When is a squeegee not just a squeegee?
When it’s used to save lives.
Assistant professor of art history Kate Mondloch spoke about the “heroic squeegee” that will be going on display in a museum in New York. The heroic squeegee was used in the World Trade Center’s twin towers to free workers from a burning elevator. The point is, she said, that we judge things based on the context in which we encounter them.
Mondloch also presented two works of art that are on display at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. One seemed to resemble a fast stroke reproduction of a table’s edge where it meets the leg. The other was a partially exposed curve of what looked like a cauldron. Mondloch stressed that neither of these pieces had titles, other than a number and the year they were made.
She contrasted these images of everyday objects to the hyper-real images we are used to seeing on a daily basis. In today’s society we are used to high resolution blow-up ads of cell phones that make them look the size of cars. The pieces in the museum were not of this genre. They were reproduced onto paper with frayed edges, through a technique called photo emulsion.
These images of objects are art and not gaudy advertisements based on their context, Mondloch said.
Associate professor of art history Andrew Schulz had a different focus.
“Can we think of a work of art as a thing of a thing?” he asked.
Schulz showed slides of a typewriter eraser sculpture that is on display at more than three locations in the U.S., including Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle. The typewriter ribbon was initially a mid 1960’s sketch by Claes Oldenburg. Oldenburg intended to challenge the notion that public monuments should be dedicated to historical figures or events. The artist’s selection of discredited or obsolete objects has roots in his childhood. As a youngster he enjoyed playing in his father’s office with a typewriter eraser.
The sculpture is now ironically on display in front of the former IBM Building in New York City. The irony, Schulz said, is that IBM made the typewriter ribbon obsolete by successfully marketing the personal computer.
Professor of anthropology Aletta Biersack discussed a recent trip she made to the highlands of Papua New Guinea. While there, Biersack learned the relationship between subject and object from a local tribe. The creed of the tribe was that the mind was used to instigate action and the body was needed to get the most of that action. Therefore, without embodiment, humans can’t express themselves.
Art history student Madison Weissberg summed up The Not-So-Secret Lives of Things symposium on Wednesday afternoon by saying that “an object can have its meaning changed based on the context it is being shown in.”