Ugo Rondinone. Liverpool Mountain. 2018
Photo taken Liverpool, 2019
Boulders painted in Day-Glow paint.
Rondinone: “Stone and colour is something universal” (0:22) Tate. 2018 Ugo Rondinone-Liverpool Mountain | Tate. 1:41 https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/ugo-rondinone-liverpool-mountain
Day-Glow pigments are also used in a lot of industrial materials. I feel like this kind of colour is arresting, which is why it is so practical in industrial materials- people notice it. It’s also ironic.. I don’t know how to describe I have to think about this more and come back to it.
Ugo Rondinone, Seven Magic Mountains, Las Vegas, Nevada, 2016. Photography by Gianfranco Gorgoni, Image courtesy Art Production Fund and Nevada Museum of Art [retrieved from https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/11274/why-ugo-rondinone-is-revisiting-his-colourful-magic-mountain-sculptures]
After reading ONE article about Rodinone’s work by Holly Beck, I tried to pick out some of the themes I have been thinking about relating to colour and how it is perceived. What is interesting is Rodinone’s self described dualism in his work (Beck 2018) . That got me thinking of the dualism between stone- as something serious and intellectual and colour as something emotional and simple.
The large pieces of stone Beck compares to the ancient religious site of Hagar Qim in Malta an ancient remnant of civilisation. Stones stacked on top of each other from Stonehenge to cairns on nature trails are monuments- the etymology =to remind. Rodinone is Quoted: “the stone figure is something universal, you see it in every culture. It’s completely timeless.” (Beck 2018) (don’t Roman figure statues seem tasteless and gaudy when imagining them in their previous painted state)
The stone in this artwork consist of a duality is mystical and also rudimentary. Beck quotes Rodinone: “You see a stone figure, that’s what it is; you see a pile of colourful stones, that’s what it is.” (2018)
Colour in contrast is described as something more instinctive than intellectual or thoughtful. Beck begins the article by describing Rodinone’s past works which beginnig in the 1960′s varies in media, but has always been brightly coloured and summarises “[Rodinone] has always championed feeling over thought when encountering art.” Similarly the point (in post below) that Grosse made, that colour is classified as emotional rather than intellectual element in fine art. (I need to do some research on colour theory because there is a huge theoretical and practical knowledge when using colour -as light and as a substance- it’s not purely emotional in theory)
By utilising colour, Rodinone’s work is described as being universally understood and “heavily instagrammed” by young and old alike (Blake 2018) Just thinking again about my research into Ngai’s aesthetic categories and cute. I think about this use of colour on the stone and I think about the cyclical relationship of emotional affect observer to object. Stone which is heavy and usually found naturally coloured is artificially brightly coloured, imitates the qualities which the artist wishes to extract from the viewer playfulness joy- the power of mimesis.....
Beck, Holly. 2018.” Why Ugo Rondinone is Revisitting his Colourful Magic Mountain Sculptures”. AnOther, 28, October, 2018. https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/11274/why-ugo-rondinone-is-revisiting-his-colourful-magic-mountain-sculptures
