Two visual arts classes launch a cross-disciplinary exploration of the multiple

A giant baked potato is projected on the screen. A solitary, giant baked potato.

Which kind of makes you wonder what’s going on, since the title of the lecture you’re hearing is “One Two Many: Paradoxes of the Multiple in Art.” Multiple? As in more than one? So where are the rest of the potatoes?

As it turns out, they’re out there in the world, somewhere—just not here. Philosophy faculty member Karen Gover, who is presenting “One Two Many” as part of a larger examination of the multiple in art, explains: The projected photograph shows just one of dozens of resin replicas of baked potatoes mass-produced by the artist Claes Oldenburg in 1964. Created for an exhibition called The American Supermarket, their very purpose was to be sold—one by one—to gallery visitors.

Oldenburg’s potatoes, Andy Warhol’s classic soup cans, and other pieces of 1960s pop art are considered classic examples of the multiple in art—but they are far from its only expression. Just ask visual arts faculty members Barry Bartlett and Jon Isherwood. Bartlett, a ceramic artist, and Isherwood, a sculptor, are each teaching a class this term that addresses the multiple. What began as two classes has expanded—multiplied—into something much larger, something that draws on nearly every discipline taught at Bennington.

The two classes meet separately, but come together for lectures and group critiques.

Isherwood’s class, Multiples, asks “why and what it means to work in duplicate,” and gives students the opportunity to use a variety of materials in their creation of “artwork produced in quantity.” Bartlett’s class, called Appropriation, Repetition, Replication, is grounded in ceramics, and focuses more on concept. Students use found objects as a jumping-off point for creating collections of ceramic replicas, which are then manipulated and arranged into something that goes beyond their original inspiration.

The two classes meet separately, but come together for lectures and group critiques of the pieces the students have created. Throughout the term, Bartlett and Isherwood have invited faculty from other disciplines to speak on how the multiple is expressed in their particular fields. Psychology faculty member David Anderegg lectured on multiple personality disorder. Literature faculty member Mark Wunderlich worked with students to consider repetition in poetry. Music faculty member Tom Bogdan taught about song cycles in medieval and contemporary music, and led the students (and teachers) in singing rounds and other voice exercises based in repetition.

"The words are almost pulling off the postcards and disappearing..."

Studying visual arts at Bennington involves a serious focus on creating new work, and these two classes are no exception. On the first day of class, after a brief lecture on the history of multiples, Bartlett and Isherwood sent their students straight back out of the classroom with a mission. They were to go out onto the campus and into town, and come back with objects to “jumpstart our investigations,” as Travis Kline ’09 puts it. Kline eventually seized on postcards as his object of choice, and began casting hundreds of them in porcelain. Soon he was even making photographic prints on them using liquid emulsion. On some, he writes broken fragments of sentences; others he leaves blank. For one in-class critique, “I set up a desk-type scene where somebody has been trying to communicate using these postcards. The words are almost pulling off them and disappearing, and you can see the person’s frustration through the multiple postcards, the repeated attempts.”

Jasmine Raymond ’08 took an existing mold—“this kitschy hen figurine, like you might see in your grandmother’s kitchen”— and proceeded to cast a series of porcelain chickens that she alters and adds to, changing their meaning. “Chickens remind me of home,” she says. “They feel motherly to me.” So she decided to use her “kitschy hen” to examine ideas of feminine stereotypes, often in humorous ways. One of her pieces consists of a pristine white chicken with a wedding veil set next to a black-glazed chicken in fishnets.

"It’s not about you alone; it’s also what’s around you. It makes you think outside yourself.”

Students from both classes, as well as from Donald Sherefkin’s Prefab class (an architecture course), contributed work to a gallery exhibition called Multiples, which went up in Bennington’s Usdan Gallery. Once again, faculty work from a variety of disciplines, including dance, biology, music, physics, and several others, added to the mix. Gover’s “One Two Many” lecture, given on the night of the gallery opening, was just one of several presentations. And visitors to the gallery could view the work of experienced artists alongside that of burgeoning ones—for instance, physics faculty member Jason Zimba’s piece in which a series of screens represented the trajectory of a bullet.

All that collaboration and convergence is a far cry, one could argue, from the lonely baked potato. “The great thing about looking at multiples,” Bartlett says, “is that it begs the question of your shared humanity. It’s not about you alone; it’s also what’s around you. It makes you think outside yourself.”

More:

• Visual arts at Bennington
• Spring 2007 Curriculum
• More Postcards from the Classroom

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