Nature’s Readymades

/m (Elizabeth Myers Mitchell Art Museum) at St. John’s College is pleased to announce the January opening of Nature’s Readymades, an exhibition of gongshi (scholars’ rocks or viewing stones) drawn from the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum in Washington, DC. Carved by nature and relished by Chinese literati as early as the Tang dynasty (7th c.), these paradoxical objects are worlds in miniature, presenting the vital energy of the universe in a hardened, static form. Not sculpted in the conventional sense, they predate Marcel Duchamp’s readymades by more than a millennium, and in many ways pose an even greater challenge to long-held definitions of art: they are unauthored and typically undated, yet have long been understood and appreciated in artistic terms. Government officials steeped in poetry, literature, and art displayed them prominently in their studios, alongside brush and ink paintings.  

In addition, the exhibition includes contributions from a range of scholars—a geologist, a novelist, an observational painter, two poets, a political scientist, a religious studies professor, and a sculptor—who each offer thoughts on a rock or stone in their personal possession. The participants include artist Ellen Altfest, who has spent the last eight months looking at and making a painting of a rock, and Ugo Rondinone, whose sculpture has been inspired, in part, by gongshi.  

“A core question the show asks is, ‘Is there art in nature?’” say Shelly Bancroft and Peter Nesbett, the co-curators. “A related question is if there can be art without artists. Can we adopt an aesthetic attitude to objects that are extra-artistic?”  

About the Mitchell Art Museum (/m) 
Accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, the Elizabeth Myers Mitchell Art Museum at St. John’s College presents changing art exhibitions to the ever-curious. Our mission is to pose persistent and timely questions about the human experience through art and with extraordinary artists. 

About St. John’s College 
St. John’s College is the most distinctive liberal arts college in the country due to our interdisciplinary program, in which 200 of the most revolutionary great books from across 3,000 years of human thought are explored in student-driven, discussion-based classes. By probing world-changing ideas in literature, philosophy, mathematics, science, music, history, and more, students leave St. John’s with a foundation for success in such fields as law, government, research, STEM, media, and education. Located on two campuses in two historic state capitals—Annapolis, Maryland, and Santa Fe, New Mexico—St. John’s is the third-oldest college in the United States and has been hailed as the “most forward-thinking, future-proof college in America” by Quartz and as a “high-achieving angel hovering over the landscape of American higher education” by the Los Angeles Times. Learn more at sjc.edu.