In response to Dave Barry-
Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one. "If a work of Conceptual art begins with the question 'What is art?', rather than a particular style or medium, one could argue that it is completed by the proposition 'This could be art': 'this' being presented as object, image, performance, or idea revealed in some other way. Conceptual art is therefore 'reflexive': the object refers back to the subject, as in the phrase 'I am thinking about how I think.' It represents a state of continual self-critique (pg 12 of Conceptual Art Packet)."
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
#39 October 28 (class assingment 10 Body artists)
Janine Antoni- conceptual artist that focuses on the process for each of her piece. How did her piece get from the beginning to what it is now. Antoni often confronts issues such as materiality, process, the body, cultural perceptions of femininity, and her art historical roots.
Louise Bourgeois- is an artist and sculptor. She is best known for her 'Cells', 'Spiders' and various drawings, books and sculptures. Her works are sometimes abstract and she speaks of them in symbolic terms with the main focus being "relationships" - considering an entity in relation to its surroundings. Louise Bourgeois finds inspiration for her works from her childhood: her adulterous father, who had an affair with her governess (who resided in the home), and her mother, who refused to acknowledge it. She claims that she has been the "striking-image" of her father since birth. Bourgeois conveys feelings of anger, betrayal and jealousy, but with playfulness. In her sculpture, she has worked in many different mediums, including rubber, wood, stone, metal, and appropriately for someone who came from a family of tapestry makers, fabric. Some of her pieces consisted of erotic and sexual images, with a motif of "cumuls" (she named the round figures such because they reminded her of cumulus clouds).
Kiki Smith- Her Body Art is imbued with political significance, undermining the traditional erotic representations of women by male artists, and often exposes the inner biological systems of females as a metaphor for hidden social issues. Her work also often includes the theme of birth and regeneration, sustenance, and frequently has Catholic allusions. Smith has also been active in debate over controversies such as AIDS, gender, race, and battered women.
Charles Ray- is a Los Angeles-based sculptor. He is known for his strange and enigmatic sculptures that draw the viewer’s perceptual judgments into question in jarring and unexpected ways. Size, medium, subject matter all changes from piece to piece, making it hard to classify his work.
Ron Mueck- Mueck's early career was as a model maker and puppeteer for children's television and films, notably the film Labyrinth for which he also contributed the voice of Ludo, and the Jim Henson series The Storyteller.
Mueck moved on to establish his own company in London, making photo-realistic props and animatronics for the advertising industry. Although highly detailed, these props were usually designed to be photographed from one specific angle hiding the mess of construction seen from the other side. Mueck increasingly wanted to produce realistic sculptures which looked perfect from all angles.
His work also plays on scale and EXTREME realism. These figures almost feel more real than the people they are modeled after.
Antony Gormle- Over the last 31 years Antony Gormley has revitalised the human image in sculpture through a radical investigation of the body as a place of memory and transformation, using his own body as a subject, tool and material. Since 1990 he has expanded his concern with the human condition to explore the collective body and the relationship between self and other in large-scale installations like Allotment, Critical Mass, Another Place, Domain Field, Inside Australia and most recently, Blind Light.
Gormley describes his work as "an attempt to materialise the place at the other side of appearance where we all live." Many of his works are based on moulds taken from his own body, or "the closest experience of matter that I will ever have and the only part of the material world that I live inside." His work attempts to treat the body not as a thing but a place and in making works that enclose the space of a particular body to identify a condition common to all human beings. The work is not symbolic but indexical - a trace of a real event of a real body in time.
Magdalena Abakanowicz- often working with different kinds of textiles and processes, focusing on size and the body
Abakans
The 1960s saw some of the most important works produced during Abakanowicz's career. In 1967, she began procuring gigantic three-dimensional fiber works called Abakans. These works would secure her place in the art world as one of the great artists of the time and influence all of her work she has produced since.[8]
Each Abakan is made out of woven material using Abakanowicz's own technique. The material used for many of these pieces was found, often collecting sisal ropes from harbors, untwining them into threads and dying them.[9] Hung from the ceiling, Abakans reach sizes as large as thirteen feet with sometimes only a few inch clearance from the ground.
Humanoid sculptures
During the 1970s, and into the 1980s, Abakanowicz changed medium and scale; she began a series of figurative and non-figurative sculptures made out of pieces of coarse sackcloth which she sewed and pieced together and bonded with synthetic resins. These works became more representation than previous sculptures but still retain a degree of abstraction and ambiguity.
Robert Gober- His work is often related to domestic and familiar objects such as sinks, doors, and legs, and has themes of nature, sexuality, religion, and politics. The sculptures are meticulously handcrafted, even when they appear to just be a re-creation of a common sink.
His work often ties in the familiarity and simularity between everyday common objects and the human form.
Do-Ho-Suh - Best known for his intricate sculptures that defy conventional notions of scale and site-specificity, Suh’s work draws attention to the ways viewers occupy and inhabit public space
*most text taken from wikipedia or artists' websites.
Louise Bourgeois- is an artist and sculptor. She is best known for her 'Cells', 'Spiders' and various drawings, books and sculptures. Her works are sometimes abstract and she speaks of them in symbolic terms with the main focus being "relationships" - considering an entity in relation to its surroundings. Louise Bourgeois finds inspiration for her works from her childhood: her adulterous father, who had an affair with her governess (who resided in the home), and her mother, who refused to acknowledge it. She claims that she has been the "striking-image" of her father since birth. Bourgeois conveys feelings of anger, betrayal and jealousy, but with playfulness. In her sculpture, she has worked in many different mediums, including rubber, wood, stone, metal, and appropriately for someone who came from a family of tapestry makers, fabric. Some of her pieces consisted of erotic and sexual images, with a motif of "cumuls" (she named the round figures such because they reminded her of cumulus clouds).
Kiki Smith- Her Body Art is imbued with political significance, undermining the traditional erotic representations of women by male artists, and often exposes the inner biological systems of females as a metaphor for hidden social issues. Her work also often includes the theme of birth and regeneration, sustenance, and frequently has Catholic allusions. Smith has also been active in debate over controversies such as AIDS, gender, race, and battered women.
Charles Ray- is a Los Angeles-based sculptor. He is known for his strange and enigmatic sculptures that draw the viewer’s perceptual judgments into question in jarring and unexpected ways. Size, medium, subject matter all changes from piece to piece, making it hard to classify his work.
Ron Mueck- Mueck's early career was as a model maker and puppeteer for children's television and films, notably the film Labyrinth for which he also contributed the voice of Ludo, and the Jim Henson series The Storyteller.
Mueck moved on to establish his own company in London, making photo-realistic props and animatronics for the advertising industry. Although highly detailed, these props were usually designed to be photographed from one specific angle hiding the mess of construction seen from the other side. Mueck increasingly wanted to produce realistic sculptures which looked perfect from all angles.
His work also plays on scale and EXTREME realism. These figures almost feel more real than the people they are modeled after.
Antony Gormle- Over the last 31 years Antony Gormley has revitalised the human image in sculpture through a radical investigation of the body as a place of memory and transformation, using his own body as a subject, tool and material. Since 1990 he has expanded his concern with the human condition to explore the collective body and the relationship between self and other in large-scale installations like Allotment, Critical Mass, Another Place, Domain Field, Inside Australia and most recently, Blind Light.
Gormley describes his work as "an attempt to materialise the place at the other side of appearance where we all live." Many of his works are based on moulds taken from his own body, or "the closest experience of matter that I will ever have and the only part of the material world that I live inside." His work attempts to treat the body not as a thing but a place and in making works that enclose the space of a particular body to identify a condition common to all human beings. The work is not symbolic but indexical - a trace of a real event of a real body in time.
Magdalena Abakanowicz- often working with different kinds of textiles and processes, focusing on size and the body
Abakans
The 1960s saw some of the most important works produced during Abakanowicz's career. In 1967, she began procuring gigantic three-dimensional fiber works called Abakans. These works would secure her place in the art world as one of the great artists of the time and influence all of her work she has produced since.[8]
Each Abakan is made out of woven material using Abakanowicz's own technique. The material used for many of these pieces was found, often collecting sisal ropes from harbors, untwining them into threads and dying them.[9] Hung from the ceiling, Abakans reach sizes as large as thirteen feet with sometimes only a few inch clearance from the ground.
Humanoid sculptures
During the 1970s, and into the 1980s, Abakanowicz changed medium and scale; she began a series of figurative and non-figurative sculptures made out of pieces of coarse sackcloth which she sewed and pieced together and bonded with synthetic resins. These works became more representation than previous sculptures but still retain a degree of abstraction and ambiguity.
Robert Gober- His work is often related to domestic and familiar objects such as sinks, doors, and legs, and has themes of nature, sexuality, religion, and politics. The sculptures are meticulously handcrafted, even when they appear to just be a re-creation of a common sink.
His work often ties in the familiarity and simularity between everyday common objects and the human form.
Do-Ho-Suh - Best known for his intricate sculptures that defy conventional notions of scale and site-specificity, Suh’s work draws attention to the ways viewers occupy and inhabit public space
*most text taken from wikipedia or artists' websites.
#38 October 28th (class assingment Transformation lists of words)
1. List the words that describe your object formally--color? shape? texture?
unnatural representing nature
organic shape
transparent
opaque
texture- soft and bubbly, hard and sharp
works both on a horizontal and vertical plane
naturalistic colors- clear, white, grey, brown- colors found in nature
2. List the words that describe its original function or meaning. Does the context change it's meaning or function?
sturdy, safe, opaque and transparent, boxy, organic, malleable
Originally, my objects were shipping supplies- a box and bubble wrap. I then made changed these items so they could no longer function as objects used to transport and protect objects from one place to another.
unnatural representing nature
organic shape
transparent
opaque
texture- soft and bubbly, hard and sharp
works both on a horizontal and vertical plane
naturalistic colors- clear, white, grey, brown- colors found in nature
2. List the words that describe its original function or meaning. Does the context change it's meaning or function?
sturdy, safe, opaque and transparent, boxy, organic, malleable
Originally, my objects were shipping supplies- a box and bubble wrap. I then made changed these items so they could no longer function as objects used to transport and protect objects from one place to another.
Monday, October 27, 2008
#37 October 28th (class assignment Conceptual Art Questions)
1. Why is the "viewer" an important element in conceptual art?
"Because the work does not take a traditional form it demands a more active response from the viewer, indeed it could be argued that the Conceptual work of art only truly exists in the viewer's mental participation."
2. Why was it so difficult for people to accept the "Fountain" by Duchamp, as art?
"Before Fountain, people had rarely been made to think what art actually was, or how it could be manifested; they had just assumed that art would be either a painting or a sculpture. But very few could see Fountain as a sculpture."
3. What question did Duchamp pose with his "readymades"? Explain using examples
"Could this urinal be an artwork? Imagine it as art!" "Try and imagine this reproduction of the Mona Lisa with a beard as an artwork, not just a defaced reproduction of an artwork, but a artwork in its own right."
4. Why was it difficult to categorize Conceptual art in the context of traditional art? Explain using examples.
traditional art: painting/drawing, sculpture. Conceptual art is not defined by a medium or style. Conceptual art is often a "readymade" or an "intervention/documentation". It is often an idea presented to the viewer, not as a solid fact, but as something each viewer and participant can take from in their own experiences.
5. Chose a quote from the article that you find interesting and explain. Be SURE to cite a page number.
"If a work of Conceptual art begins with the question 'What is art?', rather than a particular style or medium, one could argue that it is completed by the proposition 'This could be art': 'this' being presented as object, image, performance, or idea revealed in some other way. Conceptual art is therefore 'reflexive': the object refers back to the subject, as in the phrase 'I am thinking about how I think.' It represents a state of continual self-critique (pg 12).
What a mindf*ck right there. Alright, non art folks, read that and wrap your mind around it. So basically, the importance of conceptual art is that you do not give it an exact list of "this is what conceptual art is, always". As long as you keep questioning it, it can be considered conceptual.
"Because the work does not take a traditional form it demands a more active response from the viewer, indeed it could be argued that the Conceptual work of art only truly exists in the viewer's mental participation."
2. Why was it so difficult for people to accept the "Fountain" by Duchamp, as art?
"Before Fountain, people had rarely been made to think what art actually was, or how it could be manifested; they had just assumed that art would be either a painting or a sculpture. But very few could see Fountain as a sculpture."
3. What question did Duchamp pose with his "readymades"? Explain using examples
"Could this urinal be an artwork? Imagine it as art!" "Try and imagine this reproduction of the Mona Lisa with a beard as an artwork, not just a defaced reproduction of an artwork, but a artwork in its own right."
4. Why was it difficult to categorize Conceptual art in the context of traditional art? Explain using examples.
traditional art: painting/drawing, sculpture. Conceptual art is not defined by a medium or style. Conceptual art is often a "readymade" or an "intervention/documentation". It is often an idea presented to the viewer, not as a solid fact, but as something each viewer and participant can take from in their own experiences.
5. Chose a quote from the article that you find interesting and explain. Be SURE to cite a page number.
"If a work of Conceptual art begins with the question 'What is art?', rather than a particular style or medium, one could argue that it is completed by the proposition 'This could be art': 'this' being presented as object, image, performance, or idea revealed in some other way. Conceptual art is therefore 'reflexive': the object refers back to the subject, as in the phrase 'I am thinking about how I think.' It represents a state of continual self-critique (pg 12).
What a mindf*ck right there. Alright, non art folks, read that and wrap your mind around it. So basically, the importance of conceptual art is that you do not give it an exact list of "this is what conceptual art is, always". As long as you keep questioning it, it can be considered conceptual.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
#36 October 26th (3D Artist)
Happy World Zombie Day!
Banksy, has done it once again. He has taken art to another level of interaction, public voice and concern, public awareness and satire. Known for his risky graffiti works that evade police and persecution, Banksy has opened up graffiti to popular culture and made graffiti and street art much more widely accepted (whether this is a good thing or not, you decide).
This time, instead of his 2D works, his first exhibition in the US is a display of animatronics on the american way, how humans in general are gluttons with our over-processed fatty foods and our lazy asses.
get more info and see more art @ SuperTouch Blog
Banksy, has done it once again. He has taken art to another level of interaction, public voice and concern, public awareness and satire. Known for his risky graffiti works that evade police and persecution, Banksy has opened up graffiti to popular culture and made graffiti and street art much more widely accepted (whether this is a good thing or not, you decide).
This time, instead of his 2D works, his first exhibition in the US is a display of animatronics on the american way, how humans in general are gluttons with our over-processed fatty foods and our lazy asses.
get more info and see more art @ SuperTouch Blog
Friday, October 24, 2008
#35 October 25th (more sketchbook!)
More and more and more! This is what my sketchbook looks like on the outside. A small hardbound book, black o the outside with smooth white paper on the inside that I have been replacing.
Today is the ZOMBIE WALK. I am dressing up as the Sarah Palin zombie and my costume is complete!
Today is the ZOMBIE WALK. I am dressing up as the Sarah Palin zombie and my costume is complete!
Thursday, October 23, 2008
#34 October 23rd
here are some sketches from my latest assignment in illustration. The assignment was to illustrate a phobia of our choice using black and white and 2 colors. I chose the fear of hair and I used doll hair in my piece. I think it was mostly a success! I will scan it in as soon as I get it back from being graded.
look in the top right corner! an original drawing by Bill Carman. Haha! :P
the organs are some sketches for my art 108 assignment on the body. Zach and I are making organ pinatas. The liver, the stomach, and the lungs. We haven't made the lungs yet and the whole thing is due tuesday. Yikes!
#33 October 23rd
more from the sketchbook! I have about 10 entries worth.
I have been working with a little color in the sketchbook. I especially enjoy using pink to highlight protruding body parts like noses, fingers, things of that nature. It gives a very soft and coy feeling to the drawings.
this is a little asian girl that had giant cheeks and was holding a fuzzy lamb.
I really like being able to see through the pages too.
I have been working with a little color in the sketchbook. I especially enjoy using pink to highlight protruding body parts like noses, fingers, things of that nature. It gives a very soft and coy feeling to the drawings.
this is a little asian girl that had giant cheeks and was holding a fuzzy lamb.
I really like being able to see through the pages too.
#32 October 23rd
I finally got to scanning stuff from my newer sketchbook. Last night I felt like drawing something a little smutty. Pretty fun!
Today was good. It was an inservice for the art department so I didn't have any art classes, and it just so happened to be the day my 3 hours history class was canceled. All I had to do was show up to my femme fatale french lit course and watch people draw their description of Zola's Nana. My friend, Jon, drew the best rotting corpse with germans watching. I wish I had taken a photo. No one minus 3 people in that class know that I am an illustration major, so there was no pressure to draw something on the board.
I went thrifting and antiquing today. I got some nice old books that I can use the paper for art. I got a few other items like a sweet pair of earings.
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