Trinity News
Arts Editor
11 November 2003
Barry White
ARTS Trick or Treat: Ten of the Scariest Art Masterpieces 16
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Barry White Mathias Grünewald - The Isenheim Altarpiece, c. 1515. German artist Mathias Grunewald painted this celebrated altarpiece for the hospital chapel of a monastery in Alsace. One of the panels depicts Christ’s crucifixion, but Grunewald’s rendering of the scene is a far cry from many artists’ depictions of the crucifixion, which tend to tone down the violence of the scene. In Grunewald’s depiction, Christ’s flesh has taken on a greenish tone, his body is covered in suppurating wounds and his hands are grotesquely splayed out. His entire body is grossly distended and twisted, his face hanging in an expression of utter agony. This remarkable painting does nothing to elide the physical anguish of its subject, and to this day remains one of the most shocking artistic depictions of human suffering. Edvard Munch - Anxiety, 1894 Set on the same bridge and against the same “screaming” landscape of his most well known work, The Scream, Munch’s Anxiety is a chilling depiction of mental anguish which haunts the viewer like a bad dream. A group of menacing figures move towards the viewer, their strangely illuminated faces glowing out of their black clothing. They fix the viewer with accusing, penetrating gazes, arousing a sense of alienation and unease. Alfred Kubin - Madness, 1904 In this disturbing drawing, a grizzled old man sits with his misshapen hands folded in his lap, staring out at the viewer with wide eyes, his mouth open in a hideous grimace. Behind him, an attenuated, spectral figure prepares to hammer a long nail into the old man’s head. Kubin attempted suicide on top of his beloved mother’s grave at the age of nineteen, and, unsurprisingly, much of his work deals with themes such as insanity, death and disease.
Jake and Dinos Chapman - Zygotic Acceleration, biogenetic, desublimated, libidinal model, 1995. A sculpture by the controversial English brothers, (who are on this year’s Turner prize shortlist), comprising a group of hideously mutated mannequins which have been fused together into a grotesque mass. The mannequins are all of naked young girls, and in some cases, parts of their faces have been replaced with genitals. All of them wear identical trainers. The work is a genuinely shocking comment on the grotesque sexualisation of children at the hands of advertisers and marketers. Marc Quinn - Self, 1991 A self portrait bust, made from 8 pints of the artist’s own blood stored in a refrigeration tank. Self is a powerful work which plays on the many connotations of blood, and also points to questions about the nature of artistic creation. Eight pints is of course the entire blood content of the human body, thus the artist has literally poured his entire self into the creation of this work. Katharina Fritsch - Rat King, 1993 Rat king is a gigantic sculpture which consists of a ring of identical nine foot high black rats, made from a polyester resin. The piece is in some ways humorous, the rats having a certain cartoonish quality. However, its overwhelming scale and the menacing poses of the rats, which stand on their hind legs with their heads pointed out, as if the are about to pounce, evokes a deep sense of unease in the viewer. Richard Wilson - 20:50, 1987 20:50 is a site specific installation designed for the Saatchi gallery in London. The viewer walks along a walled catwalk which projects into the room in which the piece is housed,
only to realise that the catwalk is surrounded by a 2500 gallon lake of oil which rises to the very edge of the walkway. The oil is perfectly reflective, so its surface mirrors the glass ceiling above. 20:50 completely disrupts the viewer’s sense of the relationship between their body and the environment in which it stands, resulting in a disorienting, frightening, yet exhilarating experience. Chris Burden - Shoot, 1971 In 1971, American artist Chris Burden enacted a performance piece in which he stood in a Californian art gallery and was shot by an assistant. In other works, Burden had himself kicked down a flight of stairs, crucifed on the bonnet of a Volkswagen, electrocuted and almost drowned. Burden’s work explores the extremes of human experience, and challenges some of society’s ultimate taboos. Nancy Grossman - Caracas, 1971 A bust of a screaming head, made from wood covered in black patent leather and zips. Grossman’s intensely disturbing works deal with issues of confinement, aggression, torture and power. In this piece, the use of black patent leather and zips alludes to sadomasochistic practises. Luis Caballero - Untitled, 1991 Columbian artist Luis Caballero uses images of murder victims as well as gay pornography as source materials for his drawings of young men, which possess a charge that is simultaneously violent and erotic. A consummate draughtsman, Caballero produces drawings of violently contorted male bodies, which seem to oscillate between ecstasy and agony. They twist and writhe, with a strange, fierce animation that points to the thin line between pleasure and pain.
Clockwise from top left: Nancy Grossman - Caracas; Alfred Kubin - Madness (detail); Chris Burden - Shoot
Genie in a bottle - Ivana Panizzi at TCD Louise Taylor
Ivana Panizzi with one of her previous installations
“I
t doesn’t hurt at all,” the dark haired woman adds with a smile in response to the rather awkward poses pulled by a male student as she positions her camera. The scene is the dimly lit aisle of the college chapel and the young man in question is just one in a long list who have been ‘recruited’ by the chaplain, Rev. Alan Mc McCormack to be part of an exciting installation work by the Brazilian artist Ivana Panizzi. On the invitation of the chaplain, Panizzi is endeavouring to create a screen or reredos behind the altar, constructed entirely from milk bottles to mark the beginning of the Christian festival of All Saints. In the week running up to All Saints Day, which will significantly be the opening night of the exhibition, the artist has been working in the chapel taking photographs of students, tourists, and college staff which she will develop onto acetate transparencies before inserting them into the bottles kindly sponsored by ‘Nude’.
The idea is both inventive and hugely symbolic as Panizzi, a graduate of the Instituo Superior de Arte in Cuba uses the bottles to play upon the idea of the body being but a fragile vessel for the soul. Like captured fairies, the light infused transparencies convey a need for freedom and spiritual enlightenment as they contort against the sides of the glass. The finished product will depend on the complete structural harmony of every component part reminding us once again that to create the bigger picture, each element is relevant and to remove but one piece would result in the failure of the whole. On the suggestion of the chaplain himself, Panizzi has decided to intersperse the images of people she has met and photographed with those of saints old and new, adding another dimension to the already evident spiritual possibilities of the piece. “It makes the idea of saints and religion more accessible to the wider public when they are
placed alongside ordinary everyday people and friends,” Rev. McCormack remarked. Ivana Panizzi was also very expressive in her recognition of the connection between the theme and location saying that “It is so, so, so significant to do this… in this place.” She also told me that as well as including pictures of her own family, she would for the first time include a photograph of herself in this type of installation. Panizzi’s fascination with bottles and their creative potential began when living in Cuba. There, many commodities were purchased in bulk and would therefore require smaller containers to break down the goods into usable quantities. It was in this collecting and recycling of old bottles and jars for friends and neighbours that the artist began to recognise the value of a container not just for the beauty of the object, but for the inherent potential that the item possessed. The connection between the bottle and the human body was made during a period of great personal difficulty for the artist. She spoke of a time when her father became critically ill and in desperation to preserve his image, she placed his photograph in a milk bottle. Unfortunately, the bottle broke a few days later and so began the chain of events that has led Panizzi to build these huge towers of glass as a testimony on one hand to the fragility of human life whilst recognising the endurance of the soul on the other. The artist has also been actively involved in the building of houses in some poorer areas of South Africa from bottles and containers filled with sand. This government project as well as being hugely beneficial to the African people involved, has proved an immense influence on Panizzi’s art. The installation will be open to the public for the nine days of the religious festival and I encourage art amateur and expert alike to avail of the opportunity to see this remarkable work in this unusual setting.
De Rijke and De Rooij at The Douglas Hyde Clare Flannery
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ou are told that the ‘film’ will be showing in twenty minutes. Do you to head off for a cuppa cha or a wander up Dawson Street or do you decide to stick around the Douglas Hyde Gallery and explore the space? Artists Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij hope that you would choose the latter, viewing this exhibition more as an installation than simply a ten minute film screened at precise twenty minute intervals. An integral part of this ‘minimalist installation’ is space. The deliberate space is a waiting space but it is more importantly an art space. The dichotomy of the word here is intentional, referring simultaneously to the actual space of the gallery and the precise space of time between screenings. The projection booth is also part of the installation, reminding us of the process of the film screening. As regards the actual film, a single shot, we are presented with the interior of a mosque converted from a church in Amsterdam. (This film is part of a series of three ten minute films. The next will be screened next week.) Nothing happens and nothing is supposed to happen. The intermittent and sparse stimuli of staged sound and visual obstructions break the monotony, alerting the viewer to the process of recording and creation in a way and also serve to
waken any sleepy (or bored) viewers. On the opening night of the exhibition a public conversation between John Hutchinson, Gallery Director, (who fell short of Michael Parkinson but managed to keep his head above any Alan Partridge stylee gaffes) and the artists allowed for a much needed occasion for explanation and elaboration. After a lot of meandering questions and answers and through a process of elimination the artists affirmed one definite aim of their installation; that of coercing the viewer into a certain way of looking, encouraging a more attentive regard. In fact the committed viewer must watch, give or take the odd unexciting bit of deliberate technical trickery, ten minutes of the same image. Was this aimed at thwarting the viewer’s expectation of action, so associated with the film genre and its cinematic affiliations? A provocative degree of discomfort perhaps? No, the artists disregard this interpretation. “People spend this long looking at a painting” and the artists want us to devote as much time to their film. De Rijke and de Rooij betray here a detachment from the reality of the public and their viewing practices. Nevertheless this is novel notion - fully absorbing an image and exercising the poten-
tial of our too often dismissive and distracted concentration. The 35millimetre sharp image furthers this comparison with the painting as do a few cautious references to 17th century Dutch paintings of interiors. The pure aesthetic quality of the film is patent and admirable. Yet despite several claims made by the artists of a narrative structure justified by the presence of a beginning, middle and end and the history of the actual building, don’t expect any obvious story. As one astute audience member pointed out, that is more the reality of the building’s history than a story within the film. By claiming to have a story the artists appear to have an ulterior motive; trying to avoid categorisation, in particular that of post-conceptual art. According to the artists you should feel refreshed by the space. Presumably they mean intellectually and spiritually because if it is physical refreshment in this space you seek, off to Phoenix Park with you. However adhering to the modern ethos of the museum as sacred space, together with the art invoking a spiritual atmosphere and evoking an intimate experience, recognition is due. It’s worth seeing, but don’t expect anything as exciting as a magical painting from Harry Potter’s Hogwarts.