Tips (the ends of things)
A visual essay concerning objects that come to an end. A work-in-progress.
Random Ideas
Really random ideas. Collect them, then put them together later.
The tip as a kind of climax. As in the steeple of a church. Or a cross.
added Feb. 12, 2003
Tips seem to be lacking in the modern and contempoary periods in comparison to the faraway past.
Perhaps tips are old-fashioned or antique. Perhaps there is a conflict beween the present culture and the need to decorate/differentiate what happens at the end of an object. There is not the same elaboration of the tip (or even the use of the tip) in our time or in the era of the modern movement. Modernist furniture and architecture are noted for their boxed off edges. Parellel lines. No decoration. The sides, beginning and end of a shape are all rectangles. And contemporary architecture, furniture, objects seem to be smoothed out, aero-dynamic, aqua-dynamic space age shapes. Even Bilboa which has a more tolerant attitude towards the decorative, (the non-functional) has no tips, is a long flowing shape, nothing making a transition to a point or to an end. Cars are the same. No hood ornaments, no fins, nothing poking our of the grill.
A corvette covered with tips. (added Feb.2004)
The lights on the back of a corvette protrude and taper.
Cars seem to be smoothed out as well, every shape transitioning into another. Except for the boxy milataristic cars - the hummvies and various SUV's that seem to be prepared for battle. Decoration has been replaced by defense. They use a wide variety of shields, gaurds, bumpers, protecting shapes as their form of decoration. (A need to elaborate on the shapes of protection/shields).
An humvee
An humvee decorated with protective gear.
A Range Rover.
Maybe even tv antennas are on the way out with the advent of cable and the internet. I am sure there are examples of the tip in contemporary life but it seems to be used less and when used it refers to a bygone era, a romantic view of the past e.g. perfume bottles.
The contradictory qualities of a tip. A tip is both sensitive, the most sensitive part of the body, the part of the body that finds out about the world and returns information but penetration, poking, slicing are also characteristics of tips.
The knife and the fingers, the penis and the stamen. So the tapered decoration at the end of a tip can be seen as a welcoming of the air around it and a cutting into it. Whereas the box (rectilinear prism) does not seem to have this relation to the space around it. Neither aggressive (probing) nor responsive. Neutral in a way. Even. Regular.
Tips, an area of extra attention. Like windows, doors, altars but not like walls - the long expanse, an undifferentiated plane.
One of the main qualities, characteristics of a tip is tapering. (Need picture of a table leg and of reitveld's chair). The tip is a kind of end. But not all ends are tips.
Tips emanate from limbs.
The trunk or torso is really the opposite of a tip. Even though a tip is the end of something, it's opposite is not the beginning but the middle, the center. Tips are eccentric.
Tips are mostly "outsides" not an inside. Boxes on the other hold, contain, their function is to put something inside of them. Though I think I am wrong here. What about the penis or the bee stinger - something inside waiting to come out.
I was trying to think of another opposite. Thought of the cave. But the "cave" is less of a concept, less abstract, refers to something more specific. On the other end of the spectrum was "void" the abstraction used by sculptors to talk of emptiness, what is not there, holes, negative space, hollows. And going through the list I thought that "hollows" and "holes" are concepts more like "tips" than "cave". Intermediate abstractions.
Intermediate abstractions. This is important. Kind of the idea of this exercise, exploration (if you will). A move away from the almost complete abstraction of "mass, volume, void, surface, shape". The all-inclusive abstractions.
Multiplicity of tips. Bad reproduction of a fragment of a drawing in progress.