Update: My professor only gave me a 95. Clearly, she has no sense of humor.
The past week has been particularly stressful for me. I have doing school almost around the clock, trying to meet assignment deadlines, etc. This morning, in a state of fatigued stupor, I turned in an assignment that I think I will regret.
Essentually, I was to observe the sculpture (shown below), describe its composition, my emotional response, where my emotional response comes from (weird), my response to the museum's description of the work, and the work in the context of class lectures. Here is my response in full glory. Buckle up.Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
As a fan of realism, my immediate impression of the work was that it was absolute gibberish. It looked very much like the failed attempt of an art student at making something worth wasting fifteen seconds trying to understand.
This biased impression lasted about 0.1 seconds and was quickly replaced by faint recognition. Geometric shapes and line came together to form what can best be described as a glorified statue of a stick figure. The statue, made of polished aluminum, seemed to depict blind, life-sized Siamese bird-twins, conjoined at each other’s mid-sections. Interestingly enough, they were wearing hats.
When I looked at the work, I felt emotion. I’m not exactly sure what the emotion was, but I know I felt it because my blood pressure increased and I recall musing, “Thanks for nothing, Kandensky. Now anyone can be an artist.” On a philosophical note (judging solely from my presumably emotional experience), I would theorize that my particular “emotion” comes from my experience and the expectations that result. From my experience, birds look like birds, not featherless, beakless, conjoined hat-wearing creatures with skewed “bird” profiles. Like Hitler, I am against art becoming a synonym for nonsense. If an “artist” must pervert the image of an otherwise beautiful creature, he should at least do so in a manner that is geometrically and mathematically pleasing. These were my expectations, and they were pulverized.
The museum explanation possibly defines the motivation for the deformed work, which was finished just after World War II. Supposedly, Noguchi was trying to capture the elevated blood pressures that “artists” such as himself inevitably experienced as a result of the war. After all, the piece looks “skeletal” and “reaches toward the sky”. This makes sense to some people, I’m sure.
I think the preceding explanation was likely written by an art student paid minimum wage to speculate for the museum, and tend to disagree. After the dropping of the atomic bomb (which was discussed in class), radiation was not well understood by the public, nor were its effects on living organisms. Clearly, Noguchi was trying to warn the world of the post-apocalyptic, life-sized mutants that would eventually ravage Earth. Likely, his work inspired film-makers of the 50’s and 60’s (Godzilla, Them, etc.), ultimately leading to the widespread belief that, with enough radiation, any creature can become any other creature. My explanation makes sense within the statue’s historical context, and, more importantly, allows me to see a glimmer of realism in his work.