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?