The Archaic and an Imperfect Fit
In ancient Greek culture the Classical Period is associated with the “perfection” of forms, in sculpture the proportions of the “ideal” human being, in drama the imagination of Sophocles that produces ideals of persons acting strictly on the human and social scale: in both cases the synchronizing of a society with the types of persons equipped to sustain it on its own terms. Preceding the Classical Period was the Archaic Period, with its outsized statues of persons at least as much attuned to the divine as to the social, and lyric poetry, such as Sappho’s, of extravagant emotional definition and in her case homoerotic love. The Archaic positions itself somewhat outside the social status quo of a society. A Book of Ours ushers the periphery of establishment expectations. The perspectives of the homeless re-align and re-purpose familiar representations of the social and the individual; signs of the archaic, the presence of “medieval” associations such as A Book of Hours itself indicate this defamiliarization. “Archaic” in this project stands for anything that grates against the idea of art as purity, consistency, and singularity of construction, which usually points to a principle of exclusion of unwanted materials and voices. The British artist and painter Allen Fisher coined the phrase “imperfect fit” to characterize art that deliberately fosters signs of what perfection would call a mistake or an inaccuracy but that in fact signifies inclusion. For example, calligraphy, itself “archaic,” appears throughout A Book of Ours, gorgeous and polished, but it appears inconsistently, along with cruder, less polished penmanship.
ABOVE: workshop table
BELOW: Peggy and Stephen Raw
Photographs by Lois Blackburn
A BOOK OF OURS was exhibited at Bury Art Museum May-July 2021, then Manchester Cathedral Oct 2021-March 2022, after which it went permanently into the collection at John Rylands Library, where it can now be viewed. It is the final project by arthur+martha CIC.
Comments
Post a Comment