Rivers and Tides Response

Goldsworthy seems to look for a peculiarity in the area he is working in and replicate it.  The sticks which are only partly black become a sheet with a burnt circle, a stone outcrop receives a driftwood whirlpool, a grey rock face gains a splash of color by putting yellow wildflowers.  His river inspired curvilinear lines reflect a nearby river and the curves in the form

1.  The way Goldsworthy seems to be obsessed with the Platonic idea of ideas and forms.  He constantly creates and sees the forms of the archetypical idea of rivers and streams.  Goldsworthy creates artificial forms to represent the idea he sees in his head, the form however is merely a representation of this archetype he knows.  Because of this every new river, every new tide, and every new installation he makes are equal and new despite having seen something almost exactly like it before the form is important because it shows a different interpretation of the same root archetype.  As Goldsworth sees more and more forms the unfamiliar parts fill in gaps about the pure non-tangible river idea.

2. Goldsworthy is excited because the ice structure he built that appears to be moving through a rock is perfectly illuminated against a cliff behind it.  Having started building the ice sculpture at night he could not have known how the Sun would affect it.  He is also excited about it because the very thing that brought the sculpture to life, the Sun, is also the thing that will destroy it.

3. The Sun comes up behind the ice, bringing it into brilliant contrast with the hillside behind it, however because of the heat from the Sun the ice will begin to melt and ultimately the sculpture will disappear. The context in which art is made usually contributes greatly to the form and concept.  Someone from rural Illinois may make sculptures in a similar way to other rural areas but it will inform the viewer in a different way than if it were to be placed in a museum.  If you were to take the Kaaba and place it near mountains of black rock, the Kaaba would not seem as mysterious or mystical as being in the middle of the desert.  The same with Stonehenge, with Stonehenge being in the middle of a field it brings different things to mind for those experiencing it than it would in the middle of a quarry.

4. All work is theoretically ephemeral; Paintings will fade, songs may be forgotten, even the Sphinx lost its nose.  Works that are ephemeral in a more immediate sense force a person to experience it in person for full effect.  Seeing Goldsworthy's wooden whirlpool gives you a facsimile of the experience that the actual installation would have given.  It is a full life story of a project.  From birth to finalization of form to eventual destruction Goldsworthy knows that once the tide rolls in the project will disappear.  Everyone knows they will die, they just hope they achieve an acceptable form by the time the tides come to wash them away.  It is like watching children build things out of sticks and rocks during recess; they know it will probably be destroyed by the next day, but the thing is actually in the creation of it.

5. When Goldsworthy was working in a cubical at art school he could control every variable, there was no driving force.  Once he began working on the beach he could focus on the fact that eventually the work he did would disappear allowing him to start anew.  When combined with the uncertainty of working somewhere new and with found objects makes the work unique, it makes Goldsworthy work from a new point every time, despite going for a similar thing  from what he has done before.  When his rock pile falls apart he has to adapt and rebuild, if he were in an art school he could have selected each stone and made sure they would all work.  There would be question as to its fate, it would have been built and stayed like that till someone decided it should be taken apart.  Even if you know when the tide is coming in and that the tide will tear your piece apart, you don't know how and you don't really know when.  In that Goldsworthy allows a sculpture to actually work in a time base format; the piece is not done until it is truly gone.

6. Learning photography through editing your own photos is much like learning from failure to discover how you can succeed.  Pouring over contact sheets and through CF cards looking to see which shot was successful results thousands of shots that did not work.  But then there are the photos that do work, they inform on the ones that did not work by contrasting.  Once you compare the successes to the failures you can come away with more knowledge as to what your style really is.  Doing this over and over and over again speciates your work and develops you.  If every photo taken were successful it would be hard to see the direction you should go.

7. Goldsworthy's projects in a museum have a sense of immutability and permanence derived from their creation from stone.  They seem as if they will always be there, as if they were a greek statue.  In a museum it also seems as if the work is out of place, put on display for all to see.  His work in the field feels natural, as if the stone were part of the landscape created to serve some purpose, to mark a spot or provide guidance.  It also makes you feel like it will eventually degrade and go back to the loam and be reabsorbed into the landscape.

8. The idea of sheep as benign silly creatures was destroyed for my by a Scotswoman who taught me Scots-Gaelic.  Before that class I saw sheep as a fluffy cute animal that wander around just eating food.  What I learned then was that sheep had destroyed the wildflowers of Scotland, turning the hillsides and valleys green with only grass.  The English removed the Scottish peoples to Canada in order to graze more sheep.  Sheep destroyed what was Scotland and have turned it into the idea of Scotland most people have today.  Goldsworthy put a layer of wool atop the foundations of an old house, almost as if the sheep had conquered the place and their wool had settled leaving the house empty and slowly disappearing.

9. To mark the lack of something in a landscape requires an almost completeness.  The pictures in Joel Sternfeld's "On This Site" show images that seem normal and mundane, but beg the question "Why this picture?" By leaving a negative space or making a space seem so mundane, yet on display, you can evoke a feeling of something missing.