THE SECOND LIFE OF EVERYDAY OBJECTS IN BARRY FELDMAN’S WORK


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Published: Jan 16, 2022
Keywords:
common object 1 avant-garde art 2 readymade 3 conceptual art4
Paraskevi Kertemelidou
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5124-3868
Randall Warner
Abstract

The following text makes special reference to the transfer of common industrial objects from the category of utility or even waste to autonomous works of art. The concept and image of the industrial object as garbage, by-product or as a thing without value, has occupied the artists of Cubism, Dada, Pop Art, Fluxus and Conceptual Art more recently (Cornell, Schwitters, Duchamp, Arman, Rauschenberg, Oldenburg, among many others). Barry Feldman, a New York artist and art historian, discovered through the permanent collection of MoMA avant-garde art and when he moved to Greece his New York experience remained alive for his work. Every industrial object finds its place in some of his three-dimensional compositions which he categorizes as boxes, portables, portholes and rockets. In wooden boxes, old or made by him, the worthless objects of our world are recycled and return to their autonomous existence.

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Author Biographies
Paraskevi Kertemelidou, International Hellenic University
Assistant professor at the International Hellenic University, Department of Interior Architecture and visiting professor at the School of Fine Arts, Department of Film Studies, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Randall Warner

Randall Warner earned a B.A. in Classical Studies, and was on the staff of Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington D.C. before following a career in the publishing industry in Boston and New York with Houghton Mifflin Company, Alfred A. Knopf (Random House), and Harper’s Magazine. She served for many years as Communications Director as well as Archivist at the American Farm School in Thessaloniki, Greece, where she currently lives in the city center. In parallel, she has edited and supervised production and publication of numerous works of history, poetry and fiction in English and Greek languages. A devoted museumgoer and observer of the cultural and artistic world of the city and country she calls home, she works as a freelance editor specializing in books.

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