Read Catalog - Charles Simonds

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Mythologies The Mythologies embody the basic ingredients and relationships of all Charles Simonds's work. They set up his fundamental orderings of man as first born from the earth, body as man's first home, and then in turn, man's imprinting of the earth with his physical form and from this, shaping his dwellings. Implicit in the Mythologies is the intertwining of two of Simonds's essential creative forces: growth and construction, the natural and the built. Birth, Body - Earth, and Landscape - Body - Dweliing are films of rituals enacted by the artist. In Birth Simonds, buried in the earth, symbolically is reborn from it, thus establishing earth as mother and also implying a sexual relationship to clay and earth as material. In Body -- Earth the artist, as first man, uses the movements of his body to contour the earth, creating a small-scale landscape within the larger 40 one, giving back to the earth the shape and scale of himself. In Landscape - Body -- Dwelling Simonds transforms himself into a landscape with clay, then goes on to construct a fantasy dwelling on his body, on the earth. With the contours and substance of his own body as landscape, Simonds establishes a unity of body I earth and house/home. Crucial to an understanding of the Mythologies is the fact that in addition to their existence as films, they are rituals enacted by the artist for his imaginary civilizations. They have been enacted more than once. As the only existing "Little Person," Charles Simonds has done these rituals not only to create works of art, but as a kind of personal experience central to his art. The actual experience of the unities he generates in Mythologies is spiritually refreshing.
41 Plate I. Birth, 1970. Photographs.
Page 3 and 4: ! I - I 'vi r ....--' I \ \
Page 5 and 6: Exhibition Tour Museum of Contempor
Page 7 and 8: Introduction Reunited for this exhi
Page 9 and 10: y Clive Phillpot, Librarian of the
Page 11 and 12: the question, just as formal analys
Page 13 and 14: miniature landscapes into an instru
Page 15 and 16: source. As has been noted in anothe
Page 17 and 18: Certainly Simonds seeks to undergo
Page 19 and 20: 4 "I think of the dwellings in a ve
Page 21 and 22: I9 Bib. I I978, Simonds and Molderi
Page 23 and 24: 33 Bristow, The Sex Life of Plants,
Page 25 and 26: miniature landscape and dwellings w
Page 27 and 28: uildings into a community park and
Page 29 and 30: Simonds: Life Built to Dream. Dimen
Page 31 and 32: toms, justified their constructions
Page 33: Three Peoples By Charles Simonds Th
Page 36 and 37: gradually deposited in front of it
Page 41 and 42: Plate 2. Body - Earth, 1971. Stills
Page 43 and 44: Plate 4· Dwelling, Dublin, 1980. 4
Page 46 and 47: Plate 8. Charles Simonds building D
Page 48 and 49: Plate 11. Dwelling, Kunsthaus Zuric
Page 50 and 51: Plate 14. People Who Live in a Circ
Page 52 and 53: Plate 16. Labyrinth, 1972. Collecti
Page 54 and 55: Plate 18. Gate of Souls, 1981, deta
Page 56 and 57: u D ," Temenos, Birthscape These in
Page 58 and 59: Niagara Gorge, La Placita, Park Mod
Page 60 and 61: Plate 2 7. Proposal for a Stanley T
Page 62: Floating Cities Charles Simonds's F
Page 65 and 66: The third landscape also shows us t
Page 67 and 68: Number 10 (pl. 41) From the first v
Page 69 and 70: containing seeds which anticipated
Page 71 and 72: *Plate 33. Number 2 (Untitled), 197
Page 73 and 74: *Plate 35· Number 4 (Untitled), 19
Page 75 and 76: •Plate 37. Number 6 (Untitled), 1
Page 77 and 78: *Plate 39. Number 8 (Untitled), 197
Page 79 and 80: *Plate 41. Number ro (Ritual Tower)
Page 81 and 82: *Plate 43· Number 12 (Untitled), 1
Page 83 and 84: *Plate 45· Stone Sprout, 1981. Col
Page 85 and 86: One-Person Exhibitions I9?S-?6 Cent
Page 87 and 88: Commissions, Projects, Films Commis
Page 89:
Art Institute of Chicago. Small Sca
Page 92 and 93:
Knight, C. "Some recent art and an
Page 94:
Museum of Contemporary Art Board of
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