Good morning! Just quickly, let me share a few more photos of Joana Vasconcelos’ outsized, wrought-iron teapot, part of the Women House exhibition I saw in Paris last Thursday, at the Monnaie de Paris. I’m busy catching up at home, checking out my terrace garden (posted this on IG, if you’re curious), cuddling some beloved wee ones, having dinner with family, sorting bills, filing paperwork, doing laundry — you know, all the fun stuff!
I’m also working on Wednesday’s post, which will be another in theBy Invitation Only serieshosted by Daily Plate of Crazy. We won’t be taking a Fantasy Train Picnic together for this one, but we will be thinking about Travel — and the Rest of our lives. . . .
For now, though, I’m meeting my husband for lunch shortly after his plane lands — he left Rome a few days before I did, and he’s been in Portland since then working. I’ll share these photos with him and catch him up on the rest of my Italian and French travels and find out what he’s been up to, and we’ll begin making plans for the next few months, setting some general goals for 2018.
So I’ll leave you with these photos of Vasconcelos’ magnificent teapot — I love the subtle subversity of such a useful, quotidian, domestic item wrought so large, turned into art, placed — literally — “outside” its normal context (and, of course, rendered quite useless, thus, for the purpose of that little, ordinary object it refers to). . .
Thoughts?
Remember, if you’re in Paris, you still have a few days to catch this exposition before it closes, and after that, if you’re planning to be anywhere near Washington’s National Museum of Women in the Arts, the collection is there from March 9th to May 28th.
Bye for now, but let’s chat, ‘kay? Comments always welcome.
What a wonderful sculpture…the wire is so intricate it must have taken a long time to create this whimsical teapot. Hope you have a lovely lunch and I look forward to reading your next post…
Yes, such an intricate pattern for a wrought iron piece, isn't it?!
Oh, that is so delightful. The chain irritated me (and I realize it has to be there), but then, maybe it can be a political statement about teapots being tethered to women- ?
That does look like a chain, but if you look at the photo below, you can see that it's actually a 'door" opened downward, resting on the ground. See "Belle's comment re the cage (so your political statement resonates)
Wonderful sculpture,so many significations
Lacy-like wrought-iron,traditional craft in modern art,masculine-feminine…..charming!
There's no place like home,no?
Dottoressa
It's true, the piece invites so much interpretation — wonderfully evocative.
And ah, it is very good to be home!
Wow! Tension between that laciness of detail, the comfort of tea and the cage scale of the whole is unnerving.
Exactly — and a cage is definitely suggested — hard to see the door that opens on one side (see my comment to Duchesse, above), but it's there, and it does invite a walk-in. . . . eerily. . . So much of the exhibition spoke to the notion of the domestic as confinement (riffs on The Doll's House, then full-on 60s-70s feminism) but there was also some celebration of the domestic arts AS subversive. This piece really pulled it altogether — and although I get the political work that conceptual art did for feminism, I can't help but prefer that which offers a big aesthetic reward along with. . . as this does. (remembering our visit to Gathie Falk's show years ago at VAG
I just love that teapot – thank you for all the photos of it! Never too much art …
Glad (not surprised) you agree, Tiffany — never too much!
Beautiful! I love the teapot!
me too! đ
How beautiful. Very delicate and yet incredible strong.
Ali
Exactly.
Useless, but oh, so pretty and shapely. Perhaps that's enough?
It wouldn't be, for me, in a kitchen teapot , but it works here!
Now that's my kind of teapot! If only it could hold lapsang souchong tea… đ
Yes, that moody, smoky tea would match the power of the wrought-iron's intricate pattern. . .