An internet meme raises questions about collage, but is it collage?
This news item appears in Kolaj #14. SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj Magazine or Get a Copy of the Issue to get the wonderful world of Kolaj delivered to your mailbox.
This fall, the Internet was overtaken, briefly by, how do we put this delicately, um, images of beautiful landscapes gently being interrupted by men’s testicles.
The Huffington Post, Mashable, the United Kingdom’s Metro, and dozens of other media outlets ran giggly stories about the phenomenon. We didn’t think much of it, these things come and, before you know it, we’re all back to looking at Hipster Kitty and Grumpy Cat. But it occurred to us that Nutscapes had particular relevance to Kolaj’s mandate.
We asked ourselves, Is this collage? A nutscape is essentially a juxtaposition of images, an unexpected intervention on an image of a landscape. And we decided to investigate. Here is what we learned: Nutscapes, the Tumblr blog, is the property of Providence, Rhode Island artist Clancy Philbrick, a talented man with a history of tongue-in-cheek interventions. Philbrick once added a pile of blue poop to Lawrence Argent’s massive blue bear sculpture, I see what you mean, at The Colorado Convention Center. He painted a rock jutting out of the water on the Connecticut shoreline to look like a giant brain (Brain Rock). We asked Philbrick about these ballsy photographs and he spoke to us about how Nutscapes interrupt traditional landscape photography, subvert compositions, and “shift the plane through which we view these landscapes while also squarely placing the photographer and, through the anonymity of the testicles, the (male) viewer, within the frame.” Are Nutscapes collage? We’re still not sure. But we do believe Philbrick’s explanation could be applied to a number of collage works and that is worth noting. You can read more about Nutscapes and weigh in yourself on Kolaj’s website.
Images: Courtesy of www.nutscapes.com and Twitter @nutscapes
