During a recent trip to the MoMA I was able to visit the Wunderkammer: A Century of Curiosities exhibit, and ran across a modern cabinet of wonder by Mark Dion. This piece, called Cabinet, got me thinking about the relationship between the quantity of a certain object and its ability to interest us or inspire wonder. In Dion's cabinet, the curiosities are collected from an excavation of relatively unexciting building materials, everything from bricks to screws. But as I viewed the objects in their glass covered drawers, neatly organized in collections by item, they became more than simple materials that I understood as existing within the relm of the functinal and the everyday. The repetition of quantity, with unique variations from item to item, made these pieces worthy of display and contemplation. What is it about the repetition of a form that can inspire our curiosity? A bird floating on a current of air is something to notice. But 200 birds doing the same is something to wonder at. A lightbulb is something to appreciate, but 75,000 of them in Dr. Hugh Francis Hick's Mount Vernon Museum of Incandescent Lighting is amazing. There is a lot of interesting psychology out there about collectors: part of it is the desire for order. But it's more than that: I am not a collector, yet I am in awe of anything normal taken out of context and in great quantity. In the same way that a large quantity of things which hold little value on their own gain intersest and value when grouped, sometimes things which are seen as highly valuable on their own will lose that value in quantity. This may be pure economics, but again, that can't be the whole explanation. When value hinges on rarity, wonderful things drop in esteem when we percieve that they may not be so rare. One example are the fruit-stone carvings that, in spite of the feat of their creation, they were so plentiful that every respectable wondercabinet had one, and were dismissed more than marvelled at. In my own work, I often find myself responding to something I've made with "this would be really interesting if there were 100 more!" Fortunately for me I don't necessarily carry out this compulsion, but now I do wonder, what do I make that holds power from being unique, and what would actually benefit from quantity?
2 comments:
I am in complete agreement with you about the power of numbers. Lately, I have been questioning (in my own work) the effects of repetition. I often wonder if it is the labor involved in the accumulation or repetition, or is it something about the rhythm that is created as a result of the process?
Collection raises so many interesting questions for artists and I feel that many of us are engaged in the activity on a subconscious level. While we may not collect things (finances have a direct bearing on this), we usually collect images. Does that count?
Your posts on this blog are so insightful and elegantly written. Thanks!
Great post! The validity of repetition is definitely something to ponder. Knowing your work, it is a good thing for you to ponder. Your first complete work in grad school was all about some repetition, and now your second big project is all about the discreet object. Or is it? Weaving is an accumulation and organization of hundreds, thousands even, of strings of yarn. Even though they are mostly one long connected strand of yarn, their treatment is as individual threads (weft variations). Rhythm, the flow of individual parts put together, is integral to weaving. Weaver as collector?
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