.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
In 1983, Ana Mendieta was awarded the Prix de Rome for sculpture, which gave her a one-year residency at the American Academy in the Eternal City. Upon arrival, she was delighted to discover that she would have her own studio for the first time, and the space allowed her to experiment with new materials. It was in this year that Mendieta began to work with hollow tree trunks and slabs of wood. Like four other wood slab sculptures created at this time, the present work, Untitled, was designed to rest against a wall, and into its surface Mendieta carved and burned patterns resembling a leaf’s ribs. The work was included in Mendieta’s 1987 exhibition at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, as well as her 2004 retrospective held at, in addition to other institutions, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.
Although decidedly physical, this body of work nevertheless retains many of the central characteristics that underpinned her earlier art, namely an abiding interest in the female form, the use of organic materials, and the fusion of body and earth. Describing Mendieta’s overarching aesthetic vision, the artist Nancy Spero wrote that her art was “an elemental force, divorced from accidents of individuality, speaking of life and death, growth and decay, of fragility yet indomitable will” (“Tracing Ana Mendieta”, Artforum, vol. 30, no. 8, April 1992, p. 77).
Archival material reveals that Mendieta had hoped to make larger public wood sculptures, but these were unfortunately never realized. For Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park public art program, she proposed an installation of seven tree trunks in a triangular patch of grass writing that “they will be set up in relationship to each other charging the space with a tenseness” (quoted in P. Barreras del Rio, “Ana Mendieta: A Historical Overview”, in Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective, exh. cat., The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1987, p. 39). Such ‘tenseness’, Mendieta hoped, would engender a shared encounter of the work, as communion between viewer and art was of paramount importance to the artist.
Indeed, Mendieta was concerned above all with experience, and one that was as expansive and atavistic as possible. In the catalogue of her 1987 solo exhibition at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, curator John Perrault wrote: “What do we see when we look at what remains of her artworks? A few photographs depicting silhouettes on the ground or rock carvings in Cuba. Later we see female figures made of fernwood or constructed of vines. We see earthly symbols on the floor. We see wood inscribed with fire, as if this were the only way to let the soul become visible. If we do not see beyond what we see, then we are not seeing the art: we are stuck in the fallen world of art products. Eschewing the sentimental and, for the most part, the sensational, Mendieta was courting the gods” (J. Perrault, “Earth and Fire: Mendieta's Body of Work”, Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective, exh. cat., The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1987, p. 17).
Although decidedly physical, this body of work nevertheless retains many of the central characteristics that underpinned her earlier art, namely an abiding interest in the female form, the use of organic materials, and the fusion of body and earth. Describing Mendieta’s overarching aesthetic vision, the artist Nancy Spero wrote that her art was “an elemental force, divorced from accidents of individuality, speaking of life and death, growth and decay, of fragility yet indomitable will” (“Tracing Ana Mendieta”, Artforum, vol. 30, no. 8, April 1992, p. 77).
Archival material reveals that Mendieta had hoped to make larger public wood sculptures, but these were unfortunately never realized. For Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park public art program, she proposed an installation of seven tree trunks in a triangular patch of grass writing that “they will be set up in relationship to each other charging the space with a tenseness” (quoted in P. Barreras del Rio, “Ana Mendieta: A Historical Overview”, in Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective, exh. cat., The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1987, p. 39). Such ‘tenseness’, Mendieta hoped, would engender a shared encounter of the work, as communion between viewer and art was of paramount importance to the artist.
Indeed, Mendieta was concerned above all with experience, and one that was as expansive and atavistic as possible. In the catalogue of her 1987 solo exhibition at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, curator John Perrault wrote: “What do we see when we look at what remains of her artworks? A few photographs depicting silhouettes on the ground or rock carvings in Cuba. Later we see female figures made of fernwood or constructed of vines. We see earthly symbols on the floor. We see wood inscribed with fire, as if this were the only way to let the soul become visible. If we do not see beyond what we see, then we are not seeing the art: we are stuck in the fallen world of art products. Eschewing the sentimental and, for the most part, the sensational, Mendieta was courting the gods” (J. Perrault, “Earth and Fire: Mendieta's Body of Work”, Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective, exh. cat., The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1987, p. 17).