description: This book explores the art of British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy. EXTRACT FROM THE INTRODUCTION One of the problems Goldsworthy's art addresses head on is the age-old relation between the `real world' and art, between objects as they are in the everyday world, and objects as they are represented in art. Goldsworthy makes the viewer look again at not just at the beauty of it, but at the multitudinous variety of forms in nature. His sculpture is a poetry of natural forms, in which notions of `representation' are sidestepped, because he uses things `as themselves' (the use of photography, though, sees a swift return of confusions over the politics of representation). The snowball in Snowballs in Summer (1989 and 2000) is not plastic masquerading as a snowball, but a real snowball. Similarly, the twigs and stalks and needles and pebbles folded into the snowballs are real. What's amazing is the actuality of the variety of forms, the way the branches twist, for instance. Goldsworthy would have the viewer look closely at nature again. By using `real' objects, Goldsworthy aims to demolish notions of representation and mediation. Instead of a picture of snow, one has in Goldsworthy's art snow itself; rather than paint pebbles, or sculpt them in bronze, Goldsworthy uses real pebbles. Of course, there are problems with using objects as objects - Duchamp with his readymades confronted this problem. The problem is partly one of for, placed in a museum, so obviously as items to be studied, the natural forms become art. The snowballs may not be on pedestals, but they are perceived as art objects. The leaf sculptures are more obviously works of art, set on shelves, or photographed against paper backdrops, as bottles of perfume or Swiss watches are photographed for adverts. If one is looking at a Goldsworthy sculpture in a book or a gallery, one is a already anchored in a gallery/ art/ aesthetic mode of viewing. If Goldsworthy's sculptures are in a gallery, one sees them as art (and a particular kind of Western, bourgeois art, the sort of art that is exhibited in Western, bourgeois galleries). Carl Andre explored the relation between real and represented objects with his controversial pile of bricks. The sculpture was `controversial' because the general public (whoever they are) perceived, via the media, that Andre had simply stuck some bricks into a gallery. Or rather, that taxpayer's money had been used to purchase Andre's bricks. A pile of bricks on a building site is... a pile of bricks. A pile of bricks in an art gallery is... sculpture. Context is everything here. This is what Carl Andre explored, whether consciously or the response, affected by so much of culture, socialization, physical context, education, and so on, makes objects sculptures. People make art. A leaf simply exists, but if someone puts it in a gallery or an art book, it becomes art (as well as remaining a leaf). If people think something is art, then it's art, as Donald Judd said.
language: English
title: Andy Goldsworthy in Close-up
titlecomplete: Andy Goldsworthy in Close-up (Art in Close-up)
publisher: Crescent Moon Publishing