auto-destruction

 The moment this project was assigned, I recalled a conversation I recently had with a good friend of mine, a non-UNCSA visual arts student. I played La Valse by Maurice Ravel for her, an orchestral work in which a (relatively) traditional waltz unravels into chaos over about thirteen minutes. After listening to it, she showed me James A. M. Whistler's painting, Nocturne in Black and Gold. I have not been able to confirm this, but she told me that, because Whistler used certain chemicals in his paint, some of his paintings are not displayed upright for more than a few hours to keep the paint from running.

Both of these works of art are self-destructive, albeit in different ways. Ravel carefully constructed La Valse with every intention of having the piece implode on itself. Whistler may have just been trying to keep his paint wet for as long as possible. I find the idea of turning a medium against itself intriguing. I designed this project to not only destroy itself, but to also create itself (at least theoretically). I have taken the very means by which one traditionally uses watercolors (the addition of water to powdered paint), deconstructed it, and pushed it to an extreme.

I rubbed the dried pigment into the watercolor paper using both my hands and a palette knife. I then slowly dripped water onto the paper. At first, this “makes” the piece from the perspective of how watercolors typically work. If the water is allowed to completely fill the container that the paper is resting in, it should completely wash the paint from the paper, leaving perhaps only a grayish stain.

The non-art implications of this are familiar to any self-aware American. In this country where bigger is supposed to be better, we are beginning to realize that such a tendency toward excess may be our undoing.