holidays – Found in [GW] Collection

Spot any supernatural occurrences on campus lately? Witness any paranormal activity during your lectures? Ghost problems at your residence hall? Who you gonna call? Does Ghostbusters immediately come to mind, or the crew of Ghost Adventures? Think again. Artist, sculptor, and draughtswoman, Alice Aycock, can come to your rescue.

Alice Aycock’s captivation with the many ghosts that inhabit contemporary work that involve technology, physics, and the contrast between mind and body, led her to create the site-specific sculpture, How to Catch and Manufacture Ghosts: Collected Ghost Stories from the Workhouse. Aycock was inspired by devices and apparatus found in history books from the 18^th and 19^th centuries and claims that her piece is “…her interpretation of the history of invention…”[1] Although Aycock’s device constructed of metal, glass, steel and wood was dismantled in the early 1990s, if you are having problems with the paranormal, a number of prints and drawings were created that document the work and its process with diagrams and quotes, and one drawing is a part of the GW Collection.

Pencil and ink sketch of Aycock's sculpture, How to Catch and Manufacture Ghosts. — Alice Aycock, *A Spinning and Dunking Device from How to Catch and Manufacture Ghosts*, 1980, ink and pencil on mylar. Gift of Shirlee and Howard Friedenberg, 1986 (P.86.13.2). *© The Artist or the Artist’s Estate*

Aycock’s medium of work ranges from architectural drawings to sculptures to photo documentation. Growing up with a father who owned a construction company influenced Aycock’s interest in constructing sculptures and creating drawings based off of architecture. As an artist, she strives to create a transcendental experience for her audiences and what she calls the “glance of eternity”, an allusion to Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of eternal return. In an interview with White Hot Magazine, Aycock expands on this, by stating that art that has this effect on you keeps you coming back to revisit the piece. [2] She compares it to that gasping moment one experiences when a wave comes in and takes you under. If you are interested in experiencing the “glance of eternity,” you can find her works in many collections aside from the GW Permanent Collection, such as the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She also has public works displayed in various locations throughout the United States, among them are New York, Washington D.C. and Sacramento.

If you are in need of a remedy for your supernatural snag, Alice Aycock has you covered. Despite the sculpture of her work, How to Catch and Manufacture Ghosts: Collected Ghost Stories from the Workhouse, no longer being in existence, her drawing can provide you with detailed insights on how to take care of your pesky paranormal problems. With that said, put down your cellphone and your television remote! Forget about the outrageous and bizarre methods used by the Ghostbusters and the crew of Ghost Adventures and instead take a few pointers from Alice Aycock’s print to resolve any supernatural occurrences you may face on campus!

This post was was written by former Gallery Assistant Taylor Schmidt (BA 2017). It was originally published on the former Luther W. Brady Art Gallery “Found in Collection” Blog in October 2013 and is the first of a number of previous posts we will be highlighting “From the Archives”.

Happy Halloween!

[1] Alice Aycock. Institute for Research in Art at the University of Southern Florida.

[2] Nietzche’s concept of eternal return is the idea that events recur again and again infinitely. Aycock notes this concept in hopes that her art has an eternal return impact on her audienc

As the leaves continue to change color and the weather gets chilly, here at the Luther W. Brady Gallery we have been enjoying the start of fall and looking forward to Halloween! But if you have been having trouble getting into the spooky spirit (and even if you haven’t), this painting in the GW Collection (which has been exhibited multiple times at both the Dimock and Brady Art Galleries!) will certainly give you the chills.

Painting of 4 figures around a pool. Mostly dark sky with trees and wall behind and pool in foreground. — Sidney Goodman, *The Pool*, 1965, oil on canvas. Gift of Dr. Louis Wener, 1969 (P.68.6). © The Artist or the Artist’s Estate

In 1965, Sidney Goodman completed his eerie oil painting, The Pool. At first glance, you may think this painting seems more like a summer scene than a fall, but look closer! You will notice it is filled with figures who appear to be not quite human. The man in the pool has only his head above the water with blurry shapes instead of eyes. At the table another man is sitting still and staring forward at the viewer with an empty expression. The lifeguard is perched on the tower with her face cloaked in shadows. And perhaps most unsettling is the woman in the chair who has no head, but still seems to be reading. Pitch blackness stretches out behind all of them, giving the scene a contradictory mood as the lighting at the pool appears to imply it is the middle of the day.

The artist of this piece, Sidney Goodman, was an American realist painter who rose to prominence in the 1960s. He was born in 1936 in Philadelphia and was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. Goodman attended the Philadelphia College of the Arts before enlisting in the army for a year and then taking up a career teaching art in universities. All the while he continued to paint and test out more experimental themes and styles in his works. He was well-known for both figure and landscape paintings done in the American Realist style which he often imbued with a metaphysical quality. This month is the perfect time to explore more of his works which have been described “disturbing” and “apocalyptic.” Goodman himself said about his work that “I sometimes paint a realistic picture in order to justify logically something unreal.” And this quality of his work is clearly on display in The Pool.

As viewers, we are drawn into the painting under the impression that it is a normal scene of a day at the pool. It appears as a mundane moment that many of us have likely experienced before. Only upon closer inspection do we notice the inconsistencies and peculiarities of the picture that give it a sense of unease. The fact that it is these small, less obvious details that give this piece its disturbing tone leads us to pause and reflect on what else goes on around us everyday that we may not notice. Keep an eye out for a glimpse of unreality this month. Happy Halloween!

-Alys Gross (BA ’23)

Tag: holidays

Paranormal Problems?

Sidney Goodman’s The Pool