Lack

by   Posted on January 23, 2010 in Contemporary Art Issues & Images

giacometti_man_stridingGiacometti is a curious artist for us to study in the context of “contempoary art issues” because he stands apart from the majority of 20th and 21st century artists. While an overwhelming majority of artists concern themselves with abstract reality or conceptual reality, Giacometti grapples with tangible material reality in every painstaking stroke. The essayist Jacques Dupin comments how odd it is to see Giacometti’s work installed alongside the other notable artists of his time, for his work stands in utter contrast to that of most of his contemporaries whose concerns were with inner states of being or the world of ideas, as opposed to the world of physical forms. I cannot praise Giacometti’s work enough, so I won’t even try to go on….  Visit the Museum of of Modern Art’s multimedia piece on Giacometti for more detailed information.  You’ll be glad you did!

In our first class this semester, we talked about Giacometti’s use of space. He elevates destruction to a method, to paraphrase Dupin. The figures get whittled down to thin, elongated, fragile forms.  In contrast to classical sculpture in which the figure asserts itself in the space, Giacometti’s figures are almost overwhelmed by the space around them. This meaningful use of the negative space is common to several artists I’d like to mention. It’s really a provocative idea, in my opinion, to deal with lack – or absence, void, negative space, whatever you want to call it – as a thing itself. To use an analogy to music, it is the intervals between notes that are as much a part of the piece as the notes themselves.

Rachel Whiteread is a British artist whose work often involves casting the negative space around large objects (e.g. entire rooms, library stacks), to produce a sculpture or installation piece that renders the space between things solid matter.whitereadStacks

In this video, Rachel Whiteread discusses her piece “Ghost” and some of her artistic methods.Download Rachel Whiteread discusses “Ghost” (National Gallery of Art)

Materializing lack is also reflected in the new memorial to 9/11, which is described in this BBC video. Water is used to represent persistent absence.



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