CHAPTER 8 FIGURATION

IntroductionRepresentation

Gianlorenzo Bernini. David. 1623. Marble, approx. 5' 7" high. Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy.

To shape material into a form resembling a preexisting thing(object or figure) is to represent it.

Representational art is commonly referred to as realism or figuration.

Representational sculpture dates back to prehistory and is one of the principal modes of three-dimensional expression.

Abstraction is a vast category with a wide range of expressions, from preexisting forms that have been altered, simplified, or exaggerated by their creators.

Brancusi’s interpretation of a bird in space is an excellent example of abstraction.

IntroductionRepresentation

Constantin BrancusiBird in Space. 1924. Bronze4' 2 5⁄16" high.

The manipulation of pure form for its own sake, is usually referred to as nonobjective or concrete art.

IntroductionRepresentation

Donald Judd. Untitled. 1980. Steel, aluminum and perspex, 9” x 40” x 31".

Realism, of course, exists across the cultural spectrum, from the classical artworks of antiquity to present-day kitsch artifacts.

Faux food. Iwasaki Images of America.

IntroductionRepresentation

These plastic life-size, full-color, three-dimensional replicas have a high degree of verisimilitude, or accurate likeness.

It is quite uplifting to see such care expressed in the fabrication of such lowly items as restaurant displays.

Wire car created by a child in Malawi. Copper wire, bamboo, tin can lids. C. 1967. Photograph: Travis Fullerton, 2010

IntroductionRepresentation

• This car is both a representation and an abstraction.

• A child in central Africa created the wire car (a kind of drawing in space) and it is a representation that actually functions as a car.

• It is a good example of the category of objects that attempts to represent objects experientially as well as visually. This homemade toy was driven around the streets of Malawi by its maker, using the steering wheel to maneuver it.

IllusionCamouflage

Nature is the ultimate master of illusion.

Birds and fish tend to have lighter undersides and darker tops in order to be less visible from below (looking up at them against the light) as well as from above (viewed against thedarker ground.) Atlantic spotted dolphins.

Using digital prints of the surrounding site and adhesive vinyl, an artist camouflaged many utility boxes in California.

The cell phone tower at right is completely visible, but hiding in plain sight. It no longer looks like a cell phone tower; it now looks like a pine tree, however out of scale it may be.

Paper clip

IllusionCamouflageCamouflage is also used in the built world.

Joshua Callaghan. Camouflaged utility box.

Artificial pine tree concealing cellular telephone tower.

Anamorphic projection is seen in an image that is coherent only when viewed from a single, fixed point; from other viewpoints it appears strangely stretched or radically distorted.

For Robert Lazzarini’s Payphone, the original object was digitally scanned and electronically distorted, 3D models were generated, and the final piece was fabricated with the very same materials used in the original pay phone.

Robert Lazzarini. Payphone and two viewers. 2002. 9’ x 7’ x 4' 8".

IllusionArt and Architecture

However, there is no vantage point from which the viewer of Payphone can account for the visual information received

Looking at Cloud Gate from a view from below, at its underbelly—we are lost in a maze of reflected distortions, and these distortions are in motion, coinciding with the movement of people below.

This disorienting apparition stands in stark contrast with the distant view of Cloud Gate: a minimal form with reflected blue sky and clouds.

Anish Kapoor. Cloud Gate, detail. Millennium Park, Chicago, IL. Anish Kapoor. Cloud Gate, detail. Millennium Park, Chicago, IL.

IllusionArt and Architecture

One element in this spectacular and theatrical fountain by Isamu Noguchi appears to be a cube propelled skyward by its trail of water, miraculously levitating above the surface of the pool.

In reality, pipes support the cube and supply the water cascading downward, hiding the trick. The other cube disperses water from above, becoming as ethereal as a floating chunk of fog.

Isamu Noguchi. Nine Floating Fountains,detail. World Expo 70. Osaka, Japan.

IllusionArt and Architecture

The Klein bottle is not really a bottle; it is a mathematical concept that cannot exist in real 3D space. As a one-sided construct requiring a fourth dimension, it can only exist theoretically.

Nonetheless, mathematicians have created fascinating representationsto approximate this theoretical object.

Klein bottles made by Alan Bennett. 1995.

IllusionArt and Architecture