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.