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An analysis of Goldsworthy's creations against the background of the development of contemporary art
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‘Sie wissen es nicht, aber sie tun es’ Karl Marx
A bright fringe of red shining leaves around heavy boulders, a row of leaves changing from greeny white over yellow to dark green, pebbles concentrically arranged from big to small and from dark to light around a black hole, icicles frozen together into a spiral: this is only a pick at random from the meanwhile very popular creations of Goldsworthy.
TECHNICAL BEAUTY
Goldsworthy’s creation is governed by the principle of the elementary.
Elementary is already his choice of the materials. Goldsworthy processes ‘raw materials’ in the literal sense of the word: materials as they are found in nature. That has certainly been, in primeval times, the starting point of human production as such. But gradually nature itself is processed before being subject to further manipulation. No longer the fleece of the sheep is washed and cut: it is the wool that is sheared, combed, spun before entering the fabric as a thread. The same goes for trees, that are sawn up into planks before being transformed into a piece of furniture; for the grain, that after having been submitted to cultural selection is previously ground to flour before being baked into bread; for the clay that is previously moulded into the shape of bricks and baked before entering the masonry. Not so with Goldsworthy: his colours are not just squeezed out of a tube. It are the very colours you just find like that in an autumn forest. They are all over the place.
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