My dollmaking concept.
Доверили дураку стеклянный хуй... Вместо перевести быстренько на английский пост о сборке Франца-Ксавера, я бахнул здоровенное эссе про мамикарлины куклодельские концепции. Это ни разу не перевод - оно самостоятельный причудливый (хорошее слово "outlandish") текст, и мне жалко потерять его в мордокниге и инсте, поэтому принесу его сюда - в архив.
There is a couple of words… being expanded to an essay about art-doll construction concept, my Franz is as an example. Despite my utterly outlandish English I try to show my doll-maker ideas clearly.
When you are a doll-maker creating art-dolls, not toys, or even art-toys, you are often asked why your dolls are so eerie, absurd, not-looking-like-real-human, not realistic, not pretty, not lovely, not cheerful, not human-friendly at last. Toys must be human-friendly, art-dolls should not - they may be as unfriendly as they want, because they have another aim. They are closer to sculpture as they are firstly to open some small skylights to an artist inner world to connect it with the outer world. They help the artist to be alive and realise what is happening around - the dollmaking as a way of living. It is an egoistic approach - yes, and it is mine!
Though being dolls they want to have their own soul and will and world - they want to be alive too, to have their own rules. Toy-dolls get their personality from their owners playing with them, breathing individuality into them through the play. Art-dolls firstly are in constant dialogue with the doll-maker - from the very beginning, where it might begin, even in a moment when they are only some vague unformed ideas - pieces of raw clay, heaps of cloth and threads. They speak with the artist, and they demand to be expressed speaking. They dislike an idea to exist only as voices in someone’s brain being a few letters short of an alphabet. They don’t want to be pieces of art as sculptures. It’s not enough for them to be beautiful, full of harmony or touching, waking feelings of viewers, or shocking. It’s not enough for them to expose abstract ideas of their author or to catch feelings into a bronze form. They are to combine their doll nature, “genes” got from toy ancestors, and sculpture - “serious”, “adult” art. They are to make the time solid enough to carve from this time-material their own lives differing any other modus vivendi. The dollmaking as an art is very ambivalent, I think. To make an art-doll is always to look for a balance between two contradictory elements of its nature - its toy side and its sculpture side. Compromises are various and they make a doll more or less “loud”, resonant, appealing, expressive, telling.
Well, art-dolls are eager to have their own language to tell stories about themselves and their author. And they have it kept in their forms, construction, motion abilities and degrees of their freedom.
A doll’s body is a text - a life story. The construction and its movability act like a style of the text with its metaphors, litotes and hyperbole with all its intricate context. The construction of the art-doll is stuffed with seeds of connotations as a poppy capsule looking forward to be dropped in mind and sprout fresh flowers of imagination. That's why I hardly like giving author’s comments to an art-doll. It may sound abruptly but I think if an art-doll needs an author’s comment, the work is a failure - the doll is mute, even dead. What is in truth eerie that’s a human-like “dead” doll with realistic glassy eyes staring through and past you.
Though I’m told that a few people are interested in reading author’s comments…
So I have something to say about my doll - Franz-Xavier - who has been assembled recently. I don’t reveal much turning free space of interpretation over to you. Let some enigmas remain.
I have been always mesmerised by the idea of the unity of opposites - it affects all my work one way or another. Franz is a vivid example. A human destiny is a seesaw for Life and Death - dolls are like humans bound to grope for balance. Franz is my fifth dangling-doll and in all cases dangling limbs act as a metaphor of unfreedom. Dolls with loose joints are in a cage - in a cage of ideology, religion, prejudice, their own worldview too logically elegant to turn it more comfortable, in a cage of somebody’s ill will… Franz is in a cage of an upbringing. His loose construction reminds of marionettes. But there are no threads to pull - the marionette has escaped. Here an idea of unlimited freedom appears which in fact proves to be an illusion. An upbringing machine - an ironclad car of his family and society - has run him over to and fro. A pile of bony parts and delusions survives. He survives - he has three good working boll joints: two in his neck and one in his waist. It is his spine, his conquest and a sneer of his past. The doll has the past and the past has the doll. Born to be a warrior he hates his nature warring with himself. And by the way, ball joints are often used in toy-dolls which adds some more tension to his odd construction.
It looks simple only at first glance. Franz-Xavier’s psyche is built as a fragile complicated system of counterforts and counterweights in search of harmony with the world. And he finds some balance despite all opposites swirling inside and around him. He is like a crystal piece of ice under parching sun rays, but it is not evident. At first he makes an impression of nearly minimalism, tranquillity, slight sadness and delicacy nothing of energy, storm and tragedy. The tension is inside - in small details.
I’ve just recounted too much so now I’m not to interpret each significant detail of Franz only to list them: almost lethal thinness (angularity of Gothic steeples), absence of skin, vague gender characteristics, colour and texture reminding of a statue made from sandstone or metal - moonlight and patina, a contrast between living eyes and stone face. (Well, I see, it sounds rather eerie.) A limpid watery colour scheme close to monochrome incorporated in a decorative form whose being bizarre becomes evident only through play of light and shadow - elusiveness, seeming minimalism. These details are turning points - paragraphs in Franz’s book.
The language of the art-doll-body is far from unambiguity you can read Franz as you want through colourful glasses of your own life experience. The book is unlike for each new reader.
So many words about the doll-body and this body will be mostly hidden in a not-less-meaningful clothes. Franz is reticent and ready to be personally frank and open only with his doll-maker and a future owner. Yes, he doesn’t like me blurting his treasured secrets out.
There is a couple of words… being expanded to an essay about art-doll construction concept, my Franz is as an example. Despite my utterly outlandish English I try to show my doll-maker ideas clearly.
When you are a doll-maker creating art-dolls, not toys, or even art-toys, you are often asked why your dolls are so eerie, absurd, not-looking-like-real-human, not realistic, not pretty, not lovely, not cheerful, not human-friendly at last. Toys must be human-friendly, art-dolls should not - they may be as unfriendly as they want, because they have another aim. They are closer to sculpture as they are firstly to open some small skylights to an artist inner world to connect it with the outer world. They help the artist to be alive and realise what is happening around - the dollmaking as a way of living. It is an egoistic approach - yes, and it is mine!
Though being dolls they want to have their own soul and will and world - they want to be alive too, to have their own rules. Toy-dolls get their personality from their owners playing with them, breathing individuality into them through the play. Art-dolls firstly are in constant dialogue with the doll-maker - from the very beginning, where it might begin, even in a moment when they are only some vague unformed ideas - pieces of raw clay, heaps of cloth and threads. They speak with the artist, and they demand to be expressed speaking. They dislike an idea to exist only as voices in someone’s brain being a few letters short of an alphabet. They don’t want to be pieces of art as sculptures. It’s not enough for them to be beautiful, full of harmony or touching, waking feelings of viewers, or shocking. It’s not enough for them to expose abstract ideas of their author or to catch feelings into a bronze form. They are to combine their doll nature, “genes” got from toy ancestors, and sculpture - “serious”, “adult” art. They are to make the time solid enough to carve from this time-material their own lives differing any other modus vivendi. The dollmaking as an art is very ambivalent, I think. To make an art-doll is always to look for a balance between two contradictory elements of its nature - its toy side and its sculpture side. Compromises are various and they make a doll more or less “loud”, resonant, appealing, expressive, telling.
Well, art-dolls are eager to have their own language to tell stories about themselves and their author. And they have it kept in their forms, construction, motion abilities and degrees of their freedom.
A doll’s body is a text - a life story. The construction and its movability act like a style of the text with its metaphors, litotes and hyperbole with all its intricate context. The construction of the art-doll is stuffed with seeds of connotations as a poppy capsule looking forward to be dropped in mind and sprout fresh flowers of imagination. That's why I hardly like giving author’s comments to an art-doll. It may sound abruptly but I think if an art-doll needs an author’s comment, the work is a failure - the doll is mute, even dead. What is in truth eerie that’s a human-like “dead” doll with realistic glassy eyes staring through and past you.
Though I’m told that a few people are interested in reading author’s comments…
So I have something to say about my doll - Franz-Xavier - who has been assembled recently. I don’t reveal much turning free space of interpretation over to you. Let some enigmas remain.
I have been always mesmerised by the idea of the unity of opposites - it affects all my work one way or another. Franz is a vivid example. A human destiny is a seesaw for Life and Death - dolls are like humans bound to grope for balance. Franz is my fifth dangling-doll and in all cases dangling limbs act as a metaphor of unfreedom. Dolls with loose joints are in a cage - in a cage of ideology, religion, prejudice, their own worldview too logically elegant to turn it more comfortable, in a cage of somebody’s ill will… Franz is in a cage of an upbringing. His loose construction reminds of marionettes. But there are no threads to pull - the marionette has escaped. Here an idea of unlimited freedom appears which in fact proves to be an illusion. An upbringing machine - an ironclad car of his family and society - has run him over to and fro. A pile of bony parts and delusions survives. He survives - he has three good working boll joints: two in his neck and one in his waist. It is his spine, his conquest and a sneer of his past. The doll has the past and the past has the doll. Born to be a warrior he hates his nature warring with himself. And by the way, ball joints are often used in toy-dolls which adds some more tension to his odd construction.
It looks simple only at first glance. Franz-Xavier’s psyche is built as a fragile complicated system of counterforts and counterweights in search of harmony with the world. And he finds some balance despite all opposites swirling inside and around him. He is like a crystal piece of ice under parching sun rays, but it is not evident. At first he makes an impression of nearly minimalism, tranquillity, slight sadness and delicacy nothing of energy, storm and tragedy. The tension is inside - in small details.
I’ve just recounted too much so now I’m not to interpret each significant detail of Franz only to list them: almost lethal thinness (angularity of Gothic steeples), absence of skin, vague gender characteristics, colour and texture reminding of a statue made from sandstone or metal - moonlight and patina, a contrast between living eyes and stone face. (Well, I see, it sounds rather eerie.) A limpid watery colour scheme close to monochrome incorporated in a decorative form whose being bizarre becomes evident only through play of light and shadow - elusiveness, seeming minimalism. These details are turning points - paragraphs in Franz’s book.
The language of the art-doll-body is far from unambiguity you can read Franz as you want through colourful glasses of your own life experience. The book is unlike for each new reader.
So many words about the doll-body and this body will be mostly hidden in a not-less-meaningful clothes. Franz is reticent and ready to be personally frank and open only with his doll-maker and a future owner. Yes, he doesn’t like me blurting his treasured secrets out.