Humor Art and everything in between

   This week we read a conversation with a gallery owner, Leo Castelli, which was refreshing and new because we haven't heard from one before.  I had trouble connecting the speaker, Donald Morgan, with the readings.  I had done the readings before class and when I listened to the lecture my blog ideas sort of began to change.  First I'd like to talk about Leo Castelli when he made the comment, "most of them had absolutely no aesthetic qualities--which a work of art must, after all, have" (458).  I find this sentenced to be the most controversial sentence Leo said during the conversation with Suzi.  I think Leo is extremely frustrated that he is living through yet another art revolution and doesn't really like where its going but is going to accept it none the less.  He values what he believes to be a 'true artist' (which we all have our own definitions) but since he is a gallery owner, a celebrity in the art world, and known for his merit and talents in discovering new artist his definition of what a true artist is, is probably pretty spot on... for his generation. The thing that he doesn't want to understand is that art is always evolving and even though some of us like other decades trends more than others we can't fight the tidal wave taking us into the future.  


I wonder what he would say if he wondered into the gallery in New York that Morgan and Reeder put on entitled Drunk vs Stoned.  It really had no deep concerning content relevant to the times of today nor did it scream at you with talented aesthetics so I am guessing Leo Castelli would be indifferent to the pieces.  There are all kinds of artist out there some like The Whitney Biennial who address certain social issues and interact with society, some who long for the paintings to be hung in prestigious galleries like Leo's, others who channel humor through their art, and others who just do what ever their hands lead them to do.  Everyone has a personal preference and I don't think that everything that is art has to have aesthetic merit, I think it's creativity and thought inspiring merit out weighs any others.


Leo isn't all that opposed though to this new era of art, he actually in a way is trying not to fight it but be a part of it and embrace it, he doesn't want to be like other dealers, museum directors, or art historians who fight to reject this post modernism way of art.  That characteristic I like about Leo he seems like he knows whats going on in the art world and to a point I do agree that some merit and talent has seemed to of vanished since the times he remembers and true awe inspiring artist such as Andy Warhol cease to stand out as they once did before.  Becoming an artist is more accessible then its ever been but its sad because now theres this sense of a path, a set of rules, a person must follow in order to become a professional artist but I think that is bullshit... there should be no path, no rules, and no one telling you how to create your art.  That right there is what is ruining the merit and talent of aesthetics in art these days we've managed to create a system through institutions that takes away all aspects of self thought and creativity.  You think the great mind of Andy Warhol followed a path, a set of rules?  No way and that's why his name means what it means today.  True creativity, true thought, true talent, true conversation, true art genius.


It was a nice change of pace to talk about how the gallery does really effect the artist to a certain extent, it can create a name for an artist so that they can create pieces that are more like installations and interactive work outside the gallery and get recognized for it.  Galleries offer a great starting places for artist to give definition to their name.  I believe the Morgan's work would both prosper in the gallery as well as in the streets.  It would be so awesome to see his Drunk vs Stoned pieces randomly placed in busy city streets, kneeling near trash cans, falling onto trees.  I think that would escalate the humor of it quite a bit!  It would be the perfect pieces to place in Portland!  Leo ends by saying attitudes of the artists about the world have changed and I completely agree.  In premodern times it would be ridiculous to create humor driven art to be seen in institutions like galleries in that sense yes we've allowed the artist to look at the world differently but we've also began to look at the artist differently as well... how it's changed I'm not quite sure of yet.

if everything is art, is nothing art?

{missed blog post 3 here my make-up!}

 Hilton Kramer is different and I think that he believes that if the family structure were to be restored that it would help society from drifting into a state of individualism.  He believes family and tradition is at the core of what changes society.  He thinks that art has little to nothing to do with what molds society and our cultural views.  Popular culture he believes is what constructs society or should I say deconstructs society, he has no hope in art to save the world which is contradictory of many of the conversations we have had included the speaker Jack Ryan we listened to on Tuesday.  

Jack Ryan was all about art being able to change and mold society, he wanted his art to remind people of the sublime and to ask questions, create thought and conversation in order to better understand society and this world.  Ryan stated, "I want the audience to take away an experience where they're challenged to ask themselves complex questions."  I think that if Kramer stepped back he would realize similarities between his views of tradition and family and Ryan's not so traditional views of art.  Ryan wants people to understand their relationship with people and nature, to come to grips with the finiteness and realize their place in the world; he wants his audience to become grounded when they find answers to those complex questions.  Kramer wants the same thing he wants people to realize their place in the world to become grounded but not through art through family, they both have the same intent both just see it coming from different sources.  Kramer differs from the next speaker Satish Kumar in a sense that he believes art cannot serve as a means for transformation and unfortunately society is only molded by the poisoning of pop culture, however Kumar sees art in a very different light and believes everything is art.  It's a sort of decoration of life that is constantly reflecting and molding society and although she believes in tradition she thinks that art is a perfectly good medium in which to get to society through.

Kumar was very well spoken and I enjoyed reading this conversation, I took many notes through out the pages and have way to many quotes to share.  Although one I thought stood out because of its versatility and applicability in all our conversations we've read this year.  "You are part of the anima mundi and anima mundi is part of you," (142).  Kumar stressed the realization that individual soul is not separate from the soul of the world but one in the same just as art is not separate from this world but a part of it.  She talks about Indian thinking as being a continuum of thought (kind of how I talk about how art and thought is continually being recycled and all new thoughts are just revised thoughts from the past) a flow of art and thinking being passed on and continued from artist to artist.  In India art is decorating their lives not hidden in cubicles of white walls and bogus religiosity, it is apart of them as they are apart of it.  One thing we forget in western civilization is that the individual cannot be separated from the communal, social, universal body.  Western civilization is so caught up in this idea of individualism and this post modern era keeps telling us come out with something new, something only you, but there is nothing that is only 'you'... the creations artist come up with are merely reflections of what they see, observe... which is the world and society.  It is not just one artist coming up with a piece but everything and everyone that has affected that persons perception is the creator, everyone is the artist of that piece.

When we debate about whether a 5 year old or an unartistic person can make art, I think Kumar offers us an answer, "the artist is not a special kind of person, but every person is a special kind of artist," (137).  We are all artists and all creations created are art.  

Art keeps running, who's chasing it?

Our guest speaker today Tannaz was super interesting the way she wanted to take everyday objects and arrange them together in studio space to give deeper meaning to them was really innovative.  She would reference to pedestrian objects in a hope that it would trigger a movement inside her audience that would cause them to reorder their existence in the world.  She wanted her audience to objectify themselves and figure out how to see themselves in the world, in society and in history.  I really enjoyed the one about the holocaust I think it said IFORGOT and it was all about not forgetting horrific events of the past that may of happened to your culture or a culture you’ve learned from.  She talked a lot about culture identity and how one meaning from a culture could translate so differently to another but she emphasized the importance of looking for that translation, looking for the meaning, and then using it to reposition your views of worlds culture.  Like the art world her visions and pieces had many layers in different directions with different relationships with different viewers.  Her work is open ended and allows for conversation to take place after viewing it which is what art is all about like I have said… conversation.  She has a fascination with future and her simplistic pieces had a way of constructing multiple narratives (when maybe she was only thinking of one).  She says she negotiated with form to create value and meaning by taking ordinary objects and having them stand for something bigger than herself or her audience; culture.

The conversation we read this week was with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and I found her connection with Tannaz late it her conversation, actually on the last page to be precise.  Barbara states, “Post-disciplinary says, ‘Forget them.’  Who needs them?  Take a problem and go anywhere you need for the material.  Tannaz took problems from history in different cultures and literally looked to the streets to find materials to solve the problem for herself in the hope that she could create remembrance within her audience to feel what a culture feels when on that topic or to think about what once happened and how it affected people of its culture.  I liked Tannaz latest piece with the cinder blocks and roses and different lights with colors, it was really aesthetically interesting and chaotic but at the same time simplistic and peaceful.  The roses balanced the cold stark image of the cinder blocks so well it really made for a beautiful composition. 

Barbara talks about the art world’s resistance to move but I think of it as more of a resistance to learn or accept new ideas.  I think right now the art world is confused a reason it could be confused is because of Barbara’s idea that contemporary or avant-garde is contemporaneous with all other sorts of art like Whitney Biennial.  Also there is this struggle within the art world, this sort of tug and pull between new age innovation and traditionalist institutions… artists are struggling trying to attack certain issues in a certain way but it is hard to survive against artist getting the commercial benefit—making the big bucks—because their line of work falls within the bourgeois and the institutions.  A connection between this conversation and all the others is this war between western civilization and the world and the different ways in which the cultures born out of each place is different yet the western civilization has seemed to contaminate all other perceptions.  Barbara ends the conversation by saying, “It’s the West and the rest—it’s not a solution,” (433).  The end of the conversation scares me, it frightens me that we can’t shake this politically and economically deep definition of art that surfaced through western cultures birth.  I wonder if things will ever change, art keeps running but is the institution even chasing it?

Mind and body, Soul and Nature

   In the first conversation we read with Richard Shusterman they jumped right in talking about the externalization of objects and is strong separation we've been taught to feel between art and the real world.  They brought up the idea that has been brought up before that through our western tradition our culture has taught us that art is meant to be on walls in the galleries and to be seen only by the fortunate ones who have enough leisure time to be able to enjoy this commodity of high culture.  But that of course is bullshit, art started so long ago I like to think of art beginning with tribal dances and beautiful long rituals that tribes would connect through and create this relationship with each other, the earth, the natural and super natural they would create creative artist connections.  Performance art and simulations began far before the white man decided his portrait should be inside of a aesthetically similar building as to that of a cathedral.  It wasn't until egotistical men of power decided art was only for them that generations after we would think that galleries was just where art was and should be.  Thankfully theres hope..


Through out all of these conversations we have been breaking free from this idea that art is for the bourgeois and very separate from the real world and nature.  But our speaker Terri Warpinski has obviously proved nature and art are one in the same and art is very much present off the walls, outside the galleries and present in our everyday lives and experiences.  I logged onto her website to look at more of her work and in such a simplistic way she captures the sublime and reminds us its still there.  The vast landscapes she discovers and captures breaks the barrier between mind and soul, between art and nature and, I think like our conversation pieces we read, hopes to ground us from innovation and think of reflection and recycling instead.  A quote I liked from Richard, "everything is a simulation of another simulation, and that we're all recycling, quoting and appropriating."  I believe everything that can be done has been done before but just by a different hand, through a different eye, created through a different medium.


In the conversation with Carol Becker she brings up bourgeois nothing of freedom being a freedom for the individual apart from society, not a freedom for the individual within society.  Individualism has brainwashed generations thinking thats what we need to strive for in order to be successful and stand out but what we've fought for for so long is community and access to being part of society free of racism, sexism, ageism, all -ism's we have fought for are trying to break the perception that we as humans should be individual and in our own worlds when in reality we need to walk, breathe, talk, BE together and work together.  The more separation we create between each other, between art and earth, the more separation between us and earth which is not a good separation to have.  


All the separation... may i remind us all separation has nothing to do with art AT ALL!  Art is about communication, relationships to society and nature (which is one in the same), its about connections so when we look at something we feel something!  We learn something, we take something away from the art in front of us that we couldn't of been inspired to feel without that aesthetic piece.  It is about conversation, whether were talking to people or being inspired by art to talk to ourselves and hear that artist voice through their piece or hear the peoples voices that the artist is trying to capture.  Thought in it self is a conversation and through art and the creative whelm it is created.  Nothing else in the world can inspire change like art can.  No simplistic view that we find in the New York Times can move us to feel one way or another like a short quote from a philosopher or artist who leaves you with the answer and poses ways to find it.  Nothing in the world can cause you to think like art can and it is important we see more of it everyday... or should I say it is important we LOOK for more of it everyday.  There is not a place in this whole world where art is but seeing distance away.

bogus religiosity

I was really disappointed when we didn't get to hear a speaker this week because it really connects everything and makes it easier to dive into the readings and make real the conversations we read.  But I managed to power on and get through this weeks reading and was thankfully able to compile some sort of response.


A reoccurring theme I've noticed in the past few weeks is this idea of getting the art work out of the museum and put into the real world so that it is no longer perceived with a whack view where the frame and atmosphere gives more meaning than the true meaning of the art piece by itself, as a living representation of culture in the world.  John Berger a art historian, philosopher, and writer was a brilliant man who I have enjoyed studying in the past.  He gives definition to bogus religiosity where he claims that threw reproduction and replacement (moving the art to museums) takes away the true meaning of art and gives it the bogus representation of it self.  The museum now creates the meaning of that art and tells you it must be art if it is in the museum.


All the artists we've read in the conversations have talked about interactive pieces, installations, and performance practice, a way of art that takes power back from institutions and gives it back to the artist and art itself.  I ask you, how can you capture a conversation and put that in a museum?  Because according to the institution art is found in museums, a separate world for the high culture to view what art it, its not in the world... but conversation is at most the basic presentation of art that occurs in all environments and geographies of the world.  Its like one of our speakers mentioned I want to say his name was Dan, a photographer who was obsessed with capturing the intangible, capturing human interaction and thought, art at its core.  I think Mary Jan Jacob wanted to do the same thing, take the power away from the museum, away from the institution and give it back to the people, back to the world.    I found it interesting when they were talking about interactive and performance art pieces and how high culture doesn't understand how that can be art when non-artist help create these art pieces but maybe high culture has got their heads so high in the clouds they can't see the basics of art, the first component always needed to inspire art to be created... interaction, communication, relationships between people, animals, earth, artists and non-artisit.


The Guerrilla Girls were interesting without really saying much about themselves, they seemed very mysterious and didn't give answers to many of Suzi's questions.  They did talk about connection though. They fit through civil injustices that mostly deal with women because they are women so its relevant to them and together their voices roars loader than alone and they are trying to change the motto, the walls are his the floor is mine.  It is not about a numerical system while each minority slowly gets involved and accepted in popular/ high culture its all in the same each minority should abolish together its a process that all should be involved in not just one being more important then the next decade we'll take on the next minority.  It's about the system as a whole changing, changing the definitions of acceptability, environments of art, who an artist is, what art is.  We must remember not to be blinding by bogus religiosity and high culture flare and remember the basics that art is not separate from life but a reflection of it that needs to be a part of our lives day in and day out.

I would like to start with a quote from Coco Fusco one of the artists conversations we had to read for the week, "I like to think of a productive relationship to society and to creating culture as being a back-and-forth kind of movement between going out into the world and learning about people, places and situations, and then going back and reflecting on them in the work that I do" (333).  Fusco talks about an interactive performance art piece most of the conversation and it was not until the end (till after reading that sentence) that I connected him with everyone else.  Suzi asks him if art is a waste of time because "the world is ending" and he responds the same way I think all the artists we've read and heard would, by simply saying art is the solution, art is the productive conversation we must all become and remain a part of in order to fix this world of chaos.

Over and over I say again, art lies within the rediscovery of what is and what comes out of that rediscovery, Fusco obviously feels the same way.  He looked to history to create a cage performance project that was show cased all over the world with radically different responses.  I loved the response from  the person on the Chicago ABC news that said, "I've been interested in Native Americans for a long time, but I've never seen this kind of tribe before.  This is really weird" (328).  That made me laugh.  Fusco relates to identity politics and advocated for native american minorities in his cage performance very much and wants to disassemble levels of culture just as I think our speaker this week Ron Graff does too.

Graff talked about his brutel hate for almost everything and his disspaointment of life, he was a crack up I really enjoyed what he had to say although it was hard to know what his heart was trying to say.  He said he began to despise realist paintings and drawings because he was no longer himself doing what his mind told him to do he became a commodity and began only serving people of high culture, who only wanted the art to enhance their wealthy apperance (not that he wanted to just give it away to people who didn't care about it but he no longer wanted to work for and support the higher status quo).  So he turned to abstract and illusionism and what he had once hated he now loved.  He spoke a quote that I think you can apply to all aspects of culture not just art, "I saw something I hated so I went home and tried to paint it myself and I didn't hate it anymore."  I think its about 'try it before you knock it' type deal.  Like when his friends told him his abstraction of art was destroying himself and everything he had worked to become, it was almost like they needed to get off their high horse of high culture and try something new, be apart of it, become active in the conversation and see what happens.


CONVERSATION.  Philosopher Arthur Danto was the over conversation we had to read, "I don't think anybody in the art world is able to function without other people being involved" (286).  Imitation, reproduction, rediscovery... both Graff and Danto talked about human connection needing to be a necessity in order to create art.  Graff simply came out and said that he would go to galleries then go home and copy it if he liked it, then alter it if need be and call it his own.  He become part of a productive process which could metaphorically be called a conversation.  I like Danto's idea of what it means to be a part of a community and he is totally right.  I come from a small town where teachers and parents would always talk all this bullshit about our responsibility as a member of this community, give me an effin break lets step back and talk about our responsibility to this world.  I hated everyone in that town we were not the same, I didn't want to be responsible for what they wanted to be responsible for.  I like the idea of us all just being interconnected between relationships we all individually have, which if we connect each relationship we would have this amazing web of interconnectivity = one big conversation!  Its all one in the same, language = art.  So get in where you fit in and start the conversation.

Rediscover the Dumpster

At the end of class tuesday Ty told us to look up two words: Cartesian and Jungian Analysis.  My understanding of Cartesian is as follows; that mind is separate from body just as I am separate from you and separate from this world, promotes western individualism and belief that science can provide answers to everything.  Jungian Analysis is the idea that the unconscious mind is a source of healing and development for the individual.  Individualism is the topic of the week, in the James Hillman conversation one sentence really stuck with me on page 188 when James defines Aesthesis as meaning to notice the world and my definition of aesthetics being a philosophy dealing with everything beautiful and everything art.  Connection of definitions-noticing the world is beautiful is artistic.  My photography teacher I had freshman year at an art school told me, "once you see the world through a lens, you finally see where you've been living, and tomorrow when you walk that same walk to school everyday you'll see trees you never saw before."  I believe this world is art and like I said in my last blog maybe its not about creating it but about discovering it.  Dan Powell was awesome and had super amazing work, I loved his visions with layering and using trash to make something beautiful.  He totally connected with the two conversations we read this week, in the Hillman conversation he says, "it rescued and made use of discarded materials."  Dan Powell did this in his early years of art physically and I think metaphorically in his later years of art.  Powell continually mentions his fascination with capturing human interaction with nature and human thought; capturing the intangible.  His early work deals with physically gathering trash (noticing his world) and then bringing it to his studio to create something aesthetically pleasing (discovering beauty) later on he decides he wants to take his camera out into the world and capture it, live it, be one with it.  He went outside of reasoning, Hillman and Merchant would approve, and looked to the world to give him art, he became enlightened with the idea that traveling this world looking at its physical history to find current cultural meaning was the best way to capture what art is, by rediscovering it over and over again.  I believe art is the process of rediscovering what was to know what is.  Like Merchant discussing art as participatory and about relationships with objects, nature, animals, humans, the world.  On page 236 Merchant creates this idea that transformation into this new world will be about reflection, support, encouragement and nurture, that through crisis and chaos a regrouping and reorganization will itself emerge and provide us with something new.  It is not us writing our story we are simply just a part of it, reading it as new everyday, we can't predict or solve with science to know the ending... we need to be humbled and realize were not in a domination race with nature but a partnership.  The quote that I loved the most from Merchant was, "It will arise out of our attempts to get away from the betrayals of the past, to see what has not worked and to try to make something else work... these ideas will have to work in a context that is uniquely our own."  Merchant's creativity lies in language and teaching as does Hillman and Powell's.  They all have a secret love affair with the beauty of language, and if art is beauty then I guess the conclusion is language and art are but the same thing!!  The old views of looking for solutions to chaos in the world was to find solutions through science, to be innovative and technologically dependent, those people who hold these views are stubborn, resource hunger and have an ugly relationship with over consumption.  It's the younger generations, our generations, that are learning and listening and understanding the connection between everything, "the world as a big giant conversation in which everybody is involved," the interconnectivity of the world is what has been ignored for far to long and the act of finally participating in this conversation is the most beautiful thing a person can do.  You don't need a paint brush, a camera, or a pencil to be an artist... you need language, conversation, and relationships with the world you live in, participation is art.  I think all three artists were dealing with this week want us to, like Hillman would say, turn away from the loyalty to the God of commodity and money, and search for the God the artist in the river is serving... whatever God that may be.