I have been thinking about my favourite artistic collaborations…
Christo & Jeanne-Claude
particularly Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin (1971-1995)
Politics aside, Jeanne-Claude and Christo’s claim that “All our work is about freedom” is also interesting to consider in relation to the act of collaboration itself… perhaps artistic freedom cannot be found in solo work; however counterintuitive that might sound? By its very nature, (artistic) freedom needs to be expansive, it needs a language and what’s the point of a language if only one person speaks it? http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/wr.shtml
Michael Rosen & Quentin Blake
The Sad Book (Walker Books, 2004)
Probably the most perfect visual collaboration I can think of. http://www.michaelrosen.co.uk/sadbook.html
Werner Herzog (director) & Klaus Kinski (actor)
particularly Wojzeck (1979) and Fitzcarraldo (1982)
What happens when you can’t stand the person you are collaborating with, but you know that what you create together is amazing? At what point does the collaboration stop being worth the anger and the stress? I can’t even begin to imagine how I would undertake a collaboration with someone I don’t get along with; but then I have never had the misfortune to be either an actor or director – neither side of that power relationship appeals to me.
Leopold & Rudolph Blaschka
particularly Glass Flowers (1887-1936)
This father and son produced beautiful, intricate and surprisingly life-like glass models of invertebrates and flowers. The romantic in me is drawn to the fact that the secret of their craft died with them – an appropriate analogy for the unique nature of collaboration. For an overview of their work see http://designmuseum.org/design/leopold-rudolf-blaschka.
Gilbert & George
particularly The Nature of Our Looking, video sculpture (1970)
I don’t know if they are lovers, but I have always assumed that Gilbert and George are partners in every way. Do they not get sick of each other? We will never know; they allow us to see them, but not know them – they really are sculptural in that sense and the mystery is appealing. I would really like to undertake an artistic collaboration with my partner (a painter), but every time we try, it doesn’t work. Our working methods are just too different. Whereas I “see” a finished piece in my mind’s eye and then try to make it reality, my partner’s paintings come about in a more fluid, wending kind of way. We’ve recently started talking again about how we might work together and have come up with a possible solution, perhaps because of the subject matter of his recent work: “My recent paintings are populated by groups of individuals coming together to grasp at some kind of understanding of their surroundings.”
Rineke Dijkstra
The Buzzclub, Liverpool, UK/Mysteryworld, Zaandam, NL (1996-7)
Not a collaboration in the sense of creative practitioners working together to create a finished piece, but this is still collaborative work – impossible without the teenagers who agreed to participate. Perhaps I secretly like this because it reminds me of the now long gone together/alone feeling of clubbing? Maybe my current interest in collaboration allows me to find that together/alone feeling in a different way?
