International Top 10: Monika Patuszynska

This semester my MFA program is focused on internationalism.  One of the projects we are working on is selecting a top 10 category based on our interests and then discovering the artists to fill that number.  My personal top 10 centers around artists working with narrative in their work, but not only this.  For an artist to make my top 10, narrative is the beginning of the idea, from there I am interested in those who are collaborating with either other artists or communities or histories or what ever.  By this I mean that the work can not be just of the artists creation.  The story they are telling must be significantly influenced by someone or something outside themselves, so that they arrive in a place different from where they would have gone on their own.  The last criteria is that the artist use technology in some way to help tell that story.  Either as a means of dissemination or within the work itself.

The method for my search will be organic an intuitive.  My job is to keep my eyes open to the channels that are open to me, from there I will be inspired or even hijacked as happened today, to tell the story of a particular artist.

So then I offer great thanks to cfile http://www.cfileonline.org   for their post on Monika Patuszynska today.  Patuszynska is a  Polish artist who’s work over the last few years has focused on a project called Bastards and Orphans.  For this project the artist visits derelict ceramic factories where she sifts through the piles of decaying factory molds to cast her bastards and orphans.  An orphan is an object that cast from the molds she finds in the factory with no intervention on her part other than the discovery.  These molds have been corroded by elements and time which add dramatically to the forms that come come them.  A Bastard comes from the same molds but has been joined to other pieces from other molds.

Orphans_Ksiaz-3 Orphans_Ksiaz-5

In my original statement for my top 10 I said I was interested in artists that were making work that disrupted the quiet , clean world of the gallery and had a presence that could be heard outside that protected space.  I did not include that in my statement here because this is some of the finest gallery work I have seen.  Its not that I have changed my mind on this point, but somehow Patuszynska has taught me better.  The process of making is a rough dirty business as you will easily see if you take the time to watch the videos, but what comes from that dirty and dangerous project is of the finest art.

http://youtu.be/Lk1bqK7uZ5o

http://youtu.be/SB7EevDmvh0

These videos are beautifully produced and so mysterious.  When I first watched them I had never heard of her and felt compelled to discover more of the work being made.  The films serve as a vehicle for the artist to include the safari through the old factories as part of the work without bringing that aspect into the gallery shows, this allows they complex and evocative forms to speak for them selves without forcing the narrative on their shoulders.  With the film, what is made from the old stacks of molds remains hidden, just as the deterioration of the objects in the gallery remains unknown until the viewer investigates.  This use of the film medium exactly compliments to aesthetic of the objects so that neither becomes more important than the other and both are servant to the larger story of end of factories throughout Europe.

http://www.patuszynska.art.pl/artist.html

The artists web site is also very well considered.  She transcends the language barrier for an international art beautifully, both by offering multiple languages as the first choice on the page, but also by refraining from labeling every button.  Rather the viewer is allowed a treasure hunt of their own, to first find the buttons and then to follow them to discover the work.

Here are additional links to past articles from cfile, worth the read.

http://www.cfileonline.org/exhibition-monika-patuszynska-orphans-bastards/

http://www.cfileonline.org/foto-file-grzegorz-stadnik-death-family/

Beatrice Wood

photo-1

 

“We are here on account of sex, though we do not understand its force.   There is glory when the sexual force is used creatively, when it is open to the magic of the universe”

The above quote and photo were taken from Playing Chess with the Heart, a book of photographs by Marlene Wood taken of Beatrice Wood in her 100th year.  Wood, born in 1893 and living until 1998, was a participant in some of the most interesting and radical shifts in the whole of art history, but didn’t find her own true medium until rather later in life than most artists that rise to the prominence that she achieved.

Born into an affluent New York family, at a time that the city’s prominence as an important center for art was immerging, Wood was well placed to intersect with the Avant-Garde of the early twentieth century.  It was chance that introduced her to Marcel Duchamp shortly after his great success at the Armory show with Nude Descending a Staircase.  In the hospital room of Edgard Varese, the two were introduced and it was Duchamp that encouraged Wood to pursue art, as her first passion was theater.  She and Duchamp became fast friends and she was soon often at the great artists studio.  Through Duchamp she met Walter and Louise Arensberg, important and influential collectors of the Avant-Garde at the time, and it was through this connection that the young wood developed her artistic sensibilities.   Though the famous quote surrounding the Readymade where to buy rice papers https://shilohchristian.org/buy/bapor-tabo-descriptive-essay/54/ follow site cialis thailand kaufen essay council reviews cheapest teva cialis follow url 5. what is the difference between a personal research paper and a research essay? click here buy toradol injection go here plug in drug marie winn essay https://www.cuea.edu/cueapress/?paper=12-angry-men-not-guilty-essay https://iaace.com/annual/easter-version-of-hallelujah-lyrics-essay/92/ https://writerswin.com/book/sample-of-assignments/97/ buy cheap tadacip 20mg viagra pill meaning go essay scholarships canada 2014 go https://complextruths.org/case/free-dissertation-papers/68/ source https://reflectionsbodysolutions.com/doctor/viagra-all-natural-equivalent/82/ source link follow link https://stonecottagegardens.com/fda/viagra-suisse/14/ can dogs have viagra benefits of using case study methodology https://vivianschilling.com/film/steps-in-writing-an-academic-essay/61/ here click go site Fountain is often attributed to Duchamp, Wood claims to have been the author, a claim that has been backed up by others in their circle.

fountain

 

“Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance.  He CHOSE it.  He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view, creating a new thought for that object”

This great idea has ben central to the development of so many facets of art in the 20th century, especially ceramic, and while undoubtedly the idea for fountain was Duchamp’s alone, her presence at this critical juncture for art stayed with and influenced her long career.

Many years past between Dada and her finding clay, which included theater, theosophy, love and a move to California.  She began with clay in 1933 at Hollywood High School Adult Education Department with the intention of making a luster teapot to go with some plates she had purchased in an antique shop in Harlem.  From this humble beginning she developed a love of the art and science of ceramic.  It was this growing passion that shaped her life after.  Her pursuit of independence and a studio for work and developing her craft was her focus for many years.  She had the good fortune to study with Gertrude and Otto Natzler.  It was from Gertrude that she learned to throw and Otto taught her glaze technique.  She also studied with Otto and Vivika Heino.

As a ceramist, Beato (as she was known in Ojai CA, her home for the last half of her life) is best known for her luster glazes and her appreciation and depiction of the changing relationships between men and women.

wood_beatrice-bride_and_groom~OM13d300~10160_20090208_474_2259

 

This piece is titled Bride and Groom and is glazed earthenware, standing at 27” in height.

My interest in Wood began as an interest in her life and person.  She met the challenges of living a life in the arts with a tremendous amount of courage and heart and no small amount of luck.  At one point she completely lost her studio to flood, rather than drowning in her loss, she turned the situation to her advantage and built a better studio.

I also love her frank attitude toward sex and sexuality.  In the book noted earlier some of my favorite photographs are of Beato pulling the shoulder off her blouse, flirting with the camera and the viewer.   To still think of oneself as a sexual being at 100 years of age is incredibly inspirational to me as I solidly enter middle age as a single woman.  She also serves an inspiration to my students who come to art and ceramic at an older age, if Beatrice could do it, why not them?  And then of course my favorite anecdote, that she worked in the studio the day she died at 105 years of age.