woensdag 3 april 2013

Kurt Schwitters

A few months ago, someone mentioned the artist Kurt Schwitters and how his work is related to my work. Kurt Schwitters was a German artist that fled Germany because of the Nazi government and came to Britain in 1940. He lived in The Lake District, very close to where I first came to live when I moved to Britain from The Netherlands. But I went voluntarily during the credit crunch....

Tate has an exhibition on about his work in Britain. He used found objects to create his sculptures and made collages. These days it isn't very innovative to use rubbish and found objects in art, there are loads of artists doing that and for that he was ahead of his time! I use found objects, but I didn't start using them to make a statement, more as a convenient cheap material. Soon I saw the benefit visually in the contrast it created and kept using found objects ever since. I now even use found objects to tell something about my sculpture. Again proof that I as an artist started of with something coincidental and saw the benefit and explored the effect more.

The person who mentioned Kurt Schwitters mentioned him mainly because he also used bones in some of his sculptures. The most cited one is 'Dancer', which is shown in this blog. So we both started using sheep bones in our work after arriving in the UK.

With these elements the comparison probably stops. His work is a lot lore abstract than mine, but I do wonder what he would think of my work if he was still around. One thing I do know is that I can't just use found objects because it has been done before, almost a century ago!

Perhaps the use of popular culture, bones, comical characters and plastic is innovative?

Geen opmerkingen:

Een reactie posten