Somehow when I visited the PMA the first time, I ended up blogging about a general room instead of a specific piece... whoops. So when I went back for my second visit and tried to choose a piece from the same gallery, I realized that no individual piece in the room spoke to me strongly. It was the way that the pieces communicated with each other and filled the space together that had drawn me to The Alice Jones Eshleman and William Thomas Vogt Gallery in the first place. No painting stood apart in a way that encouraged me to write about it individually. And so, I set off into the rest of the museum in search of inspiration. Eventually, I came across Enrico Donati's sculpture, The Evil Eye, Done in 1947.
I found this piece very compelling. It was unlike anything else I had seen in the museum and doesn't even seem to fit well with the pieces in the room it's in. I almost felt guilty for liking it so much because it reminds me of some sort of carnival trick or tacky voodoo object. I almost have a hard time grasping what sets this piece apart to me. It's a beautiful, unfocused looking eye, lazily gazing past the viewer. The piece itself is mostly gold and coppery colors. These colors definitely played a part in attracting me to this piece. The gold helps create that mystical quality that this piece possesses. What’s really compelling about this piece is the circular mirrors set behind it that reveal a monkeys face. This monkey stares at you from all angles, with a pair of vibrant and frantic orange/yellow eyes. It's a little unsettling having those eyes looking at you all the time, but thats part of why I found this sculpture so interesting. Copper wires emerge from the bottom of the piece like veins. There is something mystical and bewitching about The Evil Eye. If you view it from the side however, revealing the front and back of the piece at once, the magic is somewhat lost. But those eyes still see you. I also find eyes to be very powerful. Our eyes are what we use to see the world. They directly connect to how we perceive and understand things. There is also so much emotion that can be expressed just through one’s eyes. After spending some time with this piece, I realized that it reminded me of another image I had seen. On the cover of the special edition Congratulations album by MGMT, is a picture of a chunk of a face, including one eye, laying in the sand.
This image is taken from the music video for the song Congratulations. I think MGMT has the same mystic type of qualities that attracted me to The Evil Eye. They were my favorite band for a while. I often felt that they were trying to convey some kind of secret, or lesson about life and reality through their music. I think The Evil Eye makes me feel the same way. I actually hadn't realized my attraction to eyes so much until analyzing this piece, but they are reoccurring theme in my own art and other art that I'm interested in. There’s just something very knowing and truthful about them, almost as if you can look into a person through their eyes. I hope I'm not starting to sound too crazy right now, that’s just how I view them.
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