Artist Post #6: Eleanor Antin

"A Hot Afternoon" from "The Last Days of Pompeii"
2001
Chromogenic print, 46 5/8 x 58 5/8 inches
"The Artist’s Studio" from "The Last Days of Pompeii"
2001
Chromogenic print, 46 5/8 x 58 5/8 inches
"The Golden Death" from "The Last Days of Pompeii"
2001
Chromogenic print, 58 5/8 x 46 5/8 inches
From "Before the Revolution"
1979
Installation at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York
Left: "Karsavina," masonite figure on wheeled base, 54 x 30 inches
Right: "Nijinsky," masonite figure on wheeled base, 58 x 15 inches

3 quotes:

"Essentially what I do is invent histories."

"You can find anything you want by going back to the past. You don’t even have to look. The metaphors start erupting all over the place. I've always loved the past because of the relations that I could make as an artist with the present. I don't remember this once it's finished, but I do all this enormous research. Once it's done, I kind of forget it and I don’t remember it too well. Otherwise I would be carrying a trash pail in my head... "

"...I have this love affair with the past. I wanted to be an ancient Greek. And one of the reasons I wanted to be an ancient Greek was because I would already be dead. And I was very aware of this. You know, even as a child you can be very logical. I was very aware that I would be dead. If I was dead I would no longer have to go through all of the disasters and difficulties of living."

-Eleanor Antin

Bio:

Eleanor Antin was born on Feb. 27, 1935 in the Bronx, New York City. Her parents immigrated from a tiny town in Poland. She went to the City College of New York to get a bachelors in creative writing and art. She moved to Southern California with her husband, David Antin, and taught at UC Irvine and UC San Diego.

Relation to my work:

Antin uses cutouts and created scenes in her work. She has a relation to the past that I also share. She talks about how when she was little she wanted to be an ancient Greek. She understood that if she were one then she would already be dead and this was the key. She wouldn't have to deal with the struggles of day to day life and she would have already lived an interesting life. I had the exact same sentiment when I was young. I thought I was going to die young but I also just wanted to have already lived a full interesting life. I never felt that this was a depressing or sad thing. I don't think that Antin's description of it is sad either. I think its something that just was. This is the first time I have ever identified with someone on this topic. It is also the way that Antin describes her relation to her work that deals with the past. Her reasons for creating the work is to understand her own obsession with the past. Its interesting that I am recalling the memories I had as a child and where my insecurities come from to create work. I hadn't considered the ideas of my interest in death as a child, or the understand of death, that was coming out in my work. Antin creates histories of important histories and I am recreating history of my own story.

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