Brancusi for Joe

The piece is actually called "The Newborn", by Constantin Brancusi. What I particularly like is that he used the egg for both form/shape and symbolism.

Don't forget about Joseph Cornell!

I hate to just default to Google without any commentary, but this Image Search for Joseph Cornell should give you a pretty good idea of what he is all about. Lots of boxes with found objects and collage too. Different from a lot of other work I've shown because Cornell's boxes are meant to be held in your hands - most are less than 12" x 12" and have moving parts.

Yet even more Box Art by Jackie Winsor

Jackie Winsor is an artist who made a variety of boxes in the late 60s and early 70s. (Maybe even now - I admittedly haven't kept up) This was a time when other artists were also working with ideas of the GRID and BOX spaces (Sol LeWitt and more).

I like her work because of the variety of form and ideas expressed, although she worked almost exclusively with the box form. In addition to Fence Piece, above, and Four Corners, below, in which she took a wooden frame and wrapped each corner with hemp cord until the form became exaggerated, Jackie also did pieces where she built boxes and ignited explosives inside of them, displaying the burnt out remains in the gallery, and boxes that were unfolded to resemble a cross shape.

Another Classic Box to Love or Hate

Box with the Sound of its Own Making, 1961 by Robert Morris.

Very simply, this is a 9 inch square wooden cube that plays a 3.5 hour recording of Morris in a woodshop, making the box. Quite loudly, I should add.

Donald Judd

Truthfully, I don't know a lot about Donald Judd... but as a minimalist sculptor who seems to have specialized in making boxes, I feel that his presence on my 308 blog now is unavoidable.

When I worked as a security guard at the Baltimore Museum of Art, they had a Judd box on display in the contemporary galleries. It was about three feet high, made of AC grade plywood, and a constant source of annoyance. It was situated in the center of a small room with large paintings on all four walls, so several times a day, we would have to step forward and say "Please do not touch the sculpture" to museum goers who were absorbed in the paintings, and who were completely unaware that they were leaning on anything resembling art. (It was around the time that this piece was made that painter Ad Reinhardt said "Sculpture is something you bump into when you back up to look at a painting") We would literally stand in front of it when young school groups came through, because to a child just barely taller than the box, it was impossible for them to resist walking right up to it, grabbing the edge and pulling themselves up - the irresistable urge to see what was inside.

Inside the box was nothing much, just another panel of plywood. When the galleries were empty, I liked to stare at it and try and figure out all the angles... it must have drove Judd's carpenter up a wall. The panel was situated inside the box, like a lid that had collapsed or fallen inward, except that the surface touched all four corners, meaning that it wasn't a square or rectangle but a kind of distorted, stretched shape. What puzzled me most was that each corner was at a different height - one touching at one quarter height, one each at one half and three quarters, and the fourth touching just so the top edge.

I hated it.

For a long time, anyway. It was the only thing in the whole museum that I really had a hard time with. I spent a lot of time staring at it and writing about it when the galleries were empty, which was most of the time. Minimalism can be hard to access at first, but (like most things, really) what it takes most is time.

What eventually struck me about the piece was how it could appear both empty and full, depending on which direction you approached it from. From the entrance, walking towards it and fixing my eyes on the corner, it was almost a surprise to see there was something inside, even if it was just more plywood. Walking all the way around it, the plane inside the box seemed to shift like a wave, revealing all its odd angles, and then seeming to disappear completely. The other guards thought I was crazy, circling and staring at the Box, which was universally disliked by the security staff. For such an inelegant and possibly even ugly thing, this stupid plywood box, it suddenly seemed to mean a lot.

To make a long story short, Judd eventually went a little crazy with people installing his works incorrectly and letting other people casually lean against them while they looked at painting instead. He moved to the middle of nowhere in Texas, got his hands on some 340 acres, and set up his own museum. The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX is the result.

At the center of the Chinati are Judd's 100 untitled works in mill aluminum, as seen in the photo above. "Each of the 100 works has the same outer dimensions (41 x 51 x 72 inches), although the interior is unique in every piece."

A long post, I know. And inconclusive... I'll leave it at that. Just something to think about.

Safety Speakers

SSPS-1 speakers clip onto your clothing to keep your ears free to hear "potential attackers, traffic noise, animals and other serious threats." ... but they aren't as cool looking as Iain's.

Love meets tech meets art

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/009325.php

"The nature of male and female is changing, roles are changing, behaviors are changing and in this fluid and complicated society how and by what means will we adapt? How might emerging technologies be appropriated to elicit subtle forms of control and how might these changes affect out current societal norms?"

Escape Headphones

The Escape Headphones by Chris Woebken : "The proximity-sensing headphone is an experimental sonic device that allows small spaces feel much larger than they are. While most portable listening devices usually mask your environment with a soundtrack, this device aims to create a playful sonic experience."