Eleanor Antin, with her work “100 Boots Looking For A Job”, 1972, was a series of 100 boots “walking” around, documented with photography, which was used as postcards. The work is not the boots themselves, or the photos, although these are mechanisms to bring it into being. The work is the idea, and the impact it had; the receivers of the postcards, and subsequent viewers, are also part of the work. Perhaps the most important is the artist herself, who created this work, but it could also be argued that the viewers– the outcry, confusion, relation, and any and all reactions to the photos– is as much what ties the art together in being actual art. The execution is important; the making of the art will always affect it, conceptual art or no, such as Sol Lewitt’s instructions for wall art pieces that are followed even after his death. Is the art, then, the idea or its making? This has always befuddled me. Lewitt stated that “the idea becomes the machine that makes the art”, does this mean that what comes after matters very little? Or is it that the idea makes the art, and the artist themself is more of a catalyst? Is the artist the messenger, bringing the art to the public surface to be viewed and interpreted by others? Back to my previous point, is viewership an integral piece? These are questions to which I hope answers will become clearer as I progress through this course.
As soon as I heard the phrase “colour walk” I made a connection to myself. My OCD has a colour-based component. When this is the prevalent form it takes, I need to notice and acknowledge blue things. Occasionally other colours instead but it is overwhelmingly blue. I can’t always touch these things, especially if I’m trying to not look silly, so alternatives are to blink at them, look over the rim of my glasses, touch my hands together, etc. It doesn’t work in absolutes and I have decent restraint so that I am not constantly doing rituals. If I am engaged in a conversation or a daydream it’s less frontal in my brain.
But for this walk, I decided, okay, you win, just for now, you get to acknowledge ALL the blue you see. Blue-tinted cool shadows, everything. I’m putting limits on the sky, though. If you look at the sky every time you think “I need to find a blue thing” this is gonna be so tedious.
My colour walk will be as follows: I get twenty minutes. I take a photo of everything blue; that’s my acknowledgment. Only one photo of each. Do it as fast as possible before my brain can put any more arbitrary rules on this walk. They don’t have to be good photos.
POST WALK:
I only had the urge to touch the snow and the leaves once, which is unusual.
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