The End of Purity
C Print plus sculpture made of wood, vintage pillow case, candles
A major epiphany occured while taking my art history class. I learned that my carved wooden abstract sculpture was basically passe. If my art was dead, I decided that the only appropriate postmodern response was to give it a funeral.
I took the wooden form I had carved, laid it on a funerary bier, and put a plaque with the dates 22,000 BC and 1917. The first date is the year that the first recorded sculpture, the Venus of Willendorf, was believed to be created. The end date is the year that Duchamp exhibited the urinal. Between the two dates lie 24,000 years of sculptural tradition where artists were concerned with issues of beauty, sacredness, form and purity; concerns that are no longer relevant in today's contemporary art world.
