COZIC: some lessons
/A month ago my Lovely First Wife and I traveled with friends to Quebec, where we spent a delightful long weekend in that beautiful city.
Our hotel, the lovely Auberge du Trésor
The highlight for us all was the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec even though we had to trek through the tundra to get there, and the highlight of the MNBAQ was the restrospective on COZIC, a duo artist collaborative.
Monic Brassard and Yvon Cozic have been churning out art as a team since 1967, and the exhibit was inspirational in several ways. First and foremost was the artists’ sense of play.
Here’s the piece in the entry hall to the exhibit:
I failed to record its title, but if you’re thinking that might be fun to walk through, you would be correct. COZIC’s earliest work invited viewers to interact in various ways, and this one was to walk through. Here’s a video:
Their early work was largely fabric-based: plush fabrics, vibrant colors (this was the 60s–70s, after all), and simple shapes:
Most are no longer able to be handled by the public, but there was a pile of these plush worm shapes called “orphans”: we were encouraged to pick one up and take it with us through the exhibit.
I chose a purple one and wore it as a tail.
LESSON: Don’t be afraid to be “cute” or “silly.” Don’t be afraid to keep it simple.
The second phase of COZIC’s career involved the origami figure known in French as a cocotte (“hen”). They decided to make nothing but cocottes for a year, at least one a day, either in paper or other materials.
LESSON: Don’t be afraid to repeat an idea ad nauseam. BUT if you do, don’t just repeat it: start looking ways to mess with that idea, to change it, to grow it. Go sideways. Take it apart. Multiply it.
In their next phase, COZIC relied on discarded materials, recycling bits and pieces of everything. This is where the exhibit became inspirational for me.
Here’s a ton of little objects from their studio:
Look at them!
LESSON: You can get up right now, take a walk around the block and pick up bits and pieces of flotsam and jetsam, and come back to put them together, to Make the Thing That Is Not. DON’T WORRY about making it “look like” something.
[sidenote: I have done exactly this in my past:
Untitled, c. 1971, found items
Applying this pastiche/assemblage technique to their larger works:
This piece is called The Big Jump…
… and on each little diving board is a tiny one-eyed person made of wood scraps.
One of the still-interactive pieces was one called Monument: you are invited to stand on the stump and take a photo of you “holding” the staff. Since this was eerily like my burn theme camp 3 Old Men, I could not resist.
Continuing their “recycling” phase:
LESSON: Make up a rule. Follow it until it breaks. Then make up a new rule.
The main lesson from COZIC is superfluity: just make and make and make and make the art. Don’t worry about “good.” Worry about “more than is necessary.”
