Found

L

Levi Dalton

Levi Dalton
Imunu.jpg
I saw in the de Young this found sculpture from New Guinea. The plaque nearby went like this:

Imunu are unique spirit figures obtained from the root of the Mangrove tree. The village where this figure originated is located at the delta of the Fly River on New Guinea's south coast. It is waterlogged with swamps and forests traversed by small streams and sluggish rivers. Mangrove trees and shrubs that grow in the saline habitat thrive. Spirit figures are obtained from the root of the mangrove. A carver or spirit-man dreams an image and then goes to find it in the mangrove forest. Small, carved modifications of the surface are made such as the addition of facial features. However, the natural form is retained.

I have read that the process of finding the Imunu that one has dreamt of can take weeks.

I have myself have had a dream for several years, although mine was of a Coteaux Champenois, the still red wine from Champagne. I have looked for a long time for subtle and mysterious flavors, as well as captivating aromas. I have sampled many Coteaux Champenois and been disappointed. Either they were too ephemeral and wane, or too clodish and heavy. None was the one I had dreamed after. But this week I did find that wine, an amazing one, and it was called

2005 Egly-Ouriet Ambonnay Rouge Coteaux Champenois

and I thought I would share that with you.

I laughed when I put my nose to the glass.
 
Nice note. I've never had this wine (in any vintage) but I hear it is a pretty unique Coteaux Champenois without many/any peers. Is that because their terroir is just that much better than other people or because of the attention they pay to it?
 
Thank you for sharing your find, Levi. It's not something I knew was in their line-up.

E-O has also has provided me with a special memory in an unusual category- their ratafia. There were a few bottles that moved through CSW a while back which were NV, but appeared to be from a number of years back. I don't have much experience with aged mistelles, but from tasting I'd guess pre-'90. I have a bottle left- I'll have to dig it out and scrutinize it a bit more to see whether any info can be gained from lot number, etc.

If anyone has a line on either the ratafia or Coteaux Champenois, I would be interested in purchasing a few.
 
with the 1996, bought a bunch of bottles and was seriously unimpressed with where it went.

Maybe this is one of those wines you just have to catch at the right moment for you.

I don't really know what "found art" is, the curse of the country mouse, I suppose. Maybe it's the above.
 
originally posted by VLM:

I don't really know what "found art" is, the curse of the country mouse, I suppose. Maybe it's the above.
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In the western art historical tradition I think a lot of commentators would point to the Readymades of Duchamp, and also to some of the sculptural elements used at times by Picasso as examples of found or redefined artwork. Certainly Duchamp was a reference point for a lot of subsequent artists. Some who are into earthworks are also into the found piece. Sherry Levine's After Walker Evans series might be considered another example, of at very least, the redefined (maybe?).

But I thought the explanatory text did a good job of explaining what it meant in New Guinea at the turn of the twentieth century. I believe something similar could be said in reference to the Inuit.
 
Sigh, what a wonderfully constructed note. Thank you for that.

A few months ago I saw an exhibition of works by an illiterate man from the interior of one of Brazil's poorest states who makes sculpture from pieces of wood he finds in the forest. The pieces supposedly tell him what they want to be, and he just "helps."

Bezerra.jpg
While Sherrie Levine is very much in the Duchamp lineage, there are interesting differences between ready-mades and appropriation, only natural given the seventy odd years that separate them. Only the former used found objects, to, among other things, question what is art and critique the artist's ability to establish a kind of commodity fetishism, while the latter used established works to, among other things, question the concept of authorship itself, seen by feminists and others as part of the western male domination system (of which Picasso is exhibit A, and Duchamp a witness for the prosecution). What both practices share, I suppose, is a critique of commodity fetishism itself, as applied to art (the concept of commodity fetishism was developed by Marx for other purposes, but it seems to me particularly useful here). The New Guinea sculpture could be seen as an example of a non western male concept, since the sculpture is not made by a specific artist, endowed with great genius and craft, but is a sort of bequest from the elements, evidence of a communion with nature that is increasingly lost as man becomes rational and technological. The object was not so much found as given.
 
Duchamp opened the way for the conceptual possibility of found art, but his readymades were not found art. First, just as a matter of fact, with the possible exception of "Fountain," most of the readymades, including such things as the bottle rack, not to mention more obviously the bicycle wheel on the stool, were artificed and not merely presented objects. Second and more importantly, Duchamp's choices and presentations were artifice whose aesthetic point was calling into question aesthetic concepts that could not explain those artworks as artworks.

Found art is actually much less interesting and problematic. One finds a piece of drift wood one chooses to apprehend as beautiful and then puts it in one's livingroom. One knows just what is going on and one's choice to designate the object as beautiful can be explained, as most artworks can, equally well under any number of theories. The extension, finding works from other cultures whose original purpose one either ignores or is ignorant of and apprehending it in aesthetic terms, may raise questions of ethnocentrism, but they don't raise any particularly interesting aesthetic ones. Of course, both the driftwood and the anthropological object one is presenting as beautiful may actually be beautiful and worth apprehending in that way, but that's another issue.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
The New Guinea sculpture could be seen as an example of a non western male concept, since the sculpture is not made by a specific artist, endowed with great genius and craft, but is a sort of bequest from the elements...
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Disagree. The person who picked it up has the genius to see it.

...evidence of a communion with nature that is increasingly lost as man becomes rational and technological. The object was not so much found as given.
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Anthropomorphizing nature is silly.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
Is, too.
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Okay, my response pretty much begged that.
I guess my backhanded attempt to contest Jeff's value-loaded absolute ("silly"), missed.
Or, maybe not.
Best, Jim
 
Levi, thank you.

VLM, I too loved the '96. I believe my note, from a Brussels offline (to use the proper term), read: "...like a 16-year old, but with experience". And we know where those typically end up.
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
Nice note. I've never had this wine (in any vintage) but I hear it is a pretty unique Coteaux Champenois without many/any peers. Is that because their terroir is just that much better than other people or because of the attention they pay to it?
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Where's Peter Liem when we need him?
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
The New Guinea sculpture could be seen as an example of a non western male concept, since the sculpture is not made by a specific artist, endowed with great genius and craft, but is a sort of bequest from the elements...
Click to expand...
Disagree. The person who picked it up has the genius to see it.
Click to expand...

Oswaldo's claim of how the sculpture "could be seen" of course evades the issue of whether that seeing would be an accurate interpretation. It's virtually a moral certitude that the original artist did not intend his sculpture to exemplify "a non western male concept," since he would have to have conceived of himself in terms not available to him. On the other hand, one could claim that the object evidenced such a concept without reducing the claim to the perception of the person who picked it up to exhibit it. But the problem persists that the object will really only evidence that concept from within the context that the exhibitor brings to it. In effect, attempting to find an alternative to western aesthetics, the exhibitor reenacts a western appropriation of a different culture's productions for his or her own purposes.

On anthropomorphizing nature, I vote with Jeff and Joe: is too.
 
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