art formerly known as beverages

at the Armory show -visited on Sunday March 10, 2013- I could have bought this beautiful El Anatsui. He is now becoming very fashionable and is having an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum:
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/el_anatsui/

My first encounter with the artist El Anatsui- was in Berlin where I snapped this photograph on August 8, 2010. I intuitively knew that the "artistic look" of the Alte Nationalgalerie juxtaposed something interesting and contemporary with the architecture used since Greek antiquity. I had no time to investigate because I was with friends who were interested in the Trödler market. I never found out who/what it was until two weeks ago:

In our Art office at THE HOTCHKISS SCHOOL we had a copy of Art in America. The detail on the cover was described on the inside with almost the exact same photo from Berlin that I had taken. More importantly it gave the artists name and exhibition calendar.

http://blog.savvycollector.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/art-in-america-2010-cover.jpg

I knew that this was similar to a piece I had seen in the MET called Between Earth and Heaven. From afar these artworks look like shimmering tapestries but on closer inspection one realizes that the material has seen a previous use: El Anatsui used salvaged liquor-bottle caps, flattened them, folded and/or twisted them, then stitched them together with copper wire. Met's Curator (in the video link below) describes the works as referring “to the celebrated West African traditions of stip-woven textiles, namely that of kente developed by weavers in Anatsui’s native Ghana…”

Taken on our MET trip Nov 4, 2010

Watch the MET install it on You tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7UBvknG8c4

for the artist’s statement and more detail:
http://www.ethnicarts.org/elanatsui/

example of Kente cloth: 
http://gse.berkeley.edu/faculty/WNGrubb/WNGrubb_Topics.html


Part of the reason for starting this blog is my interest in figuring out the difference between art and craft: and of course we have seen several amazing works from recycled materials including pop-can art.

http://hackedgadgets.com/wp-content/cans_73.jpg