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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image 3(a)
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image 2(a)
image 1

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.

blog post 006 "special collection"

*note: I know this is ridiculously late and I apologize. I have class every day from 10-5 15 so today was the first non-weekend day I had a chance to get to the library before 5.

001:

Bud Shark; Shark’s Inc is a collaboration of artists that publish their, and others’s prints. The Director and Master Printer is one in the same: Bud Shark.

Payton, Cydney, ed. The Legend of Bud Shark and his Indelible Ink . Hardy Marks Publications , Print.

(no place or year of publication available).

The prints in this collection are completely intriguing, particularly the clear differences in style between artists. While some artists seemed to be drawn to a more graphic approach, utilizing the clear, concise lines capable in printmaking, others’s prints looked more like abstract paintings than prints. I’m particularly drawn to Hung Liu’s prints, as well as John Buck’s (which I’ve featured in the photograph attached).

002:

John Baldessari; Baldessari is an American conceptual artist who began as a painter and then began to move on to the incorporation of other mediums in the 1960s.

John Baldessari: A Print Retrospective from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation. New York: D.A.P.

(a collection of authors).

I really enjoyed the John Baldessari videos we watched in class, so when I saw this book I thought it would definitely be worth looking at more of his art work. What I enjoy most about his art work, at least from what I’ve seen in class and from this book, is his wide array of experimentation in different types of art. Many artists have a general style of work, which in its own way can be an interesting aspect of their work, but I think that his tendency not to necessarily have one way to definitively define or recognize his work makes it that much more interesting.

blog post 007 "if this is art"

Like other articles we have read this semester, I find the discussion in “Photography as Contemporary Art” of photography as much wider a genre than that of the capturing of just a passing moment extremely interesting. The artists discussed in “Photography as Contemporary Art” use photography from merely a way to record art that is occurring in the world, to manipulating that art that is occurring in the world to make it a different type of art once captured on film, to a complete composition in and of itself much like we saw with Gregory Crewdson’s work.

The discussion of whether or not anything can be art based solely on the artist declaring it art is an interesting conversation, and one that is exemplified well by the Fountain, created by Marcel Duchamp and photographed by Alfred Stieglitz. Since the original sculpture doesn’t still exist, the question now could be whether the sculpture itself or the photograph of the sculpture was, or still is, the actual art. Also, if anything can be taken, rotated, photographed, and labeled art simply because the artist says it is, what’s to say that everything isn’t art? And does that genre of art start a conversation that suggests that an art that involves heavy study and learned skill, such as painting or marble sculpture, is then on the same level of artistic value as that art that is just found, photographed, and presented perhaps just to illicit some sort of passionate response from those deemed artistically elite?

We talked about this in class as well, but I thought the use of video and photo merely as a way to document performance art brings up an interesting question of whether or not art exists if no one is there to see it. Maybe anything can be art, even a urinal, but if there is no way to document it, is it still art?

#005 Gregory Crewdson

When I think of traditional photography, I generally think of capturing the moment before it is gone, of having a camera ready to go at the opportune moment. Watching Gregory Crewdson’s documentary in class on how he puts together his photos provided a whole new level to how I interpret photography as an art. Crewdson constructs his photographs like landscapes; each aspect completely essential to the piece as a whole. By putting together his photographs before he takes them instead of happening upon them or simply capturing a moment as it passes, Crewdson has complete control over ever aspect of the photograph; the photograph becomes less of a snapshot of life and more of a pure comment on, or play with, the idea of life itself.

One of the aspects I found most interesting about Gregory Crewdson’s photography is the fact that he uses minimal to no photoshop after taking his photos. His precision and premeditation, coupled with the intense colors he achieves by lighting when taking his photographs makes Crewdson’s photos almost painting-like. It was interesting to hear his thought process in the documentary we watched in class, “The Aesthetics of Repression,” as it is interesting to hear any artist’s thought process; I think that it would be especially interesting to be a part of his artistic process, particularly if you were to be one of the actors in one of Crewdson’s photos.

What I think is really important in art, and what Crewdson does really well in the specific arrangement of each of his pieces, is to start a conversation with the viewer. In each piece there is tension or some aspect that catches the viewer’s attention and causes question or contemplation. Instead of simply being a statement, Crewdson’s photographs are a part of a conversation, inviting the viewer to engage.

I am for an art

I am for an art that starts a conversation and never finishes it

I am for an art that tilts heads and churns insides

I am for an art that does not try to appease, ever.

I am for an art meant to open doors, then twist them around and change every dimension, then make you question if that was even a door or a window you just came through.

I am for an art engulfed in opinions

I am for an art as propaganda.

I am for an art never meant to be too good for anyone.

I am for an art that stops and goes, frustrates and ignites, pokes and prods and never lets up

I am for an art that comments, states, and rebukes.

I am for an art of growing up, of staying a child, of having children and helping them to grow up.

I am for an art to teach bike riding to those in top hats, and ballroom dancing to those with ripped jeans.

I am for an art of anger and passion; venom in the details.

I am for an art aware of its surroundings, unaware of time, present in community.

I am for an art made for yourself, to share with others.

I am for an art that cries, croons, incorporates, tries to explain, invites you to guess.

I am for an art as invitation.

I am for an art that teaches and learns

I am for an art that breathes; expands and contracts without hesitation.

I am for an art that spins your head around your shoulder blades, paints your toe nails neon orange cooks you escargot after a long day of selflessness.

I am for an art that keeps you up at night.

I am for an art that you cannot keep to yourself, even if you try.

I am for an art with no final punctuation; art that aims to continue an endless critique, an endless conversation.

I am for an art of passion so deep it runs you from midnight to midnight; an inability to keep still from the sheer longing planted in the deepest workings of your bones.

I am for an art that reminds you why you started here in the first place, that gets you to keep on going, to change direction, to rethink and refuel.

I am for an art that challenges.

I am for an art that makes you want to talk about it; that leaves you no other option.

I am for an art of children.

I am for an art that makes sense in the moment, and a different sense later on.

I am for an art of complete indecision, and art of insecurities.

I am for an art as language.

Ideas for Dream Project:

(Dream) I'm eating a sandwich at a counter with two other friends, and my roommate, Samantha comes hurriedly over to tell us all to hurry up. I try to eat the sandwich faster but each time I take a bite and put the sandwich down I look and there is just the same uneaten sandwich, which really stresses me out because I am trying to hurry up for Samantha's sake. Samantha says something like "Vamoos!" and then pauses and looks confused. She asks me if that's what she's meaning to say and I tell her that's she's trying to say "Vamos," like "let's go" in Spanish, but that I wasn't too good at spanish in high school so I don't know if that's the right translation. She's really persistent about it though so suddenly I have my computer (I guess it was sitting there while I was eating) and I tell her I'll look it up, even though I know what she was trying to say. While I'm doing this I'm also trying to eat my sandwich, which won't get any smaller, and I'm really not that hungry, and I'm pretty stressed out by the whole thing. I'm trying to tell Samantha that I can't do both of these things at once and that one of them's got to be more important to her than the other so she'll just have to choose, but before I can figure out how to get these thoughts out to her, I wake up.

(Dream) I had this dream when I was much younger but I still remember it and I think it would work well in combination with the dream I explain after this, which is also one I had (recurringly) when I was younger. I am with my sister and for some reason we are near the outskirts of the woods. They're not particularly dense woods, like they aren't really that scary or anything, but as they get deeper, there are wooden stairs going up this slowly sloping hill. The stairs are very wide and very long, and there are a lot of them, so many that I can hardly see the top. For some reason that really scares me, my sister and I have to run up them as soon as we see them, and all I know is that we can't stop. I am holding my sister's hand, pulling her along in a way behind me, and I know that it would be the absolute worst thing imaginable if I were to let go of her hand. We need to get away from someone who I don't ever see in this dream, but whose shoes I can almost hear finding the bottom of the stairs behind us and all I know is that I have to protect my younger sister, and to do that we have to get up those stairs.

(Dream) I come out of a building, I think a small museum, and onto a small stoop, down two small steps that have black iron railing on each side like in cities, and on to the side walk. In front of me is the street, which isn't particularly busy. I turn to walk in one direction and I see a man, poised with his feet and arms spread, in a position not to let me pass. Immediately I know I can't go that way and that I have to get away, but when I turn to go in the other direction, there's another man in the same position. I run in between them, neither of them touching me or trying to catch me; their purpose is just to let me not pass. I could obviously have gone across the street but for some reason in the dream I can't.

(Methods) For filming whichever dream idea I end up choosing, I don't want to film anything with straight out acting. I want to learn how to do stop motion, animation, illustration, or a combination of all of those things, and put them together to make a surreal, dream-like look to the finished product. I don't have any experience with any of these methods though, so I really need help.

assignment 002--3 contemporary artists

Artist 1: Christo and Jeanne-Claude

When I was in elementary school, I went with my mother, sister, and our family friends to see Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Gates in Central Park in New York City. The Gates alluded to Japanese torii gates constructed at Shinto shrines, which I obviously did not know at an elementary-school age. The Gates wound all around the pathways of Central Park and were made of eye-catching bright orange-colored nylon fabric hung between orange steel gates. What I remember being really beautiful about them all together was their striking effect against the slowly melting snow in Central Park, especially as they blew in the occasional wind. I don’t know much else of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work, but in looking it up, their installations seem inspired by what has created impacts on the courses of their lives, which I think is as good a reason as any to use in creating art.

Image 1—Title: Running Fence; Year: 1973-1976; Medium: fabric, steel posts, steel cables; Dimensions: 5.5 meters high and 40 kilometers long.

Image 2—Title: The Gates; Year: 2005; Medium: nylon, steel, vinyl tubing; Dimensions: Each Gate differed in width depending on the width of the pathway, but the most common width was 11 ft., while the fabric was 16 ft. high.

Artist 2: Jacques Pellegrin

When assigned this blog post, my original inclination was to just look up artists that I am already decently familiar with, whose work I know I like. But when I started to look up those artists I realized that none of them fall within the post-1970s parameters of the assignment; at first this was a little bit frustrating, but ultimately it just forced me to look up other artists, including Jacques Pellegrin, whose work I recognize but am not too familiar with. In looking up his work, I’m really drawn to his use of solid, bold colors and obviously defined shapes. While it is easy to see the connection between many of his works, I appreciate how each piece is individual and a whole story unto itself.

Image 1—Title: Scaled Cat; Year: 2009; Medium: Acrylic on canvas; Dimensions: 120x120cm.

Image 2—Title: The Beautiful Redhead; Year: 2006; Medium: Acrylic on canvas; Dimensions: 116x89cm.

Artist 3: Art Spiegelman

Art Spiegelman is a comic book artist as well as an author. One of his more well known works is his graphic novel memoir, Maus. Interestingly, Spiegelman leaves his name in lowercase when published with his works. I read Spiegelman’s Maus when I was younger and found it surprisingly moving, in large part because of his artwork. His attention to detail using what must be just pen and/or ink is incredible, leaving you holding your emotions, not quite sure what order you need to feel them in. With Maus in particular, his choice to use personification as a tool of connection between the audience and the subject matter is really an incredible one; the result is one which brings out much more emotion than I think would be capable if he were to have just used people in his drawings.

Image 1—Title: Page from Maus; Year: 1986-1991; Medium: pen and/or ink; Dimensions: unclear.

Image 2—Title: Early Maus sketch; Year: pre-2001; Medium: pen and/or ink; Dimensions: unclear.

Stan Brakhage reaction

Working with film in any way, shape, or form was a completely new experience for me; working with what I guess I would label as abstract film animation was a new experience, but one that I enjoyed both in the physical aspect of making the film to be viewed, and actually viewing the film once I had manipulated it. In Brian Frye’s article on Stan Brakhage, Brakhage is described as having realized the potential of the American avant-garde cinema. What I found most interesting in this article was how clear Brakhage’s growth was in to that realized potential, from his original films being described as more primal, stressing psychological themes, to his first physical alteration of the film itself, to a fascination with birth, sex, and death, and finally to a focus less on actual filming and more on scratching and drawing directly on to the film.

The aspect I enjoyed most about manipulating the film in class was that, especially since the practice was entirely new, no one in the class knew what the film would actually look like once it was projected. Connecting all of our film together created a really neat combination of effects, both with colors and textures. I’m looking forward to adding sound to back up the feelings we were aiming to create with our mark-making as well.

While reading Frye’s article, I watched many of the films mentioned to get a feel for the progression of Brakhage’s filmmaking. Personally, I enjoy his later films, like the ones we viewed in class, more than his earlier films. While his pieces like “The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes” (1971) are interesting because they understandably presented material that was new to the film world, I don’t think that they are as interesting as films to actually be viewed as his films such as “Mothlight” (1963) because of both the creative thought and originality that went in to them. While many people are capable of going to film an autopsy, it takes much more to create a film like “Mothlight,” in my opinion.