I'm interested in the slickness and texture of Barry X Ball's work and how that works with his human subject matter.
Skewered Portraits: Obviously, the skewered heads are violent - human heads (multiple or single faces) float in the air, skewered and hanging from the ceiling. The drape of material off the back of the neck is representative of skin/flesh hanging? What does it add to have this extra flesh instead of just the head? Only aesthetics? The skewer draws some of what would be skin from the top of the head towards the ceiling like a moment frozen of the skewer moving upwards through the skull.
I am writing this and becoming disgusted....yet I look at his work (only digitally so far) and it is mesmerizing and gorgeous. It is slick -marble or rock- (his work uses rare materials with intensive technical labor). The color of the stone contains (naturally?- i think at least on some of them) textures and colors that make the sculpture less representative of human - they become more of an object. The skewered hanging heads are displayed in a bare white gallery space with dramatic lighting. This slickness of the environment - how does that affect these pieces? Maybe they are more clinical? Maybe they are more revered and god-like, mysterious? Maybe they are fetishized or their object-ness is more apparent?
So many questions! What happens to a human representation that becomes so much about texture and color? The human element leaves to some extent....there is an interesting line there...between a human being represented and erased into the sculptural material's qualities.
I need to find more out on the Baroque (?) romantic nature of his work. How does that speak in comparison to other human representation in art?
From the article "Romanticism and the Work of Barry X Ball" by Monroe Denton:
"Ball embraced the theatricality of a Roman Catholocism that was at odds with the Christian fundamentalism in which he had been raised....the extreme emotionalism of wonder, totally bypassed in the art of the time, was Barry Ball's element. " (He arrived on the nyc scene in the 1970s)
The top photos here are of Barry's sculpture of Matthew Barney made of onyx (the skewer is 24K gold). In speaking of Romanticism, Denton says:
"..Prometheus, Faust, Hamlet form the melancholy triumvirate. Barney is an interesting contemporary emobodiment (the theatricalized masochism - the stretched scrotum of Cremaster 1, the bloody mouth of Cremaster 3 would, one thinks, supply him with sufficient scares of his suffering".
That is interesting.... I never really thought of the masochism of Barney...although its obvious with his sport endurance tests too...
New research topic: Romanticism and Pain and Masochism
I wonder if its different for men and women.
