Monday, August 13, 2007

No Words Necessary

11 comments:

Panday said...

Ahh. Concept art.

500 years from now, all of the current concept "artists" will be long forgotten.

Renoir, Matisse, Rembrant, Michaelangelo, and DaVinci, however, will still be remembered.

Steve Perry said...

I tend to agree, except that five hundred years from now, probably most of us won't be here, so we don't know for sure what will stand the rigors of age.

Lots of examples of artists or writers who were famous in their day, but who left no footprints on the sands of time.

Charles Dickens was considered a hack in his day. So was Billy Shakespeare -- they used to throw rotten vegetables at his actors.

That picture exists, and may still be around as long as there are computers. Might be that Danielle Steel is the writer folks venerate half a millennium from now, or that some graffiti artist in New York City who isn't born yet tops the list of greats.

Never know until you get there.

Me, I thought the picture conveyed all kinds of things, like ... which position would I like to be in, I was in the stack ... ?

Bobbe Edmonds said...

NO, Steve.

There are SEVERAL words necissary.

*GASP* being the first.

"Who's the lead babe?" are the next four.

Steve Perry said...

The picture is, apparently, from an April, 2002 exhibition, "Dangerous Liaisons," in Poznan, Poland.

Something called "critical art," apparently quite the rage in Poland in the 90's.

I'm not sure what they are criticizing here ...

I came across the image whilst looking for something else and was struck by it. First, because of the nekkid folks; second, the immediate question -- how'd they do that?

It's obvious they aren't standing up unaided -- the balance is impossible, plus there isn't any weight on their feet, you can tell by looking at their toes.

So I figured they are lying on their backs in a stack, but no; the guy on the bottom would have, well, a flat bottom, and the women's hair and breasts aren't showing gravity's pull in that direction. There's no compression of muscles where there should be.

Then I realized they are probably lying on their left sides on a black background with the photographer perched over them on a ladder or somesuch. The drape of hair and the breasts on the girl in front seem to make this likely, though it is hard to be sure, the image is so small.

Maybe on a stand with a slot for their arms, or something there for them to hold onto to keep them in position.

I don't see any names showing who the models are, but the article is here:

http://www.artmargins.com/
content/review/jakubowska.html

Tiel Aisha Ansari said...

"I'm not sure what they are criticizing here ..."

Possibly the unthinking social acceptance of the concept "gravity", which artificially dichotomizes the world into "up" and "down", with the attendant creation of meaningless value-hierarchies embodied in words like "above".

Where'd I put my hip boots? It's a nice picture, though.

Steve Perry said...

My.

Okay, you're a poet. Speak to us of naked gravity, Tiel ...

Tiel Aisha Ansari said...

event horizon
photons are raped away by
naked gravity

Steve Perry said...

Ooh. Free verse porn ...

Dan Gambiera said...

Nope. Hai-koochie

Steve Perry said...

You know, I thought that might be haiku, but I don't know enough about it to be certain -- I always get the number of syllables mixed up.

Tiel Aisha Ansari said...

Well, some people believe in a strict 5-7-5 count, some say those should just be upper limits, some say you can't really write haiku in any language other than Japanese...