Welcome to another episode of 3 Minute Art
History.
I'm Mead, and today we're going to talk about
Tom Friedman.
Friedman works within the structures of contemporary
conceptual art.
Initially conceptual art began with dematerialization
and an anti-economic and anti-commodity agenda.
But in Friedman's work, the form is as important
as the content.
He began working in this style during grad
school at the University of Chicago.
He painted his entire studio white and would
bring in one object at a time to think about
it.
He would try to get to the structural essence
and the pure meaning of each thing.
This lead to some of the most ground-breaking
pieces in his catalog such as the slightly
used bar of soap with inlaid pubic hair.
He broke down the process of art making into
four parts: Idea, Material, Form, and Presentation.
All of these stages had to be in balance,
or at least considered, for a piece to be
complete.
You can see evidence of this process throughout
his work.
He will typically base the construction of
a piece on the particular form of the component
parts, sort of like a molecular structure.
In the toothpick sculpture, you can imagine
that the points of the toothpicks are glued
together in what's probably a sphere in the
center, then built outward to its final form.
He uses the full range of presentation locations:
floor, wall, ceiling, high, low, corner, pedestal,
etc.
Ultimately, we're lead to think about the
infrastructure it takes to produce these commonplace
objects he uses and the systems in place in
our society, especially those we take for
granted.
One of his most minimal (and maximal) pieces
is 1,000 Hours of Staring, which took 5 years.
It's simply a piece of paper, at which he
stared for 1,000 hours.
Apparently, he did document the work, but
found the presentation of the documentation
unnecessary.
Here we're entirely dependent on the title,
which Marcel Duchamp called "the invisible
color", for the transmission of the meaning
and medium of the work.
Friedman's work is always fun to see, and
it has a wide appeal because of its obvious
craftsmanship, its recognizable materials,
and its clarity.
I'm Mead and this has been another 3 Minute
Art History.
Take care.
