Most artists create art with just a paintbrush and an imagination. Cornelia Parker, on the other hand, “disrupts” art which has been already built with items like snake venom.
Parker’s attraction to destruction started when she was just a child, a daughter of an abusive father in Cheshire, UK. Born in the 1960s, she enjoyed placing coins on railroad tracks and watch them get crushed by incoming trains. This destructive act was what eventually led to her interesting works starting in the late 1980s.
Parker made many sculptures, all of which were unique and creative. From using explosives to snake venom to just some string, she was unlike any other artist before her.
One of her pieces is when she took Auguste Rodin’s iconic sculpture “The Kiss” and wrapped it in string, renaming it “The Distance (A Kiss with String Attached).” However, this idea wasn’t completely random. She used a mile of string, which is an allusion to a famous prank pulled in 1942, when Marcel Duchamp also used a mile of string to web the inside of a museum, making it hard to walk around and see the artwork. That isn’t the only thing “The Distance” shows though, as it also makes Rodin’s original sculpture more mysterious.
Her most famous piece of art by far is “Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View,” which depicts a shed in the middle of being blown up. She persuaded the government to help her explode an actual garden shed for the piece, and the pieces of that shed are positioned to look as if they are frozen in time. The explosion is also illuminated in a way so that the shadows of the pieces are shown on the walls.
In an interview with BBC Culture, Parker said, “I’ve always liked nocturnes. The first time I really used lights was my exploded shed. I wanted to make a work with a light source. It’s linked to explosion – the flash – so that’s where the light first appeared.”
Cornelia Parker has one of the most interesting stories of any artist, and it shows in her creative artwork. Her unique ways of creating art seem weird at first, but when you look deeper, you can see the full meaning of her works.
Article: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220621-cornelia-parker-the-artist-who-likes-to-blow-things-up
Parker’s attraction to destruction started when she was just a child, a daughter of an abusive father in Cheshire, UK. Born in the 1960s, she enjoyed placing coins on railroad tracks and watch them get crushed by incoming trains. This destructive act was what eventually led to her interesting works starting in the late 1980s.
Parker made many sculptures, all of which were unique and creative. From using explosives to snake venom to just some string, she was unlike any other artist before her.
One of her pieces is when she took Auguste Rodin’s iconic sculpture “The Kiss” and wrapped it in string, renaming it “The Distance (A Kiss with String Attached).” However, this idea wasn’t completely random. She used a mile of string, which is an allusion to a famous prank pulled in 1942, when Marcel Duchamp also used a mile of string to web the inside of a museum, making it hard to walk around and see the artwork. That isn’t the only thing “The Distance” shows though, as it also makes Rodin’s original sculpture more mysterious.
Her most famous piece of art by far is “Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View,” which depicts a shed in the middle of being blown up. She persuaded the government to help her explode an actual garden shed for the piece, and the pieces of that shed are positioned to look as if they are frozen in time. The explosion is also illuminated in a way so that the shadows of the pieces are shown on the walls.
In an interview with BBC Culture, Parker said, “I’ve always liked nocturnes. The first time I really used lights was my exploded shed. I wanted to make a work with a light source. It’s linked to explosion – the flash – so that’s where the light first appeared.”
Cornelia Parker has one of the most interesting stories of any artist, and it shows in her creative artwork. Her unique ways of creating art seem weird at first, but when you look deeper, you can see the full meaning of her works.
Article: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220621-cornelia-parker-the-artist-who-likes-to-blow-things-up
