Lessons in Art

Ryan A. Mihalyi Arizona Daily Wildcat Diane Mansfield Colligan's work "The Abstraction of Our Minds Adorn" is part of "The Relevance of Beauty," a show that combines her artwork with Charles Gillispie's poetry.

"The Relevance of the Beautiful" is an exploration of what is seen as beautiful in Western art. Scattered among the frames are recreations of Greek sculpture, early Renaissance portraits, Impressionist paintings and architecture. Colligan has an obvious love of architecture; many of the pictures are, in fact, seen through doorways or windows. The pictures are layered, with the doorways or buildings hanging in front of, or behind, other parts of the work, sometimes casting shadows and creating a realistic 3D effect.

Gillispie took the influence of Colligan's technique of mixing images from famous and influential artwork and wrote collage poems, taking words from books and fitting them together to create interesting sounding pieces, which he himself admits don't make much sense. But because of that, the poems are perfect complements to the pictures; unexpected combinations of already-established art are taken out of context and, therefore, redefined.

In one piece, "Miss La La," a trapeze artist from a Degas painting hovers in front of an orange and pink Georgia O'Keefe haze. Next to it hangs a poem with the same title by Gillispie: "Casual as a sumptuary law, Miss La La is comfortably clothed in her refusal to speak the pluperfect, or God forbid, the imperfect." The painting, while still reminiscent of the original Degas, suddenly has more motion and insight. It's like a children's storybook; the text enhances the pictures and vice versa.

"All'Angelo" is a piece that incorporates a Byzantine-esque fresco and the facade of an Italian building. The building is worn and old, but a neon sign hangs over a doorway. Behind the building is the fresco - a typical medieval panel complete with angels and people drowning in fire. The poem, "Chapel of the Fool," beside it reads, "Here in this hermitage twenty-five monks stare at one another and eat cabbages."

Like in an art class when students recreate the works of the masters in order to learn their technique, Colligan's recycling style recreates the meaning of the old works and justifies its purpose in the world of art even more. The relevance, then, is that even though art from antiquity has been around collecting ages of dust, the basic forms and ideas are still what is regarded as beautiful. They can be molded and regenerated in different mediums, like through the art of Colligan and the poetry of Gillispie. In other words, it's a multimedia art history lesson.