Final Words

The content presented to the class was a good send off. Donald Morgan was interesting, and Leo Castelli made a lot of sense.  I was a bit torn by Donald Morgan. He started off the presentation with a picture by Per Kirkeby, claiming he had a big influence on him. I was expecting to get to see some abstract and colorful art full of paint with a free form style.

I’m a big fan of this style, so I got excited to see something like it, but instead was surprised when he showed us his work. A lot of it was very modern and sleek, while other stuff was super organic and didn’t look like it came out of a factory. Instead of talking about pieces such as “Egyptian 180” or “Black Snowflake”, I will focus on the works that i actually liked. I loved all the “Middle Nature” work and thought his process was really interesting. The idea of producing something that looks so other-worldly from the negative space of a rotting tree stump is really cool. I just felt so torn between really hating some of his work and loving other stuff. A god example of how Morgan and I don’t see eye to eye is his sketches and drawings for his larger work that he showed us. he kept saying how a lot of the sketches weren’t successful and how they were just rough drafts for the real thing. Well I happen to love all of those drawings and think they were all more successful than the final pieces. I guess that’s just me liking messy art though… who knows. I just don’t know how to feel, I like the art of his hat he doesn’t seem to focus on or like very much. Very interesting indeed.

The chapter that we read this week was the conversation with Leo Castelli. This was a good way to end the book because he is a voice that is well respected and liked by a large population. After reading about him a little I realize how important his opinion on the art world is. This is why a few things that he says during the conversation are of interest to me.

1) When asked to comment on the Whitney Biennial: “most of them had absolutely no aesthetic qualities- which a work of art must, after all, have. It can’t just be purely based on some kind of idea that the artist may have about the present times and world.” This statement seems very bold. I personally hold this to be true for myself, but saying that about all art in general seems a bit judgmental. It’s a tough call on my part because I agree to an extent, but who am I (one person) to decide what art is? Here is my thought process: I agree because if I was just commenting on the state of affairs of the world without any aesthetic aspects taken into account I would just call myself a writer. But aren’t writers artists too? I disagree because it’s not fair for me to categorize anything with so narrow a view. If they want to be artists, and they are calling themselves that, then they are. Easy peasy.

2) Castelli’s comments on the idea that there are no more “geniuses” in the art world. He seems to have the same problem in the quote above, a narrow and judgmental point of view. Sure there are geniuses out there, they may just not be the same as the ones from the 60’s Leo. How can we even start to define what a “genius” is? It’s all relative, geeeez.

Overall, to sum up – interesting stuff this week, interesting class. The only problem I have with both, is the lack of perspective that people in the art world seem to have. Why must we argue about what is good and bad when anything can be seen as either from another point of view?

Special thanks this term to: http://www.booooooom.com/

 

Freebie

Seeing as how this week’s blog post has very low standards (none at all), I thought I would take this opportunity to show you my thought process during some of the lectures: My doodles. I value them very much, and they are how most of my ideas come to me.  This is a better representation of how I feel than any blog post I could ever write. Enjoy!

Not gonna lie, I feel quite at a loss for words this week. I really loved the work by Tannaz Farsi for a number of reasons, but the reading didn’t really connect with me. I just sort of wish that this class involved reading from more than one book. It seems to limit the discussion somewhat. It’s just frustrating to hear an argument, chapter after chapter, that pretty much just sounds the same as all the other ones. I’m a full supporter of Suzi Gablik’s point of view, but I’m also interested in hearing about other themes. Why can’t “The Artists Experience” include positive aspects of the art culture in America as well as Gablik’s view? Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is a prime example of the kinds of people that Gablik loves: smart, cultured, well-spoken, and a supporter of art outside the galleries. Not that these are bad traits, I just feel I have already exhausted these topics in previous posts.

I found Tannaz Farsi’s work to be just up my alley. Cool, abstract, and futuristic installations with a creepy, ethereal quality to them. My favorite work of hers is definitely “Self-Haunted and Synthetic”. It was the one that looked like the inside of a space station with all those clear inflated forms.

She was a very good speaker who did a great job attaching ideas to such abstract forms. Immediately when I saw this piece I thought of space. Space in every sense of the word: outer space, and the space between us. This is a complicated feeling to evoke from viewers, and as an artists who attempts to go in that direction fairly often, I think she did a great job.

The readings this week were interviews from Richard Shusterman and Carol Becker. Both artists seemed to be saying the same thing: that art should be removed from it’s current context (only being viewed in the gallery by a limited audience) in order to broaden our perception of what art can do for a society. They both agree that art in other societies is viewed differently, and Carol Becker goes into detail on how she feels we should fix this problem. She describes the relationship that modern artists have with their community with words such as disconnected, isolated, and disinterested. She puts a lot of blame for this phenomenon on art schools and the way they are structured. “I think art schools should be structured around ideas, not around physical matter or what tools you’re going to use. Maybe they should be more like departments of narration, departments of political art, figurative art, abstraction, and so on- and then whoever wants to work in whatever medium would think about ideas first, and then find the medium at any given moment through which they could fulfill them. But it would be the ideas that would frame the school.” (Carol Becker p. 375) There are a lot of aspects of this idea that I think are great. She backs this idea of working from the idea rather than the medium by saying how many modern artists work with different mediums depending on the subject matter. The idea that they stick with one is outdated. This whole idea caused me to think about how I would structure my own art school if I was given the chance. The only thing I would add to this structure is to require students to take prerequisites that teach them formally how to work with different mediums available before allowing them to use anything they want in the classes that are only based on ideas.

Our speaker this week, Terri Warpinski, is a good example of someone who has experience with how other cultures view art versus our own. I can’t speak for her, but I would guess that she would agree with Carol Becker. Much of Terri Warpinski’s work focuses on human’s relationship to the landscape. She explores this theme by traveling and photographing evidence among many different cultures. For this reason (and her telling us she used to work on archeological sites) I see her work as anthropological in a way. Her work focuses on the topic of the relationship that humans have with the landscape, and then to the even more specific topic of the boundaries that we have created. She compared a lot of her work to one another when man-made boundaries were what the pieces had in common. Her speaking style made it very easy to see the common themes. Her work shows us that many cultures leave physical evidence of political and cultural similarities. By calling herself a landscape artist, it challenges the viewer to ask themselves exactly what that means. Do physical barriers made by humans constitute landscape these days?

This is my favorite piece because I love the mark-making on top of the photograph. I enjoyed her explanation of her struggle between painting/drawing/printmaking and photography because she has come to a very nice compromise with herself by including these aspects in her photography.

I liked our reading this week. Two women who really seem to know what’s up. Not gonna lie, I tend to favor all those feminist women out there who recognize that men do in fact run our society, and try to do something to change that. The Guerrilla Girls are doing that in the best possible way I think-with humor and without any personal gain. They aren’t doing it to be cool, only so out society can move in the right direction. I do appreciate them, I really do, but the act of practicing what they do myself tends to be a hazy subject for me. I can never decide if I should do something about how i feel. By not doing anything, I feel like I’m not giving men the satisfaction of recognizing that they have the upper hand. But on the other side of the picture I feel like i should do something because it’s obviously corrupt. I try to find a balance somewhere in between. I try not to let the fact that I am a woman define who I am as an artist or the opinions that I have and I really try to call someone out when they say something sexist. We are all just people, and sometimes I feel like bringing any attention to the subject is only making things worse. Take this whole Whitney Biennial thing that Suzi Gablik likes to talk about so much- when the museum made an obvious effort to only include artists of minorities in the show, doesn’t that just isolate them more? Sometimes I feel like we are at the point in our society where it’s time to let go of this whole effort to incorporate minorities as equals because it’s only making it worse! Can’t we all just be judged and thought of as people and artists rather than male, female, black, white, ect? It reminds me of a job application that I was filling out this summer. There was a slip of paper inside of the application that was talking about how the company isn’t discriminatory when hiring based off our sex or race, and it goes on about how important this is…then underneath all this there were ten or so boxes asking me to identify what race I was! It made me so angry. Why do you even need to know if you aren’t hiring based off of it? I think once we stop recognizing race, this is when we can move forward.

Mary Jane Jacob was semi-interesting to read about. But honestly, I feel like she didn’t say anything I haven’t heard before. More stuff about how the gallery system is flawed and art can be participatory too. Well duh. Why is this such an issue? All these different opinions on what art should be… I personally believe art can be ANYTHING. Anything at all. Whatever works for the artist. So it’s cool if people want to give their art a message, have the community make it together, not give their art a message, it can be messy or simple, take years or minutes…doesn’t matter. Put it in a gallery, don’t put it in a gallery, different strokes for different folks. I may not personally like all of it, but I believe that everyone has the right to create whatever they please. Can we just stop arguing about it?

The Still Life

It’s just so still…

So i guess my main topic of conversation this week will be what the title suggests: the concept of a still life painting. Obviously my inspiration for this topic comes from our guest speaker this week, Ron Graff. He is a very classically trained, skillful, experimental painter (the reason I say experimental is due to his recent excursion into the world of abstract painting. I may not be the biggest fan of these works, but I can still appreciate the effort). This is also how i generally feel about still life paintings from most artists. I appreciate what he’s doing because I assume he paints for one reason: because he loves to do it. If an artist is doing what they do for that sole purpose, I can always stand behind it. It’s just this whole art for art’s sake thing that we have been talking about. Ron Graff can’t be painting those scenes with a noble message in mind… right? Can apples and flowers save us from this crisis that the human race is in??! Is making art enough anymore?! Okay now I’m just making fun of Suzi Gablik…

Don’t get me wrong, I really like the stuff, and i appreciate the things that it has caused me to think about on my own. For example, I loved the bit about how the flowers in his paintings were all from different times of the year, and couldn’t exist in real life because they don’t really all bloom at the same time. Like some sort of magic, imaginary, dream bouquet that we will never get to experience in real life. The only way to represent it is through some wort of magical power – a painting. During that section in my art history course last year we learned about this phenomenon and has stuck with me ever since. Another thing i liked about the presentation was his playful attitude and general feeling that it’s silly to try to define what art is. He said it was crazy to try to figure out who thought what was and wasn’t art because everyone has their own opinion on the matter and there is no way to figure out who gets to be right or wrong. But i guess what i’m trying to get at is this: I appreciate what he is doing, I think it’s pretty, and I know it’s fun to paint still lifes, but I’m just simply not inspired by it.

I may not be inspired by it, but I do like it. Does that make sense? Is that possible? I think so. Because it’s happening. This is the main connection to the reading that I can make this week, even though it may be a little pathetic. I feel the same way about the reading as I do about Graff’s work: I like it, but no inspiration there. I feel like the two artists interviewed were not saying anything I haven’t heard before. Just like Graff wasn’t painting anything I haven’t seen before.

Sorry.

Ps. Do pictures of really cool houses/churches count as still lifes? Because I like those…

Art for Art’s Sake…

It’s a phrase that we hear all-to-often, am I right? Everyone has an opinion on the subject, and every single opinion is correct for that person. Different strokes for different folks yeah? It may be obvious from my previous statements, but I am a full supporter of this type of art-making. This subject has come to mind this week mostly because of the second reading, “Viewing the World as Process”. I finally have figured out that the author of Conversations Before the End of Time is not a supporter of this! In fact, she “has been involved with trying to change that framework, to shift our ordinary understanding of art away from value-free, autonomous thinking” (Viewing the World p. 238). First of all, why does art for art’s sake necessarily mean it’s value-free? Isn’t there value in the process of art-making? The value in my own art becomes apparent to me after I start making art for art’s sake. There is value in the subconscious. Second of all, why would anyone ever think they have the power to change something like this? To change the way art is created or viewed…that’s ridiculous. It’s something completely different from science (a profession based on fact, and a profession she was trying to compare to artists). Art is something uncontrollable that exceeds words. That’s why I liked this Carolyn Merchant character a lot. She has this idea that yes, we are in an ecological crisis and yes, we do have a moral obligation to try to fix it, but as humans, not artists. I got the idea from her that art is relative. It will exist no matter what happens, and will probably only reflect change, not bring it.

This whole idea that art exceeds words has been creeping into my life a lot lately. I find my own art reflecting my opinion on the subject. I have become very interested in the idea that words don’t really mean anything. They seem to devalue most situations and limit my imagination and explanation for my work. I’m not really sure if this is what he was going for, but my feelings about words were what made me able to relate to  Dan Powell’s work. His interest in text, language, and communication are clear from works such as these:


He believes that words are the basis of our culture…he is right, but i wish he wasn’t. The reason I chose these two works was because they show the range that he is capable of. One is from the studio, the other from his travels. From what I can take from his photos from traveling, he seems to be interested in portraying the sublimity in the landscapes found in the desert, and says that eastern Oregon is an especially good place to do this. When compared to his studio work, this is quite the range in style. To think about his studio work, I would like to address some concepts brought up in the first reading, “When You’re Healed, Send Me a Postcard”. There were a lot of interesting ideas brought up in this chapter, but the one that I found most relevant to Dan Powell’s work was this idea that artists going to their studio to work is therapeutic, and that therapy is too self-involved and should be projected outward instead. There are a few problems that I have with this idea. Here it goes: most things that we do can be skewed as selfish if you try hard enough. Anything that anyone creates, whether it be art, relationships, a nice meal, or money that we earn, can be seen as selfish in a way. So why is spending time on ourselves a bad thing? Why must we guilt people out of spending a little quality time with themselves? By doing what an individual needs to be happy, this makes them much more tolerable to the rest of the world. I say go for it! And as we can see from many talented artists (such as Dan Powell), the work created in the studio tends to be different from the public approach. Both work is good, I don’t know why we all have to be choosing sides here. I have no doubt in my mind that we can create art for art’s sake (the therapeutic approach) while still having it hold meaning to the rest of the world.

by Kate Castelli

Jack Ryan’s Brain

I’m not going to lie- I got very excited when i found out that Jack Ryan was coming to lecture our class on his quirky opinions of art. Last year i was in his Art 115 class: Surface, Space, and Time and I definitely was always curious as to what his own art was like. I love his way of speaking to the class. He just kind of shows us some stuff that he thinks is cool, and leaves everything else up for us to interpret ourselves. His connections that he makes between the pieces is always there, but always subtle. I think this is a good representation of his personal artistic style as well. He describes his process as experiencing an input, then producing some sort of output. This output isn’t meant to be didactic- it’s left up to the viewers interpretation and is supposed to ask questions rather than give answers.This concept is something that i can really appreciate. As an art student I am constantly being asked to explain myself, but as soon as I try to explain my work I feel like it loses all meaning. The words seem to degrade the image. He describes his objects of output to be part of a conspiracy of form and theme. I just love the way he put that. I feel that it’s the only way to describe all these objects that he has created. They all seem to go together for some reason, but he doesn’t explain why or how he arrived at that imagery. This is the stuff I’m into- the weird, abstract, almost random kind of art. It’s not trying to prove anything, it’s just the artist being inspired by an input and then producing some sort of output. If you notice, all he did was kind of just show us all this weird stuff, then didn’t attempt to explain the meaning behind it. For me personally, this visual walk through his process was much more beneficial to my understanding of him as an artist than any explanation could have given me.
In response to the readings this week- I’m having a hard time really connecting them to the lecture. Of course I see how they relate to one another, but not so much to the lecture. I mean, Jack Ryan is definitely a modern artist that is innovative and doesn’t seem to need to live up to or care what the traditional aspects of fine art are. I guess he might be considered to be one of these “disgraceful” artists that the staunchy art critic from the first article might have described, but Jack Ryan seems to have a set of high technical skill as well as a talent for conceptual and abstract thinking. So therefore I don’t think that he should fall into the category of ignorant modern artist without skill.
In contrast to the first interviewed artist, the second seemed to be a very nice person. His take on the modern art world was accurate in my opinion. I would appreciate a move away from artists being put on this pedestal that they seem to currently be on top of. The idea that everyone is an artist is something that rings true in my book (that’s why i will be an art teacher one day). Even though he describes America as having a crappy art scene, I appreciate that he goes into detail about India’s perspective on art. Very refreshing. Makes me hopeful that maybe one day i can find some people that value the process rather than the product that come a long with art making as much as I do.

^Reminds me of those postcards of the mountains that Jack Ryan included in one of his exhibits.

to address this whole eco art thing

The content that was presented to us this week has “sparked my interest” to say the least. The whole concept of an “eco artist” to me is slightly silly. Just because the artist happens to be interested in ecology and sustainability doesn’t mean they need to be assigned this title. Of course I am fully supportive of the movement, I just feel the title is unnecessary. Wouldn’t it be cooler if an artist made art about whatever they wanted, then if it happened to be about the environment it would still be held to the same standards as any other subject? This whole trend of eco-friendly jobs, products, and lifestyle is great on one hand because it is raising awareness to a problem that really does need to be addressed, but ont he other hand it is doing something foolish- it’s mkaing it a trend. This is one subject that is serious, and as a trend it will lose momentum and popularity eventually. Hopefully “eco artists” such as Colin Ives won’t lose credibility along with the popularity that comes with going green these days.

This week we have heard/read the opinions of four artists. Colin Ives, Christopher Manes, Rachel Dutton, and Rob Olds. From these people we can observe a common interest that they all have- to preserve our earth and all the life forms that reside here. They all share the opinion that the direction mankind is headed at the moment is the wrong way, and that change is necessary. Colin Ives was the first to present his opinion to our class. His work focused mainly on the concept of wild animals who thrive by living among us in urban environments. His work was interesting and super cute, but what i found compelling about the lecture was his view on technology. He seemed to believe that we should use technology to our advantage to raise awareness of this ecological problem that we have on our hands. But isn’t technology the problem in the first place? This is the point of view that artists Rachel Dutton and Rob Olds are most concerned with. They did almost the opposite of Colin Ives even though they both seem to have similar opinions. They rejected technology and art in an effort to study what they believe to be most important- to live off the land and be one with nature. So i guess Their opinion versus Colin Ives’ is slightly different. While they want to “be one with the earth”, Ives just wishes to preserve it.

Now we get to the good stuff: Christopher Manes. The things he had to say during the interview titled “Making Art About Centipedes” made A LOT of sense to me. I loved his ideas of how mankind really isn’t special at all. We really are just a bunch of animals running around on this earth just like anyone else. I’ve always kind of had this idea in my head, but the problem that i always ran into was that humans have developed technology, built civilizations, family units, ect. This always seemed to be obviously superior to animals. I always thought it was what separated us. What i failed to think of and what Manes hammered into reader’s heads in this piece was that animals have crazy accomplishments too! Ones that we could never achieve. “If longevity is what you really care about, then bristlecone pines are the most superior beings. They live for several thousand years.” (page 97) Manes calls to action a new era of art-making not completely centered around humans. This artists named Daniel Richter doesn’t exactly do that, but he does depict humans in a way that keeps them humble yet still complex, with human emotion yet still animalistic and wild. This kind of art is moving in the right direction because it isn’t putting man above nature. He portrays man as a part of nature.

I just love how he manages to find a way to show the energy itself that exists in nature. Of course man is a part of nature, so this seems to make sense.

Let me start off by saying that my own opinion of what art is only applies to me. It seems pretty pointless for me to attempt to define this ridiculously broad and abstract phenomenon that we call “art” and then force my own opinion onto the rest of the art world. This is pointless because there are too many opinions out there! Every artist has a different opinion on the matter, and they are all right. But of course, I would love to share my opinion. My own art is something that I use to physically record an image or concept from my mind as best as possible, that couldn’t be represented in words. Sometimes it’s been inspired from something, sometimes it’s just a subconscious recording of the abstract, other-worldly images that are constantly floating around in my brain (example of an artist who i consider to be abstract/awesome: http://www.aleksrdest.com/RDEST_08.html). Does this mean that it doesn’t have a message? No… of course not. But personally, this message isn’t always explainable through words. I feel like I’m constantly trying to draw the same thing, but it comes out in different ways. Does that make sense? No… of course not. But that’s why I’m an artist, not a writer. So should all art always be in response to something? This is the question from the reading that really stuck with me. “Because much of the art being made today focuses on social problems rather than on ‘self-expression,’ the broader context of political, social and environmental life is often the artist’s work arena, rather than the more traditional withdrawal behind closed doors in the studio.” (page 31) My idea here is this: just because I’m not commenting on some physical, worldly thing, that still means I can be an artist. I don’t think art always has to ask a question. I think it’s anything that is expressive of our inner self. That’s what I’m really trying to get at here: I make art for myself. I do it for the process mostly. It’s therapeutic to represent emotions in a visual way. Most of the time I have an easier time expressing how I feel visually rather than through speech. I’m interested in the abstract, the things that words can’t describe. Again, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hold meaning. But honestly, the meaning of the image is almost always revealed to me after I start. So since I do my art only for myself, does that mean that it’s selfish? Yes, probably. But I can’t help it! It’s just how my brain works. So is it morally okay to be an artist? This was a question that was brought up in the lecture multiple times. The answer is yes, but it’s definitely still selfish. At least for me. Because I’m not really trying to save the world or convey some sort of moral truth to anyone, I’m just doing the only thing I know how to do: create an image. If that’s what art is, then great. If not, too bad for me because I’m an art major…?