Human Flower Project
Artistic Nectar
Wolfgang Laib paints with pollen in Sydney, Australia.
Wolfgang Laib
Photo: JCA Online
The yellow rectangle, radiant but soft around the edges, is reminiscent of Mark Rothko’s pulsing paintings of the 1950s. But this piece is ultra contemporary, made from freshly gathered tree pollen.
Wolfgang Laib’s Pollen from Pine and other works will go on exhibit today at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia).
Laib lives in a village of Southern Germany and spends much of the spring and summer months collecting pollen.
“It begins in mid-February with the blossoming of hazelnuts up till August, September. I use my fingers to brush the pollen from the flowers into a jar. It is very simple and with dandelion, for instance, which blossoms in June for about a month I get two big jars. Pines have so much pollen days with a lot of sun and I collect much pollen, and there are cool days, windy days, when I collect very little. After all these months I then have four, five or six jars of three or four different kinds of pollen.”
It took two weeks, Laib said, to gather the pollen for the current piece, Pollen from Pine. Laib smeared the delicious and fragrant grains directly onto the floor of the gallery. His Five Mountains Not to Climb On (Die fünf unbesteigbaren Berge), 1984, consists of mounds of hazelnut pollen arrayed in a line.
Five Mountains Not to Climb On, 1984
Wolfgang Laib
Why use pollen? For one, it’s a macho thing. These are, of course, the “male germ seeds of plants.” Using the gold dust of plant procreation is a metaphor for creativity itself. And of course there’s that saturated color, that smell!
We see Wolfgang Laib’s work also in the tradition of Andres Serrano, whose works like “Blood” (1987) and “Piss Christ” (1989) resorted to bodily fluids for immediacy and shock value. In this respect, we consider Laib’s pollen art a delightful advance. Dandelion pollen is so much finer, in our view, than piss (though for those with urinary fixations, dandelion happens to be an excellent diuretic, too.)
Here’s some very basic information about flower pollen in medicine, a schematic piece which includes two new (to us) vocabulary words.
Entomophilous pollen = large grained, sticky, spread by insects
Anemophilous pollen = small grained, light, spread by wind
Perhaps we could fairly call Laib’s pollen art “Homophilous,” spread by human effort and imagination.
The exhibition in Sydney runs through November 6. As always, we appreciate reports from those fortunate enough to see the show.