let's talk about something else before we start.
do you remember Picasso's works mentioned before? Yes, guernica, a work accusing the atrocities of war. Remember that character in the picture? Ta drags her aching body and looks up for the light.
Later, I talked about Our Body, the purpose of which was to remind you to pay attention to the subtle reaction between your body and the outside world. The human head has always been regarded as the most important part, because the headquarters that directs our behavior is in the skull, and the most sensitive sensory organs-eyes, ears, nose, mouth, etc.-are also concentrated here. We can't see our heads (unless we look in the mirror) but we can see our trunks and limbs. Some people think that the brain is the residence of the soul and the limbs are servants.
The pharaohs in ancient Egypt wore masks made of gold after their death. The ancient Egyptians believed that in this way, the Pharaoh's soul could be made eternal.
It is also a gold mask found in Jinsha Site of Shang Dynasty in Chengdu more than 3, years ago. Some experts think it may be a sacrificial tool.
In the Buddhist tradition, there is also a culture of gilding Buddha statues (or faces). Believers believe that this will have great merit.
Let's look at our boy Boyce. He first smeared his head with honey and gold foil, and then held a dead rabbit to tell him about painting.
This is another important artistic performance of his "How to Explain Painting to a Dead Rabbit".
This work was implemented in 1965. Boyce has a gold foil on his face, a dead rabbit in his arms, a steel plate on his right shoe and a felt on his left shoe. He shut himself in a room, and everyone could only observe his behavior through the window. Boyce is seriously telling the rabbit in his arms about the pictures hanging on the wall, and from time to time, he lets the rabbit's head and ears touch the picture, as if to let the rabbit smell and listen. The whole process lasted three hours. Finally, the door was opened. When the audience poured into the room, powys held the dead rabbit and sat quietly with his back to the audience. No one knows exactly what he told the dead rabbit. Many people find this work extremely obscure, but it has caused a sensation in the world.
Some people say that the whole process is a shamanism witchcraft ceremony. Let's put those theories and labels aside and feel and experience with our intuition.
There are several elements in Boyce's performance: putting gold foil on his head, smearing honey, hugging rabbits, stepping on steel plates and felt, explaining painting, and closing the space. Let me elaborate on it separately.
gold
what do we often compare to gold? Time, sunshine, soul, etc. show that gold gives people the impression of being precious, eternal and pure, and also symbolizes wealth and status. As mentioned above, human beings believe that gold has an immortal value.
honey
Our ancestors thought that bees were sacred animals, and the therapeutic effect of honey was recognized by human beings long ago. Boyce has made an in-depth study of bees. He found that bees do not have the function of individuals, but only as members of a group. He feels that a single bee is like a cell, playing its own role in the "organism" of the whole bee colony. In this way, a complete bee colony is like our human body, the queen bee is like the brain, and the bees with different division of labor are like various organs of the human body. Honey, like blood, brings nutrition to the whole body. Beeswax, the material of beehives, is like human bones. Honey and beeswax often appear in many of Boyce's works.
Holding a dead rabbit
Humans also have a long history of using rabbits as totems. The ancient Egyptians, the ancient Greeks, the ancient Germans and our ancestors in China all regarded the rabbit as a divine or auspicious animal. Easter in the west is symbolized by rabbits and eggs (it is said that rabbits are related to the resurrection of Jesus). The ancients in China believed that rabbits lived in the Moon Palace. Sharp observation, agile movements and strong reproductive ability all make the lovely rabbit one of the protagonists in the animal world. Boyce once said, "I am an unusually keen rabbit!" " .
you don't happen to be a rabbit, do you?
you must have loved dolls when you were a child, right? Maybe Barbie dolls, maybe bears, maybe puppets. At that time, did you often hold them, tell them stories, play with them and sleep with them? You know that dolls are lifeless and won't hear what you say, but you will give them selfless love, just like your mother gave you love. You will say, because it is a child! In fact, adults also come from children! And what most adults lose is the innocence of their children. But there are exceptions, like the one below.
After reading the above words, imagine yourself holding a dead rabbit like Boyce and telling it what you are interested in ... What will you feel? Helpless, sad and lonely, do you feel that although things have reached this point, you want to do your best and finally do something for the rabbit?
steel plate with feet and felt
steel plate is the symbol product of industrial production, and it gives people a feeling of indifference. I think in this work of Boyce, the steel plate symbolizes the cold rationality of people in modern civilized life, the mental burden brought by excessive logical thinking, and also implies that the development of industry has caused disaster to the nature represented by rabbits. Felt is another symbolic creative material of Boyce, who thinks that the product made of animal hair can bring warmth to people. Felt not only represents a kind of warmth, but also implies that sympathy is not enough, and necessary actions should be taken.
Explain painting
Boyce showed amazing talent for painting when he was 15 years old. In college, he chose to study sculpture. That is to say, he was strictly trained in traditional art, but he didn't indulge in the original expression, but put forward the concept of "social sculpture", which expanded the artistic behavior to a larger scope, including people's language and behavior in addition to daily necessities (which we will elaborate later). Boyce's act of telling rabbits about painting has already constituted his works of art, so painting has become a material in his works. I think it implies that Boyce intends to break through the tradition and extend the art in those frames, the so-called elegance, to our daily behavior.
Closed room
During the whole performance, Boyce didn't let other people participate, which is different from some of his other works that make the audience fully participate. I think this is Boyce's intention to make people not pay attention to what he said specifically, but to make people think about the meaning of the act itself. Boyce is lonely because it is difficult for his contemporaries to understand him. Boyce also faces such loneliness directly. He tells everyone with such a work: viewing and understanding through a window-a symbol of limited vision-can only be one-sided. Think about it, isn't there a limit to what we look at? Don't you all understand the problem from your own point of view? It is not terrible to admit this limitation. Only with this understanding can we tolerate and treat those people, things and things that you can't understand at the moment, and our hearts will become broader.
When we look at this work as a whole, the image presented by Boyce reminds me of the man in guernica, who is stumbling, in a depressed place and watching the light. It's been half a century since everything Boyce did in that room. His work left only fragments of memories such as pictures, words and so on, but it is still being discussed and pondered by people now, and it has also gone down in history. His thoughts are still nourishing and inspiring young people.
Summary: I think in How to Explain Painting to a Dead Rabbit, Boyce is not doing any religious ceremony as many people think, but preaching, and setting a mystery for people to communicate with nature. It doesn't matter whether the other person can understand it, whether it is human or not, and whether the information can be effectively transmitted. What matters is the act of "speaking". He put gold foil on his head-the residence of the soul, representing the sacredness, eternity and purity of the spirit; Putting honey on your head represents the dedication of eliminating self-selfless service like bees; Embracing rabbits means transcending identity, race and even species to achieve equality; The dead rabbit represents the concept of transcending life and death and time; Stepping on the steel plate and felt represents the surrender of hard reason and the restraint of warm tenderness, and the difference between not being human; What he is talking about is the art of painting, which is the spiritual crystallization of human pursuit of beauty and loftiness; People are forbidden to participate in it and can only watch from the window, which means that people don't have to pay attention to the content and details he said, as long as they know that he is doing such a thing. Boyce wants to tell everyone that human existence is to carry an eternal spirit with behavior. What spirit? It is equality beyond prejudice, fraternity that sees through life and death and freedom to eliminate concepts.