Blog Assign. #7 - Olympic Winners Platform, Coryn L.

During our tour at the Walker Art Center, I hadn't come across the piece entitled, Olympic Winners Platform until the very last second. In those minutes of profound study, the work itself is displayed in a tightly knit yet extremely idealistic fashion.

Olympic Winners Platform, by Tetsumi Kudo (1970-1972) is a 3D post modern work that intertwines the idea of 'hopeful metamorphisis'. The use of aethestic human body parts, a bird cage, and one unified platform is difficult for me to understand and proposes a beautifully threatening idea.

As taken from the Walker Art Center website,

"Olympic Winners Platform was first exhibited at an art festival accompanying the 1972 Munich Olympics. In addition to the universally known Olympic logo, the other graphic symbol represents the brand specific to the Munich edition of the games. Many of the props were repurposed from the film Mire (1970), for which Kudo served as art director. Treating the alienation of modern man, the film was based on a work by absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco, who ended up clashing with Kudo on the set. The face and body parts seen here represent Ionesco himself: the decomposing fragments of the anti- humanist European intellectual ironically adorn a platform associated with human tenacity and a “community” of nations."

While much of the use of human body parts look chaotic on the platform, the platform itself stands as a 'unity' object, bringing everything in the piece together. The idea of all the nations coming together to participate in a worldwide event also adds to the ingenious idea of unity.

I think what really drew me into this piece was the idea of the antique bird cage sitting above the structure, with the two removed human hands grasping the cage as if clawing to get the plasticine birds inside. The idea of lost freedom comes to mind, of prison, of wanting something you can never have. I love the use of colors in this piece - mixing a sort of bathroom blue with the grotesque rotting green of human skin.

The work may better be understood looking at Kudo's background. After a career in early post-war Japan, he moved to Paris in 1962 where it was said he performed a number of absurd rituals in multidisciplinary events in front of an audience. He is seen as a highly individualistic sculptor and who's work can be described as eccentric, haunting, with the combining use of 'day-glo' colors.

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Sources:

Olympic Winners Platform, http://www.artsconnected.org/resource/90397/olympic-winners-platform-pollution-olympics-pollution-game-l-art-pressentiment

Olympic Winners Platform, http://collections.walkerart.org/item/object/12381