+ Essay Briefing
LEVEL2
We can approach The Thing philosophically, asking the question Martin Heidegger asked 'What Is a Thing? e.g a photograph may be a thing, but is a film a Thing? A mountain may be a Thing but is a river a thing?
We can ask the question formally for Sculpture perhaps by going back to classic essays like Rosalind Krauss' 'Expanded Field', or Michael Fried's 'Art & Objecthood' or Donald Judd's 'Specific Objects'
We can ask the question taxonomically by looking at Foucault's short and entertaining preface to 'The Order of Things' (which I will mail you to read in preparation for Monday's session) or according to books like Baudrillard's 'The System Of Objects' or Neil Cummings's 'the Value of Things'.
However, we can also look at 'Things' with a kind of pathos, the way that 'Things' may belong to and define a self or humanity. Perhaps the Arte Povera movement come closest to this approach in Sculpture history. To illustrate this approach to Things I here paste a poem that I hope you will read and that we can discuss in the session.
Please make notes of any ideas or connections that occur to you while reading this and the Foucault 'Preface' -two very different approaches to 'The Thing'.
NEL MEZZO DEL CAMMIN by Bernard O’Donaghue
No more overcoats; maybe another suit,
A comb or two, and that’s my lot.
So the odd poem (two in a good year)
Won’t do to make the kind of edifice
I’d hoped to leave. Flush out the fantasy:
The mid-point being passed, the pattern’s clear.
This road I had taken for a good byway
Is the main thoroughfare; and even that
Now seems too costly to maintain.
Too many holes to fill; not enough time
To start again. “I wasn’t ready. The sun
Was in my eyes. I thought we weren’t counting”.
Soon we’ll be counting razorblades and pencils.
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