trumpets of justice

I got to teach a 5-credit Issues in Contemporary Art class last year, and while it was extraordinarily challenging, it was also fascinating to be forced to lay out the paths-- especially since the 1960s-- that have led us to this complex and rich moment we happen to be in as artists. One of the movements that I fell in love with as I restudied it was Arte Povera. It was readily apparent that these were our artistic grandfathers (more rarely grandmothers in this case) in profound ways. The phenomenological, elemental approaches that you might see in someone like Caleb Larsen (whose work can be seen in Seattle at Lawrimore Project for a week or so more) or one of my all-time favorites, Ann Hamilton, can be readily traced to arte povera experiments.

I ran across the above image in the February 2009 issue of Modern Painters; it's of arte povera artist Michelangelo Pistoletto's 1968 piece Le trombe del giudizio (The Trumpets of Justice). In the image, Pistoletto and Maria Poppi play the over-sized instruments. It stunned me in much the same way as when I was studying him and others like Jannis Kounellis last year. The simple but powerful poetry they wield with basic structures and materials is inspiring to me. I can't find any more information about this particular piece, but I love the way that the instruments completely dwarf the bodies of Pistoletto and Poppi. A great image for the relative effect of the human voice and scope when compared with our humble corporal appearance. It made me think of the artist's talk I heard by Tim Rollins, who works (or worked?) collaboratively with K.O.S. (Kids of Survival). Below is one of the versions of Amerika, in which each person designs her or his own trumpet. The result is a beautifully diverse, but unified set of compositions that make music out of silence.