Final Blog

It is challenging to me this week to relate the artist and the reading. They are both interesting men who have been going through this dramatic change of the art world. The reading was a man named Leo Castelli. He 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 did not like, and only displayed what he loved in his gallery. When he how he started off his gallery, he says that he was naïve and really confidant 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” ... “[t]he 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, the 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 generally feel the same way. There are so many galleries that display artist in use a lot of video, and a lot of time I find it pretty boring, or maybe I just do not get it.

Luckily Donald Morgan, our guest lecture, did not show us anything in video. He 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. He began being influenced by Per Kirkeby, a painter, who used the natural world and earthy colors in his paintings. After this Morgan began making furniture so he had a lot 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 started to be influenced by 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 their perspectives. 

CHANGE ME

This weeks readings and guest lecture were very conflicting for me. Our guest lecture Tannaz (no last name provided) was a very strong and opinionated Iranian women. Which makes perfect sense to pair her with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, another strong and opinionated women who discusses culture a lot while Tannaz bases all of her work off of culture. I have made this connection on how they are similar and I know that we are expected to talk about these two women and related them in a cultural form but this not the most evident similarity for me.
At this point I have not finished the reading but by the end of this blog I will have. I had to stop reading and start writing about what these women seem to be screaming at me. This whole class has been one huge theme that for some reason just slapped me in the face ridiculously hard. All artists experience change in their work, desire change, and rely on change for their work to become successful to them. Throughout Tannaz’s presentation I was intrigued by how much her work progressed in only five years. She showed us specific pictures, read us an exert from a short story, and gave us very descriptive objects of all the things that had inspired her work. I personally know nothing about the Iranian culture and I felt really lost in her work, it was all visually appealing to me, and it is apparent that she is a very intelligent women, but I just did not get it with my severe lack of background knowledge. At the end of her presentation I was kind of hoping that I could get more insight into her opinion of her culture but instead she opened my eyes to something else. I asked, “Which one of your pieces did you personally find most successful?” I assumed she would reciprocate with which ever piece she most successfully got her political message out but instead she said, “[M]y most recent is always the most successful to me.” This punched me. Her work changes as the world does and her inspiration comes from all these things she has come across that have changed her.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett wont stop talking about contemporary and contemporaneous and in the introduction Suzi Gablik was quick to point it out as well. Contemporaneous means existing right now, contemporary means existing at the same time period. She really stresses these words as she talks about how culture is related to art. She is a strong believer in art changing with the cultural world. She thinks that all art is political mean it has to change and form as contemporary art does, She and Gablik discuss this matter and she becomes rather heated.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett: All these distinctions are meaningless to me. They’re meaningless because all art is political. Some art makes political issues an overt subject, but don’t  tell me that formalism’s not political. To suggest that some art is political and some art isn’t-
Gablik: What about the notion that some art is aesthetic and some art is not?
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett: Also bullshit, if you’ll pardon me for saying so (420-421).
People express how they feel according to the conditions they are living in. As the world changes so does art.

Change Can Be An Amazing Thing

It is interesting as the term goes on how much I realize that most people do not know what artist. A lot of people have a general idea of what they consider art but nobody has a definition. This week’s reading and lecture were mostly females, which I find amazing. Female artists are so inspirational to my young mind. There was one thing that particularly stood out to me though.

At the beginning of the guest lecture, Terri Warpinski start off with a story about how she currently reconnected with a student that she had twenty years ago. Her student, a male named Jason, wanted her to start telling all her art students how hard it is to make it in the wart wold. If he was having so much trouble it is unimaginable the struggle for women to be successful. I feel like both readings and Warpinski touched base on challenges in the art world, unintentionally at times. Warpinski, a female photographer, had the most amazing photographs I had ever seen. She takes black and white photos and enhances them digitally or by hand. The different things she did with her photos were timing intensive, creative, and beautiful. She instantly laid out the problems with calling herself a photographer though. When you tell someone that you are a photographer it goes along with stereotypical thoughts. She made it into a joke but at the same time I am sure she did it out of frustration. It would be hard to explain everything she does, and the magnificent feeling you get while looking at it.

The second reading we were assigned was about a dean of an art institute named Carol Becker. She also talks about the stereotypes of artists. “It used to be, when you came to Chicago, that you could recognize an Art Institute student from a mile away, because they were the ones dressed in black; they were the only ones with green hair” (363). She continues talking about how the area has become more urban now and it is harder to spot an art student. Her whole interview was about changes in the art world being made.

Rickard Shusterman, the first assigned reading, believes that there should be more change. He is one of many who are encouraging the feminist act. He believes that we should more or less abolish art galleries because people are only classifying art as what is in a gallery, when are is everywhere and anywhere. Not only is our natural habitat beautiful but the buildings and the streets we live in and walk on are also incredible. I feel that Shusterman thinks that beauty and art should not just be in a segregated place because that separates art and life.

Every artist is searching for change and equality whether they realize it or not. There are so many artists in the world and no two things that have created are identical.

I Have a Dream!

It is hard for women to get a job or to even be recognized as an artist. Both of the readings for the week are inspirational. Both have different ways of working in the art world, but are both very successful in their own ways. We live in a world that is not always the most friendly to women, and when it comes to jobs other than desk work or being a nurse, our world is less than hospitable.

The Guerrilla Girls have been leading the feminist march to equal rights in the art world for centuries now. Not only are they trying to empower females but also people of color. They have strong statistical facts about how most art in museums and galleries is by white men. They have been inspirational to so many people with some of their wild and crazy tactics. These girls are so amazing because they are not doing this to further their careers in the art world; they stay completely anonymous and just fight for what they feel is right. They make posters and post them all over town; they are true activists with a cause. I wish that I was able to be as active for the things that I believed in. They are truly the Martin Luther King Jr. of the art world.

The second reading is also very inspiring in a spate way. It is another woman who stood up for her beliefs in a separate way. Her name is Mart Jane Jacob. She used to work at a museum but quit because she also felt like it was sexist and racist. Instead she became a curator, another important role in the art world. It is inspiring to see woman succeed in the art world when so little do. It is obviously a white man’s world.

Although the guest lecture was sick this week it would have been nice to compare her to these artists because she is succeeding in the art world in a different way. She, as well as Ty Warren, is teaching art. There are many different things you can do in the art world and these women have shown three of many ways. The guest lecturer for the week did ceramics, we have had lecturers that were painters, animal rights activists, and so much more. There are so many women out there and they all have a dream, but are not all willing to be an extremist to make a point. It is stimulating to me as a young women see other women still making a stand for what is right. We have been suffering hundreds of years of oppression but we are not willing to give up the fight for what we believe in. It is beyond incredible.

This is an obvious one by the infamous Guerrilla Girls

 

This is compelling to me because most of the guest lecturers that were male and most of the male art teachers I have encountered always show a naked women. Way to stand out girls!

Evolving

    For me, this weeks guest lecture and readings were particularly interesting. All three were very diverse, yet similar in the art world. All of which showed a transition and change in art and life. Ron Graff, the guest lecture for the week, showed how his work progressed over time.
    Graff has had his own art studio since he was five years old. He eventually got in trouble with the law by stealing a motorcycle and was forced o either go to jail or join the service. He began painting in the navy. After the navy he went to school at Northern Cal. After about two years he went to Yale graduate school. He started having troubles painting in studios and began making street painting of what he saw out his window. From there he began doing drawings. After a while he was tired of realism and painted all kinds of different unrealistic things. Again started changing by painting landscaped (mostly of Oregon I believe he said) and then painted flowers. After he went back to painting unrealistic things. Throughout his entire art career he could never define what art is. He could not figure out if realism was art, and still does not know. He had many questions and “ I don’t knows” along the way.
    Similarly to the first reading, Arthur C. Danto, a philosopher and art critic. He also is unsure of what art is. During their interview Suzi Gablik, author of Conversations Before the End of Time, asked him several art related questions and just like Graff he had to respond “I don’t know”. It seemed to me that he was almost afraid to give his opinion about some art. In the introduction Gablik mentioned that the only art he tend to critic is that which is in a museum already. To me, this means that he is only willing to talk about something that someone else has already said is art. I believe this could be because art is beginning to change and evolve and he is afraid to claim it before someone else. This also shows because he considers himself a philosopher before anything else, like he is not proud of the title “art critic”. It seemed a little a little weird to me
    The second reading was Coco Fusco, she is performance artist, she seems a lot more opinionated about the art world but still really unsure. Fusco gave a whole lecture in Spanish because not all Americans speak English. Fusco was obviously trying to show that the art world is different and diverse but she was still really unsure of the effectiveness of it.
    All three people are very unsure what art is but something that the are sure of is that art is changing.

Preserved Nature

Suzi Gablik the author of Conversations before the end of time says that James Hillman was a lot of the inspiration for this book, he is a psychologist. He mostly works with the humanities instead of the sciences of psychology. Hillman is a very interesting kind of person to me. He does things that he doesn’t even believe in. He says “I like to practice therapy. I do it well. Bit I don’t believe in it” (177). I suppose I do not understand how you can be “good” at something when you do not believe in it. How can you be a therapist and believe that you are helping someone when you do not believe your methods work. I suppose some of what he is says is a little contradicting to me or maybe I am just not reading it right. I suppose it is possible that he feels as though he just understands how the mind works and not really how you are suppose to “cure” it.
The insertion “Viewing the World as a Process” is about a woman named Carolyn Merchant. She is an environmental historian. Merchant and Hillman are both authors of several books. Merchant has theorized that civilization has but itself above nature. Meaning that civilization has a disadvantage and is being destroyed because of people. Which is entirely true. We have definitely put ourselves above nature. We have been developing, littering, and basically doing everything in our power to make the world a less beautiful place. The less populated places and the most beautiful and preserved places. I feel as though Dan Powell and her share common thoughts about nature.
Dan Powell, our guest lecture for the week is a topographer. This is a person who studies the Earth’s surface, which includes all the plants, moons, and asteroids. He has been photographing since 1978. He started off by putting things onto his walls and layering them to create new and interesting shadows. He learned that he did not like using color in his pictures so the majority of his photography is in black and white. Which were all very elegant and beautiful to look at. He begin a career where he could travel to all these different places he loves to take pictures of these less populated persevered places. He said that he really loves Eastern Oregon, but who does not when they go there. Professor Powell seems like he mostly takes pictures of the desert in Eastern Oregon, and the different trees but I really prefer the few hilly parts of Eastern Oregon.

 

This photo is taken by Stan McQueen. It is in Eastern Oregon. It is not in black and white but I feel like it really captures the glory of the land. Being able to see forever at all the different lush greens there are.

This is a Photo of Ice Lake taken by Michael Skourtes. This pictures shows that there is not only flat plains in Eastern Oregon but there are many different, yet extremely beautiful things in Oregon.

"Visual World"

This weeks guest lecturer was very interesting. He is a professor here at UO and his name is Jack Ryan. He has only been teaching here for 2 years. He also teaches in New York in the summer and he has been working there for 8 years. He is also in many other artist groups as well as working for the musical department. Professor Ryan was very interesting and engaging to listen to. He connects his art to the world which he calls a “visual world”.
He started off as a fisherman in Alaska. He lived in a tiny cabin and the only way to get there was by boat or plane. It look very isolated, or as he called it sublime. He began comparing the cabin he lived in with that of Thoreau and Kaczynski. Possibly because there was a double homicide in the cabin about a year before he moved into it. Kind of comparing the sanity of his cabin with theirs. This essentially started his career. He began drawing and examining his world. He showed us some of his earlier work. Drawings of Kaczynski and random other things. He had an exhibit names “Blue Skies: Thar She Blows”. which displayed many things including a table set up with a projector of the news cast of a beached whale in Florence, Oregon in 1970. It was extremely humorous because these people had no idea what to do with this whale so they decided to blow it up! What a logical decision! (NOT). The whale blubber went way further than anyone anticipated and drenched many people as well as smashing the top of a car in. I thought this piece was amazing. It was incredibly funny and it was a real issue that had occurred. I felt like it arose awareness of what happened. I didn’t know!
Next Professor Ryan showed us Scriabin's Mustache which I didn’t fully understand so I wont talk about it. He began skipping through his slides fairly quick so that he can show us some of his newer stuff. He showed us this thing called Fugitive Video Project. I am not sure that I agree with this group of videos. It seemed very….out of the ordinary in a not so great way. I suppose that I am not capable of defining what art is but I feel as though I wouldn’t consider all of that art. Some of it was really great but I think the other might be a little too perverse for me.
I think I can relate Jack Ryan’s work more to our second reading for this week called “Ten Thousand Artists, Not One Master” and it was an interview with a man names Satish Kumar. I think I can relate these two things more because they are both more free flowing along the lines of art. Both Kumar and Ryan believe that art is conforming and changing and all of it is great. The first reading for this week was called “No Art in the Lifeboats” an interview with Hilton Kramer, an art critic. He seemed very set on his ways. It seems as though he is not even slightly interested in modern art. Kramer named a couple artist that I absolutely love but other than that I completely disagree with his view points. I love new art and different ways of creating it. Here are a few of the painting that I think Kramer and I would agree with:

 These are done by Rickard Kiebenkorn

This work is by David Salle

Bugs? Eww...

I couldn’t bring myself to put an actual picture of a bug on my blog. These are mechanical bugs made by Mike Libby. I guess these mechanical critters don’t really fit into the theme of the reading, although they are very impressive. The article “Doin Dirt Time” in the book Conversations Before the End of Time, Suzi Gablik, the author of the book, is discussing an interview with Rachel Dutton and Rob Olds. The insertion is basically about this couple who lived in Los Angeles and decide to rid all of their art work and live in the desert, for lack of a better term, to become “hippies”. The people seem a little over the top to me, but I really respect what they are doing. They live off of their land, do no use electricity, and simply try “to live closer to nature“ (62). It is inspiring to me that they have become so dedicated and willing to live in such a manor, but I feel their reasoning is somewhat ridiculous. They feel they “need” to live this way incase the world suffers some form of apocalypse. I guess I somewhat understand the fear of apocalypse but if anything is going to happen the world will probably flood and then we’ll all be screwed!

The second reading was called “Making Art About Centipedes”. This reading was not my favorite. It was an interview with a guy named Christopher Manes. I see his point of view but I do not like it. Also Gablik did not do the best job counter acting with an argument. Maybe I missed some hidden messages or just really didn’t know what was going on but it really just seemed like Manes believed that humans are completely dispensable compared to fungi and insects. All he talked about was how they are better than humans, but I kind of like humans. I think we are a very diverse set of beings. It is impressive to me how Manes perspective really makes you realize how similar humans are to insects but I would not say that either is better. I feel like they are not super comparable. We do similar things but in very different ways. Some better some worst. Gablik’s argument about “a centipede doesn’t play basketball” (98) wasn’t exactly the most intriguing. Especially for trying to say that humans are not hopeless. There are many people in the world that do many great things despite how Manes may feel.

One of the people was our guest lecturer on Tuesday. His name is Colin Ives and he mostly does work with animals and exploring their tendencies and behaviors. Ives does a much better job of explaining how animals and insects play bigger roles in the world and our environment than we let ourselves believe. With his work he is simply just trying to open the eyes of others saying that there are things in the world that need some improving. During his guest lecture he showed us several things but one really stuck out in my head. It was on his website colinives.com and his project was called “The Clearing”. In this art museum he set up a projector with a 360 of a beautiful forest and only played segments at a time, but if a person walked in front of the image the projector would turn off, leaving the image ruined. Just like in real life, we have all these amazing habitats around us but we can ruin them just as easily.

All of these people have very similar ideas about maintaining nature and they all have displayed them in very unique and powerful ways. I believe just as much as they do that we need to do our best to maintain what is left.

This weeks theme for class as well as the reading is “what is art”. In class we discussed that art is something that makes you ask questions. Art means many things to a lot of people, and there is no true definition. As for myself I am entirely unsure of what defines art, but I know what I consider to be art when I see it. After the lecture on Tuesday September 28th, I am seeing more that the things I consider to be art really make me ask some intense questions. I feel like good art makes you ask really in depth questions. In our assigned reading for the class the author Suzi Gablik refers to her friend Ellen Dissanakake as well as has an interview with her. Dissanakake states that, “[t]o understand what art is, or might again become”…”it is useful to consider the bigger span of human history and not just the restricted field of modern Western society in which art has become identified with stable objects rather than with kinds of behavior or ways of doing things that embellish and enlarge life.” (Conversations before the end of time 41).  I believe what she means by this is that people are not asking questions about art, but they should be. She thinks that art has a huge question about life. Each piece of art work is a discovery that enlarges our lives. There is art all around us whether it be a painting, or a sculpture. Something you can identify or something that makes no sense.

These paintings are by an artist named Leonid Afremov. They are two of my personal favorites. Afremov is a very talented artist. All of his art work is beyond amazing and when you search through his work it is incredibly challenging to stop. What makes this art good though? I think all of his work is very appealing because the colors and brush strokes he uses. He puts in so much time and effort into each individual stroke. He has time to consider what his and the viewers minds are asking.

These are by another amazing artist named Edgar Müller, he has dedicated about 17 years of his life to strictly street painting. He creates 3D art on sidewalks. According to http://www.metanamorph.com/about.html  Although he has he traveled all over Europe, making a living with his transitory art. He gave workshops at schools and was a co-organizer and committee member for various street painting festivals. Müller set up the first (and so far only) Internet board for street painters in Germany – a forum designed to promote solidarity between German street painters. been creating his art for a while now, it still amazes me how alive he makes these masterpieces. All of his work gets my mind rattling with millions of questions about space, time, and simply just how.

Art is so many different things to so many different people. Whether it may be because it creates an emotion, the time and effort the artist had put into it, the quality, the angle, the form, or because it makes you ask important questions about life or the way we live, art surrounds us in our everyday life and opens us up to new things everyday.