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Jeannie Mah: Ouvrez les Guillemets
In French dictées, the words ouvrez les guillemets indicates the
beginning of a citation. The exhibition Ouvrez les Guillemets (literally means,
"open the quotation marks") will expose my long - time (but never before overtly
confessed) habit of quoting from historical sources. Previously, I had acknowledged my debt
to them. Now, by including the images of specific historical cups, I mean to reveal the
sources BEHIND my work.
Ouvrez les Guillemets Photo: Ed Jones
My points of reference have been a small Kamares ware cup
from the 14th century BC, Minoan Crete and the Sèvres teacups of 18th century France.
Prehistory + Enlightenment. Utility + Decoration. Art + Industry.
At the entrance and exit of the gallery, wall-mounted clay quotation marks connote that
a dialogue is in process between these seemingly antithetical forms. By placing the simple
Minoan cup beside the self-conciously over wrought French teacup, I
" .. continue to use "the Cup" to examine the decorative within the
utilitarian, the vestiges of art in the quotidian, and the private
museum in our domestic lives, so as to focus on the intersection of the domestic, the social
and the political.&qout;
Lately, Cinematic studies have strengthened my admiration of
Jean-Luc Godard's dense intertextuality, and I have adopted aspects of his approach as well as
others, Bresson and Wenders. I imitate them, "retranslating", by quoting scenes from
films about cups. This second layer of quotation draws the discussion into the 20th century,
forming a triangular debate across time.
I have structured the exhibition in the from of a classical essay; this is also a
Godardian trait, as his visual sequences at times take up the dialectical form of this three
part structure. (I am thinking of the café sequences in Godard's Vivre sa Vie
(1962). While the exhibition borrows the form of written language, my intent is not to provide
a comprehensive or even cohesive statement about ceramics, history, or
industry. Rather, I would prefer that the images and objects form the context and content of
the "statement".
Physical 3 - D quotation marks and other objects from the "real world" are
meant to recontextualize my pieces into the physical world. Denying their autonomy by revealing
their lineage, my physical objects are but reflections and amalgamations of existing objects. As
the world of images meets the world of objects, the juxtaposition of art and industry, of the
hand - made and the machine - made (the Industrial Revolution and the Arts and Crafts Movement),
may ignite multiple connotations between ceramics and image, object and language, and between ...
spectator and perception. Foreign words, isolated and not immediately recognizable, veer towards
design and image.
Ouvrez les Guillemets Photo: Ed Jones
Yet, I am stuck in the 18th century. Designs from centuries past continue to exert their
force in the market place and in our homes. Hmmmmmmm. The Enlightenment produced a split between
art and science, just at the moment of the emergence of a new middle class with spending power.
I am beginning to suspect that the crux of my dilemma my revolve around the ideas of the
Enlightenment. Uh - oh - back to Adorno again.
Jeannie Mah
Bibliography:
Les Illusions Perdues Balzac, Honoré. A self-reflexive look at the
printing industry
Au Bonheur des Dames Zola Emile. The creation of the department stores in 19th c. Paris
Screening the Text Kline, T. Jefferson. Chapter 7: The ABC's of Godard's Quotations: "About de souffle with Pierrot le fou": p. 184 - 221
Two or Three Things that I Know About Her Guzzetti, Alfred. Harvard University Press, 1981 pg. 132 - 145 |
