it looks like it could be a dead animal shaped into a tea cup instead.
The more I looked at this hairy tea cup to more I wondered what kind of animal this must have been. Fox hair came to mind, but that would be too long. I kept on the same lines as a smaller animal that might often be hunted. That is when I figured it out, it was a deer fur, or deer hide. It makes more sense because deer are most commonly hunted.
So now that I knew this tea setting was covered in deer hide I began to wonder why. I know that deer are hunted and killed all the time especially in New Hampshire, but I still did not know what it means. Then I thought that maybe it actually did have to do with hunting. Perhaps Oppenheim was representing his dislike of the whole concept of hunting by showing how little of a purpose it has and how much damage it does. Killing of an innocent animal but not really getting much out of it. The small tea cup, saucer, and spoon, I feel can actually represent the insignificance of a dead animal and how little people nowadays get out of it.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Paper
One of the first things I noticed when I walked into the art gallery room was this weird looking pop-up book. It was not like any other pop-up book I have ever seen where each individual page has its own little cool design that pops out at you. This one actually fit the definition of “pop-up” a lot better. The book that was designed by Jong-Yoon Kim actually came right out of its cover; it looked as if all of the pages were actually attached on one side of each other, which they were. Within every indent, which is actually just one page, there were actual pop-up designs shaped like stairs. These stairs did not seem to go anywhere but every page had its own unique design of stairs. This kept on going as the chain of pages turned back towards the cover and spine of the book, with each page possessing pop-up stairs, which is the title of this unique piece of art work. The way that the stair cases were put together by Kim reminded me of the famous painting of stairs that keep leading to more stairs; however, I am not quite sure of the name of that painting. When you really analyze this piece you really start to wonder how this could be done, it is so clearly out of my league when it comes to artistic ability and creativity that I found myself scratching my head wondering how long this must have taken and how much patients it must have taken. I thought, maybe he made the book first then cut the pop-up stairs into it after, but then I realized that by doing it that way it would be near impossible to make the stairs as perfect as he did. Eventually I just figured that since this piece intrigued me so much that this is the one I should write about.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
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