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.