Thursday, October 09, 2008

Marc Quinn



Britain's National Portrait Gallery is hoping to buy Marc Quinn's 2006 sculpture entitled "Self". Every five years, Quinn makes a new self-portrait by casting his head and filling the mold with his own blood, collected over several months, which is then frozen. I believe this picture is Self 2001. You can buy posters from Quinn's website, if like me, you want to put the poster in the back of your refrigerator and terrify house guests.

Most of Quinn's work is interesting to me. I especially like his "frozen garden" made of cyrogenically frozen plants that could never actually grow together; when I have money, I'd like to get a poster of that for my study. His sculptures of people with differently-shaped bodies, culminating in a huge statue of disabled model Alison Lapper while pregnant, displayed in Trafalgar Square, are beautiful and challenging.

I will say that Quinn's recent sculptures of Kate Moss in exaggerated yoga poses don't really do anything for me. And much of his work is too garish for my tastes. But I find the blood sculptures to be moving; there's a strange sort of immanence to them. And, again, the frozen garden (which reminds me a lot of a J.G. Ballard short story called "The Garden of Time") is sublime.

1 comment:

Brian Dunbar said...

>And much of his work is too garish for my tastes.

Sure - but it would be kinda nifty to have that in your living room. Or parked next to your doorstep outside ...

"Yes, we're three houses down from the weirdos with the giant statue of a fetus in their front yard...'

'Say no more - I know exactly where you're at. We'll be there in 10 minutes.'