Marc Quinn

Bonsoir,


I'm going to do a post on my favourite artist of all time... he was only born in '64 and is male... so all in all it's very strange that he is and always has been my favourite artist seeing as I love 1940ish art the most and female modern artists the most. Odd.

Anyway it's Marc Quinn.

Why do I love his work?

Well first of all it is the fact that most of his big pieces are sculptures. And I'm more than obsessed with sculptures, especially of the human body(ish - if they're obscurely human it's even better).

But it's not just that because I actually prefer bodily figures like Georg Herold's 2010 sculptures a lot better:

Or these that I'm stood next to in the Tate and now cannot find anything about them anywhere...

grrrr.

So the next reason is because Quinn mixes science with art and this is something that I'm realllllllllllllllllly interested in. Everyone nowadays is into mixing art with music or music with poetry/writing
or all 3 in some cases
or even music with science sometimes
but noone really crosses science with art. But here we have his blood head called 'self' that is a frozen mold of his head made by his blood:

Now, if I had to study only 1 piece of art for the rest of my life that would be it. Why... well it is kept in a incubator to keep at a certain temperature so it doesn't melt. This is supposed to show how fragile human life is and that the 'plug can be pulled' at any moment. But there are TOO MANY ways to interpret it which is always fun. And it is just so aesthetically pleasing to me! To know that all that stuff that has made that has come out of the person that made it... it's just madness. It is part of the reason why I like Pete Doherty's art even though I dislike him - because he uses his own blood. Call me crazy, but it adds a new dimension to the whole 'death of the author' Roland Barthes theory. The author or artist is definitely not dead - very much present in these works of art.

Another one of his science + art creations is the portrait he made of nobel prize winner John Sulston. Quinn managed to use DNA for this seeing as Sulston won the prize for sequencing the Human Genome. Quinn said "The portrait was made by our standard methods for DNA cloning. My DNA was broken randomly into segments, and treated so that they could be replicated in bacteria. The bacteria containing the DNA segments were spread out on agar jelly in the plate you see in the portrait." - CRAZILY CREATIVE?!


Anyway, another reason why I love him is because he makes you think about your body and your relation to your body and subsequently, whether you are your body or you have a mind which will fly out of you when you die. It's very hard to be faced with the debate of whether when you die you cease to live in all ways - but that's what Quinn does.

Then there's the way that he doesn't shy away from topics that could seem 'low-brow'. I know most of the byas and the artists of today usually do art on everyday crap too but he specifically goes out of his way to do art on subcultures such as transexuals and celebrities such as kate moss (who is an idol of mine so... that helps):

And then there are the baby sculptures. Now I'm completely preoccupied with not babies but maternal relationships - especially when the child is young. I think he should put one of his baby sculptures with a mother sculpture.. this would satisfy all my needs and I could look at it for days. A kind of Louise Bourgeois V Marc Quinn mashup. Maybe just move the giant baby sculpture to Maman sculpture and I'd be happy.

PLUS

Yes please.


Well I could type all day about Quinn because as you can tell I'm pretty amazed by him and his work.


Ciao Amigos,


- Pantha x