Sunday, January 31, 2010
A Phenomenal Performance
Simonova, 24, drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand
table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion
during World War II. Her talent, which admittedly is a strange one,
is mesmeric to watch.
The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience
to tears and she won the top prize of about £75,000.
She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands
on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy
scene is obliterated.
It is replaced by a woman’s face crying, but then a baby arrives and
the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova
throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman’s face appears.
She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before
the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier.
This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is
looking out on the monument from within a house.
In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man
standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying
goodbye.
The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine , resulted in one
in four of the population being killed with eight to 11 million deaths
out of a population of 42 million.
Kseniya Simonova says:
"I find it difficult enough to create art using paper and pencils or
paintbrushes, but using sand and fingers is beyond me. The art,
especially when the war is used as the subject matter, even brings
some audience members to tears. And there’s surely no bigger
compliment."
Outsider Art Fair
The 18th anniversary of the original fair devoted to art created outside the mainstream of society--self taught,
art brut, primitive and visionary art.
NEW DATES
February 5 - 7, 2010
Friday 11am - 8pm
Saturday 11am - 7pm
Sunday 11am - 6pm
Admission $20/per day & $30/two-day pass/ Both include a catalog
NEW LOCATION
7 West 34th Street off 5th Avenue, NYC
The Radicant First & Last Notes
The Radicant Nicolas Bourriaud Preface & Introduction Pg.1-11
· Walter Benjamin & Georges Bastille
· Magicans of the Earth
· “For the end of US-Soviet bipolarity came the end of history” pg 11 Francis Fukuyama-philospher
· Post-hisotry is a hollow concept, post-modern simply marks period after modernism
· Animal humanism
· Is globalization killing cultural identity?
· Thomas McEvilley-“History is nothing but ”a single line moving forward across the page of time, with the vast ahistroical blank spaces of nature and undeveloped world around it”
· Experimentation & Modern, being modern means daring to seize the kairos
· Kairos-venturing, to clear new paths
· Nietzsche “There are no facts, only interpreatations”pg.16
· Artist have the responsibility and privelge to link the worldwide culture
· Diversity is now a cherished value, not a old wooden ship
· Radicant-designating a organism that gros its roots and addes new ones as it advances
The Radicant Nicolas Bourriaud Pg. 177-188
Post-Post, or Altermodern Times
· Oil Explosion as an archetype to the American dream
o Word Associations
o Explosion
o Masculine, splurge, random and organized
o Driven, Excess, danger, wealth, pillaging the earth
o Iconography of this reflected in Jackson Pollock and Roy Lichtenstein’s work
· “Everything an artist spits out is art” said Kurt Schwitters
· If everyone has the capacity to be an artist, then everything is art.
· Anarchy is the true form of modern art, without labels, organized classification, randomness prevails
· Postmodern ideology is born in the wake of energy crisis, 1973 oil crisis
· Finite amount of resources available, space has shrunk creates a subconscious idea of infinite possibilities to creative minds
Why are art critics so concerned with defining link of the future of art and globalization rather than what is here and now?
Alter modern Wikipedia definition
Alter modern, a compound word defined by Nicolas Bourriaud, is an attempt at branding art made in today's global context as a reaction against standardization and commercialism.
October 130 Notes
October 130- Questionnaire on the Contemporary
· Is removing the so-called mold of artistic expression, removing its connection to other artists?
· Are there benefits to this apparent lightness of being?
· How contemporary can contemporary art be since time is continuously question what is new?
· What’s with the comment about the curators at the bottom all about?
· I think it is hard for me to create meaningful art because I cannot connect to the contemporary art world. My creative ambitions seem more self-reflective than actually creating art.
October 130-Okwui Enwezor
· Schadenfreude- is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others
· Why is it that speculative value vs. artistic quality always comes in to question? Is the value of the work worth any less if it is if there is no soul in it?
· Value vs. Price
· The end of the excessive art market/ End of belief of globalization as a means of understanding the art market
o Good- Opens the public to more artists
o Good- Doors will be opened to artists that are
o Bad- Shock will be a continue way of getting attention since there is so many artists, quality will be lost
o What sells? Sex & violence
· Altermodern-Bourriaud is not merely a supplement to modernity but a new condition
· Altermodern artists produce links between signs faraway from each other, explores the past and the present to create original paths. Pg 34
o Is art and culture no longer on the linear line of time but rather a web of time, place, & influences?
· Are we all contemporaries in this new model of contemporary art?
· A history of hybridization rather than universalism pg 36
· Chief Claim of Altermodern: to discover the current habitations of contemporary practice, which Bourriaud believes to be scatters and off-shore based
· Allows for the breakdown of cultural and locational hierarchies
o What Signifance does contemporary art institutions have is this new way of thinking is established?
· Era of globalization, art no longer is its own cultural dimension, It is intertwined in the fabric of society across place and time
Notes of Week 1 Art & Today
Art & Today Introduction
· Alfred H. Barr Jr.-First Director at the MOMA
o “The narrative of modern art as both exhaustive and generative-before it expired, a prevailing style would beget not just one, but various other styles” pg 7
· Q: Is Barr purposing there is a specific formula to the life & death of an art movement?
· Clement Greenberg-art critic-responsible for Abstract Expressionism & Pollock’s success
· Arthur Danto-art critic
o Thought art becoming popular again in the 1980’s was artificial to its original meaning
· “Artists demanded freedom of expression, and they found radical ways to test the limits of all definitions of art.
· Does the diversity of the art world hinder itself from creating a concrete art movement?
· Response to Lyotard-Is abandoning the idea of a universal ideal for art really going to make stronger connections between artists in these post-modernism times?
· Definition of post-modernism is as vague as it can get
o Many definitions create confusion to its identity
· What exactly is the ‘master narrative’?
· What chapters I like:
o Art & Representation-strong narrative qualities that a viewer can identify with
o Art & Nature and Technology-anxieties of being aware of your role as a human in this globalized worlds with your effect to on the nature
o Art & Spirituality-The soul’s bond to expression is a continued deep connection for the artist, Drama makes people aware- Connection to my past and present
Futurism Manifesto-A bit Macho
MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM
- We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
- The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
- Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
- We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
- We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
- The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
- Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
- We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
- We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
- We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
- We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.
(Text of translation taken from James Joll, Three Intellectuals in Politics)
Altermodern Manifesto
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Definition of Modern Art Movement
During the Industrial Revolution, new ideas were starting to arise in popular culture. Technology brought change to a society, binging people into the cities and ranging the fabric of society forever. As more people moved into the cities, the educated started questioning and reevaluating ideas of philosophy, culture, and art. In the later 19th century Modern Art was born with the philosophy of questioning its own relevance and existence.
Art is always reflective of the time it is apart of and artists starting seeing the world in a whole new light. Many believe it started in Paris as a result of the French Revolution more than fifty years before the Salon des Refuses. Many people view Modern Art as an overall movement and time period, an umbrella to many different art styles ranging into the 1970’s. Before the early 1900’s, artists were commissioned by churches or wealthy families to create specific works of art. A characteristic of Modern Art reflects the change that artists created art to express themselves and later find funds to support their craft.
In 1939, Modern Art became official by the American art critic Clement Greenburg. Greenberg is credited to defining art during this period up to the as well as the Abstract Expressionists and its poster-child, Jackson Pollock. Art enthusiast Peggy Guggenheim is also to thank for her support of this unique and important time. Abstract Expressionism made the world take notice of the New York art scene and shifted the importance from Europe to the United States (World War II also added in the transatlantic shift). For the first time in history, American artists were recognized for their importance and groundbreaking ideas. Abstract Expressionism is an art movement entirely made up of organic, flowing colors expressing more a feeling than subject matter.
Artists and historians believe that the Modern Art Movement either ended in the 1970’s, with the rise of Post-Modernism or continues even to this day. During the turbulent late 1960’s and early 1970’s, change was in the air. The world was angry and wanted equal rights for all, including the end of the Vietnam War. Social movements including Civil Rights, Gay Rights, Women’s Rights made people question the values of their lives & society, expanding what they know and what they don't. New art movements formed including conceptual ideas of performance, pop, environment, installations, video and many others. Artists attracted the attention of galleries, writers curators, and enthusiasts. During this time, artists started rejecting the ‘Modern’ for the Post-Modern art movement. By the end of the 1970s, many critics coined this time as the "the end of painting" accredited to writer Douglas Crimp. The idea of art spread from the 2-D form to anything an artist could come up from.
Many believe this practice is thanks to the 'father' of Modernism, Marcel Duchamp. The artist expanded the idea of what art is with his famous ‘Fountain’ submission during the Society of Independent Study in 1917. Thanks to that toilet, art will never be the same and will be continued to question what it is, why we make, and does it really have signifiance in history and society.
Dada- Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917
Surrealism-Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937, Oil on Canvas
Abstract Expressionism- Helen Frankenthaler, Mountain and Sea, 1952
Surrealism- Salvador Dali, Lugubrious Game, 1929, Oil on Canvas
Pop Art-Roy Lichtenstein, In the Car, 1963, Magna on Canvas
also see www.lichtensteinfoundation.org
Land Art-Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970, Great Salt Lake, Utah
Post...
Assignment: Develop a list of all the post-s you can think of. For example, post-modernism,
post-fordism, post-colonialism….. Keep adding to this list as the semester progresses.
Post-? List
Posthaste
Postman
Postmark
postwar
Post-Modernism
Post-codus
Post-apocalyptic
Postponed
Post production
Post-adolescents
Post-mordum
Postgraduate
Postmenopausal
Post season
Thanks Emily... update 2/3/2010
post-modernism
post-industrial
post-renaissance
post-fordism
post-war
post-wwII
post-911
post-evangelical
post-impressionism
post-colonialism
post-history
post-mao
post-post
post-marxism
post-facto
post-humanism
post-feminism
post-human
post-grad
post-bac
post-apartheid
post-class
post-black
post-queer
post-hippie
post-punk
post-bellum
post-google
post-painterly abstraction
post-jungiam
post-minimalism
post-matrix
post-islamist
post-sputnik
post-capitalism
post-utopia
post-MTV
post-creation
post-mortem
post-operative
post-apocalyptic
post-contact (1491)
post-adolesence
post-enlightenment
post-millenial
post-pop
post-production
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