E. Bagatelles
As a small child, I was familiar with at least some of the piano bagatelles by Beethoven from my mother’s playing. I had no knowledge until very much later of other composers who wrote pieces of the same general name. The term has been used in music for centuries to denote a ‘trifle’ – a slight and insignificant piece with a certain innocence. The title should not always be considered guileless.
Around 2009 I discovered the bagatelles of Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov. Two years later, I decided to make twelve much smaller and simpler models than I had formerly; my friend and collaborator the late Andrea Mina – maker of very small powerful models – was gravely ill, and I felt a need to reduce the size of my models even if I could not approach his. My exploratory makings finally commenced in April 2012. In each model, the effort would be to deal with a constrained array of ideas. What evolved were two sets, each of six models. Set one explores means of shaping Six Places for Considered Reading, while set two gives form to Six Places for Moments of Optimism. Most places in the first set are stable and calm with an obvious reader’s seat. Optimism is required in the places of the second set, as they are variously unstable, dangerous, threatening, or flighty; a visitor requires optimism to remain, sometimes even to enter.
What follows is an account of the ideas and concerns in each of them, and something of their generation and construction.
To begin, a dozen bases were cut from a piece of wood rescued from a timber yard off-cut bin. All my saw cuts (both horizontal and vertical) were at small angles. No base is the same as any other. Predominantly, they are within three millimetres of being 75mm by 70mm, but there are two about 64mm on one side, and one is only 59mm. The heights diverge only a millimetre from 50mm. There was overlap in the construction of models within set 1, but little with the set 2 models. Throughout, they were considered as two divisions of the one whole set and informed one another. My intention was to make these smaller models simpler than their predecessors. In fact, many of them appear simpler, or at least easier, to construct than was the case.
Set 1: Six Places for Considered Reading
23 A Place for Considered Reading 5
In a white Barcelona chair, this reader is surrounded by distracted echoes of the Mies van der Rohe German Pavilion at the Barcelona International Exposition of 1929 (in its reconstructed form completed 1986). The initial provocation for this model was a paperweight salvaged from my late mother’s study. While it was strongly reminiscent of the Alpine green marble walls in the Barcelona Pavilion, it first needed a cork base and a decorative medallion removed. The steps, the red drapes, the column, the roof, and the chair followed directly in a re-arrangement to evoke, rather than parallel, the pavilion. The water, glass and sculpture, some of the most recognisable elements, were not incorporated, yet I imagine it is a straightforward evocation. This raises the question faced by many artists, writers, designers and makers: how will the clues, (allusions, if you like) be read by others. The ancillaries to this, concern the inclusion of sufficient allusions as well as avoidance of veering into (feared) literality.
Base: 77mm x 73mm. Model: 85mm x 74mm. Height: 102mm.
Initiated: September 2012. Constructed: 25 October 2012 – 2 February 2013.