Really liking lots of those thumbnails for their solidity and sense of their construction. I suppose my advice to you is advice I've given pretty much everyone else. Your travelogue, while highly imaginative, seems to layer in elements that are 'not' Voulkos - i.e. the idea of natives and prehistory etc. His work reminds us of those associations, but the little bit of reading I've done about his work suggests that Voulkos doesn't himself view his work as being somehow 'primitive' but rather sees it as being primal or 'about clay' or as a challenge to our expectations of what 'clay' can be - so not primitive, but provocative, so not 'prehistoric' (old) but 'avant-garde'... (new).
His forms remind us of huts etc, but he's not creating huts, he's investigating what a vase can be or what a plate can be - in other words he's deconstructing the refinements of pottery and trying to get challenge expectations around what these elements can be. If Voulkos was asked to design buildings or think about cities, how would Voulkos think? I suggest you take a side-look at the whole concept of deconstruction, and how it associates with ceramics, but also with architecture, because there is a principle there that is more interesting perhaps than using Voulkos' work to theme a primitive civilisation:
I'd like you to think about what Voulkos would do if he was asked to design a skyscraper - what would that look like given his ideas about 'vases'? How you you/he apply his principles/processes/philosophies to the brief of designing a city? It's a different, more 'inside-out' approach, then just up-sizing his 'vases' and turning them into houses, just because they already look a little like houses.
Short version is maybe look a little deeper into what Voulkos thinks about his own work and then use his ideas + his trademark methods to re-evaluate your city - I don't see why his city needs to be 'primitive' or populated by 'natives' - he's a contemporary artist, after all.
OGR 05/11/2016
ReplyDeleteHi Alex,
Really liking lots of those thumbnails for their solidity and sense of their construction. I suppose my advice to you is advice I've given pretty much everyone else. Your travelogue, while highly imaginative, seems to layer in elements that are 'not' Voulkos - i.e. the idea of natives and prehistory etc. His work reminds us of those associations, but the little bit of reading I've done about his work suggests that Voulkos doesn't himself view his work as being somehow 'primitive' but rather sees it as being primal or 'about clay' or as a challenge to our expectations of what 'clay' can be - so not primitive, but provocative, so not 'prehistoric' (old) but 'avant-garde'... (new).
http://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag01/march01/voulkos/voulkos.shtml
His forms remind us of huts etc, but he's not creating huts, he's investigating what a vase can be or what a plate can be - in other words he's deconstructing the refinements of pottery and trying to get challenge expectations around what these elements can be. If Voulkos was asked to design buildings or think about cities, how would Voulkos think? I suggest you take a side-look at the whole concept of deconstruction, and how it associates with ceramics, but also with architecture, because there is a principle there that is more interesting perhaps than using Voulkos' work to theme a primitive civilisation:
http://mlj.com.my/deconstructivism-in-architecture.html
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tfm6FNQqawo/maxresdefault.jpg
http://www.historiasztuki.com.pl/ilustracje/ARCHDEKONSTR/DK-Gehry-DisneyConcertHall.jpg
https://designcanopy.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/frank-gehry-minneapolis.jpg
I'd like you to think about what Voulkos would do if he was asked to design a skyscraper - what would that look like given his ideas about 'vases'? How you you/he apply his principles/processes/philosophies to the brief of designing a city? It's a different, more 'inside-out' approach, then just up-sizing his 'vases' and turning them into houses, just because they already look a little like houses.
Short version is maybe look a little deeper into what Voulkos thinks about his own work and then use his ideas + his trademark methods to re-evaluate your city - I don't see why his city needs to be 'primitive' or populated by 'natives' - he's a contemporary artist, after all.