The objet
trouvé, the found object separated from
its context, is an important topic in modern and contemporary
art. The experience that objects in an unusual combination
or with provocative commentary can make an intellectual
or ironic point led the Surrealists to unleash a flood
of object montages whose fetishistic, magical, and
often erotically charged content was informed by these
artists' continued interest in psychoanalysis and psychopathology.
With the introduction of the ready-made object by Marcel
Duchamp, the idea of objet trouvé became
significantly more radical. The disassociation from
utility transformed ordinary objects into conceptual
constructs. At the same time, with the inception of
readymades, the ambivalence of setting values moved
plainly into art's field of reflection. Initially conceived
as no more than a protest against meaning - against
the unquestioned superiority and preciousness of art
- readymades opened up the possibility of a new artistic
definition of meaning for meaningless objects. In the
sixties, object art underwent a multilayered expansion
as an interpretation of the reality of modern civilization
in Nouveau Réalisme and Pop Art. The artistic
reality of the image was to be reconnected to the reality
of life, an endeavor that could be most concretely
accomplished by using parts of the real world in art
just as they were found. The objet trouvé became
a quotation of reality; life was to be breathed into
art with new techniques and unusual materials. Many
innovative forms of presentation arose: accumulation,
assemblage, combine painting, environments, installation
art, and new forms such as happenings and Fluxus. It
was an intensive use of actionistic and multimedia
forms of expression that in modified form are still
employed in contemporary art.
A selection of
works from various years is meant to demonstrate how artists
use found objects today.
Marcel Broodthaers
created the work The Manuscript in 1974. It shows a wine
bottle made of clear glass engraved with the words "The
Manuscript" standing next to the box it came in. The words
on the bottle and the title of the work refer to The Manuscript
Found in a Bottle, a story by Edgar Allan Poe that the
author published in 1833. With this object, which in fact
only simulates a found object, Broodthaers connects fiction
and reality in a complex interplay of references to time
and content, a play of contradictions between signs and
the things they describe. By presenting the definition
of a subject from everyday reality in literal terms, the
artist transforms it in an ironic distance of alienation,
making a reference to the broken relationship between perception,
definition, and meaning.
The same buoyancy
that is always retained in Broodthaers's process of reflection
is found in the works of the artist George Brecht. Games
and Puzzles shows a box containing an assortment of different
balls like rubber balls, billiard balls, and Ping-Pong
balls. This work is part of a series of Fluxus boxes developed
by George Maciunas and Robert Watts that were to be produced
in unlimited editions. They included concepts, events,
and games by various Fluxus artists; their content often
consisted of found objects. The unbiased use of these works
is viewed as the creative point of departure for a new
beginning. The found objects assembled here are detached
from their conventional use, liberated from the rules assigned
to them, and are consequently made available for a new,
freely invented game. If playing pieces are lost, they
can be replaced with other found objects.
The American
artist Alison Knowles became famous with her performance
activities in particular. The performance of Make Something
in the Streets and Give It Away took place as early
as 1962. It was a street piece in which objects designed
by the artist were given to the audience and hence entered
the circulation of objects. But found objects also play
a central role in her works. "My art documents my search
for an expressive connection with nature and the continuity
of change. In order to express my ideas about impermanence
and transformation, I use broken and discarded objects
or objects that are not yet formed… what fascinates me
about objects is their gesture and their sound," says the
artist of her approach. Dark Triptych, from 2001,
also consists of found objects.
A found object,
in this case an old doormat, also plays a central role
in a work by Serge Spitzer, an artist living in New York.
This badly worn carpet appears to have been thoughtlessly
thrown onto the massive iron girder that is mounted to
the wall above eye level. Through the elevation, this object,
useless as it has become for everyday use, acquires a new
significance and gains an independent life as an aesthetic
object. As a real thing or real document, it is an indication
of the events it has experienced in its existence and ferries
us back to these events. It indicates situations that no
longer exist, although not in the sense of a representation,
but as a remainder or a trace. At the same time, this object
occupies a new space, secures a new place, and - above
all through its puristic presentation - imbues it with
a psychological charge.
Romuald Hazoumé is
an artist from Benin who also works with found objects.
His wonderful masks, like the one shown here from 2000,
are made of discarded material that he finds around the
corner as it were. The assemblages, constructed out of
a latch from a washing machine, an oilcan, or a vacuum
cleaner, are both examinations of modern civilization and
society as well as a criticism of the sellout of his culture. "I
give everything back to the people in the Western world
that belongs to them - the garbage of a consumer society," says
the artist of his work. But at the same time, these material
collages also refer to the symbolic richness of ritual
acts in traditional African culture.
The fact that
some things are hard to find is the subject of a 1990 statement
by the Danish artist Henning Christiansen titled Freedom
Is Around the Corner. Freedom always seems to be wherever
we are not, and it requires effort to acquire it. You have
to follow it, look for it, stay in motion, in action. And
even though it's so close, reaching it may always remain
a utopia. This work is a cryptic play on the topic of finding
and losing. The expression "Around the Corner" is ambiguous:
it can either mean that something is within reach or that
something was just irretrievably lost.
But what about
things that have been lost? At first sight, it appears
paradoxical, if not impossible, to want to depict something
that no longer exists. It seems that the only things that
can be depicted are the emotions that accompany loss -
mourning, anger, regret, emptiness - or the consequences
of loss that are best expressed on a verbal level or in
music, such as in Beethoven's piece Rage over a Lost Penny.
Lost objects also
find their way into the fine arts. The concept art of the
sixties did without the material objectification in art
and instead relied on concepts and idea projections to
inspire the creative thought processes of the viewer. Several
other works have been selected here to demonstrate which
expressions contemporary artists have found when dealing
with the phenomenon of the lost.
This Way Brouwn,
by the Dutch artist Stanley Brouwn, dates from 1964 and
explores the loss of orientation, the loss of a path, a
direction, and the concomitant loss of security. For several
years, Brouwn would stop passersby in the various cities
he traveled through, put paper and pen in their hand and
ask them to make a sketch. Losing the way thus becomes
synonymous with a reorientation, but it is dependent on
the passerby's willingness to participate. The drawings,
affixed with the artist's stamp, are manifestations of
the lost. But at the same time, they make authorship and
originality a subject of the art.
Gülsün Karamustafa,
an artist living in Istanbul, repeatedly addresses the
loss of a home, emigration, and what she refers to as "international
nomadism." Her work is marked by the migration movements
in her homeland, whether the massive exodus from the country
to the cities or the emigration of Turkish workers to Germany,
a topic referred to in the German title of her 1994 work Heimat
ist, wo man isst (Home is where you are fed). The title
is a wordplay on two verbs that cannot be translated into
any other language. Three spoons seem to imply a family.
Three is a basic unit, not a large family, but a small,
vulnerable family. The three spoons, delicately connected
with each other with a white cloth ribbon, become a symbol
for the thousands of refugees who lose their homeland and
are forced to find a new one.
The contribution
of the New York-based Korean artist Kim Sooja, Sewing
into Walking, from 1997, also has to do with nomadism.
The video was made in Istanbul on Istiklal Caddesi, one
of the main roads in the city, and shows an endless coming
and going of passersby. The film is accompanied by a soundtrack
of Tibetan Buddhist chants. In Korea, "to make a bundle" means
the same thing as "to leave a place" or "travel on," and
in fact the artist did travel 2,727 kilometers with her
Bottaris for the performance for Cities on the Move in
1997. In some projects, such as the video shown here, this
topic is connected with the moment of "going," since clothes
as such are connected with the process of going places.
As worn objects, they most clearly refer to lived life,
to home and protection, and to their loss.
Before the opening
of the exhibition, the German artist Maria Eichhorn from
Berlin arranged to lose a silver ring that had been specially
made for her in New York. The information in the exhibition
tells the story of this seemingly irretrievable loss. But
the loss itself points to the presence of the object, because
it opens up room for many associations as to where it might
be and what is happening with it right now. Who knows,
maybe the ring will be found again and reenter the circulation
of art as an objet trouvé. And so Maria Eichhorn
will not react in anger over the loss as Ludwig van Beethoven
is reputed to have done when he lost a penny two hundred
years ago. The piano piece that arose out of this loss
has become so popular that it has since generated millions
of pennies in royalties.
René Block ©2001 |