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拍品專文
"Hammons makes art by rearranging the order of familiar objects, by changing the rhythm or temporal sequence and speed of movement, or by coupling things with a common meaning" (M. Diawara, "Make It Funky: The Art of David Hammons," Artforum, Vol. 36, No. 9, May 1998).
David Hammons Fly Jar is a powerful yet haunting comment on accepted notions of beauty, sexuality, and race in modern society. Using his signature method of working with found objects and the detritus of urban life, Hammons creates a delicate miniature world in the jar in which he plays with the cultural and linguistic conventions of each of the objects that he uses. Contained within the confines of a heavy glass jar, Hammons creates what is, superficially at least, a scene recognizable to anyone who captured lightning bugs or other insects as a child. But instead of delicately beautiful insects, Hammons entombs mini zippers tied to twigs and in the process challenges conventional linguistic and sexual connotations. This play on words-the word fly of the insect contrasting with the fly of the zipper-is one of the strongest themes that run through much of the artist's oeuvre, highlighting his interest in the shifting patterns of meaning and multi-layered references.
In addition to this subtle yet playful pun, Hammons' work also examines darker and more serious cultural connotations. The "flies" contained within the jar are symbolic of the confinement function the zipper performs in real life. This containment becomes all the more powerful when considered in the context of the cultural assumptions that have been perpetuated about the myth of male sexuality in general and black male sexuality in particular.
The rich seam of identity politics is never far from exploding in Hammons' work, but his distinctive artistic practice sets him apart from many of his contemporaries. The cultural theorist Manthia Diawara suggests that Hammons differentiates himself from his fellow black artists by taking a more indirect route: "In contrast to work in which what seems to be at stake is the literal deployment of the black body, Hammons' aesthetic frequently turns on the play with literal meanings. In this way, his work always takes a more circuitous approach to the politics of representation and, even in its anti-essentialist and hybrid versions, the often literalist impulse. The relation of Hammons' conceptualism to both black culture and art history never seems over determined, and the elementary facture and directness of the work has as much to do with the primitivism and automatism of Surrealism as with identity politics. Hammons makes art by rearranging the order of familiar objects, by changing the rhythm or temporal sequence and speed of movement, or by coupling things with a common meaning. His work is so simple, delicate, yet precise that if you remove a hair from an arrangement, the magic that makes it art is undone and the objects return to their banal, nonart existences" (Cf., M. Diawara, "Make It Funky: The Art of David Hammons," Artforum, Vol. 36, No. 9, May 1998, pp. 120-127 ).
Hammons' traces his use of "found objects" back to the early radical agenda of Arte Povera, and his appreciation for Dada and movements like Fluxus that followed: "It's not new. What I'm doing, these are old tools that the white boys have been using, but I'm using it to bring my culture through theirs, like we bring our culture through the European ancestors" (D. Hammons as quoted by I. Blazwick & E. Dexter, "Rich in Ruins," Parkett, No. 31, Zurich, 1992, p. 27). Peter Schjeldahl undertook an extensive interview with the artist in which he relayed the history of his artistic development: "Hammons was born and grew up in Springfield, Illinois, the youngest of ten children of a single mother who worked menial jobs. He didn't immediately dream of a career as an artist but rather stumbled across drawing after taking a class in school. Once he discovered drawing he almost gave it up after he found it too easy, but he persevered, and in 1962 he moved to Los Angeles, where, after a foray into commercial art, he attended the Chouinard Art Institute (later CalArts). There he became excited and energized by the antagonistic avant-gardism of L.A.-based international artists such as Bruce Nauman and Chris Burden" (P. Schjeldahl, "The Walker: Rediscovering New York with David Hammons," The New Yorker, December 22, 2002.
David Hammons' unique brand of art-making sets him apart from many of his contemporaries in that his subtle use of found materials often lulls us into a false sense of familiarity before slowly revealing a thought provoking and often powerfully moving sub-text. Issues of race, sexuality and cultural acceptance are tightly intertwined with objects that society has thrown away and discarded. By combining these two seemingly diametrically opposed elements, Hammon challenges accepted cultural norms and reclaims the cultural agenda for those whose voice is rarely heard.
David Hammons Fly Jar is a powerful yet haunting comment on accepted notions of beauty, sexuality, and race in modern society. Using his signature method of working with found objects and the detritus of urban life, Hammons creates a delicate miniature world in the jar in which he plays with the cultural and linguistic conventions of each of the objects that he uses. Contained within the confines of a heavy glass jar, Hammons creates what is, superficially at least, a scene recognizable to anyone who captured lightning bugs or other insects as a child. But instead of delicately beautiful insects, Hammons entombs mini zippers tied to twigs and in the process challenges conventional linguistic and sexual connotations. This play on words-the word fly of the insect contrasting with the fly of the zipper-is one of the strongest themes that run through much of the artist's oeuvre, highlighting his interest in the shifting patterns of meaning and multi-layered references.
In addition to this subtle yet playful pun, Hammons' work also examines darker and more serious cultural connotations. The "flies" contained within the jar are symbolic of the confinement function the zipper performs in real life. This containment becomes all the more powerful when considered in the context of the cultural assumptions that have been perpetuated about the myth of male sexuality in general and black male sexuality in particular.
The rich seam of identity politics is never far from exploding in Hammons' work, but his distinctive artistic practice sets him apart from many of his contemporaries. The cultural theorist Manthia Diawara suggests that Hammons differentiates himself from his fellow black artists by taking a more indirect route: "In contrast to work in which what seems to be at stake is the literal deployment of the black body, Hammons' aesthetic frequently turns on the play with literal meanings. In this way, his work always takes a more circuitous approach to the politics of representation and, even in its anti-essentialist and hybrid versions, the often literalist impulse. The relation of Hammons' conceptualism to both black culture and art history never seems over determined, and the elementary facture and directness of the work has as much to do with the primitivism and automatism of Surrealism as with identity politics. Hammons makes art by rearranging the order of familiar objects, by changing the rhythm or temporal sequence and speed of movement, or by coupling things with a common meaning. His work is so simple, delicate, yet precise that if you remove a hair from an arrangement, the magic that makes it art is undone and the objects return to their banal, nonart existences" (Cf., M. Diawara, "Make It Funky: The Art of David Hammons," Artforum, Vol. 36, No. 9, May 1998, pp. 120-127 ).
Hammons' traces his use of "found objects" back to the early radical agenda of Arte Povera, and his appreciation for Dada and movements like Fluxus that followed: "It's not new. What I'm doing, these are old tools that the white boys have been using, but I'm using it to bring my culture through theirs, like we bring our culture through the European ancestors" (D. Hammons as quoted by I. Blazwick & E. Dexter, "Rich in Ruins," Parkett, No. 31, Zurich, 1992, p. 27). Peter Schjeldahl undertook an extensive interview with the artist in which he relayed the history of his artistic development: "Hammons was born and grew up in Springfield, Illinois, the youngest of ten children of a single mother who worked menial jobs. He didn't immediately dream of a career as an artist but rather stumbled across drawing after taking a class in school. Once he discovered drawing he almost gave it up after he found it too easy, but he persevered, and in 1962 he moved to Los Angeles, where, after a foray into commercial art, he attended the Chouinard Art Institute (later CalArts). There he became excited and energized by the antagonistic avant-gardism of L.A.-based international artists such as Bruce Nauman and Chris Burden" (P. Schjeldahl, "The Walker: Rediscovering New York with David Hammons," The New Yorker, December 22, 2002.
David Hammons' unique brand of art-making sets him apart from many of his contemporaries in that his subtle use of found materials often lulls us into a false sense of familiarity before slowly revealing a thought provoking and often powerfully moving sub-text. Issues of race, sexuality and cultural acceptance are tightly intertwined with objects that society has thrown away and discarded. By combining these two seemingly diametrically opposed elements, Hammon challenges accepted cultural norms and reclaims the cultural agenda for those whose voice is rarely heard.