{"id":769,"date":"2015-06-23T22:02:23","date_gmt":"2015-06-24T03:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/?p=769"},"modified":"2017-08-29T14:34:18","modified_gmt":"2017-08-29T19:34:18","slug":"charles-ray-at-the-art-institute-of-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/?p=769","title":{"rendered":"Sculptor, Sculpture, and Sacrifice (Ray Charles, T. S. Eliot, and art)"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_770\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-770\" style=\"width: 660px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-770 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray-1024x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"660\" height=\"660\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray-432x432.jpg 432w, http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray-268x268.jpg 268w, http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray-700x700.jpg 700w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 660px) 100vw, 660px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-770\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Photo \u00a9 Henry Del Rosario)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>On one of my days off, I was able to bike a Divvy to see the Charles Ray&#8217;s sculpture exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a Chicago-born, Los Angeles-based artist with 19 sculptures currently displayed at the AIC&#8217;s modern wing.&nbsp;His works are significant because&nbsp;they are the first solid, machined aluminum and stainless steel sculptures by an artist.<\/p>\n<p>When you enter the gallery, you see an enormous room of space given to each work. Then, when you come up close, you see a&nbsp;remarkable use of materials: aluminum that evokes metal and engineered&nbsp;qualities, yet at the same time looks fluid and organic. For instance, in <em>Sleeping Woman<\/em> (2012) or <em>Shoe Tie<\/em> (2012), the work is made&nbsp;of solid stainless steel. The metal infers to us that the subject&nbsp;is cold, hard, and heavy. But because the work is figurative&nbsp;(a shift back from decades of modern abstraction) we feel them as human. Moreover, the reflective qualities have a two-fold purpose: 1) to give a soft and animated energy in contrast to our predispositions (bike frames, plane parts), and 2) to project back the <em>human<\/em> figures that project <em>humanness&nbsp;<\/em>upon it!&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It was an overall a great exhibit and a real treat. The other works also reference&nbsp;back to Classical sculptures (marble-like material, Contrapposto stances, etc). These works in addition to some surprising bass reliefs made me think about the exhibit as a whole. His innovative materials and modern reproduction of classical subjects remind me of other&nbsp;contemporary aesthetics that our culture is obsessed with:&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The cutting-edge mechanical aesthetic and minimalism&nbsp;of Apple hardware design<\/li>\n<li>The disruption caused by&nbsp;modern technology so advanced it becomes organic (T-1000 Terminator!)<\/li>\n<li>The digital surface and in particular Google&#8217;s &#8220;material design&#8221; language about shadow and light<\/li>\n<li>The illusion of the auteur theory (We like movies often times because of the director&#8217;s name)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The last point I will discuss&nbsp;briefly. In many of Ray&#8217;s work, he is more like a director. He presides over a variety of engineers, artists, and producers of materials. Many of the subjects he finds, he records, then takes a crew to help him make molds and ship them to other metal or wood working artists to reproduce the subject to the liking of Ray. As much as I like Christopher Nolan or Wes Anderson films, I also still know the names of their actors and actresses (unlike the engineers etc Ray uses to help build his works).&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Tradition, Anonymity, and Artists&nbsp;<\/h3>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t know what you&#8217;re doing when you&#8217;re working. I think&nbsp;people think it&#8217;s an idea that you follow through on, but it&#8217;s isn&#8217;t, it&#8217;s more direction that you go. And then I start chasing the sculpture, trying to wrestle it into existence.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Good work of great art&nbsp;is anonymous, it joins a kind of authorship of an age&#8211; of a time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Everything I&#8217;ve said is going to be washed away, and what&#8217;s going to be left is the art part.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>These Charles Ray quotes from the AIC&#8217;s youtube video immediately struck me as reminiscent of T.S. Eliot&#8217;s essay &#8220;Tradition and the Individual Talent&#8221; (1919), a piece I read a long time ago in college! This essay was written by T.S. Eliot&nbsp;emphasizing (one of many points) that when an artist creates a work, he is&nbsp;innovative but at the same time drawing from all the works of the tradition before him\/herself. (&#8220;What happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art that preceded it.&#8221;). This echoes to the &#8220;authorship&#8221; that Ray states his work &#8220;joins.&#8221; An artwork is never meaningful&nbsp;alone but always in relationship to other works of art.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, Ray also mentions a kind of anonymity when an artist creates a work. At the same time an artist creates a work\u2014 as it changes the way we see previous and contemporary&nbsp;artworks\u2014 the artwork starts to&nbsp;<em>outlive<\/em>&nbsp;the artist. The act of creation, in seconds, the artwork becomes independent of the artist. Years&nbsp;later, the artist is not as remembered as the artwork itself. This is similar to T. S. Eliot&#8217;s &#8220;Impersonal Theory.&#8221; At one point he states,&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h3>Sculptor, Sculpture, and Sacrifice<\/h3>\n<p>A lot of discussion can be made if an&nbsp;artwork truly outlives the artist. There is continual&nbsp;exploration\/deconstruction of the line between artist and art. But in the scope of this article, I simply point out a poet and sculptor making&nbsp;fascinating claims about art-making. The particular claim&nbsp;that piques my interest is: Why do both artist mention an element of <em>sacrifice<\/em>&nbsp;in art-making?<\/p>\n<p>If we take God as the being who made us\u2014 then He is the artist and we are his artwork. &nbsp;If an artist is someone who makes a &#8220;continual extinction of personality,&#8221; who becomes &#8220;anonymous,&#8221; who undergoes&nbsp;a &#8220;continual surrender&#8221; of the self, then how much more beautiful and meaningful that becomes when it parallels the character of God who is said to have become a&nbsp;sacrificial&nbsp;lamb sent to death to bring us to&nbsp;<em>life. <\/em>Thus, we\u2014 humans\u2014 are what&nbsp;Ray calls the<em>&nbsp;&#8220;<\/em>art part&#8221; or what T.S. Eliot calls the &#8220;something which is more valuable.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Parallels can be made about identity, image, likeness, and sacrifice when comparing God, T. S. Eliot, and Ray. Just as aluminum is reflective and recursory, the material of God&#8217;s art, words and verses both create and at the same time mirror: &#8220;Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.&#8221; God&#8217;s&nbsp;material is words and his art is us.&nbsp;But in order for us to become complete\u2014 for the art to become complete\u2014 the artist must sacrifice, just as God sacrificed:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span id=\"en-ESV-29380\" class=\"text Phil-2-5\">Christ Jesus,<\/span>&nbsp;<span id=\"en-ESV-29381\" class=\"text Phil-2-6\">who, though he was in&nbsp;the form of God, did not count equality with God&nbsp;a thing to be grasped,<\/span>&nbsp;<span id=\"en-ESV-29382\" class=\"text Phil-2-7\">but&nbsp;emptied himself, by taking the form of a&nbsp;servant,&nbsp;being born in the likeness of men.<\/span>&nbsp;<span id=\"en-ESV-29383\" class=\"text Phil-2-8\">And being found in human form, he humbled himself by&nbsp;becoming obedient to the point of death,&nbsp;even death on a cross.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But why sacrifice? He needed to sacrifice a part of Himself in order to <em>complete us<\/em> and make us <em>alive<\/em>&nbsp;into a <em>relationship<\/em> with Him.&nbsp;Perhaps all artists are mirroring this. Art-making is a ritual. With every brushstroke, with every shape we mold&nbsp;with our hands,&nbsp;life is taken from us; yet in this paradox, we create something <em>more\u2014<\/em>&nbsp;we create something <em>alive<\/em>. Like an aluminum bell ringing,&nbsp;the&nbsp;theme of surrendering in sculptor, sculpture, and sacrifices echoes again and again with every new artwork. <strong>An artist can create art, but an artwork that is&nbsp;<em>alive<\/em> and <em>relational\u2014<\/em>&nbsp;that artwork was made with sacrifice.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-761\" src=\"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Screen-Shot-2015-06-13-at-10.11.40-AM.png\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2015-06-13 at 10.11.40 AM\" width=\"76\" height=\"50\"><\/p>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<hr>\n<p>1. AIC website (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.artic.edu\/charles-ray-sculpture-1997-2014\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/www.artic.edu\/charles-ray-sculpture-1997-2014<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>2. T.S. Eliot&#8217;s Tradition and the Individual Talent (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bartleby.com\/200\/sw4.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/www.bartleby.com\/200\/sw4.html<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>3. Philippians 2 (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Philippians%202&amp;version=ESV\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Philippians%202&amp;version=ESV<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On one of my days off, I was able to bike a Divvy to see the Charles Ray&#8217;s sculpture exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a Chicago-born, Los Angeles-based artist with 19 sculptures currently displayed at the AIC&#8217;s modern wing.&nbsp;His works are significant because&nbsp;they are the first &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[52,32,29],"class_list":["post-769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-verbal","tag-aboutwriting","tag-art-design","tag-biography","column","threecol","has-thumbnail"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray.jpg",3264,3264,false],"thumbnail":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray-300x300.jpg",300,300,true],"medium_large":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray.jpg",660,660,false],"large":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray-1024x1024.jpg",660,660,true],"1536x1536":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray.jpg",1536,1536,false],"2048x2048":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray.jpg",2048,2048,false],"slider-thumb":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray-1140x395.jpg",1140,395,true],"blog-thumb":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray-700x300.jpg",700,300,true],"teaser-thumb":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray-332x205.jpg",332,205,true],"gallery-1-thumb":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray-432x432.jpg",432,432,true],"gallery-2-thumb":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray-268x268.jpg",268,268,true],"gallery-3-thumb":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray-268x164.jpg",268,164,true],"image-thumb":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray-700x700.jpg",700,700,true],"video-thumb":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charlesray-700x393.jpg",700,393,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Del Rosario Henry","author_link":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/?author=1"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"On one of my days off, I was able to bike a Divvy to see the Charles Ray&#8217;s sculpture exhibit at the &#8230;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=769"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1670,"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions\/1670"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}