Progressive Wednesday

Kiki Smith leaves me fantastically uncomfortable.

May 19th, 2007 by Matt

I’d seen the artwork of Kiki Smith — in the MoMA, the Guggenheim, and the MFA — long before I knew anything about her. It wasn’t until I stumbled on (or did it stumble on me?) the remarkably revelatory PBS series Art: 21. If you’re any kind of contemporary art lover, I’d highly recommend laying down the necessary cabbage to snag yourself the DVD of this program. ( I recommend Seasons One and Two over Three.)

In Art: 21, Kiki Smith kind of creeps me out with her artwork and amazes me with her intellectual and creative curiosity. She goes out of her way to shape-shift from one media to another — screenprints, videos, photogravure, linocut, lithographs, drawings, books, collage, and sculptures, both big and small, made from paper, wood, bronze, glass…. In the film, we see her learning new techniques of various crafts.

(You can see short clips of her from the series by clicking here. And you can read an interview of her by clicking here.)

But there is one Smith piece in particular that I can’t shake from my skull. It’s called “Born,” and it’s a bronze sculpture of deer giving birth to a woman. It is — in one breath — shocking and lovely. I’m lucky enough to see it in person from time to time at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, and you can see a photo of it yourself by clicking here.

What endears her to me even more is her chutzpah: her work doesn’t shy away from raising issues of gender, race, our relationship with the natural world, and violence towards women.

It is not an overstatement on the part of artist Chuck Close when he writes in an issue of Time that: “[Smith puts] her unique and personal stamp on everything — thrilling audiences from the most sophisticated art-world insiders to the casual gallery goer. She is one of our greatest artists.” Her work does what the best contemporary artwork does: it reflects our culture and creates it at the same time. See a small body of her work for yourself by clicking this sentence.

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Below you’ll find a 3-minute excerpt from her video “Jewel”: