Chotchke on a Table
An Insanely Great Sculpture on a Coffee Table, proposed for the new Marriott in Emeryville, California.
The Ideal Representation of Comfort using the Vocabulary of Art
The Proposal is for a 28 foot long x 15 foot high x 14 foot wide sculpture, placed on a concrete enlargement of a coffee table built to scale (approximately 40 feet long), placed in the parking lot in Emeryville. No lost parking spaces!
Abstract vs Figurative, a useful dualism
We draw attention to a genuinely useful dualism here -- Abstract/figurative. The metal sculpture elements are minimalist and abstract. The table shape is minimalist, figurative, and literally concrete. That minimalism was such a hard thing to achieve, over a period of decades, to wean people away from the ornate. Most of the customers may not know what Minimalism is, but they know what they like. Taken together, the sculpture elements and the table/plinth serve to enlighten the customers about what minimalism in art is, by defining it through the medium of something they are quite familiar with -- a coffee table at a late-model hotel.
The Complementary models of Art and Art Patronage
The initial model of the Ordinance calls for Art as something the Builder puts on his developed land that's not the building or any architectural detail thereof. Our topmost element is canonically Art, the kind of shape a homeowner or apartment dweller furnishes his home with that's not furniture.
The Ordinance bespeaks a second and complementary model -- the Enterprise as a supporter of Art. We represent this model -- we symbolize it, by identifying it as a physical entity -- by the plinth. The plinth supports the art. We are, in essence, labelling the parts, a line and an arrowhead to "This is Art" and to "This is it's Support."
Execution of the Plinth
The fabricator's job is to keep the plinth authentic. The plasticity of concrete implies that you could simply hand a cement contractor the table and tell him to execute it in concrete, and give him the dimensions. (This turns the material table into a perfectly symbolic table, like the picture of a table in a Catalog.) If he makes his forms from lumber as smoothly planed as the coffee table, the concrete will be as smooth as a coffee table; when he pigments his cement like the coffee table, he will be coloring it like the coffee table.
A Note on the The Matter - Symbol Relation
Symbolic function is a property of initial conditions mediated through context. Unless you configure your material representation as initial condition, for example, a table that's a table, it's symbolic value will be forever dependent on its initial condition as art. Let the art provide the semiotic significance for the table; only then can the table stand for itself. We don't want the table to be art; we want it to be a table.
Want to buy it? email Richard Katz or call Frog's 510-843-3764 USA