Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | M | Marvels & Tales

Corpus.

Article Excerpt
Corpus. By Ann Hamilton. Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. North Adams, MA. 2003-4.

"The secret power of the folktale lies not in the motifs it employs, but in the manner in which it uses them--that is, in its form," wrote Max Luthi in his introduction to The European Folktale. Corpus, a haunting, site-specific installation by artist Ann Hamilton commissioned by the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, eerily embodies the art of the folktale as enumerated by Luthi in so many of his writings, but particularly in the gorgeously persuasive volume The European Folktale. The half-magical, elliptically formal Corpus is divided into three spaces--a version of beginning, middle, and end--and turns you into the character of a sensual story. The story is familiar, but you've never seen it quite like this before. An oversized stairway leads to a glowing pink room of hope. Next, a tiny black room of threat. And at last, up toward a cathedral of light. Voices, paper, machines. An expectation of transformation.

The chapter headings of The European Folktale refer to the formal elements of the art of folktale: "One-Dimensionality," "Depthlessness," "Abstract Style," "Isolation and Universal Interconnection," "Sublimation and All-Inclusiveness." As literary interpretations of the aesthetics of fairy tales these have always struck me as perfect, and it is through their lens that I write my own novels. And they easily, at least to this viewer, refer to Hamilton's Corpus. When I stepped into the luminous, liturgical hall...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!