After coming across Jimmie Durhams 'Self Portrait' in a book titled 'Defining Contemporary Art' in the York College library, I researched more in to his work. I found more human like sculptures he had created using low tech materials and was drawn to the aesthetic of his work. I liked the broad range of media that he used but within that, keeping a natural theme: bones, fur, feathers, leaves, branches, shells. It was interesting to me the sections he chose to add depth and detail to and the sections he chose to leave quite minimalistic, for example with 'Self-portrait', the face has creases, it has eyebrows, it's more complex. However, the expanse of the body has human form but is just a flat sheet of canvas, painted a peachy colour.
Self-portrait, 1986
Canvas, cedar, acrylic paint, metal, synthetic hair, scrap fur, dyed chicken feathers, human rib bones, sheep bones, seashell, thread. [198.1 × 76.2 × 22.9 cm]
Images courtesy of Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. https://hammer.ucla.edu/
Malinche, 1988-1992
Guava, pine branches, oak, snakeskin, , polyester bra soaked in acrylic resin and painted gold, watercolour, cactus leaf, canvas, cotton cloth, metal, rope, feathers, plastic jewelery, glass eye. [177 × 60 × 89 cm]
Images courtesy of Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. https://hammer.ucla.edu/
'At the Center of the World' Exhibition, January 29 - May 7, 2017.
Installation view, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
Images courtesy of Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. https://hammer.ucla.edu/
I read an article online on the Sun, headlining: MY DOLLS HOUSE Divorced dad who gave up on real women now lives with 12 life-size dolls…and his daughter helps with their make-up and clothes At first glance, the article is completely unrelated to Jimmie Durhams practice. However, it got me thinking about different ways that the human form is presented and for what purpose. In the sculptural, recycled materials method of Durham as a piece of art or in a lifelike silicone, lifelike representation to be used as a sex doll. The human form is loosely presented and up to the imagination to a degree in Durham's work, and actually also with these dolls, they are not an accurate representation of the human form either but in a different way to Durham's sculptures. Here the figures are slender with exaggerated breasts and bottoms, also being a human representation that has been left to the imagination.
"He says: 'Some people might think it’s creepy but I’m happy and not hurting anyone.'
'I know couples who sit together and don’t talk, so there’s not a lot of difference'
'It gives me the illusion I’m not alone. Before I had all these girls, I did get quite lonely.'
He hopes his story will spur others to address their loneliness. He says: 'I want to erode this perception dolls are just sexual, weird things. If I just wanted a doll for sex I wouldn’t need so many.'
Dean's hobby was inspired by Channel 4 sci-fi drama Humans."
(Culley, 2019)
The man, Dean Bevan, treats the dolls as real people and uses them as an illusion for himself that he has company. It's interesting to see the comparison between where Durham has assembled vaguely life-like characters made from bits of wood and canvas presented in a gallery space and then these insanely life-like figures (apart from the exaggerated shaping) being produced in factories and keeping a divorced mans loneliness at bay. One maker, Orient Industry, will even allow buyers to customise a doll to their exact requirements so you can choose her bust size, hair colour, eyes, movable fingers and all else. The dolls could be exhibited as art but they're mainly bought by single men, 60% of which are over the age of sixty.
"Their BODY WORLDS exhibitions were conceived to educate the public about the inner workings of the human body and to show the effects of healthy and unhealthy lifestyles. Targeted mainly at a lay audience, the exhibitions are aimed to inspire visitors to become aware of the fragility of their bodies and to recognize the anatomical individual beauty inside each of us."
(Körperwelten, 2019)
The final source of inspiration for the project came from the world wide Body Worlds exhibitions. They were a demonstration of a third means of portraying the body. With Durham's sculptures and also the life-size dolls, there is some artistic license, however with these 'Body Worlds' bodies they are very factual, stripping the skin off of donated bodies and revealing all the unseen insides of a human. These exhibitions serve a purpose: to educate and are thematicly structured. For example:
I was fascinated by the raw quality of the bodies and the reality that these had been living people. It was interesting to acknowledge as well that these exhibitions served a purpose, to promote healthy lifestyles in the best way possible, to show the otherwise invisible internal effects of bad habits. Durham's figures were made to be observed, the life-size dolls were made to be used and the 'Body Worlds' figures were made to educate.
After going on a five day trip to London and visiting galleries, I felt I wanted to create something having looked at many other artists and their practice. I then started on my own Self Portrait. I began with laying down on a cardboard box that I had unfolded. This was an ode to Jimmie Durham but with the cardboard as a backbone, rather than canvas. I asked a peer to draw round me and I then cut out the shape of my body. The legs of the body fell off the main frame of the torso and so I secured them together with push pins. The figure wasn't very accurate and made my frame look very alien, for example where the pen had crept in thinning down my legs and arms, because they have a rounded shape to them but then in places where there was something rigid actually making contact with the cardboard, like my hipbones, the shape swelled out again. There was also the problem of feet because they do not easily lie flat - I referred back to Jimmie Durham at this stage and saw that on his 'Self-portrait' he has used thread to sew on some feet afterwards which are his footprint, using paint, same with his hands, he has used his handprint. For that reason, I asked for my peer not to bother with my feet and just leave it at my ankles. Although the shape wasn't accurate, the experiment was beneficial for recording the dimensions of my body, the length of my limbs etc.
I tried securing the figure to a wall but I was feeling quite disheartened, the body didn't really look like me and I wasn't enthused to try carry on and make it. The legs also kept on falling off and weren't remaining intact, I begun to get quite frustrated. I started thinking about how to incorporate the look that the bodies of the Body Worlds Exhibitions had with exposed muscles, bones, ligaments etc. I found a skeleton in the cupboard and disassembled it. I was still taking inspiration from Jimmie Durham's works and wanted to create something multimedia. For this reason I only took the skeleton from the waist down. It was missing one foot.
I also drew reference from the life size dolls that I had read the article on and sought out a mannequin. Because this was just a mini project within my overall theme, a tangent to the main idea of a chat show (due to me feeling the need to practically create something), I did not want to go out and buy a life size doll to cut up or play around with trying to incorporate it. Therefore, I felt that a mannequin was the next best thing because it is a doll in a way, something that can get played around with but something more accessible, with me being on an art course.
The mannequin was just a bust and so I set out to make a couple of arms. As visible in the picture (above right), I considered using a plank of wood, like in Durhams 'Malinche' but then I was struggling to work out how I would attach a heavy piece of wood to this mannequin bust. I then thought about lighter materials and settled on wire. I used a more rigid rod for the actual arm (the coppery coloured thicker wire, pictured below) but only managed a thumb and 1½ fingers in the hand before I ran out of the media. I then used a thinner more flexible wire (the silver wire in the photographs below) to finish off the hand and secured it back to the arm by wrapping it round the thick wire and additionally wrapping it with string. I felt that the silver wire looked too flimsy and so I wrapped it with green thread to make it more substantial and to also add more of myself in to the piece, green being a favourite colour of mine.
For the second arm and hand I revisited the cardboard cut out that I had previously made. I didn't want to completely discard the cut out but I hadn't wanted to proceed with it as the backbone of my self portrait, I didn't think it was strong enough. I cut the arm off of the cardboard 'me' at the right angle for it to fit snuggly in to the angle of the underarm of the mannequin. I painted it gold to contradict itself. Something so low tech and easily accessible as cardboard but covered and made to look like something of treasure and expense. I thought it would make the piece more attention grabbing and more engaging having a glinting quality to it rather than all matte colours. The colouring made the cardboard shine like a metal which brought in symmetry as the other arm was made from a metal rod. I carried this idea forward to the right leg. I didn't want to use excess amounts of one select media and so having the hips, thighs, calves and one foot made from bone, felt like too much and I wanted to break it down. I took out half of the leg of the skeleton and replaced it with a gold painted cardboard calve. On reflection I would have chosen the opposite leg to swop out and replace with cardboard because the piece was heavily weighted with gold on the left.
I set about making a mask for the face because the two main pieces that I have been taking influences from in this mini project are: Jimmie Durham Self-portrait and Jimmie Durham Malinche. It also would be the most accurate representation of my face, to create a cast of it. I had thought about photography and using a photograph for the face but then I queried why I hadn't just photographed my whole body, if I was trying to recreate myself using odd media then photography was an easy cop out. I also wanted a three dimensional quality within the face, with my features taking form. All this considered, I stuck with creating a mask.
I used modrock for the mask but was conscious that I did not want the modrock to be plastered directly on to my skin so I lay cling film over my face and made nostril holes and a mouth hole to allow myself to breathe whilst making the mask. After the mask dried, I pulled out the cling film and decided to paint it blue to compliment the gold paint that I had used for the arm and leg, as I felt that the white looked too bare and dull.
I then started to construct the body together on the stand that I had found the skeleton on. The photograph (below left) demonstrated how I hung the bust and skeleton legs to the stand. I had to select a different bust to the one I had originally planned on using because the first one did not have any means of securing it to a stand, whereas the black one that I picked out had a hole in the back that I fed some wire in to and then coiled the wire around the hook on the stand. I hung the skeleton legs off the same hook with string. The mask I hung on a copper wire that I attached to the top of the stand with string. I blue tacked the wire arm on to the bust as shown by the picture (below centre).
This is the finished sculpture assembled (below). Materials used: string, thread, bones, mannequin bust, mod rock, acrylic paint, human hair, cardboard, wire, necklace, blu tack, earrings, platform shoe. I photographed it against a white wall to replicate the white cube space. Because of its length, it was quite difficult to fit in to one image so I have it here pictured at different angles. The sculpture seemed to cause quite a storm. There was lots of passerby's that stopped to take a look. The use of bones and hair got the most interest. My tutor Charlie Barnes informed me that the skeleton was actually real which made me feel anxious about using it in an artwork, that I didn't want to be disrespectful to whoever had been walking around with these bones inside them in the past. The hair being real and the bones being real seemed to stir up the audience that were engaging with it. There was a lot of questions about what it was and seemingly confusion. There was also a lot of comments that the sculpture was disturbing, which wasn't my intention. When making the mask, I kept my mouth open to breath and so the mask has a gaping hole and that mouth hanging open I think creeped people out, along with me using my real hair.
I then began interacting with the sculpture of myself. I had given it one shoe of mine and I wore the other and I played around standing side by side with it, opening my mouth to mirror the expression it was pulling. I didn't stand quite as tall as the sculpture, I had been over confident with my height. My tutor Pippa commented that the images produced at this stage were very Dada and bizarre. I then held it's hand and got photographs of all four feet beside each other, demonstrating the mirror image created by the shoes. I then began editing these photographs to try get the best blue out of the sculptures face and to make the pictures even stranger. The edits make me look glossy eyed and almost as vacant as the sculpture.
This project was interesting for me because I still do not know what the final outcome is. There's the physical sculpture but I had to disassemble it: I pieced the skeleton back together; gave the mannequin back to the fashion course at my college; returned the space I had been using back to public use; took back my shoe and jewellery. I still have the wire arm, the cardboard limbs, the mask with hair attached but the photographs are all I have of it existing all together as one piece. The photographs however just feel like a documentation and they don't fully demonstrate what the piece was like because when photographing there is the perspective of the photographer and then the proportion of the objects in relation to the camera becomes part of the art as well. There is the light in the room at that time and the flash of the camera that have an effect on the art and when that physical thing is no longer around, these temporary or 'chance' occurrences, like me photographing in the evening so having to use a flash because of failing light, become recognised as the art. That particular photograph becomes recognised and maybe the real thing wouldn't live up to the photograph or they don't resemble each other. For example, the Mona Lisa has a lot of people dissappointed when they see it for the first time because it is such a recognised and high-esteemed artwork, it doesn't live up to the expectations people have of it.
Then there's another development of the project with me engaging with this sculptural representation of myself. The interaction brings a new feeling to the work. it's no longer a sculpture in a white cube space, it's now a documentation of something more performance based, a still image of something with motion. The final development is the editing of these photographs. They bring a two dimensional quality to the sculpture, making it look like it's a collage. The final outcome could be the edited photo (above right) of me and the sculpture holding hands, it could all boil down to that one image. I find that fascinating that I could choose one thing from the entirety of this mini project and state: That there is what I made. All I can conclude, is there is no set final outcome, there is a range of pieces that have stemmed from undertaking this project but not one conclusive artwork that sums it all up.
