Somewhere in a distant time I saw George Washington in blue Jell-O, his wobbly head free-standing outside its mould. Although I think it was art, it might have been a party favor. Matthew Barney’s barbell made of petroleum jelly is art for sure, and yet I tend to link them, the limp muscle-builder and the fragile father of our country, especially now, when there’s a lot of art whose point is the material used to make it.
It ranges from the cute and clever….
but can also rise beyond any category to dominate global art consciousness, as do El Anatsui’s quilts made from liquor bottle tops and flattened food tins.
El Anatsui, “Cloth of Gold” from “Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continent” at the Hayward Gallery, the largest show of African art ever seen in Europe.
Jason Wood’s self-portrait in pencils functions as a warning: don’t touch me.
Everybody making unexpected material choices owes 16th-century Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo. He stuck to oils but opened worlds of unthinkable X’s equaling improbable Y’s.