Bric a Brac: to Analyze an Analysis

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Desta Sharp Writing September 19 2012 To Analyze an Analysis Bric-A-Brac: The Everyday Work of Tom Friedman is an essay written by Jo Applin to critique Tom Friedman’s artwork. Jo Applin writes this analysis with the intentions of providing the reader with an understanding of Friedman’s work. Tom Friedman is an artist that turns everyday materials and objects into beautiful drawings, photographs, and sculptures. His use of the methods bricolage and braconnage would be considered fascinating. Jo Applin’s critique and arguments are some that I definitely would agree with! Tom Friedman is a contemporary artist that takes ordinary materials and boring activities, and creatively turns them into exaggerated pieces of artwork. (For example, sharpening a pencil, cooking pasta, or assembling a jigsaw puzzle.) “Friedman’s work is related to the past as much as the present”, states Applin, who also argues that Friedman’s process of creating, draws on the strategies of bricolage and braconnage. Bricolage is the method of taking whatever is at hand, and creating something new with it. Braconnage is poaching, or as Jo Applin uses the word, taking your own interpretation of art. “The significance of Friedman’s work lies in the conceptual strategies of assemblage and bricolage that he shows”, Applin believes. Recycling is the core of many of Friedman’s artworks. For example, in 1990, he made a monochrome from a Playboy centerfold by erasing the ink to leave the worn down piece of paper underneath. For another piece of artwork, he used these eraser rubbings and arranged them in a circular pile on the floor, the centerfold’s body taken down to the abstract and distributed fragment. This demonstrates Friedman’s great use of bricolage and braconnage. Jo Applin argues, in her critique of Tom Friedman’s artwork, that through the methods of bricolage and
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