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.