The Energy Of Clay-A Study Of Charles Simmonds’ "Dwelling"

Charles Simonds was born in 1945 into an intellectual family in New York.Both of his parents were scholars who studied psychoanalytic theory.Influenced deeply by his family,Simonds emphasizes the innate human ability.Therefore,unlike those experiential artists who constantly explore and experiment in art in order to advance their personal artistic research,Charles Simonds initially showed that he was an artist with a very strong intuition.In 1969,Charles Simonds began to publish his earliest image work "Mythology" series.In these three works of the series,the artist used clay as a bond,viewing the earth as a body,and clarifying that the body is the artist’s first home.Home is a kind of dwelling,which is the creative exploration of Charles Simonds’ life.The "Mythology" series is the cornerstone of his later "Dwelling" series.There is an obvious metaphor in it: the body,the earth,and the building are all different forms of dwelling.The artist extends the relationship between the body and the land,and in the process of interaction between the body and the clay,he constructs an ideal dwelling life with the clay materials around him,and thus the appearance of the "Dwelling" series is revealed.After the work "Dwelling",even though the artist’s creative forms and techniques have varied,the essence of his work has never changed,that is,using clay as a carrier to explore the life and dwelling of human beings and the way of life of the broader human community.This article focuses on Charles Simonds’ Dwelling series of works as the research object,and through the artist’s website letters,published books,catalogs,interviews,and published visual materials,it provides an in-depth analysis of the creative ideas and spiritual meanings behind the Dwelling series of works.The introduction section of this paper provides a detailed introduction to the artist and the Dwelling series of works,and based on this,the research purpose,value,and significance are explained.The main research questions in this paper are:1.To analyze the materials and tools used in Charles Simonds’ Dwelling series of works and explore their unique requirements and special methods from the perspective of "primitivism and handprints".2.To analyze Charles Simonds’ artistic techniques and spatial creation methods and explain the personalized artistic language and style formed by the Dwelling series of works.3.To conduct a visual aesthetic analysis of Charles Simonds’ Dwelling series of works and interpret the aesthetic spirit and symbolic meanings contained in his works.4.Based on the above questions,to analyze Charles Simonds’ artistic ideas from the perspectives of creative thinking logic and cross-material application.5.To explain how to draw on Charles Simonds’ Dwelling series of works for creative experience from the perspectives of the extension of modeling methods,the expansion of material language,and the borrowing of creative ideas.