Brooke's Proposition

My favorite kind of art entails pieces that are weird, creepy, and questionable.  I realized this when I took my first visit to the Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago.  I found a clown installation piece by Bruce Nauman.  Calling it creepy would be an understatement.  One scene displayed a clown sitting on a toilet and reading a newspaper, and one was a clown yelling directly at you.  I didn’t understand it, I don’t know why it was meaningful, and even though I was scared out of my mind, I thought I was the coolest thing in the world.  It’s weirdness left me thinking about it for days and left me with hundreds of questions.  What does that mean? More importantly, how the hell is it considered art?  That’s when I feel in love with the idea of art even more.  Art can be anything.  Not merely paint on paper but sounds, ideas, and footage.  I like art that is different and stands out from the rest.  More importantly art that is eerie and questionable.

The sentences I formed in the list “I feel” related more to how many of my fears made me feel.  I am scared of many things, which is what I have decided to use as a springboard for my series.  Turning my fears into art will perfectly exhibit my esteem for weird, vulgar, and obscure art.  Exposing my fears could also potentially help me overcome them.  That being said, I strongly feel that a topic so graphic and vivid cannot be fully portrayed on paper, but more of installation art.  It will be more meaningful in a real life, 3D setting so that my audience can get the full effect of what it is that scares me and how I see it inside my head.  I was inspired by the layout of the Counter Ground piece at the Silence and Time exhibit.   Displaying art on the floor rather than hanging it up on a wall is not only different but makes me look at it in an entirely different way-sort of like taking a painting and studying it upside down.  I’m also thinking about how I will display each piece.  I developed most of my fears at the age of six, and even though this might not make any sense, I was thinking of having each piece of art displayed in three rows of six- six to represent the age and three rows to represent 18, which is not only my current age but also shows that I still have the same fears to this day.

            The first fear I want to display is vomit.  Obviously I am not going to use real vomit in my art but I will make a realistic imitation from various types of food.  I’m not quite sure how this will be displayed yet but I want it to be the center of my display because it is my biggest fear.

            I want to incorporate dead cockroaches into my piece for a few reasons.  It is a fear of mine, but I was inspired by art my dad has at his office.  Dozens of framed dead bugs. I have memories of me touching them and admiring their beauty as a little girl.  What I like so much about the work is that it has a good combination of ugliness and beauty- pinned to a clean white backdrop in a black frame shows off its splendor while the realization that its actually a dead bug clearly presents hostility.  I am especially looking forward to hunting for roaches on campus. I will to pin or tack each one to a crisp piece of paper. 

            Although Nauman’s exhibit is something I admire, I have always been scared of clowns.  I plan on doing several different portraits of creepy looking clowns using colored pastels to successfully portray the vividness and character they poses.  To make the images more lively, I plan on having eerie circus music and or clown laughs playing in the background.

            One of my favorite stores back home is a vintage gag shop.  It basically sells junk, and its awesome.  On one of my past visits I discovered a chest full of old fashioned, decrepit baby dolls.  They were totally creepy and displayed the perfect image of “that stereo-typical scary baby doll”.  That inspired me to take those baby dolls and use them in my piece.  I may add props to soften the image of them, and I also plan on using background music of a creepy lullaby tune or a stereotypical baby laugh.