A number of my projects appear to have few if any parallels or antecedents – or so it seems. I’ve been watching for other manifestations of the chain concept, for example, without success. This may satisfy a need to be original , but it leaves me wondering about the quality and quantity of my research. My situation may be out in left field, but I’m sure that there are many who, laboring with their notions and inspirations, are curious about where they stand.
So one’s first thought is the internet. Set up a site where an artist can put up a clear image of his or her work and ask: Of what or who does this remind you? Criticism would not be solicited, only placement in a larger context.
Here’s another example of one of my x-shape compositions. There has got to be a million of them out there, all unknown to me. Do I really want to find out about someone else doing the same or similar thing? No. Do I need to find out? Definitely yes.
You will have thoughts about this. I would not be surprised to find that many such sites already exist. But, indeed, is this worth doing?
Jay,
Being the only one to do Xs is a tricky business. On the plus side, it means that your art is original. On the downside, it means that the herd is running somewhere else without paying attention to your creations.
I love this display of Xs – differences in colors, reflections, and reaching across one another.
Birgit:
Thanks for the compliment. Your comment is my point x-actly: how do we know that there isn’t a herd somewhere busily exing?
Taking the time to set-up two angled light sources can eliminate the glare from a flash.
Jay,
I don’t know of any web site where one could post a picture and ask for precedents that are similar. But it won’t be long–seriously–before you can put an image instead of text into something like a Google search box, and find images that match in some “visual” sense. So if Picasso or Praxiteles already made a sculpture like your X’s (scissors?), and it’s pictured on the Internet, you’ll have a chance of finding it. It might take a little longer to specify style as well.
Jay, this interlocking design does seem to relate to chains as well as scissors. Is there some overarching idea in your mind, or are these just a series of experiments you’re somehow driven to undertake?
D.
You’re right.
Steve:
Ah, the ‘x’ in Praxiteles.
I was just reading an article in Seed magazine about research on finding such comparatives. It involved a number of Van Gogh images and the machine/program was asked to make distinctions among them. The program was able to identify deviations from a norm that it developed in a number of cases which correlated fairly closely to those examples known to be fakes. Sounds like the Google feature may be along similar lines. Those guys must have a serious surplus of capacity hidden away somewhere to even think of such a thing.
To an extent both. I can remember thirty seven years ago drawing up a list of some twenty or more variables around the design and construction of a baby gate. It goes back that far – and was then set aside until a few years ago. So I guess that I’m driven a little bit. But the scissor jack feels like a universal – in at least a pivot sense. ???
the scissor jack feels like a universal
It does seem a basic design element, with some elegant properties. But I don’t think it appears in nature, for reasons having to do with stress and available materials. Bones meet at thickened ends, extension is via muscle and tendon working with much less leverage than the scissor jacks. Not for that reason–I’m not sure I can explain why–I’ve always found bones fascinating. A few whitened, found ones are sprinkled about one of our gardens.
Steve:
I just pivoted my head to look out the window.
But I think that I might better employ a term like relative rotational motion, of which pivoting might be a subset. The concept of a lever arm might fit as pivoting is integral. But it is likely that I’m trying to find advantage in the mechanical rather than mechanical advantage.
Watch the movie Art School Confidential with Angelica Huston and John Malkovich, reminds me of him.
My associations for Ex motif:
1) arms and legs in Joel Shapiro, some David Smith (Cubi VI, e.g.)
2) Cy Twombley
Dear Donald Frazell and M.:
So I know better where and how to look, the ‘him’ mentioned would be John M. himself? I’ll have to get that film.
I can see the comparisons to Shapiro and Smith. But with Twombley do you refer to the sixties Cy when he was a god of art, or the more neigh Cy?