In a recent post, Five Frames Outside the High Museum 2020, I showed House III and said that I’d expose the deception of House III in a later post. This is that post. While we are waiting for the exposé, I’m going to showcase a couple of other works you can find outside the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.
The Invisible Man (Salute)
This is Invisible Man (Salute) by Glenn Kaino (House III, our theme sculpture is in the background) I approached Invisible Man with the “invisibility” aspect in mind. If you stood in front of the sculpture, you saw yourself reflected in polished steel. If you got off to the side a little the reflections of the surrounding area caused the sculpture to disappear. It was an interesting effect. The artist was thinking of a little more.
The artist, Glenn Kaino, wrote: Invisible Man (Salute) is a life-size likeness of Tommie Smith made of blackened aluminum and mirrored stainless steel. From the back, the sculpture is a detailed likeness of Smith’s tracksuit clad figure. from the front, visitors see themselves reflected in a mirrored plane.
The title alludes both to Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel about the social invisibility of black people in white society and to Smith’s feeling of invisibility while wearing sunglasses during competitions, interpreted by white media in the 1960s as nonconformist and provocative. Smith’s sunglasses recall Ellison’s protagonist, who wears sunglasses as a way of adapting to white society at the cost of his own identity.
The links in the artist’s statement were added by me.
The Shade (House III)
I featured The Shade by Auguste Rodin in an earlier post, Five More Frames from the High. The sculpture was a gift from the French Government in memory of the 122 members and friends of the Atlanta Art Association who died when their return flight from Orly Field in Paris crashed on takeoff.
The previous frame of The Shade was from a distance. This frame presents better detail of the figure. Note that House III, our theme installation, is tucked in under The Shade’s left hand.
House III – Invisible Man
This frame presents House III (Quelle surprise!) and Invisible Man in the The Woodruff Arts Center’s Carroll Slater Sifly Piazza outside the High. The view is what I’m calling the “back” side. It is the same side s of House III as shown in The Shade (above) and the opposite side as shown in Invisible Man (above) and in the earlier post, Five More Frames from the High. Looks like a brightly colored model house, doesn’t it.
House III (again)
Here is a closer view of the front side House III. The edge where the white front and the yellow side come together looks like it sticks out toward you. Now look down the vertical line that joins the two sides. The point where it sits on the ground looks like it might be farther away from you than the two corner points. Hmmmm.
I walked around the left hand side of the installation and took the following shot.
House III (Spoiler)
House III is actually just two panels painted on both sides. In this view, I’m shooting down one panel, the white one with the door in the “front” view, and you can see it makes an angle with the other panel. The two panels on the right make up the “front” view which is the view from near the Invisible Man in the The Woodruff Arts Center’s Carroll Slater Sifly Piazza. The panels on the left side create the “back” view which is the view from down by Rodin’s The Shade.
Cool, eh? Ok, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I promise I won’t bother you any more with House III! Still, it’s cool.
Bonus Frame – The Drop
It was a damp and dreary day when I last visited the High. The Shade’s finger had this drop waiting to fall…
These photos were taken with a Canon 6DII wearing a Canon 24-70mm f2.8 zoom lens. They were processed from RAW files using Darktable, a darkroom program available for Windoze, Mac, and Linux.
Interesting pictures but for art’s sake, I like The Drop.
I wanted to get the House III thing off my chest. So The Drop was my arty for this post.