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Lot Essay
'Experience in a train, when, for no reason, I suddenly felt myself surrounded by hundreds of ears trying to assault me. This personal episode, however, wouldn't be any precise answer to why I make ears. I can hardly say I chose the ear. More precisely, isn't it that the ear chose me?' TOMIO MIKI
Executed in 1965, the present lot titled Ear No. 113 (Lot 590) is the most quintessential work by avant-garde Japanese artist Tomio Miki active in the 1960s. The same series work is collected by The Museum of Modern Art collection, New York.
Tomio Miki belongs to a group of visual artists working in the 1960s in Japan known as Obsessional Artists. Independent of established genres, their work is thought to stem from fantasies of fragmentation and endless repetition. Miki's manifestation of "obsession" is the ear, making his first sculpture in 1962. Having received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation he moved to New York in 1971 where he continued to work until his early death in 1978.
With high variety, Miki often depicted ears individually, on a giant scale. Sometimes he combined ears with other elements, such as spoons, or made series of them set in rows or in boxes, which the treatment in Ear No. 113. Surreal in style, 75 ears are organized in 15 columns and 12 rows rhythmically. The mass reproduction of ear pattern draws viewer's immediate attraction to this sensuous audio organ which is now detached from human body and is converted into an object in a rational context. Though repetition of one singular pattern, the space arrangement gives rise to pace and beat, both visually and audially, as if transforming noise and voice received by ear into solid pictorial statement.
Executed in 1965, the present lot titled Ear No. 113 (Lot 590) is the most quintessential work by avant-garde Japanese artist Tomio Miki active in the 1960s. The same series work is collected by The Museum of Modern Art collection, New York.
Tomio Miki belongs to a group of visual artists working in the 1960s in Japan known as Obsessional Artists. Independent of established genres, their work is thought to stem from fantasies of fragmentation and endless repetition. Miki's manifestation of "obsession" is the ear, making his first sculpture in 1962. Having received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation he moved to New York in 1971 where he continued to work until his early death in 1978.
With high variety, Miki often depicted ears individually, on a giant scale. Sometimes he combined ears with other elements, such as spoons, or made series of them set in rows or in boxes, which the treatment in Ear No. 113. Surreal in style, 75 ears are organized in 15 columns and 12 rows rhythmically. The mass reproduction of ear pattern draws viewer's immediate attraction to this sensuous audio organ which is now detached from human body and is converted into an object in a rational context. Though repetition of one singular pattern, the space arrangement gives rise to pace and beat, both visually and audially, as if transforming noise and voice received by ear into solid pictorial statement.