Object, 1936
Meret Oppenheim’s 1936 surrealist sculpture Object embodies the surrealist strategy of combining things that don’t belong together. The bold change of the surface on the tea cup reframed a familiar object into an uncanny and visually tactile artwork. Through this juxtaposition, subjects such as the power of the subconscious and civil versus wild behavior emerge, not to mention, one’s lips are agitated just looking at it.
Using Object as a jumping off point, the research process of various artists’ use of constructed surfaces were studied toward greater understanding of their function in the piece. Some pieces were observed in person during a field trip to Chicago where we visited exhibitions that had notable surfaces to observe. We visited a series of galleries and museums (including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contempoary Art, Chicago). Lisa also traveled to New York in May and recorded surfaces from various museums and galleries. Other artists were studied through printed and digital materials. Through this study, Walcott and Funston created a code book for the research where a set of surface categories were developed and applied to note function of the surface in the work.
