Entry 50

Janine Antoni's Saddle

 image taken from: http://www.pbs.org/art21/images/janine-antoni/saddle-2000?slideshow=1

"I think the startling thing for me was that I made a ghost of myself. When I’m with the piece I feel the absence, both of my body and the cow. It wasn’t necessarily something I intended for the piece, to be so ghostlike. It’s transparent...there’s nothing underneath, although the shape so articulates the figure. It’s a kind of push-pull that you feel, of such a presence of the figure. For me, the shocking thing was to realize that I’ve made a piece about the death of the cow, my own death."
- Janine Antoni

I often write about how light helps us place an object in a scene or how it helps give an object or scene a style and mood. Janine Antoni's Saddle is a perfect example of how light helps us tell how thick and object is and how much weight it has. Despite depicting a crouching full grown-human being this piece feels incredibly light, even without knowing what material it is made out of, the sculpture appears as though it could easily be toppled. This is because, as Antoni states, we can perceive the absence of a body due to the material's transparency. The light pacing through the object tells us that there isn't anything underneath the cloth, it is the light which gives Saddle its ghostlike appearance.