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..