nature morte

I visited the Chicago Botanic Gardens with my aunt & uncle and took digital pinhole photos of some of the flowers.




Nothing spectacular, but I'm thinking about how (earnest) flowers are a taboo in art these days. Does anyone like Georgia O'Keeffe anymore? I certainly don't, but I get interested whenever subject matter is widely marginalized.


"The emergence of the aesthetic of artifice was directly related to the disappearance of a whole realm of signification: that of a natural world infused with mystical attributes . . . Nature lost the metaphoric vitality associated with creation, becoming a dead emblem of its former meaning . . . As a model of ideological purity (or even better the lack of all ideology) [Nature] was redeemed wholesale in the 19th century, but as ornament it was decried as kitsch. This literal association of artifice with death is the counterpart of the assumption that Nature, because of its life giving qualities, is also authentic and transcendental, while artifice (and all of culture for that matter) must be counterfeit and superfluous since it intervenes with the raw materials of nature, investing them with extrinsic meaning. [This thinking] ignores that human perception is by definition artificial, requiring the translation of nature into culture- the symbolic conversion of things into representations."
From The Artificial Kingdom by Celeste Olaquiaga

my pink things

I recently discovered the work of Jeongmee Yoon, a Korean artist who photographs children with their hoards of gendered belongings.



I keep files of images I like on my computer organized in a folder called AWESOME. Subfolders include:
-art in general
-diagram
-fashion
-fibers
-graphic/text
-HAHA
-kitsch
-nature
-photography
-puppets

I'm constantly wanting to reorganize these images thematically. In honor of Jeongmee Yoon, here are my pink things.

royal trash

"Kitsch is not an active commodity naively infused with the desire of a wish image, but rather a failed commodity that continually speaks of all it has ceased to be. Kitsch is a time capsule with a two way ticket to the land of dreams, the collective or individual realm of myth."


(Tasty snacks.)

"Queen Victoria would not allow any of her innumerable possessions to be thrown away or even altered. If something fell in to total disrepair, she would have it replicated to perfection. When even this was not enough, she had all her belongings photographed from several angles and the photos place in huge albums that the elderly queen browsed at leisure."


Both quotations from The Artificial Kingdom
by Celeste Olaquiaga

on harems

I'm currently reading the catalogue of the Uncanny exhibition curated by Mike Kelley. Most of the objects and images in the exhibition are humanoid unions of the erotic and the grotesque. According to Freud, the Uncanny is defined by an eruption of repressed emotions and impulses. Dolls, mannequins, prosthetics, and automata are uncanny because they are both familiar and other. Being inanimate and figurative, they awaken a knowledge of mortality and sexuality we normally suppress.


I was interested to find that Kelley had also included a number of his personal collections in the exhibition. He calls these collections "Harems," a term used to describe a fetishist's accumulation of like objects. He writes, "The uncontrollable impulse to collect and order is itself uncanny." I don't get an uncanny sensation looking at these works, but I can see how Kelley might. It is disturbing to find oneself repeating the same unconscious behaviors.


"Collecting has been described as a form of 'doubling.' Through the amassing of identical or similar objects, the collector attempts to cheat death . . . the collector's inability to stop collecting, to stop pursuing similar or related objects, is a further manifestation of unrecognized and hidden motifs"
From Christoph Grunberg "Life in a Dead Circus: The Spectacle of the Real"

machin, truc, chose

A collection is a gathering of elements. I don't agree that a collection is any group of more than 3 things. I think the group has to mean more (or less) than its parts to be a real collection.
I'm interested the things we accumulate which have no real utility. Most items I collect have some potential function (art supplies, clothing, shoes, etc.), but their organization or quantity suggests I'm not keeping them around to be used. Clearly, the act of collecting is fulfilling a psychological need.


my collections:
-yarn
-fabric
-thread
-books
-shoes
-threadwaste
-friend's hair
-pompoms
-abstract knitting/crochet
-bike-themed
-religious kitsch
-vacuform packaging
-music
-vintage sewing patterns
-small display cases