The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

This is Yinka Shonibare's version of Goya's The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.

The original was an etching made by the painter and printmaker Francisco de Goya. The original was a portrait of the artist with his head on the table as owls and bats attacked him. It was meant to show what happens when reason is ignored. Another thought is that the piece shows Goya's creative process and the unleashing of the imagination, emotions, and nightmares.

Shonibare appropriated the iconic etching and gave it a contemporary art feel. The photo is of a white-haired man, not a self portrait of Shonibare like it should be if he were going to replicate the original, surrounded by realistic-looking owls and bat creatures moving in to attack him.

In Goya's version, the owls are symbols of folly and the bats are symbols of ignorance.

A quote from the original is "Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels."

Though a fairly realistic image, Shonibare's piece isn't realistic in concept. The idea of personified owls and bats so large that they can't possibly exist is definitely not real. However, the way the animals were created and those personified expressions they were almost makes the whole seen look real. Judging the piece on realism, it would fail in portraying the world exactly as it is, but it certainly succeeds in trying to make the viewer think that the image they are seeing actually happened.

In the Land of Not-Art . . .

New assignment! Last Thursday, we took a trip to the Walker. Our jobs were to find a piece we either strongly liked or strongly disliked and interpret it.

Here is what I found.

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Frank Gehry - Standing Glass Fish, 1986

Made of wood, glass, steel, silicone, plexiglass, and rubber

"In Toronto, when I was very young, my grandmother and I used to go to Kensington, a Jewish market, on Thursday morning. She would buy a carp for gefilte fish. She'd put it in the bathtub and this big black carp - two or three feet long - would swim around and I would play with it. I would watch it turn and twist . . . and then she'd kill it and make gefilte fish and that was always sad and awful and ugly."

Fish have been a recurring motif in Gehry's work. He was first inspired by them when his grandmother would bring them home Thursday morning and put them in the bathtub. One can often find resemblences of them in his furniture and architectural designs and drawings.

Gehry is more well known for his stunning and innovational architectural pieces like the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Guggenheim Bilbao than he is for his sculptural pieces like the Standing Glass Fish. Google Gehry's name and I personally guarantee you that you will find much, much more about his architectural work than his sculptural work or drawings. However, I find that this one sculptural work is more impressive than any of the buildings he has created. Perhaps this is because I haven't seen them in person, but even having never seen the fish in person, it would still rank higher than the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Why? Because the fish is real.

When I think Walker, I think of rooms and rooms of art that don't make sense. Paintings that are just color and shape. Sculptures that look as though a lump of clay or melted plastic or random objects from the kitchen junk drawer were just placed on a stand and labeled with a fancy title or the ever mysterious 'Untitled'. Things that don't make sense unless you know the context of them - when they were made, who made them, what the artist was thinking/feeling/doing when they made them. But this fish . . . The fish is a fish. There's no hidden key to unlocking its secrets. You don't have to do research to figure out its meaning. It tells you what it is the moment you see it and if you want to know more, it's right there for you on that handy little plaque in front of the sitting pool.

I feel like the fact that you can see the underlying structure of the sculpture relates to the ugliness of the story that he told about his grandmother killing the fish. In a lot of sculptures, you don't see the inside structure that gives it its form or keeps it all together. Yet, even while you see the 'ugliness' of the sculpture, the glass scales and fins of the fish reflect the beauty that Gehry was, and still is inspired by. The pool that this fish comes out of can also be a respresentation of the bathtub that the fish once swam in. However, since the water appears to be black, the pool doesn't reflect the happiness of seeing that fish swim, but rather the sadness and awfulness of seeing it killed and made into something like gefilte fish.

While, to me, the fish is just a fish, to Gehry, this is a memory of the moments he spent watching the carp swim around in his bathtub.

So. After not being able to walk past the french fries, trapped in a world of confusing art pieces after confusing art pieces, I found refuge in this fish. Thank you, Frank Gehry, thank you so very, very much.

c:

Other Images //

http://media.walkerart.org/1636600.jpg

http://collections.walkerart.org/item/enlarge_fs.html?type=object&id=570&image_num=2

http://www.walkerart.org/walker_images/e_images/01/wac_122e.jpg

Sources //

http://garden.walkerart.org/artwork.wac

http://collections.walkerart.org/item/enlarge_fs.html?type=object&id=570&image_num=1

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/gehry_f.html

Imaginary Sources //

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Gehry