Display Explanation:
When entering this installation, you would be greeted by a forest. The room itself would be black on the outskirts, with trees growing out of the ground. The trees would almost be in a circle formation, with three trees placed in a triangle formation in the middle of the circle. The trees would be decorated with fairy lights throughout, both around the trees and across the ceiling, giving adequate lighting to the pieces on the three stand alone trees. On the middle tree would be Slugocki’s Polski: Przebudzenie. Wiosna. At the base of the tree, there would be poppy flowers like the ones in the painting that grow towards the large installation that leans against the tree. I think this would almost blend the painting into reality, which would allow the viewer to feel like they are within the painting to observe it. On the left side of this painting would be Kirchner’s Female Nude with Foliage Shadows. This painting would also be large and lean against the tree. To frame this painting with a piece of nature, I would want the tree to be more of a weeping willow to envelope the viewer within its foliage to invite them once again into the painting with her foliage. The weeping willows’ foliage would be cropped in a way that the painting would be visible from the outside, but once you move towards it you would be enveloped in the tree itself. The third painting, Degas’s Young Spartans Exercising, would be on the right side. To invite the viewer into this painting, I would want some intermingled short and tall grass to be growing around the painting and its surrounding area. I feel like this would accumulate the viewer to the larger grassland landscape pictured in this painting. My goal is to make you feel like you are apart of the paintings to capture their beauty.
Installation Note:
This installation is meant to provoke the viewer to find the beauty within these pieces and their connection to nature. The three pieces, Slugocki’s Polski: Przebudzenie. Wiosna, Kirchner’s Female Nude with Foliage Shadows, and Degas’s Young Spartans Exercising, were created around the late 1800’s and very early 1900’s and depict a sense of sexuality within each. When looking at the three, we can easily see that Slugocki and Kirchner focus on one object as opposed to Degas’s multiple men and women within the frame. These make for a nice contrast that contributes to the common point of normalization of nudity within art. To me, these pieces come together nicely to suggest this idea of sexuality that is not dependent on sex itself being the selling point. In Degas’s painting, the nudity is portrayed in a way that is playful as they exercise. In Slugocki and Kirchner’s pieces, there is nudity that is almost shadowed, as the women don’t entirely show off their bodies in a sexual way. This idea of normalization through different styles in an important facet of these pieces together in this installation that I want the viewer to be able to find.
It is also interesting to note a kind of fertility shown in these pieces. The pieces each have this kind of comparability in suggesting that this. In Degas’s painting, the men and women exercising is something that historically suggests this sense of fertility as the Spartans believed that women must be strong to produce strong offspring. In the other paintings, the fertility is suggested in the way the artists painting these women tend to draw the eyes to the more feminine parts of them without being too over-sexual in what they show.
Each of these pieces are also very connected to nature with their beautiful landscape backgrounds. Their surroundings in nature are something I want to highlight with my installation, as this tie that we have seen in this class with nature is something beautiful. The idea that there is this freedom of expression for the subjects of these paintings in a surrounding that envelopes the subject into its beauty is something that should be noted within these three pieces. There is a sense of the state they are in being natural, as it should be, and innocent in this beautiful area. Although each of these pieces have a differing background, the beauty of each is undeniable and allows for the subject to be a part in this beauty as well.
Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig. Female Nude with Foliage Shadows. 1905. Kirchner Museum in Davos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Ludwig_Kirchner#/media/File:Female_Nude_with_Foliage_Shadows.jpg (Links to an external site.). Accessed 2 February 2022.
Degas, Edgar. Young Spartans Exercising. 1860-62. National Gallery, London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Degas#/media/File:Young_Spartans_National_Gallery_NG3860.jpg. Accessed 13 Feb. 2022.
Slugocki, Marian. Polski: Przebudzenie. Wiosna. 1908. File:Marian Sługocki - Przebudzenie. Wiosna 1908.jpg - Wikimedia Commons (Links to an external site.) Accessed 2 February 2022