Fred Tomaselli at the Tang

When picking which local art show I wanted to attend I decided on Fred Tomaselli's display at the Tang on the Skidmore College campus. I decided on this because his works are a marvel and they gave him a huge time span for his show. I mean February til June, my god.

The above piece named, Echo Wow and Flutter, is truly a masterpiece, he once again uses his pills technique making this wild piece of art. It is just ridiculous.. I cannot stop looking at it, its freaky. Hes got hundreds of pills, all shapes sizes and colors and also puts eyes on some of them. Seeing this piece in real life was so cool and awing. I think how he creates his art is so creative and the attention to detail is tremendous. I can't even begin to understand where his inspiration comes from, except maybe for some hallucinogenic drugs.

This piece below is one of his pieces where he uses the human form. He has many of these but this one in particular name, Fungi and Flowers, is just so appealing. I mean the mash organs, flowers, butterflies I am so just intrigued. Not to mention he even felt compelled to throw in s downstairs organ.. I don't know whats with the sexual things to artists but this guy gets a pass. Tomaselli, after visiting his show, is truly my favorite artist.

Alright anyway, back to the art.. what is with the head part of this piece. Its like roots of both the flower he is holding and roots from his face connecting. What does this signify? Hell if I know.. the dude uses pills to form acid tripping-like art pieces. It reminds me of the movie Avatar because he is connecting to nature.. literally just like they do with the hair thingamajig. When seeing this piece up close there is just more and more things you notice. It is absolutely insane.. you see a mans' actual upper body, more eyes, a real foot inside of the outer foot I just cannot wrap my head around it.




This next piece has a slightly different taste to it but he still uses his pills. I make it seem like hes taking them.. no hes uses them to create this wild pieces. It looks like a constellation in space somewhere and the piece is named, "Leo." I suppose it is probably based around that constellation. The pills are just so perfect for this type of piece and it looks that much better in person. I don't know where he finds these pills but the color and shapes he makes to connect the stars are perfect.



There were about 20 pieces he had at the exhibition but these were a few of my favorites. I would suggest anyone who has any interest in Tomaselli's work, to go to the Tang and walk around. It would be a worth while trip and you will see how much of a genius he really is. I am by no means an art expert or even a novice but I having seen a decent amount of artwork from numerous dead or recent artists.. this guy stands out and above most.

Illustrations

Talking about drawing as a form of art in our last class got me thinking back to our original question when starting this class, What constitutes art? Can illustrating for things likes comics or movies or TV shows be considered art?
The question of purpose comes into play here. Because the reason for drawing these figures is commonly to compliment a plot. what is often missed when thinking about illustrations though is how much they in fact can mean to their respective plots.
While many comics focus on the text as a way to facilitate their humor many of these comics give us iconic images much like the one shown here of Carlie Brown.
Many of these comics' illustrations can be considered art in my opinion as it is a practice often related with art (drawing) along with a meaning associated, even if that meaning is just an attempt to make its audience laugh.

Tang Teaching museum is presently showcasing artist Fred Tomaselli. His work is very interesting containing actual objects mixed into his paintings. In this picture to the left Untitled (expulsion) he incorporates different types of pills and plants to create an intricate design.
I enjoyed this work in particular as it reminded me of a simplistic art activity practice. The image that stuck out in my mind while looking at this piece was one of children gluing macaroni to plates in arts and crafts. His work goes a step further, however, taking a simplistic idea of collage of materials into such a complex design. His work provides a unique experience and I would definitely recommend someone to check out his work.

Fiona Rae who we talked about in class recently is a member of an influential art group known as the YBAs or Young British Artists. The group originated out of Goldsmiths College. The artists are anything but young know most of them around middle aged now. The group also contains Damien Hirst who we talked about earlier this year. Although the name didn't originate until the early 90s the group started off in 1988 at the Freeze exposition which was organized by Damien Hirst. This first exposition did not receive a lot of press and was mostly an underground event. Since then many of these artists have achieved fame especially Damien Hirst.
Groups like this are important as they help to familiarize the public with more artists. If a group like this produces a famous artist more of its members will be looked at because of the success of its style.

Alison Watt

Moving into painting I was intrigued to what kind of works recent painters have done. I was absolutely captivated by Alison Watt's works. Whenever I used to doodle, even if it was just a doodle, I had great troubles with shading. What I think of shading is obviously giving your drawing depth, shadows and just plainly bring it into a 3-D world or to make it look real. Now I struggled with this.. this girl has it down. I have never seen such life like work before. Her sheets etc seem like something so plain, well she makes such a plain concept or focus on her work so
incredibly awesome.



The one above just looks like I could grab it of (even from my computer screen) and take a nap. I think she is incredibly talented and is a bringer of realistic paintings extraordinaire.

I am a computer science major so I enjoy the advancement of technology and as the years roll by I can see how computer design and graphics have soared. Now painting is very different obviously but it is still nice to know by not using technology things like this can still be created. I wish I could have visited her unveiling of her "Sheets," it would have been an experience.

Ursula von Rydingsvard

Going along with the art form of sculpting, a woman by the name of Rydingsvard caught my attention. She creates these huge sculptures that are very gothic or an older styled sculptures. Many of the pieces she created went up in public places such as Madison Square Part etc. This piece in particular intrigued me, its called Czara z Babelkami. I have not a clue what the name of it means and couldn't find a source to shed some light. However regardless the first thing I thought when I saw it was.. "Beehive!" Then quickly noticing that the "dimples" in my imaginary hive are actually faces.. maybe? Well anyhow they look like simplistic faces that are scattered all round this big orifice of backwards pyramid. It is fascinating that this structure is just completely tiled. From top to bottom, it is sectioned into small squares and I become mesmerized by it.

I believe the size of sculptures are very crucial to how you perceive them. Take a small work of say, a puppy. Now take that image of a small, stuff animal vision and blow it up so that the puppy is now 30 feet tall. I would obviously take them very differently. However I now look at it in a very different artistic manner. When pieces are much larger you can just see more of it even if you must walk around it to see everything.

Art Crimes: Graffiti Art

After lecture today, I was intrigued with the graffiti art and decided to research and find out more information about graffiti all over the world. I stumbled upon Art Crimes, an online gallery of graffiti art from the US, Europe, and many other cities around the world. This project was founded by Susan Farrell in May 1994 with a handful of photos from Atlanta and Prague. In September, after her project went public, Brett Webb teamed up with Farrell supporting the site until 2005. Art Crimes has won various awards, such as; Cool Site of the Day (1994) and Top 10 nominee for Best of the Web (1995). It has also been featured in several publications such as, Flashbacks, Newsweek, Discovery Channel, Radio France, New York Times, and USA Today. 10 years later, Art Crimes had thousands of images from 445 cities around the world. It was the first graffiti site on the net and has since inspired others to be created.

The purpose of this website was to publish and preserve the graffiti that one walks past every day. In several locations graffiti is illegal and the website does not advocate breaking the law; however, they think that this art belongs in public spaces and more legal walls should be available for these expressive artworks. Art Crimes wants support in their effort to preserve your local graffiti history. Another main goal of Art Crimes is to provide cultural and scholarly information and resources along with helping to preserve and document the constantly disappearing painting. They also want to inform people that this kind of graffiti, known as, “writing” is being done by artists who call themselves “writers” not by gangs.

Art Crimes is a collaborative and ongoing volunteer project and holds great respect for the writers and their artwork. Terms such as, "graffiti," "artist," "spraycan art," "graff," are objected by many writers. However, this website but a lot of thought into its name using the term “writer” which does not adequately set graffiti writers apart from other book authors or journalists. Also the term “graffiti” is used because it is thought to still have the most recognition and using it makes Art Crimes more findable with search engines. I found this site to be extremely interesting and full of graffiti from all over the world. It is a shame that it illegal in so many places and that it is constantly getting erased. However, this also allows for more graffiti to be created so I feel that this website does a great job preserving this art. When people think of art, graffiti typically does not come to mind but it one of the most visible art throughout cities and I will not notice and appreciate it. I also looked at the art from the different cities and it was remarkable to see all of the different artworks created and how there were some similarities and differences based on the cities. For example, many of the art in New York and LA had similar styles verses the art in Kansas which I felt a different vibe from.

In lecture today we briefly discussed the Guerrilla Girls, so I decided to research more about the feminist group. The Guerrilla Girls began in 1985; after a few women attended an exhibition titled “An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture” held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and discovered that only 13 of the 169 featured artists were women. The ratio of artists of color were even smaller, none of whom were women artists either. They are an anonymous group of radical feminist artists who were established in New York City in 1985. They are known for their posters, books, billboards, appearance and other creative forms of culture jamming that expose discrimination and corruption. They were trained visual artists and their first work was putting up posters all over the New York City streets decrying the gender and racial imbalance of artists represented in galleries and museums. They have since expanded greatly to examine Hollywood and the film industry, popular culture, gender stereotyping and corruption in the art world. They are known for wearing gorilla masks in public and the names of dead women artists as pseudonyms. The Guerrilla Girls invented a unique combination of content, text, and snappy graphics that present feminist viewpoints in a humorous manner. Their intention is that many viewers who initially disagree with their positions will get drawn in by the comic hook, think about the issues, and then change their minds.

In 2000, closed to 100 women worked in the group; however, three separate groups formed in which they do not share members and have their own work and website. The Guerrilla Girls was the original group established by the two founding members of the Guerrilla Girls continuing to use provocative text, visuals and humor in the service of feminism and social change. They travel all around the world discussing feminist issues and reinventing the “f” word into the 21st Century. The Guerrilla Girls on Tour is the second group and is a touring theater collectively founded by three former members of the Guerrilla Girls. They develop original plays, performances and workshops, street theater actions and residency programs that dramatize women's history and address the lack of opportunities for women and artists of color in the performing arts. The Guerrilla Girls Broadband is the third group that combats sexism, racism and social injustice, exploring such taboo subjects as feminism and fashion and discrimination in the world.

Every year the Guerrilla Girls visit colleges and universities, in full jungle drag, to give multi-media presentations of their history and work. Exhibitions of Guerrilla Girls’ work have been organized at museums in the US, and at the Tate Modern, London, The Centre Pompidou Paris, and others. One of their most famous posters was plastered across New York City buses in 1989. Its headline read, "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?" The Guerrilla Girls conducted a "weenie count" at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, counting naked males and naked females in the artworks as well as numbers of female artists in the collection. Less than 5% of the artists in the MMOA's modern art sections were women, but 85% of the nudes were female. The Guerrilla Girls went back in 2005 to do a recount and found that there are now fewer women artists shown at the Met, but more naked males in the artworks. I think that the Guerilla Girls are very creative and enthusiastic about their cause and they have every reason to be. They raise very important issues and add entertainment and excitement to the art world.

Nicolas Bourriaud

After listening to Bourriaud's interview on "altermodern" there was a few key points I took away from it. First to explain what "atlermodern" is, Bourriaud says, "atler is multiplicity and otherness". He goes on to say that he believes postmodernism is over and the new altermodern is the new movement emerging.

He is trying to explain that it is difficult to decipher what exactly modernism is. He of course explains postmodernism is after modernism but altermodernism is what would, more or less, be the one having to become out on top.

The basis of this interview was he is about to unveil an exhibit at the Tate art show and he has three other unvelings to show to compliment altermodernism. One for traveling, one of exile and the last based in dimensional borders. He goes on to say that he believes that the new modernism needs to be global from scratch.

Down to the last minute or so he says, "The last continent artists need to explore is time." I am not exactly sure what he means by this. But then again I am not sure what he means about a few other things. However I believe he has good points and he really believes that this is the new modernism for art.

Back To The Basics With Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois is a famous traditional artist that we discussed in class. She is not like the other artists that we have recently been talking about because of her traditional style. She is a sculptor, painter and print maker. She uses materials such as; wood, clay-stone, mirrors and clothing. All of the materials that she uses have a sense of history to them and the story of history is revealed in her work. Her work is autobiographical and tells a story about her life and family. She believes that art is taking your own life and using it to create works, which in that sense makes her a traditional artist.

Bourgeois claims that she should not have to explain her art and that the work should move and speak to you. I agree with this statement; however I disagree with her argument that if her work does not move you then she failed as an artist. This is a belief of many traditional artists. Bourgeois claims that her work is inspired through her history but since everyone has a different history, every piece will not mean or inspire that same reaction. It is refreshing to know that there are still traditional artists creating work that is inspired through their history. I feel that this kind of art can be the most inspiring and cause a reason that truly connects the viewer with the artist.

Some of the work that she is best known for is Cells, Spiders, and several other drawings, books or sculptures. Louise bourgeois has a true connection with her work and speaks of them in symbolic terms focused around relationships. Her major inspiration is from her childhood; mainly her adulterous father, who had an affair with her governess, and her mother, who refused to acknowledge it. She conveys feelings of anger, betrayal and jealousy, but with playfulness in her work. Bourgeois’ pieces consist of erotic and sexual images and also forms found in nature, such as her sculpture, Cumuls (referring to clouds in the sky) and Nature Study. Although she has worked with spider imagery since the 1940s, perhaps her most famous works are the spider sculptures from 1994 to 2003, including Mamad.

Experiments of Vik Muniz

A Brazilian Vik Muniz born in 1961 is a New York based artist who experiments with media. His momentary works are of objects arranged to make an image which he then photographs the arrangement resulting in the final piece. This makes one question the truth and realness of a photograph. When one typically thinks of a photograph, they think it is of something that is real, not objects arranged to make an image.




Muniz began his career in the late 1980’s as a sculptor moving from Brazil to Chicago and ending in New York. During this time most of his works were often jokes or visual puns. A famous piece of art during this time was “Clown Skull”, a human skull augmented with a clown -nose shaped bump. In 1990 was when Muniz started creating work that portrayed his signature style of photographing his drawings or creations. “The Best of Life” was a photograph which he drew pictures of photographs included in the coffee table book “The Best of Life” from memory after losing the book. The drawings of the photographs were then photographed and shown as photographs. Muniz continues this method today.

Vik Muniz then moves to making a drawing out of a nontraditional material and then photographing it. Such examples are, “Equivalents” (1993), “Pictures of Wire” (1994), and “Pictures of Thread” (1995), where he makes drawings out of readily recognizable non-art materials such as, cotton, wire or thread. Muniz participated in the 1997-1998 New Photography exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York because of his because “Sugar Children” in 1996. Muniz has expanded his range of materials working with chocolate syrup, caviar, diamonds, earthworms, and much more. He has exhibited his work in several different museums and galleries around the world.


I find Vik Muniz’s work to be the most interesting art work I have seen in a while. I feel that it is very creative and unique and I find it enjoyable to view. Some examples of his creative art are his two detailed replicas of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, in which he made one out of jelly and the other out of peanut butter. He also created a replication of da Vinci’s The Last Supper working with sugar, wire, thread, and Bosco Chocolate. His recent work of creating larger scale works, geoglyps, which are pictures carved into the earth. Another recent work “Pictures of Clouds” is humorous where he had a skywriter draw cartoon outlines of clouds in the sky. I really think Muniz is a great artist whose unique style is very eye appealing, creative and enlightening.

Joseph Beuys' Performance Art: How To Explain Pictures To A Dead Hare

After watching Marcus Coates’ performance art, I decided to investigate Joseph Beuys, one of the earlier performance artists. He was born on May 12, 1921 in Germany and he is a German performance artist, sculptor, installation artist, graphic artist, art theorist, and pedagogue of art. His artwork is grounded with the themes of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy. He can be seen as one of the most influential artists of the 20th Century. His extensive artwork can be broken up into four domains; works of art in a traditional sense (paintings, etc.), performance, contributions to the theory of art and academic teaching, and social-and political activities. Beuys brought aspects of creative practice outside of the institution and into the everyday.

Beuys’s first solo exhibition in a private gallery started on November 26, 1965 with one of his most compelling performances: How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare. The artist could be viewed through the glass of the gallery’s window. His face was covered in honey and gold leaf, an iron slab was attached to his boot. In his arms he cradled a dead hare, into whose ear he mumbled muffled noises as well as explanations of the drawings that lined the walls. Such materials and actions had specific symbolic value for Beuys. For example, honey is the product of bees, and for Beuys, bees represented an ideal society of warmth and brotherhood. Gold had its importance within alchemical enquiry, and iron, the metal of Mars, stood for a masculine principle of strength and connection to the earth.

Beuys explained his performance in several ways, one being: “In putting honey on my head I am clearly doing something that has to do with thinking. Human ability is not to produce honey, but to think, to produce ideas. In this way the deathlike character of thinking becomes lifelike again. For honey is undoubtedly a living substance. Human thinking can be lively too. But it can also be intellectualized to a deadly degree, and remain dead, and express its deadliness in, say, the political or pedagogic fields.” He feels that gold and honey indicate a transformation of the head, and therefore, naturally and logically, the brain and our understanding of thought, consciousness and all the other levels necessary to explain pictures to a hare. The idea of explaining to an animal conveys a sense of the secrecy of the world and of existence that appeals to the imagination. He claimed that “even a dead animal preserves more powers of intuition than some human beings with their stubborn rationality”. Joseph Beuys tries o bring to light the complexity of creative areas. I find his work peculiar and although many of his traditional art, such as his paintings and sculptures I consider art, his performance art I do not.

Marcus Coates

At what point is the line drawn between performance art and entertainment? Is it merely title justification? Are Coates' performances only a type of art because he says they are or is there some other type of requirement? The first thought that comes to mind is purpose; meaning it's art because he's doing these performances with a deeper meaning in mind. This definition could change, however, due to the reason people consume his art. If people only watch him because they find him funny does that make his performance not art anymore?
If these questions seem reasonable ways to categorize art than it could be possible for the same performance to be art in one instance but not in another. For example as long as he has a deeper meaning for his work and someone consumes his art because of that meaning, or to search for that meaning it may be considered art. If another person, however, only views it because they find it funny or entertaining in some way at that point it may no longer be art. This is an interesting though because it adds a fourth dimension (time) to an artwork.

The Whitney Biennial: 2010

On April 3, 2010 I visited the Whitney Museum of American Art. The building itself was a work of modern art standing out among all of the buildings on Madison Avenue. It is a five story building which at each new level; the building protrudes out, similar to an upside down staircase. There were also very few windows to help showcase the art inside the museum. When I arrived, there was a line out the door, luckily it was a nice day outside. I observed the people on line while my mother and I waited about forty minutes to get in. Most of the people at the Whitney, which is what the museum is typically shortened to, look very sophisticated and keen on art. Their dress was very modern and untraditional and many had accents showing their different backgrounds. This museum attracted a variety of people, most who found art very interesting and fascinating. Although I enjoy art and have taken an introductory class in visual art, I felt out of place. I feel that many of the people at the museum knew a great deal about art and different artists, where my mother and I had a narrower background. However, I enjoyed the visit at the Whitney a great deal, seeing works of art by artists that we’ve talked about in class as well as art that I could compare with other art we’ve discussed.

From February twenty-fifth to May thirtieth, the seventy-fifth edition of the Whitney’s signature exhibition, the Whitney Biennial, took place. The exhibition this year was titled ‘2010’ and embodies a cross section of fifty-five artist’s contemporary art productions. The Biennials are always affected by the cultural, political and social instances of the time. Many more artists are operating and active, each of them part of a rich and lively system from which the Biennial as an exhibition draws its inspiration. Balancing different media ranging from painting and sculpture to video, photography, performance, and installation, ‘2010’ is a great example of Whitney’s past and future. Many of these artists have created spaces for performances and encounters between themselves and individuals from different communities. Several of the artists collectively try to develop a new historical movement, while others look back on abstraction and the history of modernism. Many of the images of the body are shaped by physical, spiritual, or social violence and have evidence of scars of war, discrimination, and hatred. However, these draw attention to larger social and political issues and are not hopeless, rather a form of regeneration, providing a chance for a new beginning. There were many artists whose work interested me and that I found very intriguing.

Born in Dickson Tennessee, Hannah Greely now resides in Los Angeles where she creates great sculptures. The sculpture in display at the Whitney, ‘Dual’ replicates everyday objects like many of her sculptures. In ‘Dual’ she replicates two booths in a bar, where the lighting is dark. It looks like Greely carefully designed this art because the rips in the cushions are nicely scattered. I feel that he is trying to display how the familiar can become strange and unknown. It questions what a real world object is and what a sculptural design is. Some in congruencies are the length of the seat cushion, the height of the table, and the handmade pay phone. This reminds me of the artist we learned about in class, Andrea Zittel whose relational art took regular objects to a new level. Although Andrea Zittel lived in her art, I feel that Hannah Greely’s sculpture delivers the message of taking art to the next level.

Josephine Meckseper creates a variety of art such as, installations, photographs, and films. He uses his art to expose the political ramifications of America’s culture of consuption. In ‘Mall of America’, Meckseper uses a video camera to explore the Mall of America in Minneoapolos, one of the top tourist spots in the United States. In this video he stops to obsevre all the different faucets of the mall such as the amusement park, the window displays, sale signs and shoppers. He then creates an abstraction of these images disorienting it. He does this by placing red and blue filters over the lens, turing some of the fottage on its side and creating a erry soundtrack. The mall turns into a dnagerous place of war where Meckseper uses the flight simulator attraction in the mall and added fighter pilot footage to create a hostile environment in the mall. It was interesting how he turned simple images and footage into an experience of war and violence. The normal wa turned into a cry for change in consumption and this art was a very creative may of displaying the messege.

Another piece of art that I found interesting was ‘Landscape with Houses #1’ because I find replication models very interesting. James Casebere, born in 1953 lives in Brooklyn and has since the 1980’s has used pictures and models to create surreal environments. He constructs tabletop models using materials such as Styrofoam, plaster and cardboard and then dramatically lights the model creating a mood for the art. His model, ‘Landscape with Houses #1’ was a very detailed model to date of an American subdivision based on one in Dutchess County, New York. The lighting created a depressing mood on the community, which was hit hard by the foreclosure epidemic of the past few years. Without reading about the art one could feel the message he was trying to portray based on the lighting and design which to me is what art is.

Kate Gilmore is another talented artist whose work is displayed at the Whitney. She was born in Washington DC in 1975 and now lives in New York. Her still from ‘Still Standing Here 2010’ is a mix-media sculpture with video, color, sound and dimensions variable. She is the sole protagonist in her video which explores themes of displacement, struggle and female identity. In the work displayed at the Whitney, she tries to escape from a tall column made of sheetrock by climbing, kicking and punching holes into its walls. Her attire displays her femininity wherein high-heels and a polka dot dress; however she works through these limitations determined to break free. The picture taken was before she escaped symbolizing women’s struggle and obstacles still faced in the social world today.

Lastly, Robert Grosvenor’s diverse and abstract sculpture intrigued me. He was born in 1937 in New York. His work seems to be fabricated; however, he created every contour by hand. He often forges relationships between two or more seemingly unrelated forms in his art and the art displayed at the Whitney did just that. Robert Grosvenor contrasts the surfaces of an aluminum screen along with a red bridge structure. Grosvenor describes the sculpture as “two lines of poetry meeting, one in the foreground and one in the background.” The aluminum element as well as the bridge both can be looked through to see the other piece of his art. This work creates unusual tension and curiosity; however, after looking at the art the two pieces fit well together and in a sense relate. The holes in the aluminum wall and the bridge both provide a way to the other side.

Drink Away The Art by Hannes Broecker

What.. a.. clever.. idea. If your wandering around an exhibit not knowing whats going on, why not be able to booze. Not just take out a flask and down it but drink the actual piece of art. Hah.

The name is perfect and I think even though this is simple color wine tasting thing.. it is pretty in its own little sense. Drink Away The Art, I imagine there was probably no more art left for Broecker to wind down after a busy showing after the exhibit was closed.

Besides it being freaking cool, I noticed that he made the shapes a rectangle.. kind of like the shape of a television. I think maybe he wanted to be able to show more surface area of the colorful liquid.

Or.. what I like more is that, like a television you sit in front of it and watch, and only be able to hear and see. But now when you look at this box, you can smell and taste the entertainment.

Mona Lisa Curse - Robert Hughes

"The entanglement of big money with art has become a curse on how art is made, controlled, and above all - in the way that it’s experienced."

The above quote, by Robert Hughes himself nails one of the biggest issues with art, in my opinion, right on the head. This film or documentary, with Hughes going from place to place, person to person and year to year really brings pressing issues upon the foundation of art.

Why are we paying so much for this stuff?

Hughes argues that this art, most of it, really isn't that spectacular, tasteful or just wowing in the way DaVinci and others of that nature. Now this sounds like a stubborn old mans devotion to his own beliefs but he, in my opinion is totally right.

I have always had a problem with, just because your (f)art(s) don't stink that they are worth millions of dollars. I mean, we have discussed this again and again, yes the droplets of paint are nice and I'm sure it wasn't as easy as a child making a mess. But millions of dollars.. really? No disrespect to Warhol, he was a fan favorite talented artist, but a painting of a can of a name brand of soup selling for $6 million dollars at an auction.. what have we become?

Hughes backbone and outlying start of this problem was when, of course the Mona Lisa was moved to New York. He says, without being so offensive to America, because he has lived here for a long time, that it was just a disgrace.

He says people were lining up to see the Mona Lisa, just to simply say they saw it, not because they wanted to gander and speculate on this piece of art. Not only that.. he says it really isn't that spectacular in its own sense. It is nothing of beauty (to him) and for this piece of art to be a spotlight for a circus is just disgraceful.

Relational Art: Andrea Zittel

One artist who I found interesting was Andrea Zittel. In class today we discussed how artists do not have a distinctive style, rather their work seems to blend together. Nicolas Bourriaud feels that we are living in a Relational Art world today. Artists are not working with the mindset of producing one piece of art. Rather, they are interested in utilizing a different space and connecting with society. Artists are blending with the world and not working independently which is causing artists to not develop a distinctive style like years ago when one could notice a Van Gogh or other famous artist work just by looking at it. Relational Art is defined as a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole human relations and their social context, rather than an independent private space. Nicolas Bourriaud feels that those of us who are ongoing and more creative are really creating things for the twenty-first century art.

One example of a Relational Artist is Andrea Zittel. Zittel was born in 1965 and can be best described as a sculptor and installation artist. Her art dealt with many issues such as her past as a child, special connectedness, making a comment on society and human values. She feels that her art is affected by her growing up in South California, a place that is so normal compared to her new apartment in Brooklyn, New York. In the early 1990’s she began making art in response to her own surroundings and daily routines. She created her first “Living Unit” which was an experimental structure that intended to reduce everything necessary for living into a simple, compact system; as a means of facilitating basic activities in her 200 square foot Brooklyn apartment. This Living Unit, included the basics and when she completed it she was depressed and desponded. She had a revelation that no one really wants perfection, which I can relate to. It is important to have something to aspire and try to obtain but once you obtain this goal, what else do you have to work for?

Influenced by modernist design and architecture from early twentieth century, Zittel’s one-woman mock organization, “A–Z Administrative Services,” develops furniture, homes, and vehicles for contemporary consumers with a similar simplicity and attention to order. She commented that all of her work traces back to what she dealt with as a child and most of her work is about being alone. She used this Living Unit in a sense to isolate herself from the outside world which what her work is mostly about. Zittel also created a 44-ton floating concrete island anchored off the coast of Denmark. She lived on the “fantasy island” for one month as an experiment that allowed her to escape and isolated her from the rest of the world. Zittel moved to a 25-acre dessert in the California desert to isolate herself once again. Her goal was to explore how perceptions of freedom have been readapted for contemporary living. It was her theory that personal liberation "is now achieved through individual attempts to slip between the cracks". Andrea Zittel now lives in both New York and California constantly altering and examining aspects of life that are taken for granted and responding to day to day events and her surroundings.

20x200

The piece I chose to "purchase" from 20x200 was Beth Dow's The Pinetum, Wakehurst Place. I started my method for finding an artwork by browsing the site and choosing about ten or so artists who's work appealed to me. I did this because firstly to narrow the field but also because I did not want to "buy" a piece I didn't like. Once I narrowed the field I wanted to find an artist who was popular. The way I measured this was using Google. I searched all of the artists i had found and took note of the number of hits for each name. There were three artists in my search who were head and shoulders above the rest and Beth Dow was the clear winner with about 807,000 hits. If the results were closer other things i would have used to pick the artist like the number of pieces which were sold out for each artist or personal preferences. Once I had my artist narrowed down I simply chose the piece by them that I liked the most.

Art in Todays World

Jen Bekman truly loves art and the idea of sharing art. She opened her small gallery on the Lower East Side in 2003 with the mission of supporting emerging artists and collectors. She took this idea one step further with 20x200 making the art available for everyone. She came up with a formula: (limited editions x low prices) + the internet = art for everyone. I feel that this formula is perfect for the world that we live in today. The 20x200 website introduces at least two new editions a week, one photo and one on paper. The smallest size costs $20 and there are 200 copies. The larger the piece of art, the more money it cost because there are less editions available. Every print is assigned a numbered certificate of authenticity that is signed by the artist along with the artist’s bio and instructions on how to care for the art.

I found the website very user friendly with a lot of information on the history of the website as well as the different artists and artwork. After going through the site I would choose to buy ‘Try Letting Go’, by Sean Greene. When I am shopping or looking at art, what I see first is usually what I end up buying. In this case, when I first went to the website this art was the first art displayed on the website because it is the newest. After browsing through the rest of the art I still liked this piece the best. The colors and use of shapes and lighting were magnificent. I liked Sean’s description of the piece how ‘bands of colored light are paths, traces of motion that lead the eye through a space and around a surface’. He said how his involvement in skateboarding influenced his art He related the canvas to the street or bowl and the forms or curves are the ways through the space. His art was very insightful and also very appealing. The art caught my eye as soon as I saw it which is the main reason why I would buy the art.

When I went to buy the art I realized that you could use a gift-certificate. I feel that this would make a great gift for a friend or family member because it allows them to choose a unique piece of art that they like and is something different. Overall, I feel that this website allows unknown artists to show their work and become available on the art market. It was a smart idea to use the internet, something that everyone is very familiar with and easily accessible. Art is something that should be shared with everyone and this website allows others to enjoy art.

Hickey Talk

I wasn't sure how to start this but I think it would be good to start how he commented how some people like money better than art and vice-versa. He is a funny old English teacher and was entertaining the whole time which I believe is important. So..

He also pokes fun at people who get into art for the money and jokes that there is no point in having money if your not doing drugs. Ha Ha. Naughty humor but looking at it history he definitely shuns out those who surround and associate art with wealth.

He talks about his friend who he says and what his friend says is an "Art Dealer." Quotes intended because he explains that his friend gets a piece, puts a ridiculous price on it and ships it off. He goes on to say that this isn't really dealing art at all. This struck me as accurate to some, including mine's opinion that art is just so overpriced for certain reasons unbecoming of other pieces and artists. This leads into him saying a little while after, "If you have this many buckets full of money and you want to piss a lot of it away.. get into the art world."

When he talks about commercial art vs. non-commercial art. Not really sure where he was going with it, but he claims that this non-commercial art is beneficial to the museums and the economy. Which makes somewhat sense when he claims that when the business class people buy the less wanted art then it spreads a nice money flow through it.

I like when he brings up the analogy of the hotel art exhibit vs. this Baghdad hotel black market like thing. Where it is in each room you can buy, what he calls "stolen shit." This is an interesting thought and comparison and he really must favor that since he believes many art pieces nowadays are similar to what those people were selling.. that is if I am interpreting this correctly.

Frieze Art Unveiling

One of the installation exhibits we have seen and talked about in class as of late is the Frieze Art Fair. This is a big to do in England and October 2009 was an exquisite one. Looking through the pictures from the exhibit I cam across this one, which particularly caught my eye:



Going back a ways we discussed how art just cannot be fully appreciated and is not the same at all looking at it 2-dimensionally. Which I have done here and what most people who don't get to shows do, ie. looking at them digitally.

There were many pieces such as this one in the show but this one had people surrounding it and even one or two standing in front of them. Speaking on the thought of not being able to fully appreciate the piece looking at it online, I believe I still somewhat. This snapshot really shows how hard lined and dark the lining is on the piece. It has to be one of the most, real-time cartoon looking piece I have ever come across. What I mean by that it is in real life but is a cartoon cut-out of some sort and looks exactly like it would as if you were watching a high quality, old school cartoon.

This might not make too much sense but it still is just amazing how you can create such a conflicting concept in our physical realm. It looks as though this picture is fake and that figure is a fake inserted in a designing program. It most definitely is not and makes me appreciate it that much more.

Dave Hickey from the University of Nevada in Las Vegas gave a lecture called “Custodians of culture- Schoolyard Art: Playing Fair Without the Referee”. The lecture was mainly about selling without selling out focusing on how sites of commerce have evolved from the white cube to the art fair. Hickey begins his lecture by describing Dr. J, a guy who wanted to play professional basketball and always played by the rules, even if he was playing street ball. On the other hand, in the art world, Hickey said “whatever rules there were, there ain’t”. in today’s world, artists like money more than they like art. The act of honorability does not exist in the art world anymore. Hickey argues that if you behave well, if you behave right, all you can lose is money. To be honest, that’s all you can lose by being right, by being correct and by making art that might last you 100 years.

Hickey questions why people would want art that they don’t really like. Hickey quotes Leo by saying, “you can’t be right all the time, but you can never be wrong”, which means that if you create art for yourself and if you buy art because you like it, there is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is selling art for too much money. Hickey claims that institutions suck all the money. The whole format of the art world changed since the 1970’s. You had artists in their studios who took their work to art galleries, where members of the community would buy what they liked. If community members bought the art it meant it had virtue, and it represented icons of public significance. The sequences of art reaching a museum was artist, dealer, community, and lastly museum. It reached the museum depending on the interest of the community.

Dave Hickey then discusses the idea of a price point. Leo Catelli is an example of a price point; he did not compromise his art. Price point people are never wrong, but who can give you a price point now, who makes a profession out of never being wrong. The answer to this is no one because this world does not exist in art anymore. In institutional installation markets nothing changes because nothing is driving a change and he claims that we don’t care. We don’t have style development anymore because history is over. 9/11 marked the death of post modernism. Hickey loves it when people buy art, but he will only show art he likes. He even likes art that he feels is 99% bullshit and 1% interesting because that 1% is all he needs.

Hickeys wife commented on a recent movie that they just saw claiming that she liked it because it had good values. Dave Hickey questions if value will ever return to the art world. He feels that it could be coming back and that people might start to buy again what they like, not what costs the most. I hope that good value will be reentered into the art world because art is a form of expression and should be created and bought because it expresses ones interest.

Art in Context: Fred Wilson

One conceptual artist who caught my attention in class was Fred Wilson. He was born in the Bronx and described himself as of Africa, Native American, European and Amerindian decent. This relates to his work because he feels that everyone is related and connected as he portrays in some of his pieces.

A quote that he said that I found compelling was, “when you start doing what you really believe in, that’s when you start to do your best work”. After Wilson receives a BFA from Suny Purchase in 1976, where he was the only black student, he said that he longer had the desire to make things with his hands. He said, “I get everything that satisfies my soul,” he says, “from bringing together objects that are in the world, manipulating them, working with spatial arrangements, and having things presented in the way I want to see them.” Fred Wilson has a distinctive and talented way of looking at objects and creating art out of them.

Wilson examines, questions, and deconstructs the traditional display of art and artifacts in museums. He uses new wall labels, sounds, lighting, and non-traditional pairings of objects, to lead viewers to recognize that changes in context create changes in meaning. One example of his work is, for his installation at the 2003 Venice Biennale he employed a tourist to pretend to be an African street vendor selling fake designer bags - in fact his own designs. He also incorporated “blackamoors”, sculptures of black people in the role of servants, into the show. Such figures were often used as stands for lights. Wilson placed his wooden blackamoors carrying acetylene torches and fire extinguishers. He noted that such figures are so common in Venice that few people notice them, stating, "they are in hotels everywhere in Venice...which is great, because all of a sudden you see them everywhere. I wanted it to be visible, this whole world which sort of just blew up for me." Overall, Wilson’s unique vision of art produces installations and art that is very appealing.

‘I Shop Therefore I Am’- Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger is a conceptual artist who has had several exhibitions in galleries such as; Mary Boone Gallery in New York, Yvon Lambert Gallery in Paris, and Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Whitney Museum in New York, Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago and the Tate Gallery in London. Kruger's words and pictures have been displayed in both galleries and public spaces. They have also been framed and unframed photographs, posters, postcards, t-shirts, electronic signboards, billboards and on a train station platform in Strasbourg, France. Kruger has created installations of video, film, audio and projection as well. Her work focuses on consistently about the kindnesses and brutalities of social life: about how we are to one another.

Her graphic work is mainly black and white photographs with overlaid captions set in white on a red poster. The phrases that she uses in her work are declarative, and she makes common use of pronouns such as; "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they". The combination of imagery and text containing criticism of sexism and the circulation of power within cultures is a recurring pattern in Kruger's work. The text in her works of the 1980s includes such phrases as "Your comfort is my silence" (1981), "You invest in the divinity of the masterpiece" (1982), and "I shop therefore I am" (1987). Kruger claims that she “works with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren’t." Her later re-photography uses a kind of appropriation as its own focus, pulling from the works of others and the words they depict to create her own. Her focus was to fuse broad cultural images as a whole and place them toward narrower signs of personal interpretation.

Kruger's piece, ‘I shop therefore I am’, focuses on the world as a consumer culture. For some people, shopping has turned into a lifestyle consuming at our leisure. Some feel that, the power of consumption is stopping us from finding true and sincere happiness; and that shopping often works as a substitute for something that we’re missing in life. Consumer culture has a strong power over the people. The focus is about what we buy and what we choose to invest in, the world we live in will be the result of these choices. I feel that this is the message that Barbara Kruger was trying to portray through her art.

Das Undbild by Kurt Schwitters

Continuing our discussions with appropriation art I came across this piece shown above. It is a collage painting, like a lot of appropriated art and was conceived in 1919. Like the starting with my other posts, I started thinking about the title of the piece. It seems to be some German thing.. "Das".. maybe. "Undbild" stumps me as well. Could be something like, "not building" or something similar. Since it is a collage, it is composed of fragmented images or pieces somewhat not familiar with each other.

I believe this piece was also tagged or put under the style of movement of DaDa as well. When looking at this movement.. as I think I have posted about before, it is very unique. Well, most movements are but it is just so abstract and just.. strange in its conception and use of its mediums. Its mediums being very random things, some highly political and strange use of characters and "serial murderer" type collage pieces. This piece is not so much like the more in-depth Dada but it definitely reminds me of it.

This collage is considered to be appropriation art because.. well it has recycled and adopted or sample aspects of other objects. I guess you could say most, if not all collage art is appropriate but these is definitely something going on here besides just a diarrhea of images thrown on a canvas. Coming back full circle to the title. Simply searching what others have to say on the internet spat back a bunch of thoughts and some nonsense. But filtering the good ones, it is indeed German and I came up with The deconstruction or just simply "and build." Whatever the case may be it has to do with some building of or deconstruction. Of what exactly.. not so easy to filter out.

Damien Hirst Separates Himself From The Artists Community

In class we discussed Appropriating Art and how it is community spirited meaning that the artists don’t mind other artists taking their art and portray it using a new medium or differently. However, Damien Hirst does not have this mindset, threatening to sue a 16-year-old who takes time off his school work to create urban designs of cultural icons, which he sells for £65. Damien Hirst is suing Cartain because he incorporating his diamond encrusted skull, For the Love of God, into his graffiti prints. Not only is Hirst suing him but he is also demanding the teenager to give him the £200 he made from selling these images. This is ridiculous of Hirst when he made £200 million from his diamond-encrusted skull and pickled shark.

Some of Cartain’s work is displayed on the backstreets of London’s Brick Lane and Old Street. He has done other collages incorporating the Queen and George Bush as well. Some of the collages he did with the encrusted skull imposed the skull over faces or figures from other photographs. One displayed the skull next to a bag of carrots in a grocery cart. According to The Independent, what Cartain did was that ‘he made a series of collages using photographs of Hirst’s skull, some of which imposed the bejeweled sculpture over the faces of figures taken from other photographs. One showed the skull in a shopping basket alongside some carrots. The images were displayed in the online gallery, 100artworks.com, where Cartain’s collages sell for £65, on average’. This is seen as ironic because, ‘three weeks after the artist unveiled the £50m sculpture, another artist, John LeKay, claimed he had been producing similar jewel-encrusted skulls since 1993’.

In revenge for Hirst forcing him to stop selling his collages, Cartain sent threats to his gallery and faced a possible jail sentence because he took a ‘box of pencils from a Hirst installation as a prank and offered to return them only if Hirst would let him go back to displaying and selling his art’. The Faber Castell Mongol 482s from 1990, box of pencils is supposedly worth GBP 500,000, making this one of the largest modern art thefts in British history. Some argue that the stunt was to gain publicity, which I feel was part of his revenge. Overall, if Hirst did not make such a big deal over Cartain’s art, this big ordeal would not have happened and I feel that this portrayed Hirst negatively to the rest of the art community.

Illusions of Dangerous Reality by Li Wei

While exploring some more recent performance artists or art in general, I came across a most interesting one. Li Wei's art is a most captivating and wild notion of a way to express the dangerous actions human beings could encounter.. or something of the like. Such as :



They don't seem to have any titles labeled to them, but to be honest do they? This is hard to look at without feeling a certain concern for the guy "hanging" outside the building, as seen with others reaching out to him. While I read the article, Wei answers a few questions for the interviewer and it is done with very precise, safe and useful wires as to show these pieces as real as possible.



The above picture shows a kind of drowning scene where the guy is face deep in water but floating their upside down. Now I'm sure some sort of tension rod is above the picture with a wire there but this is extreme to say the least. There doesn't seem to be faking of him actually being underwater. Which brings me to the point of, even though they have wires etc these people or guy are really over that roof and under that water. This artist really does go to the extreme and it is so different to me, even after witnessing many different types and many different artists. It is a showmanship of the thoughts and maybe nightmares of people brought into reality and put right in your lap.

One performance and installation artist who focuses on the scenery and other people rather than himself is Spencer Tunick. Tunick was born January 1, 1967 and is best known for his installations featuring large numbers of nude people posed in artistic formations situated in urban famous landmarks all over the world. He has also done some work outside the mainstream city area in woodland and beaches along with individuals and small groups. One thing that I did not know was that he is the subject of three documentaries on HBO, Naked States, naked World, and Positively Naked. The people who become the art are all volunteers whom in return receive a limited edition photo. This raises the question of the type of people who would voluntarily poses naked along with hundreds or thousands of other people for the world to see. However, when one looks at Tunick’s work, the art does not focus on the individuals, rather the new picture that these nudes create. His artwork does not judge the individuals appearance because it is not about specific individuals, rather a larger group and free in a scene left for interpretation.

His early work started when he was in London. He took a picture of a nude at a bus stop. In 1992, Tunick began documenting live nudes in public locations such as New York focusing on individuals or small groups. These works were more intimate than the large scale pieces that he currently known for. His work grew and by 1994 he had organized 65 site related installations in international major cities such as, Cork, Dublin, London, Melbourne, Rome, Sydney, San Sebastian and Amsterdam. In 2003, Spencer Tunick photographed 7,000 nudes in Barcelona and in 2007, completed his largest installation of 18,000 in Mexico City. Tunick photographs these people is different positions such as standing up, lying down, and on their knees. Tunick had to time his photographs right because he had to work with the landscape and the different lighting and sun glare that occurred.

One installation that I find interesting is the one on the Aletsch Glacier on August 18, 2007 where he uses 600 nude people to create a living sculpture intended to draw attention to global warming and the shrinking of the world’s glaciers. The temperature was about 10 degrees Celsius and he followed with an installation in Miami Beach in October. His lasts work was on March 1, 2010 at the Sydney Opera House in Australia. This was his first large sale installation in Sydney and was carried out as part of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Spencer Tunick stated, "A body is a living entity. It represents life, freedom, sensuality, and it is a mechanism to carry out our thoughts. A body is always beautiful to me. It depends on the individual work and what I do with it and what kind of idea lies behind it — if age matters or not. But in my group works, the only difference is how far people can go if it rains, snows etc.” I think that Tunick is an artist who is unique and has a mind that captures beauty with creative meaning behind it.

Today in class we were introduced to performance art. It is different than the previous art we have studied because paintings, sculptures or instillations, focus on the object as the main idea of the art. In performance art time, space, the performer’s body and a relationship between performer and audience are essential. There is no set space, or length of time, rather it is completely personal and what the performer feels. Performance art is very emotional as I learned from Marina Abramovic.

After watching her biography in class and reading more about her performance art, I have realized that there is not always a strong connection between the audience and performer. Some night find her work magnificent or appealing, however, I am more allured by other types of art. I do have a respect for her art though. She is constantly pushing the boundaries with her art and limits of her body and possibilities of the mind. Abramovic’s performances are all very personal and makes her the main focus of the piece. She claims that there is a right time and place for her performance and that she usually begins or ends on the night of a full moon. She claims that she does not want to waste the energy of the moon showing her thought and connection to the world. Abramovic has no limits to her art and a purity of expression.

Her performances all explore the physical and metal limitations of the body and mind. In her Rhythm 10, 1973 performance she played the Russian game in which rhythmic knife jabs are aimed between the spread fingers. Each time that Marina Abramovic cut herself she would pick up a new knife from the row of twenty she had set up, and recorded the operation. She recorded this and after cutting herself twenty times went over the recordings listening to the sounds and trying to correct her mistakes. She listened to her pain and the sounds of the stabbing on the recording proving her feeling that once you enter into a performance you can push your body to do things you absolutely never do normally. This belief is shown to a greater extent in her performance where for twelve days she lived in the museum. She had ladders set up with knifes as the prongs preventing her from leaving the raised three rooms. She showered there claiming it purified her and wondered if that purity could be spread to the whole room. She also only drank water, no food for twelve days testing her body and seeing how he deprived mind would function. She has also done make other performances that tested her physically such as taking depressant drugs and other harmful acts. She is able to enter into the structure giving the audience a unique and personal performance.

On & Off by Aakash Nihalani

The more and more we look at installation pieces the more I begin to like and appreciate them. Since more of them made, or put on or near public places it makes me think that they are for the public. For them to enjoy and for the art to be out in the world and not just in a gallery but then the world or two would be the gallery wouldn't it?

Whether it be the government, state, city, town or just the surrounding public installation pieces are installed for pleasure of passing by folks. People could be walking near or even on top of some pieces. This is the case for Aakash Nihalani's piece On and Off. People are actually walking on top of the piece just like a certain cracked floor in a gallery.

This piece is made with tape, and colorful tape at that. It reminds me of Michael Craig Martin's style and what he does with his pieces. Not only are they hard-lined but also very colorful, Martin's specialty.
When I first looked at the piece I thought that the piece was of two sets of two buildings. But I wasn't so sure after reading the name again.

Then the explanation that I now like is that it is because people walk on the piece and then off. This is just like the regular cross walk set up with very think white lines. That really isn't art but in this piece it gives it a twist. Not only are people walking on the piece. They are walking on top of the piece. The parts of the piece closer to us give it 3-dimensions and make it look like you are stepping up onto a platform. This is very simple but at the same time very clever. Just for the everyday public, walking to their destination.