extra credit blog

While I did find documentarian Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams an interesting documentary in the way that it was shot and the way that it showed the viewers the contrasting lives of the cast and crew of Burden of Dreams and the Amazonian extras, I found the way in which Werner Herzog behaved and conducted himself, interacting with those he had hired, to be totally ridiculous, to an extent that it distracted from the intrigue of the actual documentary aspect of the film. I think that sounds kind of weird, but as we were watching the film, the only thing I could focus on was how absurd all of Werner Herzog’s demands were, from him demanding the humongous antique boat to be ‘sailed’ down the river (at points that obviously could not hold it), to the same humongous antique boat to be hauled over a mountain from one river to a river on the other side. At the point in the documentary when they are trying to haul (and I wish I had a better word for it here than ‘haul’) the boat over the mountain, they have set up this completely elaborate pulley and rope system, and there are so many people—Werner Herzog not included—attempting to pull this boat up this massive mountain, and obviously it’s not working. But they keep on going. Herzog says, “I never want to live like [a man without a dream]. I live my life or I end my life with this project.” And that may seem great to him, but what struck me as not so romantic was that it wasn’t just him living or ending his life with this project, it was everyone he had involved in it as well.

blog 12--roni horn

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Artist: Roni Horn

Bio: Born in New York in 1955, Roni Horn still lives and works in the city. She received a BFA from RISD and an MFA from Yale. Horn works through sculpture, works on paper, drawing, language, photography, site-specific installations, and books, though she describes drawing as the key aspect of her work, saying “drawing is about composing relationships.” Horn tries to create relationships between the viewer and her work by creating a new viewing path for each viewer through her installations; she does this by placing pieces on opposing walls in adjoining rooms through series of buildings, or by other ways of creating non-identical viewing experiences.

Image 1 - You Are The Weather; 1995; 64 C-print photographs and 36 gelatin-silver prints; 10 7/16 x 8 7/16 inches (each photograph).

Image 2 - Some Thames; 2000; Inkjet print on paper; 38 x 25 inches (each photograph).

Image 3 - Rings of Lispector (Agua Viva); 2004; Interconnecting rubber tiles; the entire floor.

Review: Roni Horn draws inspiration from her surroundings, namely Iceland, which she explains herself called back to over and over again. She has a fascination with nature and the relationship it holds, which is seen through many of her works, and a fascination particularly with water, which can be seen in her installation Some Thames. When speaking about Some Thames she mentions how it holds a high rate for capturing those who are suicidal, perhaps because of the darkness so intriguing and pulling behind its waves. She is fascinated by the variance in each shot because, while the river is the same, each moment and snapshot it’s changing.

Horn sets up her installations in a way in which each viewer is privy to a different journey through the pieces. By placing pieces on opposing walls and correlating pieces in separated rooms or even separate buildings, she creates a river for each viewer that won’t be the same any time. Much of Horn’s work is also language-based, but she explains that she sees text as visual just as much as any other visual language.

Horn states her feeling that “drawing is about composing relationships,” which, out of all I watched and read about and from her, I found the most beautiful. Her focus on and continuation to come back to relationships in her works is what I find most intriguing and wonderful about her work and her philosophy. She finds and seeks to present relationships in every manner: landscapes as relationships, locations as connections, time as performance, people as landscapes, people as repetition, and so on, always back to a core relationship and understanding between herself, her art, and the viewer.

I found Horn’s You Are The Weather installation particularly appealing because of this aspect. While creating this piece, Horn lived in Iceland in a lighthouse for several months, photographing the woman (who is the only subject of the installation). Horn gave the woman little guidance except for the use the water around the lighthouse as a setting for the photographs, and when interviewed, the woman commented that the relationship and trust built between Horn and herself played a strong role in the creation of the photographs, which show through clearly in the pieces.

final project proposal

For my final project, I want to do a collection of photo recreations and reinterpretations of paintings. Looking to famous and well-known paintings for inspiration, I want to take scenes primarily with people (but also possibly just landscapes or cityscapes if I can find paintings recognizable and dynamic enough), set up those scenes, and photograph them. The goal would be to capture both the feeling conveyed in the original painting in the photograph, and also to make the photograph similar enough to the original painting that it's recognizable without considerable thought or hint.

This project would address both relationships and a time/moment aspect; documentary; photography (I could make them a slideshow for the final presentation, possibly/probably with the original paintings if that made more sense).

Noako, you asked us in class if we felt in any way cheated by what you and ‘Xurxo’ (who I’ll call Xurxo because that is what I know him as and after all, a name is just a name) created for us over the past few weeks. When I think of words to describe or explain my reaction to reading Xurxo’s letter, I think ‘cheated’ would have no place on that list, despite the fact that, from the way you asked us it was clear that you expected at least a few from the class to feel that way. One thing I believe through all layers of art is that art is a conversation, that it is an attempt to connect with other people and an cry to say something, despite how many times that same thought has been articulated before, but in a new way. During Xurxo’s time with us, we watched a lot of videos on relational art, we did projects on it, and we talked about it, all in an attempt to try to understand it as part of the artistic conversation. But what we didn’t know until last class was that we were actually all a part of it. I think this was an extremely creative and inventive idea, and that both you and Xurxo played it out to a beautiful extent. When we read his letter in class my initial reaction was to laugh, not only at myself but at the whole class because we had unknowingly allowed ourselves to get to know someone who was almost made up. This sounds like it would be something negative, but in learning about relational art, and at the end of our art foundation year, I really think that this was such perfect timing because, as Marlaina pointed out in class, we are bombarded with people who have such an authority and claim over art all the time that the need to impress or validify ourselves to them is so strong; believe that Xurxo was a biology major gave us a type of freedom to introduce ourselves to someone who we thought knew nothing about what we were doing, which in a very strange way was really nice.

(Piece 2, Gursky)
(Piece 1, Gursky)
(Piece 2, Yuskavage)
(Piece 1, Yuskavage)

Artist: Lisa Yuskavage

Bio: Lisa Yuskavage is a contemporary American oil painter who focuses on the sexualization of women in her work. Yuskavage works in New York City, but studied at the Tyler School of Art in Pennsylvania where she got her BFA in 1984, and Yale University’s School of Art where she got her MFA in 1986.

Piece 1: Outskirts

Year: 2011

Medium: oil on linen

Piece 2: Kathy on a Pedestal

Year: 2001

Medium: Intaglio with Chine colle

Thoughts on artist:

I think that the sexualization of women, especially the hyper-sexualization of women, is a fine line to walk. While I find Yuskavage’s color palette aesthetically appealing, I don’t think that I would necessarily jump to a fondness for her paintings; my initial reaction is one of questioning why she has chosen to portray women in this way. While her technique cannot be denied as beautiful, many of her pieces seem to serve the purpose merely of that of work bordering on vague erotica. I don’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing, but I do think that it’s a completely different kind of art than what many critics seem to be claiming for Yuskavage’s art.

Artist: Andreas Gursky

Bio: Andreas Gursky is a visual artist who works generally in a large format of architecture and landscape color photographs. His Rhein II, sold at Christie’s in New York in 2011 was the most expensive photograph ever sold, selling for $4.3 million.

Piece 1: 99 Cent II Diptychon

Year: 2001

Medium: C-print mounted to acrylic glass

Piece 2: Rhein II

Year: 1999

Medium: C-print mounted to plexiglass in artist’s frame

Thoughts on Artist:

I think that Gursky’s use of photography as documenting a scene in a way which portrays it as a color composition instead of merely a scene is interesting. Looking at a few of his pieces, his photographs are rich in color, contrast, and pattern, which I find appealing in any medium of work. I think Gursky’s straight-forwardness with his photography is appealing as well, but at the same time I don’t think I would pay $4.3 million dollars for his art.

picnic plan

1. ants on a log

2. picnic

3. celery sticks, peanut butter, raisins (m&ms and pretzels sticks if we want to get super creative)

4. photographs

To make ants on a log, you take the celery sticks, put peanut butter in them, and stick the raisins on top, so that they look like ants on a (rather green) log. We could use the pretzel sticks and m&ms for alternative ants and logs as well.

I'm a little confused about this assignment, so I hope this fits the perimeters?

blog: Bas Jan Ader

Looking at Bas Jan Ader’s work, as we did in class, there is a clear and intriguing progression in his work as he begins to realize and then fully embrace his fascination with gravity and its power over everything. I found the film Here Is Always Somewhere Else an interesting record of Bas Jan Ader’s life, mostly because the filmmaker obviously had no access to Bas Jan Ader himself, so the report of his life is completely from the eyes and speculations of those who were around him. What I find so magnetizing about Bas Jan Ader’s life, regardless of whether or not I like it, is the emotional connection between Bas Jan Ader and his work. I think this is explained best in Here Is Always Somewhere Else by the sections of interviews with Bas Jan Ader’s wife. The part of the movie that I remember most distinctly is towards the end when the film talks about Bas Jan Ader building a boat and preparing to sail; his wife tells the camera that she knew he thought he would make it through this adventure, but that she had no doubt that she would never see him again. Hearing that was so striking because it was the step away from the actual artist; I feel like we always try to see life from a particular artist’s view, we strive so much to see through an artist’s eyes. But by doing this, especially with famous artists like Bas Jan Ader, we forget to see the people that their art affects so directly: their families and loved ones.