A short essay I wrote for my Art History class. I could keep going on this work alone, but there was a 2-page limit.
On Felix Gonzales-Torres’ “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross, L.A.)
Perhaps one of the more curious works of art on display at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern Wing is a small mountain of multicolored candy piled up in a corner. To the uninitiated, it serves a curious purpose, to highlight how strange and fun contemporary art can be, to remind us of its reach past the frame and into the viewer’s experience of an art work. According to the display placard, “adult visitors are invited to take a piece of candy,” (but “only one piece, please,” as a security guard alerted me). The viewer can interact with the art work in a multi-sensory form. Besides seeing it, they can feel it, consume it, taste it, enjoy it in multiple ways.
Upon encountering “Untitled”, the pile of candy gleams under the bright museum lights. The individual pieces of candy - in colors of green, red, blue, yellow, and metallic silver shine with opulence. They almost seem like precious stones: topaz, rubies, sapphires, bits of gold and silver. Piled into a corner, the mound can shift, and there is a mild sense of tension, as if the pile of candy will avalanche down and spread all over the ground. Ironically, this sense of impermanence, along with its location on the floor, and in the corner, where things are often haphazardly thrown, seem to suggest a throwaway quality - the opposite of preciousness. There is dynamic power in this tension, its ambiguity or paradox.
Their materiality - they are sweets, after all - can give a sense of joy to any viewer. Most museum visitors probably do not expect to receive free candy when going to the Art Institute. When tasted, each color corresponds to a predicated flavor (blue seems to suggest blueberry, while the orange orange, and yellow lemon), but all are typical, and are un-named, non-branded. These are nondescript candies, they could have been from any store in the world, or even made in someone’s kitchen. In their lack of embellishment, they become ubiquitous, and therefore, relatable.
We can look at “Untitled” on multiple sensory levels, its visual and sensory experience, but more importantly, we must look at its latent effect, which, like the aftertaste of sugar, an undertone, its meaning, is what truly stays. The title suggests a dedication - it is a “Portrait” of Ross Laycock, Gonzales-Torres’ partner who died of AIDS in 1991. The pile of candy, weighed each day to equal 175 pounds - “corresponding to Ross’ ideal body weight” (Art Institute of Chicago). It is replenished daily, as if to be born again. It is evident that the work is one of deep intimacy and devotion. In various interviews and reviews, Gonzales-Torres is quoted that “his primary audience was his lover, Ross” (Storr, Queer Cultural Center). Effectively, then, in our experience of the shining pile of candy, of its beauty, impermanence, and its lingering taste, we question our own experience beyond the sensory. Gonzales-Torres’ work “was always motivated by his fervent desire for dialogue and community” (Carnegie International). The work raises many questions, which often contradict one another. If this is a portrait, which we then consume, do we not, in essence contribute to the ultimate end? Or does the artist simply seek to share his love with the rest of the world? What does it mean to take in another person, a stranger, into your self? Who is your own Ross?
“Untitled” is a work of art that can be analyzed on its own accord, but is much more powerful, in the larger context of Gonzales-Torres’ ouvre. His works “combine the impulses of Conceptual art, minimalism, political activism and a chance to produce a number of ‘democratic artworks’” (Queer Cultural Center). He has also exhibited other piles of replenishable items including candy such as in “Untitled (Placebo)” as a more direct commentary on the AIDS epidemic that claimed his lover, as well as his own life in 1996.
