Art & Quotidian Object

Vik Muniz

1. I don't actually know a lot about Duchamp the man - I was wondering how aware he was of his own legacy and whether or not he was an arrogant S.O.B. I imagine that being the case though. Does using a lowly object from every day increase the value of that object? No, instead it undermines and questions the value of Art Thought - value in art is whatever thoughts of value we place in the object.

Tony Cragg

2. Usually I have a hard time appreciating sculpture made with found objects. There's a whole hell of a lot of it and most of it is disengaging because the artist puts his own meaning into each object. It's usually either too personal or too obscure, the meaning that is, for me as a viewer to understand and thus appreciate. I respond much more the category

of Art that uses Everyday Objects to talk about the meaning of those objects, whether it's losing their original intents entirely or exploiting them in a n

ew way for new considerations. Falling in the category were Tom Friedman and Tara Donovan.

Tom Friedman

3. We had Charles Ledray as a visiting artist to ceramics last year - he sat in my adult booster seat! He has a more satisfying approach to the whole mass-production versus hand production of objects discussion.

Josiah McElheny

4. I noticed there weren't many examples of 2-dimensional work utilizing found and everyday objects, except Kruger and Levine. She just mentioned Rauschenberg in passing, not showing an example of the combines at all. It seemed a short chapter for all the art there is out there in this category, come to think of it.. It's like she had too much and edited a lot out when the book was put together, or something is missing.

Robert Rauschenberg

5. Not that I don't think that objects can be imbued with personal meaning for a person or that it's not valid to use that strategy in one's art, it's just that I generally find really personal art to be inaccessible. Like Louise Bourgeois (again) - she makes objects loaded with personal imagery, symbols she chooses and assigns with personal memory, and yet we can easily understand her message through titles and an innate universality.

My Role as an ARTist

I've recently come up with a good philosophy about Art and the Artist that please me:

Art, even bad Art, and there is a lot of that, challenges the viewer's very identity when he looks at it. When you view a work of art, you judge it against all the things in life that you hold value to, whether it's aesthetics, politics, craftsmanship, or any and all topics of life. This can be instantaneous, but the good Art makes you consider it longer, perhaps even question where you stand on all those ideas, and it might even change your mind.

This is why I value Art and why I'm an artist. I believe that Artists throughout history have held an important role in society and have been valued by the people for that role. That role consists of being social mirror and commentator, creator of beauty, documenter of history, giver of form to myths and invisible ideas, and much more. It's all about the meaning of life - we're all trying to figure it out, Artists do it visually.

Our Presentations

Art & Nature and Technology
This chapter was Cooper's choice so he took the lead with most of our discussion and the artist's selected to show in the powerpoint. The beginning turned into a discussion that kept spiraling and tangenting, people were expressing deep opinions and it was hard to get a word in to direct the conversation (as leaders). However, we managed to start with the presentation of the chapter. This took a long time and I felt could have been skimmed a little less in-depth but it wasn't my show. I tried to keep discussion on the topics that the book was talking about, and I asked the questions I wanted. A couple times my questions weren't really discussed but that's okay. We had thorough coverage of the main ideas, including the ethics of using nature and where's the line etc. There was a lot of meaty material and I think everyone got a good education on the topic. Oh, the article wasn't discussed much at all, we tried a little but it ended up not playing a large role in the conversation.

Art & Identity
This was the chapter I took more of a role in as it is an important subject to me and my work. Coop wanted to have the opening questionnaire and I think it was a very effective way to introduce the class to a complex topic. This time we went through the presentation without as much side conversations where it was difficult to pull everyone back, but the whole time there was conversation happening on each slide/artist. A couple of times I felt tripped up when a slide came up and I was left a bit out of things to say about it... sometimes when you're thinking about something too long you lose a bit of the details. I wanted to talk about Louise Bourgeois a little more and about that method of using identity in art but it was the end of the night and everyone had pretty much checked out by then. Improvements: I think I was lacking in artist examples from outside the text, somehow those seem more interesting in all the other presentations anyway. But in general I felt we had good discussion about all the main topics and I even learned some new things from the class.

For class today

Art & Spirituality
1) Upon first reading the chapter, I was like, What's up with Trenton Doyle Hancock? How old is this guy? Was he brought up with comic book lore as well? What's the status of a created fictional marrative that is on-going in installments of his paintings? Is it art historical by formal reference? I wanted to understand his place....
Well, he's on Art 21 so apparently he does have a set place on the scene, though I still don't see why - I don't think his work is great. As I suspected he is a young artist and draws influence from childhood Sunday school stories. Also art historical formal traditions. But his narrative isn't all that stimulating, in my opinion.

Trenton Doyle Hancock

2)Fred Tomaselli's work is about transcendence, mostly through substances. Interesting: most of the effort exerted by this art and spirituality is about the transcendence of the mind visually, and Fred uses both art and substances quite literally for a visual transcendence. One thing I'm sure everyone's curious about is does he get in trouble for putting some capsuProxy-Connection: keep-alive
Cache-Control: max-age=0

s on the canvas? Technically it's possession... His work also brings up, inevitably, questions about the always-fascinating political struggle the hippies go through over illegal substances - and it's even more basic than that: the struggle of human's control over nature (and their own minds!)

Fred Tomaselli

3) Really just an observation: most of the examples are from the 80s and 90s - only two or three from this century... What's really the status of Art & Spirit today??

4) I've recently decided on my own definition of what good Art does: Art changes your thinking. When an object or artwork of any kind is viewed, it is considered, and weighed against every definition you have within yourself about reality - so by judging a work of art you judge everything that you are and hold value to as well. The article we read talked about this and stated this was why Art is the perfect vehicle with which to involve spirituality in our daily lives to make them more rich.

James Lee Byars

Mariko Mori

5) Mariko Mori suggests a different tack: that overload of technological influence and media images will lead to a sort of Buddhist enlightenment. I'm not sure if I agree - I'd like to think that were possible, but it seems to be turning out different for most people - they're all getting increasingly jaded and cynical because they don't know what's real anymore. But her spaceships are awesome though.

Art & Globalism
I have no questions on this topic - we've talked about it so much and really it goes two ways for me: 1, I feel like a nomadic artist living freely and making art without rooted associations in any specific geography. 2, all the art mentioned as examples for this topic have nothing to do with who I am as an artist and I have no access to their works as an outsider of any culture but white upper class suburbia, which I maintain is the ultimate anti-culture. So, I'll try my best to participate in discussion, but basically the issue of Globalism Art is too subjective to arrive at any answers for all the questions that are brought up.

Tom Friedman

For class today

Identity and body images

David Hammons

Tamy Ben-Tor

Robert Colescott

Lorna Simpson

Chris Burden

art & identity and art & the body

1. When the author talked about critics saying any art specifically aligned with any particular biographical indicator was inferior art, I got to thinking - Is there any art that is completely without any references to identity markers? Even Abstract Experssionism was all about machismo. By their own definition then, those art critics would have to call Da Vinvi an inferior artist as he perpetrated the portrayal of the ideal female and male form. After a few days of thinking about this I came up with couple non identity artists: Monet and Rothko. Both mostly devoid of human figures and not about themselves in any way, just studies about light and perception.
2. Humor was brought up to be the great universalizer, bringing everyone from every background to a common perspective. I've always found this device to be the most pleasant for addressing important points, and many agree with me - that's why Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert are so popular. Shows like Family Guy also emphasize really really wrong stereotypes but everyone (of liberal demeanor) loves it because they know they're just joking but making a good point. I dunno, everyone enjoys a laugh it is true, but there's also a thing called taste that divides us all again, once again another marker of personal identity, forged in our upbringing.
3. A big DUH!!! moment: Cinema assumed a male viewer -> so did all Western Art --> DUH!!! Big realization for the feminists!! "The female nude flatters men by reinforcing their dominance while relegating women to the role of fantasy objects." So the feminists eliminated the female figure and/or replaced the male gaze with a female one.
4. NEA critics said they supported the X Portfolio as evidence that it supported porn - who are these critics of the NEA? Artists who don't get the grants? Traditionalists? Churchies?
5. Did the feminists start everything that changed Modern Art? They apparently started Body Art and Performance, and Identity art too.....

For today: Art & Nature and Technology, Art & Deformation

Art & Nature and Technology:
1) Okay, this chapter was much different than what I anticipated. It started out with the artists I was expecting, including Andy Goldsworthy and such, but then it became not about nature but the politics surrounding how humans are screwing with nature. (I suppose I wasn't reading the title of the chapter correctly, forgetting the "and technology") But I suppose the discrepancy I experienced is sort of a point the author was trying to make - before art and nature was about making art with nature, and since Postmodernism it's now become using nature for art that has a political message.
2) There's Eco-Art and Bio-Art. I think both these categories are poor and can summarize my feelings thus: Eco-Art is really environmental activism and can't really be called Art, Bio-Art is mostly "artists" who were once nerdy kids creating their own science fiction. True, both the central issues these both address are important - man destroying nature and himself and the whole "Slippery Slope" with both of those - but somehow putting these serious issues under the term Art somehow makes it less serious to me, almost hypocritical.

Art & Deformation
3) Interesting: the increased rejection of the idealized body in art happened right alongside society's increasing demand for physical perfection in the media. The explanation for this is that artists have always made art that rejects the current trends of society. Always questioning we are...
4) Our fascination with portraying deformation is it's function: grotesque and abjections "subvert the idealized representation and bring us closer to the truth of being human." A basic process, compare and contrast two opposites to arrive and the definition of what's in the middle (a mathematical principle, the average.)
5) This chapter had more to do with Identity than the Art & Identity chapter - that one was mostly about Art & Stereotypes.

Suck It

Suck It: a cynicist’s manifesto

· 1. Cynicism is our biggest virtue. We question everyone’s motives and we laugh at all forms of genuine belief or sincerity of expression. Political issues are always up for criticism, as are religion and the environmentalists.

· 2. Exploitation is key – we exploit the un-artucated*, for it is what allows our livelihood to function in the Art world. You have no idea what sawing a horse into sections and putting them in a glass case could possibly have to do with Art, but it DOES because we tell you it does, and you buy it. You buy it because we wear designer eyewear and dark clothing and therefore we know what we are talking about, and what’s best for you.

*Sub-point: we also make up words to further our purposes of making you believe anything we say about Art so that you will think it’s important and buy it.

· 3. Exploitation of other cultures has become a major tool. The aesthetic of the rich white aristocrat is no longer very… flavorful. It’s boring and passé. But the culture of others is much more spicy – literally, it smells like curry! So we’ll use their motifs and designs as our own to make it more worldly and exciting.

· 4. Acrylic is the best medium. After all, is it not true that Art represents the trends of its own contemporary society? And today’s society is all about mass-production and consumption of genetically altered and machine-made products, so why wouldn’t we make paintings that look like the neon glow of Times Square? Slather on that day-glow pink shiny resin, all over that canvas, until it’s thick like the Pepto Bismal signs on the subways!

· 5. Abstract is never passé. Who says Modernism is dead? We can still get away with painting indistinct lines on a black background and call it meaningful, just make it a little shinier.

· 6. Sculpture is still perfectly acceptable, but it has to make even less sense than a black and pink shiny painting. And it can’t be made in any historic media, like clay or bronze – it must be mostly found objects that most people see as trash before they take a closer look to discover its true meaning.

· 7. Going digital – the whole world is pretty much there already. No longer are we interested in what marks humans can make but what humans can make with machines and computers – after all, we made them to think better than we can. So use your machines to sculpt some blue bulbous animal-like aliens and place them in a stark white environment that exists nowhere and then have a huge printer recreate it in 1,000dpi for a nice wall piece. The White Cube could probably get $15,000 for it.

· 8. Making to sell is paramount, as always, but don’t think that there aren’t those who still prefer spiritual Art. Like we said, Modernism isn’t dead – acrylic coated candy wrappers smeared to some plywood will take you to a simpler childhood time. And no one gets tired of flowers, even though they might say so.

Witold Gombrowicz, Polish Memories - 2004

Turns out to be a book, not a visual artwork, but was brought up in reference to the "man" controlling culture and the viewing of the Mona Lisa.

Bertrand Lavier, Walt Disney Productions [1947-1990], n.9, 1990

A user of "interforms"

Subodh Gupta, Line of Control, 2008

An "interculturalist artist"

Kim Soo-Ja, A Mirror Woman, 2002

An "interculturalist artist"

John Armleder, Don't Do It! (Readymades of the 20th Century), 1997-2000

An impersonator artist

1.) There was an example of two artists buying the rights to a Manga character and supposed to be asking what does it mean to have multiple ownership of a sign. So, what does it mean? I thought I could answer that but I waited too long and everyone is home and I can’t concentrate.

2.) “The idea then, is to use forms,” but how? We, as artists know what’s up, we know the cultural map of global capitalism and have it in our toolbox. We also (I suppose only if we’re smart or non-delusional modernists) know that art has neither origin nor destination, so even though we don’t know where the proverbial train has been or is going we just get the fuck on for the ride, that’s what we do!

3.) So yes, the artist is a semionaut, navigating the treacherous waters of mass information and global culture – but to what end? Oh wait - there is no end, because that implies ideology. But is there a purpose at least? Well, “art [is] an activity that enables people to navigate and orient themselves in an increasingly digitized world.” So the artist is a semionautical cartographer, enabling everyone to know where he or she are in space and time in this crazy world of ours. Hmm, okay I can buy that function of an artist, but now where does the history of Art come into play? Is that still a valid tool in the box? There’s lots of talk about appropriation from art history, but I wonder if this is really all that effective to helping a person orient himself in the digitized world…

4.) “How can we avoid calling contemporary art only contemporary with the economy surrounding it?” But why do you want to do that, B? Wouldn’t that imply an ideology? The ideology where there’s an existing translation between all cultures and viewers and makers of art? Ha! The ideal is the Art Train on no track that is not going to an end or coming from an origin. Also the train keeps gaining cars from other random places magically, all kinds of inspiration and things to appropriate flying in from all angles!

5.) On the topic of appropriation, again, “the act of re-displaying is indistinguishable from that of re-making.” I got to wondering if this idea, expressed in the context of contemporary artists using copies of existing works or actually copying existing works, can be applied in the same way of re-displaying say the Mona Lisa in a different context from its current position at the Louvre. This might not be what was meant by the original comment, but could re-displaying the original historical work of Art in another setting, not just a copy mind you, have a profound effect on the meaning that work? Well, when I phrase it like that, yes, obviously it does. If I took the Mona Lisa out of its protective case and displayed it on a city street in front of some graffiti, that would give the viewer some pause and bring up obvious contradictions that comment on the status of Art over the centuries and today. I think the reason I keep thinking of this stuff is that I still want to hold on to the authority that Art used to have – it’s my belief that making a statement like I described with an Original has more potency than what would happen if a copy were used, even though in this day and age all that exists is copies and digital versions of culture.

1. Cady Noland, Mutated Pipe, 1989

2. Gabriel Orozco, Yielding Stone, 2005

3. Maurizio Cattelan, Errotiale Vrai Lapin, 1994

4. Kelley Walker, Black Star Press, 2006

5. Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, from Landmark, 2001

Radicant Chapter 2

1. I'm curious what people will think about a paradox described on page 81 - that though the world is becoming increasingly mutable, we're operating under the sense that the systems in place (like captialism and democracy) that created the mutable world are somehow insurmountable - there's no alternative to them. I'm inclined to agree - there seems no way of escaping capitalism. Maybe when we're able to go to Mars and establish colonies we'll do better. In the meantime, the artist reacts by making the mutable waste into something substantial, but making it Art.

2. So many artists were brought up like Jason Rhoades who use a lot of found objects and create a chaotic installation that defies order and structure and pretty much any conventional ways of decoding the work into meaning for the viewer. Before my formal artistic eduaction, I was inclinded to view work like this as massive piles of junk that were not expressing anything of value to me. Even B. admitted that he struggled at first to understand the point of Rhoades's work, but then he formed this theory of creating meaning through defining negative space. I suppose I was one of those with a more "stationary gaze," seeing only chaos. I would say that I see so much chaos every day that I've been conditioned to ignore that I don't want to pay any special attention to this pile of junk and bombardment of neon lights, no offense Mr. Rhoades.

3. It was an important point brought up around page 110, that amidst all the art being created by journeys, there needs to be some sort of starting point or something towards which to journey, like pickles, apparently. Though the journeys wander through boundaries, there is still a system in place for them to be conducted. This is an act of the artwork creating its own context.

4. Topology = geometry that measures nothing and no quantities are compared. Instead one examines the figure's qualitative invariants by deforming it to see what happens, like folding a piece of paper. Art topology = perhaps the meaning derived from a Koons work is found in the invariants left behind when he blows up a toy to the size of a building.

5. Revocable aesthetics - an interesting phrase. It implies that the authority a work of Art has can be yanked at any time. I'm trying to imagine this situation happening with a classic, like a Picasso... It's hard to imagine that all of a sudden people will reject the merit of Starry Night, probably because this is a contemporary problem. Okay, how about a Damien Hirst... Well that's easier, many people wouldn't consider a shark in a glass case very aesthetic in the first place. The job of an artwork now is to create its own authority, its own context, that can stand up when the rest of the world has become entirely skeptical. That's a huge job to do - no wonder grad school is so stressful!

artists and images for chapter 1

Image: Sarah Morris, Endeavor - Los Angeles, 2005

Morris, according to Bourriaud, gives representation to sites of power using vernacular from Minimalism.

Image: Franz Ackermann Installation view of Terminal, 2008

He's doing a similar thing as Morris - illustrating the abstract dealings in the mass-marketing powers.

Image: Paul Gauguin,

Where Do We Come From What Are We Doing

Where Are We Going, 1897In the section about Segalen and diversity this example was brought up to illustrate Gauguin's practicing diversity, even foregoing the traditional systems of composition.

Image: Mike Kelley, Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites

Image: Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

TH.2058, 2008

Here's an example of Postproduction: taking sculptures of Calder and Boursgoise and others only blowing them up even larger for this artist's agenda.

The Radicant Chapter One

1) I hate this book. I've already spent a whole semester at it. Okay, I don't hate what he's talking about, I actually really like some of Bourriaud's ideas about the problems with Postmodernism and his cues for the future of artistic practice. BUT - it's still hard to follow the academic vernacular and he makes statements that are supposed to be taken as premises and givens without backing them up. For instance, page 29 he states that cultural identities are being wiped out by globalization, and he brings this statement up over and over. I would like him to perhaps have given an example or two of this, to know how he defines this wiping of cultural identity, and also how this affects me the lowly MFA student at New Paltz. Apparenty this premise is common knowledge. But, Christina, if this is common knowledge, why don't you try to come up with your own example of the melding of cultural identity by globalization? Hmm, how about the generation next: every young person sporting the styles of clothing and music and cell phones and online profiles that have been proliferated through mass marketing? The youth focus on belonging to the larger group instead of practicing traditions of their native cultures - and I'm thinking not just in the US but Europe and Japan, most evidently. This is just me taking a stab at it, I want to ask people in class, and I also want to know what Bourriaud thinks, it's his statement after all. Maybe class will know...

Also on page 34-35 ish he cites an example of the colonizer over the colonized, forcing traditions over the natives who have been conquered. His example was in Africa, and then with some of those nations that were emancipated just became stagnant afterwards without the colonizers. Bourriaud says you can't just be anti-colonial, just like you can't just be anti-modernism all the time, you have to have something more. I'd just like to point out that the African example is awful, because those emancipated nations are taken over by dictators and tyrants - what's Bourriaud's solution to just being anti here? Martial law? The martial law of the Art Critics???

I'd also like to point out that whenever one tries to type "radicant," word processing doesn't recognize it as a real word. I'm just saying...

2) One idea of Bourriaud's that I agree with is bringing your cultural roots with you from place to place, and using them instead of burying them, and being open to allowing them to change.

I remember asking myself before when reading this book, do I really have any cultural roots? I'm a product of the suburbs, white upper middle class, the only traditions we had were the big commercial holidays and maybe you can count the religious parts of those. Is this considered a valid culture or a globalized one? I'm not sure - but it's not like I had my great grandmother teach me to make a cultural dish to eat or a pillow stitched with cultural symbols and materials.

3) p. 53-ish: B. is describing the radicant artist and says that they do not seek an ideal state for the self or society - I wonder if this is indeed not only a good/bad thing but if it's really essential for B's ideal artist? Can't you be a nomadic artist with an agenda for a better life for everyone? What about eco-artists? Is he not calling for a revolution when he says that the old system of criteria for artistic judgement needs to be rearranged, or dismantled? How can this happen when the artists don't care about an ideal state of open consideration of objects?

4) B's question, actually: why should cultural diversity be preferred to the sharing of a single common culture anyway? The answer is given a few pages later through a description of an early 20th century writer, Segalen. Segalen was all about diversity, and one of the conclusions from him was that diversity and multitudes are an energy source producing momentum to move forward. Without that stirring motion we'd be stagnant and like a lukewarm stew, not stew even, lukewarm mush. Segalen also said that the gathering of the nearly alike in the context of a series has the effect of establishing rarity/singularity as a distinctive sign. B cited Haim Steinbach as an example of this - putting things on a shelf that are similar brings out the small singularities that can be found in each. Apparently this even applies to machine-made goods.

I also enjoyed Segalen's idea that your identity stemming from the place you were born is all circumstantial and dependent on contexts; it's not absolute.

5) My favorite idea from B. is that the Postmodern art was always questioning where something came from, the origins - "where do you speak from?" The question now should be, "where do we go?" This is *gasp!* a Modernist question. There is a dilemma, or a trap to avoid to falling into: uniting with those from the same place or joining those heading to the same place, even if that place being headed to is hazy or theoretical. (The trap is the former option.)

Postproduction Q's

1) In the first chapter, "Use of Objects," B. mentions Michel de Certeau's views on the meaning of the consumer. "To use an object is necessarily to interpret it." This seems like a central idea to most of what this essay is about - how we are shifting our ideas about meaning, where meaning comes from. My impression on first reading this passage was a negative one, like what de Certeau was saying was that by touching or receiving a work the consumer corrupts it and alters it forever. After a while I realized this wasn't meant in a negative way, that this is an idea of change, actually of perpetual change and evolution that people are finding new meaning in. And I further examined why I would think of it as a negative, and perhaps it's a very Modernist way of looking at it - like the created work has the higher value and meaning, it's originality makes it purer, etc. Oh well, I guess part of me clings to the past. [image: Jason Rhoades, Tijuanatanjierchandelier]

2) I especially agreed with page 32, a general assessment (and an unusually very clear one) of Art and what it's doing right not. He says, "art tends to give shape and weight to the most

invisible processes." The one he's talking about now is that people are in a shifting of reality - it's now the Information Age and reality is becoming increasingly intangible, and Art is giving shape to how people are dealing with this new way of living the intangible. But it can't be done by simply making objects, as Art has traditionally done, but now it's the creation of experiences. He goes on to describe the open market as a model for current artistic practice. It's been boiled down to a coming together of things with history attached to them already, not the striving for constantly new things. It's become about exchanges, convergence of many separate things - relational. [Image: Rirkrit Tiravanija, Untitled, 1992 (Free)]

3) It took me a second and third read to figure out what "detournement" was supposed to be. What is detournement? It is free access to all literary and artistic heritage (culture) for purposes of "propaganda." I also question if that's the right word, propaganda. Propaganda for what?

Anyway, any and all elements are open to not only correction and integration but also reinterpretation from their original meanings.

Then he gave the example of the DJs and I watched the RiP movie and understood all this.

[Image: Girltalk]

4) It basically all comes down to where we place value. Where is the value in the Art Object - in the Maker, in the Object itself, can it stand on its own, what makes that object successful, is it pretty, is it functional, is it making you think.................. blah blah blah. For me personally, I think about the word "talent." Where does this concept fit in to all of Bourriaud's talk? It's a skill that cannot be duplicated, both technically and perhaps intellectually as well, because some people can just think up some crazy stuff that's utterly amazing. This is, I suppose, the same thing as the artist's authenticity again, and people are asking what's going to happen with all this appropriation, is it going to spiral into meaninglessness and nothing will be good anymore? I would say that there is an innate sense of what's good, we all know what that is - it's all we talk about, we just give it complicated words - but basically we all know what is good and what isn't, what's cheap and what's handmade and which is better.

[Image: Haim Steinbach, Global Proportions, 2007]

5) Page 23 where he brings up Pierr Huyghe, says that the goal of this guy's work is to give the people back the control in the writing of "scenarios," the scripts that have been written for us to live our lives by. "Citizens would gain autonomy and freedom if they could participate in the construction of the 'bible' of the social sitcom instead of deciphering its lines." Um, isn't this the theory of DEMOCRACY in general? What our country was founded on? The people make the rules, not some supreme authority with no accountability making us follow blindly or else we'll be killed.... Is this not technically what our society is? People made up these scenarios, not the government. The people are the government - it does what we want to to, right?? People have rights, they have rights not to watch sticoms on TV! I don't want to get into a big debate, it just struck me as sort of ironic, that statement.

[Image: Pierre Hyughe, This is not a Time for Dreaming, 2004]

Walter Benjamin Responses

a) What is the “aura” of a work of art?

“That which withers in the mechanical age of reproduction.” The aura of art involves its historical testimony; it’s place in time and space, and all the references to that from its inception throughout its life. Tied to this is its authenticity, derived from these historical references, that it has an original.

b) In Benjamin’s mind, what effects did mechanical reproduction, such as film and the camera/photography, have on the viewer’s perception of art?

Because mechanical reproduction strips the aura from a work of art, in its place is a new reality composed of a plurality of copies instead of a unique existence. It also allows the work of art to leave its original context and come to the viewer in his own situation. Now [some] art is designed for its reproducibility – it is now based on its exhibition value, which is determined by politics.

As the human image withdrew from the photograph, its value became more exhibitionary and also needed context – like captions, like text in silent films. In film, more levels of removal from the art of the actor come up – the cameraman, the editor, etc. Also, both film and photos offer only on possible viewing of a situation, because it’s assembled through inhuman processes, and unless you were standing at the exact angle of the camera lens seeing and hearing all the effects, you would get another experience, like standing slightly to the left.

c) What is meant by the passage: “for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence of ritual”?

The ritual aspect of a work of art is part of its aura for it implies a social function, usually of elevation to the spiritual/mystical. Mechanical reproduction changes the preexisting need for art to serve this function – it becomes about the exhibitionary value, politics.

d) What mechanically or otherwise reproductive processes are changing the face of art today?

Well, I can speak for the specific art of ceramics – the process of mold-making and reproduction is changing the face of ceramics in a big way. In similar ways, it questions and undermines the traditions of ceramics that are extremely entrenched in the artistic hand and connection to the body. It’s even about transcendence. But the mechanical reproduction emphasizes the lack of human touch. It’s also gone beyond just the opposition in functional ware but to sculptural as well. An artist can make his own form and then make a mold and multiples of that and create sculpture with it. He can also get molds of functional ware and alter them for a sculptural statement.

I suppose more generally there is a furthering of Benjamin’s examples of the lay people becoming the experts through the mass accessibility of artworks. Now there is youtube and other such reality nonsense that are blurring the lines between what’s art and what’s not, who’s the expert after all and what does that mean…

Art of This Time - 2010

Title: Unfortunately my title isn't all too original, just like previous titles, but I think it's appropriate: neo-postmodernism. I call it this because the Art being made at this time is still pretty much postmodern, it still holds the anti- principles and still goes against idealizations and all of that, and it still utilizes all of the same tools and aesthetics. The only new thing I see happening is the subject matter (and occasionally use of as medium) of globalization and individualized mass communication.

It's main principles include dealing with the self as the world gets smaller. It's not about rejecting anything, in fact I see it as sort of "anything goes!" philosophy. It's all-embracing in terms of culture and race and gender, pretty much, but there are still rules in place when we try to think of it in terms of assigning value and monetary worth (another can of worms).

I've done a lot of studying and discussing Bourriaud's manifesto for the Altermodern art and the Radicant artist: He says that the new art transcends spacial boundaries and is all about the global traveller. The Radicant is a traveller, drawing imagery from all cultures and geographies while keeping his own in the down-low. It's drawing on all cultures without that nasty question of authority, does he have the right to, because now he does - everything is in play now that we have access to (and presumably the access to understand properly) these cultures and peoples.

When and How was it born: I'd say with the coming of the internet, the 80s, and it has grown as the technology and access to information has grown.

Postmodernisn Art Movement

Beginnings: Most say in the 1960s when people began using "low-brow" materials and questioning the status of Art - Duchamp is an early case, ahead of his time, who started this whole way of turning objects and Art upside-down. Rauschenberg in the late fifties is a key starter for the big movement, and Warhol and Pop Art began a big wave as well.

Ending: Some say that postmodernism ended in the 80s when the resonance of the term faded and artists started addressing the impact of globalization, which increased with the invention of the World Wide Web and proliferation of mass communication technologies.

Main Principles: To go against the teachings and preachings of Modernism, namely against purity of form, art for art's sake, authenticity, universality, originality, and revolutionary. Postmodern questions the value of Art itself, and also it goes against the "avant-garde" and being visionary. It emphasizes the conflation of high and low culture, using industrial materials and pop culture references and tools to call attention to those discrepancies.

Main Aesthetics: These include multi-media, appropriation, use of found objects, use of text, use of video, lots of installation, performance art, happenings, images from popular culture...

Main Artists: Warhol, Rauschenberg, LIchtenstein, Kruger, Carolee Schneeman, Sol le Witt, Richard Serra, Eva Hesse

Main Critics: Lyotard (a theorist who I think coined the term postmodern), and Jean Baudrillard, and perhaps Arthur Danto.

Defining the Modern Art Movement

Claude Monet, Impression - soleil levant, 1872

Wassily Kandinsky, Fugue, 1914

Brancussi, Young Bird, 1928

Eduard Manet, The Picnic, 1863

1) Beginning: the mid- 1800s, commonly attributed to Manet's painting, Le dejeneur sur l'herbe in 1863 and continues with the Impressionists. There were many movements over a course of about a hundred years that fall under Modern.

2) Ending: hard to say when it ended, probably the mid- 1900s when Postmodernism is being attributed to starting. Though I would say that there is still art being made today that falls under a Modernism definition, like abstract sculpture and paintings that decorate corporate office buildings.

3) Anyway, it's main defining characteristics are experimentation within artistic media. in painting they played with color expression and combinations and the portrayal of light, and in sculpture as well there was abstraction and basic colors and geometry. A lot of the movements within have to do with abstraction. Modern Art went along with many posits of Modernism - thought of the times that was broadly about rejecting traditions of the past in favor of new ways of expression that weren't so restricting.

4) Main artists are many and include: Monet, Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Edvard Munch, Expressionists like Kandinsky, sculptors Alexander Calder and Giacometti and Henry Moore, Abstract Expressionists de Kooning and Pollock, Minimalists Richard Serra and Donald Judd and Mark Rothko.

The only big critic of Modern Art I know of is Clement Greenburg who wrote a lot about the idea of art being an aesthetic and uplifting experience, and the art that did this was usually the most abstract, without any cultural or historical markers that would impede the transcendent art experience.

5) The aesthetic character of Modern Art includes bright and vibrant colors, "loose" painterly gestures, abstraction of figures and things, and complete abstraction of any subject, a lot of geometry-based patterns and figures and objects as well.