The poetic object

My friend Sara Post has got me thinking about objects. She's curating a show entitled: "Lesson's from Things: Looking at Objects." She's taking her inspiration from the French, who, with the same excellence they apply to cooking and couture, study the history and development of common objects. (How otherwise can we imagine the writer Collette or the great designer, Coco Chanel? Words and fabric became great in their hands.) In order to wrap my mind around the topic I've dug out my copies of Bachelard's works, the French philosopher and phenomenologist. We read Bachelard's Poetics of Space in my graduate school art seminar and we were all practically levitating back in the early eighties as we read his words. Consider this passage for example: "...I studied a series of images which may be considered the houses of things: drawers, chests and wardrobes. What psychology lies behind their locks and keys! They bear within themselves a kind of esthetics of hidden things." Quite heady no? These days, we are often so focused on the practical side of things (and maybe that's my age speaking), that I think I could use some of this dreaming Bachelard speaks so highly of. So, before I go choosing an object, common or otherwise to render, I'll be picking up my Bachelard and spending some time daydreaming...