John D. Freyer
(American, born 1972)
Big Boy, 2005
150 x 90 x 55 in (381 x 228.6 x 139.7 cm)
Edwin B. Green American Art Acquisition Endowment, 2004.2 © John D. Freyer
Big Boy is a work of art that is not hand-made by the artist, but by collective memory and art world constructs. There is a long history of modern art appropriating ideas and objects from the worlds of industry and commerce. Marcel Duchamp (American, born in France, 1887-1968) and Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) famously interpreted aspects of this complex relationship. In the first decades of the 20th century, Duchamp designated some mass-produced objects as works of art. Such objects as a shovel, bottle rack, and urinal became works of art by authority of Duchamp’s reputation and conviction as an artist. He termed such works "readymades." In the 1960s Warhol appropriated the image of Brillo boxes and Campbell’s soup cans for his large-scale silkscreen works, further expanding on the idea of art as a commodity.
Freyer’s Big Boy offers viewers a look at how the meaning of works can change over time, the influence of context on interpretation, and questions of originality in contemporary art. Originally designed as an identifiable corporate sign for the Big Boy restaurant chain, the work has assumed a nostalgic familiarity since the 1950s. It became a pop culture icon, most widely seen in the 1997 film Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. John Freyer knew the history of the Big Boy icon when he purchased it from eBay, "The World’s Online Marketplace." In his body of work, Freyer considers the areas where art and commerce intersect and the transfer of meanings that occurs with the exchange of products. This work became the property of Freyer and was purchased by the UIMA through the pre-existing channels of museum culture. Freyer didn't create the object, but he did imbue it with artistic meaning and a new context for interpretation.
The interpretation of the work is at the heart of the matter when giving meaning to Big Boy. It can be described and classified according to design elements and principles, but the processes of formal analysis becomes a secondary consideration. Conceptual levels of critical thinking are more effective in approaching the questions raised by Big Boy, such as the role of originality in contemporary art and the historical precedence of the readymade.
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