TODT an artist collaborative
TODT is a direct art, like Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling. There is the possibility that a profound meaning lies behind TODT’s astonishing images- you don’t need it, anymore than you need to understand the words of an opera. But unlike opera, this is an art for everyone. No art could be more inclusive. It would equally entrhall a small child or a sophisticated historian of art. One does not have to interpret it to feel it. As in the case of most art, understanding is incidental to the import of the work. The visual effects which make great art great leave one speechless. And this is a great art. With elaborate installations, illusions of plant and animal forms, scale models, sculptures, tiles, drawings, paintings, and beautiful use of light, TODT achieves an art which has all the richness of the art of the museums.
TODT is a collaborative of three artists who choose to remain anonymous. The word “TODT” itself is both a brand name and a statement. “Todt” is an old german word meaning “dead”. TODT can also be pronounced “tot” to suggest a small child, or like “tode” (tod) which means death in German. A child , or death- we encounter in the name “TODT” a kind of alpha and omega: it is an art that involves both beginnings and endings. Existence on this earth fills the repertoire of TODT’s extraordinary imagery, and it includes almost anything. No aspect of reality is beyond TODT’s purview. However, it is a dark reality. There is a downside to everything TODT portrays. Death, always hovering in the wings of TODT’s art, was more overt in its early years. I remember, some twenty-five years ago , the art made from the ephermeral decoration of graves. This they collected, cast, and assmbled in works that resembled monuments. For an exhibition at the Schenectady Museum, which included the greatest of these early monuments, I was able to provide an unwrapped Egyptian mummy. Unfortunately it was on loan. There was a second death at the closing of the show. The mummy had to be returned.
One has to be very careful about pinning TODT down to a few simple matters. TODT might be understood as Dali redone by Dr. Strangelove, but it is much more than that. Historically considered, TODT could be seen as having touched base with Spanish altarpieces, Bosch, Duchamp, German Expressionism, Surrealism, Dada, Nazi design, Francis Bacon, or Pop Art. Possibly linked to these predecesors, it is like none of them. However, TODT does fit nicely into Postmodernism, for its enthusiastic deconstruction of our conventional ways of seeing and thinking, and for its delight in paradoxes- the juxtaposition of unlikely opposites. Does TODT express ideas critical of the contemporary world, as people have said? Probably. I would not want to restrict TODT. Is their art “conceptual?” Maybe. TODT has ideas about everything, or you could say, about the dark side of everything. With their art they establish a complex vocabulary capable of expressing almost anything or nothing, equally well. The art of TODT can often be so beautiful, or visually fascinating, so much like old-fashioned art in the simple delectation that it offers, that the concepts it suggests become incidental. Art does not have to talk, and sometimes it is best when it keeps its mouth shut. TODT’s art penetrates through to a level of the mind more subterranean than verbal. Whatever TODT may or not be saying, TODT and its audiences revel in the twisted renditions of what it takes from this world.
For all its variety, the art of TODT has a number of distinct characteristics. Most prominently, it is an art which embraces realsim, in an aggressive physical way, as might a Flemish painter of the 15th century- or more to the point, as might a taxidermist. This is a realistic art, though it would be incorrect to say a realistic style. Like most Postmodern manifestations, this is an art beyond style. Any reality TODT embraces is transformed into something both strange and strangely familiar, contrived to directly attack the consciousness of the observer. With obvious delight TODT rattles the chain of the viewer’s pre-programmed inner mind.
A beautiful flower in TODT’s world, considered closely, turns into a mass of creepy insects, a disturbing experience for all of us with bug phobias. In this world devised by TODT, reality has no hierarchy- anything can serve their ends. We see millipedes crawling, horses racing, children crying, lush jungle scenes, strange beaches,with stranger occupants; exotic , shiny weapons, improbable maps, huge outdoor billboard displays, conventional commercial advertising warped to fit TODT’s ends- it is a an art in which anything goes. Whatever is out there can be woven into TODT’s emotionally expressive and intriguing tapestry of a realty out of joint.
To me one of the great things about TODT is that it is an art that is quite radical, and at the same time like the old-fashioned art of the museums. This is old master stuff, disguised as radical contemporary. The art of TODT presents two great “old master” effects. It is an art displaying difficult craftsmanship, and at the same time marvelous design, TODT’s meticulous craftsmanship is like what we admire in the movements of a great ballet dancer, or in the playing of a violin, or in a painting by the Flemish master Jan van Eyck- this sense of the artist taking infinite pains , and doing things we could never do ourselves. Many times I feel like clapping at TODT’s dazzling technical virtuosity. Also it is often a beautiful art. One does not have to be into art to be excited by the work of TODT, but for those who know art and can see it, their arrangements of form and color can be spectacular. TODT presents a a powerful aesthetic of delicious visual experiences. To great art beauty always adds a pleasure principle, whatever the subject, as in the Baroque paintings of the martydom of saints. For all the dark side of its imagery, TODT takes obvious delight in what it portays, and we take an obvious pleasure in participating in it. Whatever TODT transforms in its magical ways, craftsmanship and artistry result in something utterly delightful just to see. TODT creates a “garden of earthly delights” more in feeling like the famous painting by Bosh in the Prado, than the work of any artist I know. Bosch obviously reveled in his fantastic paean to human sexuality, and in the wonderful scenes of torture in his Hell. We love to look at Bosch: I never saw a TODT work that didn’t make me smile. And it is wonderful what TODT can make you smile at.
It is not a strectch to say this art functions perfectly as a catharsis, providing its audience with a delectable “pity and fear,” and antidote to the universal and timeless human anxieties which are infused in much of its subject matter. While today we see TODT’s art as a perrect expression of our contemporary world, TODT gives us an art which has every chance of ringing down through the ages.