CONNECTION Review symbolizing Paradise the Taj Mahal for

CONNECTION: Review symbolizing Paradise. the Taj Mahal for more on Islamic gardens

14. 19 Ryoanji Zen Garden of Contemplation , Japan, c. 1488– 1499. Walled garden, 99' wide X 33' deep. Daijuin Monastery, Kyoto. This garden is not meant to be entered, but to be contemplated from the side. The Japanese have different traditions for gardens: →a garden planned around a pond or lake, featuring rocks, winding paths, bridges and ever-changing vistas →a rock garden, where visitors do not walk through, but sit along the edge meditating.

Symbolism: →universe raked quartz gravel represents the void of the and the mind →worldly dark rocks represent material substances and events →the raked gravel signifies waves →boulders represent mountains →mind’s the fifteenth “boulder” can only be seen through the eye after spiritual enlightenment

14. 20 Walter De Maria. The Lightning Field, USA, 1971– 1977. Four hundred stainless steel poles, average height: 20' 7"; land area: 1 mile X 1 kilometer in New Mexico. This work of art incorporates the ground, the sky, and weather activity. Earthworks and Site Pieces The earth itself and natural phenomena can become sculptural materials.

The Lightning Field consists of a large, flat plain surrounded by mountains in New Mexico, in which 400 stainless steel poles are arranged in a rectangular grid measuring 1 kilometer by 1 mile. The Lightning Field requires effort and endurance on the part of viewers. It is remotely located, and a visitor must get permission from the Dia Foundation.

Once on-site, the viewer stays overnight and waits for whatever happens. The Lightning Field is better known through photographs than it is by actual experience. Unless you visit the work it will function as a conceptual piece.

14. 21 Robert Smithson. Spiral Jetty, USA, 1970. Earthwork; black rocks, salt crystals, earth, red water (algae), 1, 500' long X 15' wide X 3 1/2" high. Great Salt Lake, Utah. Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York. Art. Estate of Robert Smithson/Licensed by VAGA, New York. Rocks were moved and dirt shaped to create this massive earthwork. Contemporary earthworks are large-scale environmental pieces in which the earth is an important component. Earthwork artists not only use natural materials but also are responsive to the site. The monumental scale of earthworks, is an attribute of both ancient and modern art.

There is an emphasis on minimal, simple shapes, as in Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. Smithson saw his earthworks as unifying art and nature.

14. 22 Serpent (or Snake) Mound, near Locust Grove, Ohio, c. 900– 1300. Earthen sculpture, 1, 400' long. Native American. Ancient earthworks were either mounds or in this case were shaped into animal forms. Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, and the Serpent Mound. Smithson was influenced by the mound builders of native North American cultures, who used dirt to construct large ceremonial sites.

14. 23 Mierle Laderman Ukeles. The Social Mirror, USA, 1983. A 20 -cubic-yard New York City garbage collection truck fitted with hand-tempered glass mirror with additional strips of mirrored acrylic. The New York City Department of Sanitation. This garbage truck reflects back to the people the image of themselves, to make them aware that they generate the trash of New York City. Ecological Concerns Artists who deal with the land with landscape often have ecological concerns as part of their motivation to make art. Ecological concerns are clearly political and social issues. The Social Mirror, by Mierle Laderman Ukeles, focuses on the problem of waste caused by growing populations and consumerism.

A New York City garbage truck was fitted with gleaming mirrors, transforming it into a piece of sculpture. The Social Mirror also has a performance element, as the truck was part of a parade.

The mirrors reflect the faces of the public, making them aware that they make the trash. Mirrors also glamorize the garbage truck and raise the status of workers, whose labor is not respected but is absolutely necessary.

KNOWLEDGE Humans systematically study and examine the world in an attempt to understand (and often control) its course. All art is a kind of knowing: →helps explain a specific body of learning →provides glimpses into areas of intuited knowing →critiques what we knowledge consider

Informative Images De Humani Corporis Fabrica, by Andreas Vesalius, is a study of bones, muscles, and internal organs based on human dissections. His work is considered the beginning of modern science. Vesalius’s studies corrected errors in old sources and added new knowledge. The work is a comment on the wonder of the human body and its inevitable disintegration. 14. 24 Andreas Vesalius of Brussels. The Fourth Plate of Muscles, Flanders, published in 1543. Engraving from De Humani Corporis Fabrica. This is a work of anatomical science and a work of art. It also reflects attitudes about human nature that were prevalent at that time.

Birds of America is both artistic and scientific. Carolina Paroquet, shows several birds in scientific detail, with markings and in their habitat. 14. 25 John James Audubon. Carolina Paroquet, USA, 1827– 1838. Watercolor, 29 1/2" X 21 1/4". Original for Plate #26 of Birds of America. North Carolina Museum of Art. Audubon’s work on birds in North America is still a valuable research resource today.

Audubon eliminated the background to emphasize the birds’ defining silhouettes. Drawings in the service of science continue to be made, an artist’s drawings can emphasize details that do not stand out in photographs.

Hunter and Kangaroo, is meant to be an educational aid. The painting shows the instant the hunter’s spear is about to enter the animal. The animal is shown in x-ray style---both external silhouette and internal organs are evident, to assist the hunter with the kill. 14. 26 Hunter and Kangaroo, Australia, c. 20 th century. Paint on bark, 51" X 32". Aboriginal. Oenpelli, Arnhemland. Private collection, Prague. This is a work of art as well as an educational diagram about kangaroo anatomy.

CONNECTION: Aboriginal paintings often transmit knowledge from one clan member to another. See Paddy Carroll Tjungurrayi’s Witchetty Grub Dreaming (fig 6. 5).

Some art is experiential, conceptual and educational. Bridget Riley’s, Current, is a painted pattern of undulating lines that affect our visual perception. The work pulsates, flickers, similar to experiments to test the limits of visual perception. 14. 27 Bridget Riley. Current, Great Britain, 1964. Synthetic polymer paint on composition board, approx. 58 1/2" X 58 1/2". The Museum of Modern Art, New York. This pattern reveals aspects of how the human eye works.

CONNECTION: Georges Seurat also relied on the science of optics in his work La Grande Jatte (Fig. 13. 29).

14. 28 Salvador Dalí. The Persistence of Memory, Spain, 1931. Oil on canvas, 9 1/2" X 13". Museum of Modern Art, New York. Surrealism presents dreams, intuition, and visions as a kind of knowledge. Art and Intuited Knowledge Humans experience the external environment and the internal realm of the mind and the metaphysical world. Art deals with knowledge that humans grasp intuitively but aren’t always being able to articulate.

Surrealism, an early 20 th C. art movement explored the unconscious, especially through dream imagery. Surrealists believed the unconscious or dream world was as real as, and probably more important than, the external world.

In Dali’s, The Persistence of Memory, nothing makes sense. The artist has painted everything with rigorous detail and convincing realism so that book-learned knowledge fades, and we enter the eerie scene with a kind of intuited knowing.

14. 29 José Clemente Orozco. Gods of the Modern World, Mexico, 1932– 1934. Fresco, 126" X 176". Twelfth panel in a cycle of murals entitled An Epic of American Civilization. Baker Memorial Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. Orozco presents the argument against the pursuit of sterile knowledge. The Critique of Learning Gods of the Modern World, is a warning to the academic who is completely occupied with sterile research or learning that has no value outside of academia. Orozco believed that sterile education passes for knowledge, but it actually keeps the young busy without giving them any real wisdom or understanding.

Compare: Orozco’s painting with Breaking of the Vessels, by Anselm Kiefer.

Breaking of the Vessels, consists of a 3 -tiered bookshelf with volumes whose pages are made of sheets of lead. Above, are the Hebrew words Ain Soph, meaning “the Infinite. ” The sheer mass of the sculpture becomes a metaphor for the accumulated struggles to acquire and preserve human knowledge. 14. 30 Anselm Kiefer. Breaking of the Vessels, Germany, 1990. Lead, iron, glass, copper wire, charcoal, and aquatec, 17' high. St. Louis Art Museum. Old books are not always storehouses of knowledge. They make knowledge inaccessible, or they may rot and fall apart.

Breaking of the Vessels refers to: →the fact all human endeavor is subject to periods of decline and entropy →mystical Hebrew writings that tell of the uncontainable Divine whose power shattered the vessels of the universe upon Creation →the introduction of evil into the world →the atrocities of Kristallnacht, when the Nazis vandalized Jewish neighborhoods in Germany and Austria in 1938

14. 31 Fernand Léger. The City, France, 1919. Oil on canvas, 91" X 117 1/2". Philadelphia Museum of Art. Industrialism and modernism has produced forms and shapes that artists have found exciting and innovative. TECHNOLOGY Technological Advances - we most likely think of the world since the Industrial Revolution of the 19 th C. Technology advanced rapidly in the early 20 th C. , causing cities to expand, producing structures in shapes and sizes never seen before.

The City, by Fernand Léger, was influenced by Cubism. The painting suggests the newness and excitement industrial structures and the precision and efficiency of machines.

The City: →is rendered abstractly referring to industrial forms →uses repeated colors and shapes, suggests staccato city sounds →contains letterforms referring to billboard advertisements →is populated with robot-like humans

14. 33 David Smith. Cubi XXVI, USA, 1965. Steel, approx. 10' x 12' 6" X 2' 3". Alisa Mellon Bruce Fund. Image. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. Art. David Smith/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. The materials and processes of industry were used to make this geometric sculpture. Cubi XXVI - abstract art imitating qualities of machines. Smith used industrial fabrication to create this stainless steel sculpture. His processes and materials are the same as those that would be used to make a locomotive.

14. 34 Joseph Mallord William Turner. The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken Up , England, 1838. Oil on canvas, 35 1/4" X 48". The National Gallery, London. New technology regularly replaces the old, but the artist asks whether this represents actual progress or mere innovation. Evaluating the Constructed World In The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken Up, Turner distinguishes between innovation and progress. He painted the elegant sailing vessel against the powerful tugboat, which is squat, dark, and smoky. By this time, sailing vessels were obsolete for war or commerce, superseded by more modern technology.

Turner romanticized archaic technology, the latest innovation seemed ugly to him.

Compare: Turner’s work to Jean Tinguely’s Homage to New York.

14. 35 Jean Tinguely. Homage to New York: A Self. Constructing, Self-Destructing Work of Art, Switzerland, 1960. Mixed-media sculpture. Photograph of the work as it selfdestroyed in New York City on March 17, 1960. To Tinguely, machines have a comic dimension. They never perform exactly as expected, and their use always has unintended consequences. Homage to New York, looked like a whimsical machine. Tinguely constructed it with the help of an engineer, using junkyard machine parts. It was designed to destroy itself in one evening in the gardens of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

This work references the frenzy of the machine age and, by extension, the city of New York.

Today, technology includes computers and televisions, for 40 years, Nam June Paik has been exploring what that means and its impact on us as humans. Megatron is composed of more than 200 screens displaying video clips, digital distortions, and animation sequences. Paik’s images are from high and popular culture.

14. 36 Nam June Paik, in collaboration with Shuya Abe. Megatron (three views), Korea, 1995. Eight-channel video and two-channel sound installation in two parts, overall size 12' X 33' X 2'. Courtesy Holly Solomon Gallery, New York. Technology provides us with a nonstop barrage of information, music, and image snippets, which can be recombined and experienced in infinite numbers of arrangements.