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.