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
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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.....