ANDREW BELLATTI GREEN

This piece was completed as an exploration of ideas discussed in Michael Benedikt's advanced theory seminar, On Beauty.  Over the course of the semester, we examined and discussed questions regarding the existence, nature, experience, and power of beauty.  Questions of the relationship between Plato's triumvirate -- the good, the true, and the beautiful.  Questions of the universal and the particular, transient and eternal.  Questions of chaos and order, emotion and cognition, simplicity and complexity, divinity, authority, sublimity, and love.  My aim in this sculpture was simply -- or not so simply -- to make something beautiful.

Review by Ken Dineen 

Through experience, we develop expectations of the physical world and an intuitive understanding of physics. When this intuition is challenged we become intrigued. This is why we love magic. Andrew Bellatti Green approaches the realm of magic and challenges our physical intuitions with Tethered. The work is rather simple in form, yet powerful. The perfect balance achieved between the wooden totem and the weights to which it is tethered leads one to inquiry. “Would it fall if I picked up one of the weights?” “Is it purely in balance or is it fixed to the floor?” “Is this solid wood?” “Where does one string end and one begin?” Anytime we ask questions of this nature, we begin to try and answer them, which in turn leads to more questions. This is what Elaine Scarry refers to as “encouraging and inciting deliberation”.  We think we know the answers because the form appears so simple and elegant, yet we circle the work continually, taking a knee, standing over it, touching it when no one is looking, and we still aren’t certain what the answers are. However, we aren’t bothered by the unknowable, but rather excited. 

Often works of balance are only successful at certain scales. Too small and they feel delicate and easy. Too large and they become buildings, yet they have no function. However, I believe Green’s work could approach the realm of the sublime if increased in scale. One could imagine the work outside of the Menil, a totem the size of a live oak, tethered by ropes that have slowly dragged boulders across the lawn, leaving craters, paused in its slow descent. Or, perhaps the totem is the scale of a person, replicating Michael Jackson’s gravity defying lean dance.

Clearly, these scenarios are beyond the scope of this project, but they also point to the powerful nature of Tethered. The project is physically in equilibrium, but there also exists a figurative balance between being a beautiful object, and an intellectual puzzle.