1. What is Bigger Big Chair?

Bigger Big Chair is 12 feet tall and 6 feet wide. The sculpture looks like a giant chair. It was created from 2004 to 2006 by David Ireland. He tried to express the importance and weight of education through the chair.The Bigger Big Chair become his last work before he passed away.  The sculpture went through multiple of renovation before being placed between Fair haven college and Buchanan Towers. David Ireland wanted to place it in front of Wilson Library. But because of its massive weight of 16000 pounds and size, the proposal was rejected.

It is said that the chair is representing education and learning, it is also stands for distinction and authority. Some people say the chair makes you stop and observe a reality.

2. Who is David Ireland?

David Ireland was born in Bellingham, Washington on August 30th, 1930. He said ‘You can’t make art by making art’. It means art is live in it and create an entire experience not only out of the final presented piece but very much the process as well. David Ireland uses very ordinary items and make it extraordinary raw materials. It is because many of his art sculptures are formed from the same kind of materials. Ireland has these “childish” habits that go into his art work and bring the participant more interested. David’s work lets people decide what they see by giving them necessary tools.

3. What is other work that Ireland created?

Ireland shows an artist fluent in the language of conceptual art grounded in everyday material like concrete, woodland metal. It is the work called ‘Angel-Go-Around’, seen in Walter and Mcbean Galleries, SanFrancisco Art Institute. It is made in 1996. Supported with only yellow strap, looped across her waist, the angel flies precariously through the air. This exhibition is a carefully selected representation of the practices, but not better than Ireland’s insistence on an art like time and place. It is the art that appears as if for the first time, the world we have always had about us but ignored, as an artist Allan Kaprow said. It has strength and Ireland is demystifying the labor of the artist. He is using the material conditions of each object, where and how of every action.

4. What is conceptual art?

It started middle 1960s. Conceptual art is an art that consists of ideas, written down, carried in your head. It directly challenged the idea that the art’s definition is that an object of visual pleasure. Conceptual art is first an art of questions. Conceptual art continues to question about definition of art itself and fundamental questions like politics, the media and society. It influenced subsequent art, and made big contribution to the history of ideas. Apart from other art branches, philosophy was quite an important source for the development of conceptual art.

 

5. Who is other conceptual artist who used chair?

Joseph Kosuth has a work called “One and Three Chairs”.Kosuth was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1945. In the work “One and Three Chairs”, he took picture of chair in three ways which is as a manufactured chair, as a photograph, and as a dictionary entry for the word “chair”.  It makes us confront with the fact that we use words to explain and define visible and ordinary things. “Is this art?” “Which representation of chair is most accurate?” These question is what Kosuth want us to think about. He is the artist who is in the beginnings of conceptual art. He traveled abroad throughout Europe and North America . He was questioning the use of imagery in telling meaning and ideas and exploring the use of language. He studied anthropology and philosophy. After that he began to create art as a pure idea and meaning. He thinks he can use art for exploration of the meaning of language.

 

 

Photo, description; Saki Yoshikawa

Reference

Sachs, Danica Willard. “David Ireland.” Art Practical, Art Practical, 7 Feb. 2016, www.artpractical.com/review/david-ireland/.

Winn, Steven. “For Conceptualist David Ireland, Home Is Where the Art Is.” SFGate, San Francisco Chronicle, 10 Jan. 2016, www.sfgate.com/art/article/For-conceptualist-David-Ireland-home-is-where-6740863.php.

Osborne, Peter. Conceptual Art. Phaidon Press, 2011.

 

“CONCEPTUAL ART EXAMPLES – IT’S ABOUT THE IDEA.” Widewalls, www.widewalls.ch/conceptual-art-movement-and-conceptual-art-examples/conceptual-art-examples-its-about-idea/.