And then there were none. And then we were done.

I find it challenging to draw connections between this weeks reading, involving a conversation with Leo Castelli, and our guest artist, Donald Morgan. They are both interesting men who have been going through this dramatic change of the art world. Castelli owns a famous art gallery in New York. He is an elder man who has accomplished a lot in his lifetime and did not seem to be very influenced by other artists, meaning that he knew what he liked and what he did not, and only displayed what he loved in his gallery. When he explained how he started off his gallery, he says that he was confident but naïve to believe that he would know what the right thing was. He began by showing art in his fourth floor apartment in 1957 (455). Now he does not seem as fond of the art world because it is not how it used to be. He does not like the current modern art or artists. He lists many that he likes and many that he does not. It seems like Suzi Gablik, the author of Conversations Before the End of Time, really admires him and believes that a lot of artists became famous because he selected them for his gallery. Castelli believes that the major turning point of art was the Whitney Biennial in 1993 (457). Castelli proves his dislike for modern art by discussing his dislike at the Biennial. He says, “that there were lots of younger artists” ... “But we didn’t pay much attention to them. And then they suddenly appeared, massively” ... “the first impression that I had was pretty negative: it was a sort of mishmash of all kinds of work done in various media, but predominately using video. I’ve never been terribly interested in video,” … “I found all the video work pretty boring at the Whitney, and the, generally speaking, extreme harshness of the content in the various works to be found there was hard to take” (457-458). I found this quote very interesting, and I share these feelings, generally. There are so many galleries that display artist who use video, and often times, I find it pretty boring, or maybe I just do not get it.

Donald Morgan, our guest lecturer, seems to be a pretty well established artist. He showed us many paintings, drawings, and sculptures that he has made since he graduated. He showed us many artists that have influenced him throughout the years. His influences began with Per Kirkeby, a painter, who used the natural world and earthy colors in his paintings. After this, Morgan began making furniture so he had plenty of access to wood and began making sculptures with his friend. He said that every now and then, they still get together to make these robot sculptures that they started with. Morgan then began to find influence from John Henry Twachtmen, who showed him how to use hard edges in his paintings, creating perceptual difficulties, which he then wrote his thesis on. Morgan also mentions how he likes to think of the human body when he makes sculptures. He made a log and he was really influenced on how the human body could sort of get on top of it and sit on it, which I thought was a very interesting thing to incorporate into his work. He is currently working on the “poop log” which is a sort of weird piñata and is working in the ditch projects in Springfield, Oregon. Both men seem to be living long successful lives through their works and perspectives.

This video should speak for itself..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YJ3BTKMILw

"See all those random objects?" "That's art!"

The presenter this week, Tannaz Farsi was very different from any of the previous presenters, which shows both: Farsi’s creativity and individuality, as well as, Professor Warren’s choice of diverse artists. When I heard she was a sculptor, it was initial thought that the lecture would consist of pictures of the ceramics she had ‘sculpted.’ Once again, just when I’m thinking I’ve got a grasp on this whole art scene, leave it to Art 111 to shoot me back to reality. I learned quickly that Farsi used any and all objects as sculpting tools in her pieces, all of which were very expressive, some even political. A rare fortune this week¾the connections between the presenter and the article that we read are very clear and concise and are, in fact, very directly connected.

The article for this weeks’ work was entitled “The Aesthetics of Everyday Life.” The reading consisted of a conversation between Suzi Gablik and a very intelligent teacher by the name of Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. Throughout the article, she discusses her theory on what art is and what should and shouldn’t be considered part of that genre. To put her stance on into more general terms, she believes that art is anything and everything. She discusses a concept from which the title was rendered, that being “The Aesthetics of Everyday Life” and how art can not only be found in a gallery but also in the actions and lives of everyday people. This was a breath of fresh air, as I have been toying with the argument of whether art is everything or nothing. If I can be so bold, art is an expression of self. Be it a canvas, camera, computer screen, office building, golf course, or house, they all, at their most simple form, are a display of creativity by an individual or group of individuals. At the beginning of the discussion, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett states, “everyone has something inherently creative and artistic in them,” and you don’t have to be a “Professional” to be an artist.

She goes on to discuss the Whitney Biennial, which has been a popular topic of discussion among many of these conversations. As you can imagine from her stance and definition of art, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is in full support of the Whitney Bienniel and it’s decision to select pieces that were not necessary aesthetically pleasing, but that had value in other respects. As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett would put it, “Art is the act of putting form to value.” This sums up her whole definition of art and is essentially the same concept that was used in the Biennial. When confronted with the question of whether art should be used for political gains or to send a political message, she simply shrugs the question off as nonsense saying, “All these distinctions are meaningless to me. They’re meaningless because all art is political.” In her opinion, art in itself is a political matter. Art, because it’s art, is political. This is a stance that I never took into consideration, because I didn’t give art enough respect to consider it a political matter.

I addressed how the article and this weeks’ presenter would tie together nicely, and it is because Farsi is a believer in what Kirshenblatt-Gimblett says and practices art in this way, but Farsi chooses to do so in a gallery. When viewing her pieces in class, you could see that they were not always the most aesthetically pleasing or beautifully crafted pieces, but she was simply portraying the art of living. The twist was that she was portraying this art of everyday life from inside the gallery. A perfect example is the piece that she made drawing inspiration from the man who sewed both his eyes and mouth shut. In no way was this piece aesthetically pleasing, but, in fact, repulsive and disturbing. Even so, many like Farsi and Gimblett would consider this art like anything else. It is simply putting form to value by expressing ones’ frustrations. What catches our eye, or displays superior craftsmanship, isn’t always what’s most important in art. Nonetheless, it is art, but then again, so is everything else.

I found some comedy in this video, which describes how using Clip Art may not be the answer for all your problems, when trying to use a visual aspect in your work. Just create your own, because it will be more art than the Clip Art would be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTjTXOtff8A

Photographers has cameras. I have a camera. I am a photographer?

With an interesting innocence and gentle demeanor, Terri Warpinski carried with her a shot of creativity. She demonstrated a high level of versatility in all her work. She showed us many unaltered images, and others that had been overlaid with paint, or images that would run in and out of their frame. She had an interesting style, and said she drew motivation from artists: Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and Betty Hahn. Warpinski has made an occupation out of her art and works as a Professor at the University of Oregon, which she has been doing for the past 20 years.

Warpinski kept a sharp wit and spoke eloquently. She made a joke early in her lecture targeted at the young folks (or, any age, for that matter) who purchase an SLR camera and an external flash and decide their passion is photography. Although she says she’s hesitant to describe her profession as an artist, Warpinski is proud of everything she has learned through her years of travel and experience.

The readings this week focused a lot on the academic aspects of the art world, and the processes students go through to be trained and learn certain techniques. Carol Becker, the Dean of the Art Institute of Chicago, made an interesting point about education outside of just art. The students at the institute are required to take classes in humanities and art history because so many young artists do not know how to read or write well after they graduate, and this inhibits their abilities to explore the world around them. Many students complain having to do this, and I think many college students can associate with not wanting to refine their skills in reading and writing. As Becker states, "What [students] don't realize is that they're really developing themselves, and that without that, there's little to make art about" (373). Most academics focus on specific skills, but I liked her realistic approach to teaching, and wanting students to get an education in more than just creating.

In the other reading, with Richard Shusterman, he focused on the process of mixing in a more historical analysis. During the era of Aristotle, the idea of art was based on the construction of an object, rather than the performing and experience of an action or a process (253). Aristotle defined art as poesis (or making), which can be strongly distinguished from praxis (or doing). "Thus he was able to detach art effectively from the realm of action and ethics. In other words, for Aristotle, what you do affects who you are" (254). Shusterman is convinced that it doesn't matter who you are a person, but rather what the final project is. This goes back to the arguments made in earlier posts about whether Picasso's life should reflect how we look at his art. At the end of the day, I feel that knowing specific things about artists, either positive or negative, can ultimately alter how we perceive art. While it is good in theory to only consider the final product, I feel that it's human nature to consider the character of the artist and his or her process of creation.

If I haven’t mentioned before, I am very proud to have a “Professional Photographer” as a best friend. Here are a few of Luke’s newest images. Enjoy.

This is a pimp in New York City who claimed his name was 'Pimp.'

"You want girls? You want drugs? I got you."

NYC

And who is this handsome devil?

Guerrilla Warfare

This week we are comparing interviews between The Guerrilla Girls and Suzi Gablik and also with Mary Jane Jacob and Suzi as well. The first interview was with the Guerrilla Girls who began in 1985 call themselves “the conscience of the art world”. They are famous for wearing guerilla masks and fish net stockings and running around at night putting up posters slamming the stereotypical white male for being racist and sexist.
Their interview took place in Suzi Gablik’s home in Blacksburg in 1993. It was with two members of the Guerilla Girls who referred to themselves as Romaine Brooks and Guerrilla Girl 1. Something they referred to quite often in the interview was the Whitney Biennial. It was an event that originally took place in 1987 where the Whitney Museum Biennials were targeted by the Guerilla girls for always being racist and sexist. Things finally changed in 1993 when the entire art show consisted primarily of art form women, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos and homosexuals. This was all due to the efforts of the Guerilla Girls relentless attempts to pressure the people they thought were responsible for creating the segregation in the art world. One person who they deemed highly responsible was a senator named Jesse Helms. In fact they made a poster specifically for him saying, “The art world is your kind of place. The number of blacks at an art opening is about the same as one of your garden parties.” (Gablik 204). It was this style of delivering a message that made them so famous for making a difference for the segregated community in the Art world.
The other interview with Gablik was with a woman named Mary Jane Jacob. Her believes about art were slightly different from that of the Guerilla girls in a sense that she wanted new contemporary art to have less to do with being in a museum and more with being in the real world. This is supported when she said, “It was a matter of starting to see that, from the artists point of view, and for the reading of the art we could really understand art’s meaning better within the context of the real world, as opposed to hat artificial world that the museum creates...The museum is yet another artificial box that separates art from its existence in the world…” (Gablik 301). However they were both similar in the way that they both see art in multiple ways and have a broad idea of what art can be. For example, Mary Jane said, “I think, generically, that art can be just an interaction, or it can be something physical like an object.”(Gablik 311). As for the Guerilla Girls, they brought the different style of artists to the big venues and with that came many different varieties of art such as videos, boom boxes blaring loud music, texts, and photographs were the primary forms of art found in the 1993 Biennial.

Here's a video that doesn't help the cause for those of us with a Y chromosome..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pdbnzFUsXI

Ron Graff

Our presenter this week, Ron Graff, was the first lecture we’ve had involving any form of painting. His quick wit, edgy vocabulary, and opinions on his art make him very intriguing. He began by telling us about his background, explaining that he failed out of high school, and with no degree, entered the Navy. When he returned, he enrolled at Weed College in California, where he studied to be an engineer like his brother. However, he soon decided against that profession and attempted to be an artist. In was then he met Professor Wilbur, who Graff was fascinated by because the professor had the ability to correct the contrast, colors and shades of a painting to make it easily resemble the actual scene. Ironically, Wilbur was fired the same year he received the “Teacher of the Year” award from the Art Institute. I thought that Graff’s insight on the matter was spot-on, observing that there were too many rules now-a-days of what you can and cannot do in relation to art, that it makes it almost impossible to teach. It seems that people are afraid that someone’s feelings will get hurt if their art is corrected or altered, because in their eyes, everything is “art”.

From this week’s lecture, the point that really stood out in my head was when Graff said that you needed to paint something you hate, and you won’t hate it anymore. You have to recreate it for yourself. An example of this within his own work, was his paintings of flowers. He called his first few pieces “stupid” because they never turned out the way that he wanted them to, but when he moved to Oregon there were flowers everywhere he could use, and he began painting them all of the time. This goes without saying, that Graff’s idea is relative to a lot more things even outside of art. Hearing about popular television shows or movies can make you despise them because you never think they’ll live up to the hype, but when you actually watch them, you fall in love. Or, for me, an example comes from my summer job. I never found myself dying to get out on a golf course. There were few occasions I can recall that I had a burning desire to just “play some golf”, but this summer, I worked as a maintenance employee at Michelbook Country Club in McMinnville. After spending 8 hours a day doing everything you possibly can to make the course playable, all you want to do is get out there and play. You may think things are boring or not intriguing, but when you actually try it and give it a chance, you may end up falling in love.

The readings this week had a lot to do with identity politics, which I learned are basically the political arguments focusing on self-interest and perspectives of minority groups. In “Searching for the Essence of Art,” Arthur Danto refers to our society as a sinking ship where everyone is trying to kill one another. In laymen’s terms, we’re all being selfish while our planet is being destroyed. Danto’s concern is what is happening to earth and how much more it’s able to handle. Coco Fusco stresses how important the past is in her interview in “Two Undiscovered Aborigines Dancing on the Wound of History.” She said that “in a moment where some - not everybody, but many people - involved in making contemporary culture are really interested in transforming what we understand as art.” I found this interesting because it seems as if we are trying to understand our past but are unable to. Fusco seemed very frustrated by this. In her exhibit where she posed as an aboriginal inhabitant from an island in the Gulf of Mexico, she was treated poorly by spectators; beer bottles of urine were tossed at her, teens attempted to burn her with cigarettes and grown men treated her as an animal by making gorilla noises directed at her. What she did was very bold, because she wanted to represent her body as an image of what should be the endlessly recycled colonial motives that our country was formerly based on.

For my visual piece this week, I’d like to show you the golf course I found employment at. I was thinking a lot about the course, so here she is..

They be snappin', Baby!

Four weeks in and I’d dare say I’m developing an eye for this stuff. Professor Dan Powell, a decorated instructor at the University of Oregon, gave a presentation in class this week; an impressive one, at that. Powell is an experienced photographer who has taken pictures literally all over the world. His art has been featured in more than one hundred exhibits across the world, and we are fortunate enough to call him our own here at the U of O. I was worried for Powell when he started speaking and his faint whisper sounded a lot like a lullaby I’ve heard in the past, but his work seemed to shout as he projected it to our classroom projection wall. Powell described his work as “photographic language”, and said he became inspired with not only his camera and his photos but the way he could manipulate and layer his images into something that portrayed language and feeling. His recent work connected closely to his dedication and love for traveling, as well as a medical condition that gave him another chance to live, which was a humbling experience for him, he expressed. Powell used the beauty of landscape, sculptures as a stage for his photographic pieces. Being from the Northwest, his passion and love for the outdoors is apparent in his images. To me, this is very special, because I too have a deep love for Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. Sure, it’s nice to travel to big cities with warm, dry weather year-round. Or, to mountains with snow 12 months out of the year, but there is something about those four very distinct seasons we see in the Northwest that keep me coming back for more. To see Powell share that same love is like a breath of fresh, Oregon air.

In When You’re Healed, Send Me a Postcard, James Hillman explains that therapy results in self-preoccupation, much like how art, over time, has become more individualistic and lost connection with the outside world. Hillman's point that people have been going into the world unhealed for thousands of years is a valid one. He asks, "Is anyone healed?", and it really made me think. We all have our own issues that affect us on different levels, but I do not think there is one person who is completely level-headed. That being said, people get by with whatever cards their dealt. Some things are better off because of it, and others worse. Carolyn Merchant explains that art has become completely visual with any participation to a "faceless" audience in her interview from Viewing the World as a Process, because there is no direction to anyone in particular. This seems to be quite converse thinking in comparison to last weeks' reading, which said that art shouldn't have any deeper meaning than aesthetic presentation.

I'm beginning to think that Art is what you want it to be and what you make of it. If you want art to move mountains, break barriers, and inspire people, then it will. If you want art to give people something to look it, then do just that. But whatever you do, visit Portland.

http://www.picmet.org/conferences/2005/images/portland3.jpg

Goodbye, Blue Skies.

As I reread my first two blog posts, it seems that I have addressed the speaker more so than I have the readings, and focused more emphasis on the in-class presentation rather than my tone or blog presentation. Nonetheless, I have enjoyed writing about their style of art and what their goal in creating different pieces was. However, this week when listening to Jack Ryan, to be honest, I wasn’t sure if I had any idea what he was talking about. Now that’s not to say I wasn’t listening, but I would have to agree with my classmate who made the comment of his work being like a science experiment. I found it interesting to see his views on what makes an artist and how artists what their work to be taken.

“I want the audience to have an experience. I want my work to generate complex questions,” said Ryan, when speaking of his own work. For me, his work did these things. “I feel like I’m on a trip,” came from a few rows back during the presentation. Whether this statement was generated from the presenting artist or illicit drug use, I felt the same thing.

In the interview with Hilton Kramer, I thought he touched on valid points about where the direction of art was headed too. “I find these comments interesting… you seem to suggest that they (traditional artist) are in the position of underdogs at this point” (111). I had to read over this passage a couple times before I could really digest it and make something out of it. I feel like Kramer and I might share a similar view on art in the sense that today, it seems as though anything can be considered art, if that was the intention, and we are teaching young artist to be different and be more modern in their pieces. Maybe it is that I am misunderstanding his argument, but I can’t help but feel like we label too many things as art and read too much into the simplicities of life and nature. Now maybe going back to these simplicities is what we as a nation or people need to do to fix the different environmental and global issue we currently face but I am not exactly sure….

I actually thought Satish Kumar’s interview was a little more down to earth and reasonable because he seemed more in tune with art as a changing process and the need to constantly push the boundaries. Specifically, I liked what he had to say about what we need to do to “fix” the world. “Why the world is facing this crisis is because we have become dualists, we have separated ourselves from nature…Whereas the artist can still see the relationship of unity between human beings and nature” (148). I thought this was really moving because I have always believed artists have been on the cutting edge of where we, as a nation, are headed. It got me to think that maybe artists today are trying to say something about the present and feel a need to express it. Not simply painting a landscape or drawing a Maple Tree that sits alone in a white room, but physically getting out there and creating art with raw materials and using nature as their canvas.

I feel like I may have taken a step back this week in truly understanding art. I looked at Jack Ryan’s work and could not get the words “science experiment display” out of my head. That being said, I was thoroughly engaged with the presenter and felt like his work was deeply impressive. His incorporation of music into his work was my favorite aspect of his art. I have a passion for music, and seeing him share that passion gave me a bit a bias in his favor.

Here is one of my favorite songs with the title being directly tied to one of Ryan’s pieces..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0v07InoFiU