Scars Are Souvenirs You Never Lose. (Original Artwork)

PDF

Download

Open document

Flip pages

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content INFORMATION TO USERS
This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. TJMI
films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some
thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be
from any type of computer printer.
The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the
copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality
illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins,
and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction.
In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete
manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if
unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate
the deletion.
Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by
sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and
continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each
original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced
form at the back of the book.
Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced
xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white
photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations
appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to
order.
UMI
A Belt & Howell Information Company
300 North Zecb Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA
313/761-4700 800/521-0600

Scars Are Souvenirs You N ever Lose
by
Thomas R. Osborn
A Thesis Presented to
THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
(Studio Fine Arts)
May 1996
Copyright 1996
Thomas R, Osborn
UMI Number: 1380450
UMI Microform 13S0450
Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved.
This microform edition is protected against unauthorized
copying under Title 17, United States Code.
UMI
300 North Zccb Road
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
UNIVERSITY O F SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 0 0 0 0 7
This thesis, written by
under the direction of h.,i~£...Thesis Committee,
and approved by all its members, has been pre
sented to and accepted by the Dean of The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
1 .
Dtan
D a te .J lZ X llt.
Chairtrta;
“The question is not what you look at but what you see.”
Henry David Thoreau
“One can deduce and conclude that every object has two aspects; one
current one, which we see nearly always and which is seen by men
in general; and the other, which is spectral and metaphysical and
seen only by rare individuals in moments of clairvoyance.”
Giorgio de Chirico
In this paper, I will try to explain the workings behind my art.
I hope to show that no work is finite in its meaning or the way we,
both viewer and artist, see the art. The work itself is always
changing in the way it is seen and experienced. While it conveys
numerous different meanings to an assortment of viewers, who bring
their own experience to bear on the work, the works are delivered
from the act of both collecting and aestheticizing objects. These
objects are not made from scratch, but are found, everyday items,
that are given new meaning when taken out of their original context.
I will also address the problem of what happens when
language and art are put together and how the perception of the
work is affected by the confrontation.
The viewer enters the space and sees a wood box hanging from
the wall at eye level. The box is three feet long, twelve inches wide
and ten inches deep. It is a box with three glass sides: the front and
two sides. The bottom, top and back, as well as the glass frames are
hard wood that is about an inch thick. A small tree fits snugly inside
the box. The tree is held upright inside the box by an apparatus that
holds the tree away from all sides of the box, as if suspended. The
apparatus is made of wood like the box. The tree is wrapped, just
above the roots, in a cloth gauze and sewn taut. At the base of the
tree, just below the hanging apparatus, the roots are exposed. The
wood box is made of maple and remains unpainted. On the left hand
side of the box there is a six inch crack on the upper right-hand side
pane of glass. The cloth is made of a translucent material and is off-
white in color. This cloth is sewn taut around the tree and the
1
material is gathered in vein-like patterns around the outside.
Through the glass the tree can be seen, with its dried, yellow, dead
leaves clinging within the shrouded material. The tree inside deals
simultaneously with the beauty of life, as well as, the entrapments of
life and death. The natural cycle is cut short, ceased, deceased. The
root hangs lifeless from its support loosing all anchoring it once
possessed, loosing all reference. The branches are wrapped and
sewn in, unable to grow or bloom. Yet, like the mummy, they are
seemingly eternal. The concept of preservation is reinforced by its
encasem ent.
When we are reading about art, we must recognize that we are
really looking at nothing. For that matter we are not talking about
anything either. The words that I have used here are merely a
substitute for the materials described above and serve as a
replacement for the viewing experience. I can, as an author, write a
million words trying to put together a cohesive image for the reader,
but secondhand description can never take the place of firsthand
viewing experience. The object is real, it does exist, but it fails to
exist when it remains only in language. As Susan Stewart says in her
book On Longing, “Authentic experience becomes both elusive and
allusive as it is placed beyond the horizon of present lived
experience, the beyond in which the antique, the pastoral, the exotic
and other fictional domains are articulated.” l The problem with
description is it becomes once removed from the real experience of
the object.
In-depth examination of language reveals its own paradox. To
be able to communicate socially we must use language. However, no
two people look at the meaning of language in the same way.
Meaning and language are not concrete agents. We, both artist and
viewer, have differently informed personal histories, different
experiences. Again Stewart says, “The experience of the object lies
outside the body’s experience— it is saturated with meanings that
will never be fully revealed to us.”2 Henceforth, any attempt to find
complete understanding of the artist's meaning is moot.
Artists can not expect to have complete control over their
audience. Even artists who dictate to their viewers by using
language directly can not expect the same meaning to be deciphered.
2
Each of us possesses our own personalized language of meaning. But
this language is in a constant state of flux, perpetually changing in
the wake of being bombarded by an onslaught of new experiences.
Thus language is floating, never really holding any ground, in a
constant struggle to find meaning.
Do I now have a responsibility for meaning within my work?
I must say both yes and no. The true meaning of why I make art
may lie within my subconscious. So any attempt to direct meaning is
subverted by my subconscious. Both artist and participant can only
use the information I provide to inform the process. The materials I
use already are loaded with meaning, in other words, I can only say
that, “I was thinking about this when I was making that,” or I can
say, “this brings that to mind.” Thus the nature of my work makes it
difficult to speak of artistic responsibility: The materials I use are
carefully chosen because they are loaded with meaning, but are
ambiguous enough for each viewer to develop his/her own ideas of
what the meanings are.
In order to better understand my artistic ideas and works, it is
important to note something of my history: history is a retelling of
experience. However, in no way does understanding of biography
explicate my artwork, since history is subjective and the language to
which I relate it is subjective.
When I was a small child, I grew up in a low income, one
parent house in suburbia. I began to do what is known as "dumpster
dives," to scavenge for materials that the original owner/s had felt
lost any of its worth -- materials only to be left in the trash to be
discarded. I would find a world unto itself in those trash containers.
I would gather clocks, toys, tins, wood cigar boxes, everything you
could possibly imagine. It was amazing to see what others had felt
lost its value, either emotional or monetary. I would take them
home where they now had a material importance among my
collection of bottle caps, bottles, buttons and other rejects. I became
the collector. This collecting was not limited to the world of the
human refuse, but my collecting also consisted of special found rocks,
bones, objects of curiosity and arrow heads (or what I thought
resembled arrowheads) and other refuse of nature. Leaving my
mother to once state, while I was dismantling one of many
3
contraptions, “When you do get around to taking the world apart do
not tell me what you find.” In hindsight, being a child from a bitter
divorce, maybe I identified with these same materials.
The viewer can not be expected to know this information.
Instead, the viewers must enter the work on their own level, with
their own emotional, psychological and personal history. Their own
history of language and experience must be used to find meaning
within the work. The meaning is thus always active and always
changing; never being securely held in one place.
In another series of boxes is one that is thirty-six inches long
and four inches square. The frame work of the box is made of black
steel. The frame is a half an inch thick. On all sides of the steel
frame are thick glass windows. These windows allow one to peer in
on a set of twelve mutilated oranges, that float in a pool of honey.
Each orange is marked with a series of gaping wounds. These
wounds are straight, as if cut with a knife. Each wound is sewn back
together with thick, white suture thread.
The piece does not fit into any of the traditional realms of art,
so we must take apart the work, if you will, deconstruct it. The box
itself could be stylistically traced to the modern art movement of
Minimalism. The glass fronts protect the materials inside and by the
same token keep the material from coming in contact with the outer
world. It could be said that the box says “look, but do not touch.”
These encased objects are no longer sources of nature but instead
become objects of desire. The box provides the literal framework for
the art. Like modern works, the box does not fit into any
institutional settings, that is, the museum, the university, etc.,
because the box replaces the museum preparatory case. If the box
appropriates the conventional functions of the institutional setting
but does not belong there, where does the box sit?
If we must imagine the appropriate setting for this work,
where might it be? The work might point to botanical studies as a
reference because of the oranges inside the box, but obviously does
not have the scientific information allotted for it to fall into this
arena. The work is framed as if to inform, but the information is
somewhere lost in the transaction.
The work uses the structure and framework of the museum
without being held responsible to the institution. The piece inside is
4
sealed off from touch and put in an environment of isolation. But the
work at hand does not belong inside the science museum as it is not
professing a doctrine of science. Its sole purpose is not to educate in
the name of the institute. The object relies upon the box for
organization. It is this sense of organization that the museum is so
reliant upon that seems to give the box the voice of authority.
So where does this work belong? Although it is not in the field
of science, it does use the same vehicles as science does. It is as if
the walls of the institute are translucent, and the boundaries are
blurred. There is a sense failure to the work at hand. We, as viewer,
look upon the work in search of information, but to no avail.
It is the notion of failure that intrigues me; the failure of
systems of knowledge, meaning, language and symbols. Often failure
is seen as a mark of insolvency. We look for answers when we know
there are none. The work is not illusionary in its manner such as
some photography or painting, rather it uses the props of everyday
life and experience. We, as viewers, wish now only to put the work
into the safe confines of "art”, but we can not, because the framework
in what we see tells us otherwise. The objects and their materiality
do not hide what they are in relation to our experience. The work
must be seen within the structure of paradox.
If the museum is referred to in my works of art, the idea of the
collector and the collection must also be addressed. We are not
really looking for the place of origin, but instead a location of context.
The idea of the collection replaces the origin with an order of
classification. That is, the objects reveal themselves in the relation
they have to each other. This notion of contextualization of objects is
also related to my work.
In another piece of work is a set of three boxes, with wood
sides and glass front and back. Each box contains a pig heart. A
different fluid fills each box; one contains honey, one contains oil and
the final one contains sugar water. The hearts are preserved in these
fluids, suspended inside. These hearts are haphazardly sewn up
around gaping wounds, with black suture thread, as though repaired
by an amateur. On one level, they are grotesque, intriguing, and
tactile objects of curiosity. On another metaphorical level, one is
reminded of the lonely hearts and broken hearts found in everyday
false sentimentality that saturates the marketplace of kitsch. The
5
heart, of course, is an organ that carries with it a complex set of
connotations that are often in opposition to each other. By
enshrining the hearts in hand crafted wooden relic boxes and
allowing them to be examined only through a small glass window, I
mean to isolate the individual relationships and personalized ideas
that every viewer brings to the work.
The heart is also seen for what it really is, a grotesque slab of
meat, although it is understood, metaphorically to be the seat of all
human emotions. But there is a contradiction in that the hearts can
be seen as beautiful. They float gently in the amber fluid, remaining
objects of curiosity, safe in a box of glass. The viewer can not smell,
taste or touch the hearts, only peer at through the glass.
It is in the collection that the formal interests are addressed.
In the collection, the organization of objects is made formal. The
organization of the collection is influenced by the aesthetics of
culture and not of scientific rationalism. Baudrillard noted that
formal interest always replaces a real invested interest in the
collected object, in that the aesthetic value replaces the so called real
value of the collected object. Stewart builds upon this in saying that,
“The further the object is removed from use value the more abstract
it becomes and the more multi-vocal is its referentiality.” This is not
as bankrupt as it seems when these aesthetic values are again so
directly influenced by our cultural experiences.
When collecting is addressed, the notion of hoarding must also
be noted. Hoarders are the collectors gone mad. They have an
uncontrollable need to take and keep things. It is collecting at its
most compulsive without the refinement of aesthetic judgment. The
collector must set boundaries to keep from becoming the hoarder,
even if the boundary is that of a simple glass box. That is why in
many cases collections are borders within themselves and are
manifested in the form of vessels or containers alone. The collectors'
boundaries keep them from slipping into infinity. Even the museum,
which tries to encapsulate all that we know as a culture, does not
have enough samplings to embrace all that is experienced.
So why, in the case of my work, is the box hand-fabricated and
not purchased? Fabricating the boxes myself is an issue of control.
Someone commissioned to make the box can not make the same
aesthetic decisions that I might. I make the box so I become creator,
but I also choose what belongs in the box to become omnipotent. I
6
could easily have the box prefabricated, but there would be a loss of
creatorship. Certain aesthetic decisions would be compromised if I
was to turn over the manufacture of the box.
In a interview conducted with David Hickey by Ann Wiens, he
was quoted as saying, “As an artist you have an agenda — you want
to reconstruct the visual world in such a way as to privilege certain
things, certain behaviors or outcomes that you believe in, that you
desire. And you devise an image as an agency for that agenda, to
make it visible in a persuasive way. Whatever ‘it’ is you try to make
it beautiful.”3 As an artist, it is imperative that I have as much
aesthetic control as possible over the work, from collecting to
constructing.
An object in a museum is uprooted from its original context, as
well as its place of origin. In doing so the object must achieve a new
level of meaning and signification. A process of alienation takes
place that is inherent to the formation of the collection. The same
rule of alienation is true for the works of art I have written about in
this paper. These works are not crushed by the inclusion of artificial
aids of the museum that offer the viewer some kind of guideline to
follow. This only empowers the object. It is this reevaluating of the
object that returns it to the spectator. The same juxtaposition of the
institution and the object empowers the glass boxes refered to
earlier.
What of the issue of repair that reoccurs in my work? Each
object within the boxes is seemingly having something done to repair
it. There is some kind of partial redemption being provided for the
objects. For example, the act of sewing is an act of repairing. It is
mending that is a reoccurring issue in all these works. The object is
taken out of state of decay, repaired and returned to the viewer.
Each object is stripped of its original context; the tree’s roots
being in the ground, the heart being inside the body’s central cavity
and the orange on the limb or in the market. Ail objects in the works
are no longer living things, they are coils of their previous existence.
The tree inside the glass box is sewn taut with thin fabric and the
hearts and oranges are sewn around huge gashing wounds. The
sewing serves to point to an act of insufficient repair.
The objects are sealed off from human touch, behind glass,
floating in amber fluid. The viewer must see these objects as in
7
transition from one state to another. The reparation brings the
objects to a second life. This second life is in the balance between
death and life, as it is in a state of limbo. The repetitive use of the
suture thread on both pieces must bring to mind some kind of
doctoring and the use of fabric brings to mind a cast. Both are kinds
of incomplete reparation. The actual healing is speculative. One
makes the assumption that something is being repaired, that it is
being fixed.
I still look endlessly for objects that have been discarded. The
materials get a second chance, a second life and a new meaning. The
viewer shares this experience because the materials are so familiar,
yet everything in my work can be seen as speculative because the
imagery is so loaded. I have no desire to pin down the work to
specific meanings. Each person can walk away with a completely
different take on the work. The work facilitates and encourages the
viewers’ desire to bring to it their own personal experience. By not
limiting my ideas down to specifics, I too can become a
viewer/participant in a larger social dialogue.
8
NOTES
1. Stewart, Susan, On Longing (Durham and London: Duke
Universitay Press, 1993) p. 133
2. Stewart, On Longing, p. 141
3. Weins, Ann, “David Hickey.” The New Art Examiner, April,
1994. p. 13
9
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space Trans. Maria Jolas,
Boston, MA: Beacon, 1969.
2. Hickey, Dave. The Invisible Draeon Los Angeles: Art
Issues. Press, 1993.
3. Hyde, Lewis. The Gift New York: Vintage, 1979.
4. Silverman, Kaja. The Subject of Semiotics New York: Oxford
University Press, 1983.
4. Stewart, Susan. On Longing Durham, NC. and London,
England: Duke University Press, 1993.
5. Wiens, Ann. David Hickey Chicago, IL: The New Art
Examiner. April, 1994. pp.13-17
10

Asset Metadata

Creator Osborn, Thomas Rodd (author)

Core Title Scars Are Souvenirs You Never Lose. (Original Artwork)

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Studio Fine Arts

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Fine Arts,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Advisor Price, Kenneth M. (committee chair), [Aldworth] (committee member), Weisberg, Ruth (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-12238

Unique identifier UC11357874

Identifier 1380450.pdf (filename),usctheses-c18-12238 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 1380450-0.pdf

Dmrecord 12238

Document Type Thesis

Rights Osborn, Thomas Rodd

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses