Flex Credit

A few weeks ago I attended the Chris Jordan exhibit at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of art. The reason I went was not because of the opportunity to earn some extra points in Art 101 class but because my good friend had gone and told me that I HAD to go. I do not remember the last time I willingly went to an art museum but I went because my said it would be worth my time. She was right. The minute I walked into the exhibit I was blown away. Chris Jordan’s exhibit “Running the Numbers” is one of the most eye opening exhibits I have ever witnessed. He takes raw data about American consumerism and converts them into a tangible, visual format that we as consumers can see and relate to. What Chris Jordan has realized is statistics mean nothing to us. If we hear that 25,000 people over in Africa were killed within a month due to Guerilla warfare our response is usually “Oh no, that’s terrible,” and we go on with our lives.  But to see these types of real situations thrown into a visual photograph to represent each individual person, we as people cannot help but to become emotionally involved. Jordan say’s “statistics are dry and emotionless” until we can show consumers the actual damage they are creating.

This is what Jordan’s exhibit is all about. He creates digital photomontages of certain everyday items such as plastic bottles, cell phones, plastic bags, and Barbie dolls to try and show the viewers/consumers magnitude of the statistics. How he does this is he takes a single photograph of, for example a pile of cell phones, and then replicates and overlaps it so the final composition is made up of the exact statistic of that product.

I can honestly say that there was not one piece of work that did not shock me. I am disgusted by the amount of products the U.S uses and how much of that fills our landfills. I loved every single piece of work but I chose a top 3. The first was “Cans Seurat” which mimics the painting done by George Seurat titled “A Sunday on La Grande Jette.” This photomontage represented the number of aluminum cans the U.S goes through every 30 seconds, 106,000. My next favorite was the one with the Barbie dolls in the shape of breasts. This piece represented the 32,000 breast augmentations performed every month in 2006. I can almost guarantee that that statistic has gone up in the past 5 years. The final piece that I chose was the “Ben Franklin” to represent the $12.5 million dollars spent per hour by our government on the war in Iraq.

When I look at all of these pieces I feel like there is something that should be done. It makes me really angry that some people just really do not give a hoot about our environment. Even doing something so easy as recycling can help out a lot. I hope that more people can go and check out this exhibit because it has really impacted me and made me think twice about wastefully using products.

I was not sure if I was supposed to attach an image for this post so I did anyways. This is titled “Paper Bags” which represents the 1.14 million paper bags used in the U.S every hour. This of course is by Chris Jordan.

Week 10

This week our presenter, Brian Gillis, talked about investigating multiples. He started off the lecture by asking, “what is a multiple?” He gave us 3 different definitions for a multiple, one by Webster’s dictionary, one by Duchamp, and one by Albright-Tomb. Combining all 3 of those ideas, I came up with a master definition. I believe multiples to be a three-dimensional object that is repeated many times. The repetition could be exact, a thought, idea, or characteristic of the original.

I really enjoyed the way Brain set up his lecture. It flowed very well and was easy to follow. He broke it down into 4 parts. The first part he talked about how the ideas of multiples have dated all the way back to 200,000 B.C with the Venus figurines. Then he moved on to talk about Duchamp and how he basically came up with the idea of readymade art. Readymades are when the idea behind the object is more important than the object itself. An example of this would be Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ piece. The third thing he talked about was pop art where we looked at pieces done by Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol. My favorite was the piece with Andy Warhol and a few other artists where they mimicked the American Supermarket. In this exhibit, viewers could actually interact with the art and purchase items.

Finally, Brian broke down the question of “what is a multiple?” He came up with 5 different solutions. They were anything mass produced, readymade, industrial processed, repetitive action, or repetitive process.  

 The next artist we looked at was Justin Novak. I was not quite sure how to handle some of his work because when I first looked at his collection of ‘Disfigurines,’ I was a little grossed out. But once I got over the initial shock, I realized how beautiful the collection really was. The way he made the figures look so light and soft with their solemn expressions and the porcelain look of the ceramics was a great contrast to the actions of the figurines. He also created a collection of 21^st century bunnies. I thought that these bunnies were very cute until you see them with machine guns, which kind of ruined the cute factor for me.

The final artist we looked at was Gabriel Orozco. I liked his work because it was so clever. My two favorite pieces were the ‘Ping Pond Table’ and the ‘La D.S’ car sculpture. One thing I noticed that he has in common with all of his pieces is that they make you want to interact with them. If I was walking through a gallery and saw his ‘Ping Pond Table,’ I would hope that there would be a paddle and ball there for me to play a game. It is fun to see these types of work because they go against the traditional gallery set up. We are all conditioned not to touch anything in an art gallery because we could break or damage the piece of art, but Gabriel challenges you with his artwork. He makes it so you are fighting back temptation to go and interact with his work, which I find very intriguing.

All the artists and ideas we have studied this week relate to one thing, multiples. You see the idea of multiples with Gabriel Orozco’s car. The car is probably one of the most mass produced objects in the world today. Gabriel took the idea of a mass produced object and modified it. Another connection that I made was a more literal connection. It would be between ‘The American Supermarket” and another Gabriel Orozco piece where he rearranged a supermarket. Basically the connection is that they both had to do with Supermarkets and both pieces incorporated the viewer. A third connection goes back to the idea of multiples and Justin Novak’s work. In my definition of multiples, I defined a multiple as something that follows a pattern of ideas or characteristics. In his collection of 21^st century bunnies and the ‘Disfigurines,’ they both follow a similar idea or characteristic within their own collection.

Brian Gillis gave me this idea for an image when he used the Mona Lisa to show that even though the picture is distorted in a certain way, you still know that it is the Mona Lisa. I took this idea and did it with another famous piece of work, Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.”

Week 9

This week’s presenter was Amanda Wojick whose primary focus was on sculpting. I enjoyed how she broke the lecture down into 100 years of women sculptors, 9 total, one born each decade. She started off the lecture by asking the class to look for two different themes in each woman’s artwork. The first theme was abstraction vs. representation. Our job was to look at the different sculptures and decide whether they were abstract pieces of art, based on something real but altered in some way, or representation art, mimicking an object. I am not going to talk about all 9 women artists because that will take too long but I will talk about 2 that truly caught my eye. The first was actually the first one she talked about, Louise Bourgeois. Louise’s primary inspiration was based from her childhood of trauma. Whenever artists like Louise have such strong emotional backgrounds, good or bad, I believe it leads to great pieces of work. Amanda read a long quote from Louise and I really loved it. She talked about how modern art is about finding new ways to express your self. It is about the hurt of not being able to communicate your emotions and that is why modern art will live on forever because there are always new ways of discovering your self. Of course the quote sounds much better when put all together but that about summed up what Louise was saying.

The second artist that caught my eye was Yayoi Kusama. I don’t know if it was the art itself or the artist’s story that drew me in. I thought it was very interesting how Yayoi had checked herself into a mental hospital but would leave during the day to go to her art studio to create her art. As weird as this my sound, I think it is fascinating to see what a non-stable persons art looks like. You can tell when you look at her artwork that she spent forever making the pieces just right. What Amanda said is that instead of painting the dots onto every surface, Yayoi instead painted the negative space, which seems like a daunting task.

I wrote the first half of this blog before I looked at the Art 21 assignment readings and just realized that we are going to take a deeper look into Louise Bourgeois’ work, which made me very excited. In her piece called the “Cell” I loved how she mixed two polar opposites together. A quote from the essay states that she “paired the organic with the correctional.” You see this with the feminine/domesticated objects such as mirrors and perfume bottles and then the masculine/institutional objects such as chains and steel fencing. Her second piece “Twosome” I thought was amazing. When I first looked at it, I really didn’t see much, but once I read the essay on it, I understood the genius behind this piece. There is so much symbolism within it like the red light representing passion, either passion of the heart or passion for a few hours. Also how she made this piece symbolize her childhood of seeing her parents quarrel and knowing she was too small to stop it.

Richard Serra’s piece titled “Charlie Brown” was interesting. I like the story behind how it got its name. I think that the name is perfect because the artist said in his video about how this piece of work is never finished because it cannot close. What I got from this statement that relates the Charlie Brown comic character to this piece is that it is never ending. Both are so large and monumental that they will continue to be around for many years.

The reading for this week was titled “Just Looking” by James Elkins. I loved how this reading flowed and actually made some sense to me. James starts off the chapter by telling a story about a shopping experience where the saleswomen came up to him and asked “May I help you?” and his response was “No, just looking.” It’s funny because I guarantee that everyone has used this line at least once in their lives, but the question that James brings up is “What does just looking mean?” He then goes on to talk about how we are not just looking but searching for something. That something could be love, a pair of shoes, a medical diagnosis, or an answer.  

The connection between all of these artists work is the idea of abstract vs. representation. Amanda talked about this at the beginning of her lecture as something to think about when we look at sculptures, so I did. I believe abstract art is a visual form of language that creates an image that may or may not exist. I thought that Richard Serra’s work was very abstract. When I looked at it, I did not see anything familiar. I had to look deeper to get an understanding of the pieces. Representational art I believe is something that you can name just by looking at it. For example, Louise Bourgeois spider pieces were very representational because you knew by looking at it what they were. The reading “Just Looking” was an abstract piece of writing because he talks about how he is searching to find the meaning behind “just looking,” the meaning is not on display for everyone to see.

I remember learning about this sculptor in another class of mine and I fell in love with his work. His name is Ron Mueck and he is a contemporary sculptor. The thing I love about his work is that it is so realistic and grandeur and is something that I feel no other artist has been able to achieve.

Week 8

This week’s presenter was Anta Kirvarkis. She came and talked to us about how multiple artists, along with herself, use their craft to create artwork. She started out by showing us slides of highly crafted ‘real’ objects such as diamond broaches and marble floors. Then she moves on to show us slides of items that have been re-produced or mass produced. One thing that she talked about that really struck me as interesting was the effect that mass production has on our society. What we do not realize is that when we take an item that is so special and mass produce it, it loses it’s originality and the story behind the piece.

I really enjoyed looking at John Feodorov’s work. My favorite by far was the Office Deity painting where it is mimicking the large American corporations by having the CEO portraying God and the employees portraying angels. John says “Western culture likes to castrate the powerful, maybe because it doesn’t want to be less powerful than something else.” I like how Feodorov says that because our culture truly is all about power a who is on top. That is why this painting is so fantastic. He makes fun of our western culture. Along with this idea, I like how John says that he does not try and create art that is funny because it will never turn out the way you want, you have to just create it and hopefully some humor can come out of it. I believe that he achieved his goal of humor through this painting.

The connection between our presenter and John Feodorov’s work is the idea of power in our world today. Anya talked about the power to re-create something and strip away all originality by mass production and John talks about the power our western culture has over “unique” items and is able to turn them into non-original consumer products. 

This is a comic of how I believe our society has become in terms of mass production of products. 

Week 6

Our presentor this week was John Park who specialized in Digital Arts. When I first heard the term digital arts, I thought of things like Photoshop and other programs that alter images. I did not know how widespread digital art is. For example digital arts can be found in video games, movies, commercials, and in pictures.

John started out the lecture by introducing the problems, strategies, and solutions of digital arts. He broke down the problems into four categories. The first is the screen. All of digital arts is intangible. You cannot feel it, only see it, which makes it very impersonal. The second is currency. Digital technology is where the money is because it is a very costly type of art. The third problem is losing humanity or being zombified. This is very relevant to my generation because we are very technologically dependent. We have learned to communicate best through facebook and our cell phones. By using those devices to communicate, we end up cutting off human contact. The final problem is by far the largest. It is finding the art in digital media. Most artwork is laid out in front of you. You can see the mediums used and you can see the craftsmanship behind it but with digital media it is difficult to find the art in it sometimes.

The first artist we looked at was David Byrne. He hooked the old piano up with wires and attached those wires to different places in this warehouse. When someone would come by to play, they would hear different industrial noises coming from all parts of the building. I thought that this project was neat because David let us viewers and the people who participated experience the world in new ways by giving us power and control over such a large scale building.

The second artist we looked at was Paul Pfeiffer. I really enjoyed looking at his work because he did a lot of things with sports. I particualy like the one titled “Four Horseman of the Apocalypse” because it is still such a strong photo even without the lights, ball, hoop, and crowed. I feel like you can still feel all the energy of the game without all the bells and whistles.

The third artist we looked at was Janet Cardiff. I listened to the walk titled “Ghost Machine” which takes place in a grand old theater. It was very eerie just listening to the different sounds that took place on the tape. It sounded like they were with me in my room. The second video I watched was “The Murder of Crows” which was very dark. It made me feel scarred and depressed knowing that it was about death. What I liked about her work though was she really gets you involved in the pieces and it acts as a bit of a simulation experience.

I believe that the connection between all of these concepts is how digital media is used as a tool to create grander things.  In every artists work, they have used digital arts as a tool. One occurring theme that I have seen with all the artists is how they are trying to unite digital media and people. David does this with his interactive piano, Pfeiffer does this by choosing to focus of sports, Cardiff does this with her walks, and our presenter did this with the dancer.

The photograph I found I believe represents all the technology that is available to us for communication.

Week 5

Our guest presenter this week was a photographer named Craig Hickman. It is a little difficult to write about his ideas and what he believes photography to be because we looked at photos of other artists during lecture. Towards the end of lecture though, he showed us a few of his photographs which were all doctored by photoshop. One student asked, “Why do you like photography and what do you think of it?” Craig replied, “I like the relationship it has to the world and even if you manipulate it, it’s believable.”  I think that this is great because many photographs today are altered with photoshop but you can still always find something real about them because they were made from something real.

One artist that the guest speaker focused on was Nancy Rexroth. She used a cheap camera and captured some really amazing black and white photographs. The images she captured were very simple and serene.

I really loved this weeks reading and multimedia because I felt that it was very relevant to the world today. I was able to connect with it in a more relatable way. I must start off by saying I am obsessed with Alfredo Jaar’s work after this week. I thought that his pieces were so real and thought provoking that for the first time art made me feel vulnerable. I felt like the experiences he captured through those images were bigger than me.

When reading Jaar’s interview on the Rwanda project, Jaar talks about trying to create a balance between intellectual and emotional elements with his art. I think that he does this well with all of his pieces. One piece in particulars from The Gramsci Trilogy that communicated to me with these two elements was “Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom.” The way Jarr explains the idea behind this display was so powerful. He talks about keeping something alive only to destroy it and once its destroyed, replace it. I think this is something we do as a society a lot. We take simple things for granted and by not appreciating their beauty we destroy it.

The reading this week, “Photography as a Weapon” by Errol Morris was also very fascinating. The main focus of the article was how photographs can be very deceiving. This idea was shown with the missiles how originally there were only three but a fourth was photoshoped into the picture. An interesting quote by Errol Morris was “Captions do the heavy lifting as far as deception is concerned,” which I believe to be so true. You could have a picture of one thing and completely change what you are seeing by the caption attached to the photo. Errol explains this occurs because the side of our brain that processes our visual senses is in the back of the brain but our language center is on the side of the brain and therefore processed more strongly.

The connection that I made between this weeks presenter and the readings/multimedia was the idea of “fauxtography.” As we saw from Craig’s images, they were all manipulated to be believable and that is the same with the picture from the reading. The idea of altering a photograph ever so slightly to make things that are fake seem real is very deceiving.

Another connection that I made is that all the images, even though some were altered, came from something real. For example, with Craig’s images the background of the building and the lighting was real but the pictures that he photoshoped on weren’t. For the photo of the missiles, three of the missiles were real but one of them was altered.

I found this photo on the website listed below. I think that it shows the power of the caption and how no matter what the image is of, the power of language will overcome your visual. I also advise everyone to check out this website by Austin Kleon because the things he talks about go right along with what we are talking about in class this week.

http://www.austinkleon.com/2008/09/01/the-power-of-captions-words-added-to-pictures/

Art 101-Week 3

This week we were introduced to Michael Salter, a well-known commercial artist. He started his presentation by telling us stories about his childhood and how those experiences lead him to the person he is today. One story in particular took place when he was in grade school. A new pair of Nike shoes came out and they were known as the  “it” shoes that everyone had to have. Michael did not come from a very wealthy family so he could not afford a pair of these shoes. Before going back to school with his old pair of Converse, Michael got the idea to make his shoes stand out by painting them. Sadly they ended up being a complete disaster and he still had to wear them to school. I think that this story showed the beginning of Michaels journey to becoming the artist his is today because even though the shoes the shoes did not turn out the way they were suppose to, he created a piece of art that was unique.  

I enjoyed how he talked about his career and showed us many pictures of his artwork. I was shocked to find out that he had such an amazing job designing images for huge boarding companies like Billabong and Quicksilver. I was also surprised to find that he quit working for those companies to do what truly made him happy which was producing images of whatever wherever he wanted. This to me makes him a very respectable person because he put his passion over money, which is rare to find now a days.

The reading we had to do this week was much more enjoyable than last weeks because it was in comic book form. It was titled “The Vocabulary of Comics” and talked about how pictures, words, and icons are literally the vocabulary of comics. It also talked about the idea that even the simplest icons such as a smiley face can be relatable to. “The fact that your mind is capable of taking a circle, two dots, and a line and turning it into a face is nothing short of incredible” (31). Which is completely true because our mind has the ability to look at something either familiar or unfamiliar and find similar characteristics within it so we can make it relatable to something we know and understand.

I think the idea of simplicity really relates to Michael Salter’s work. One thing that Michael stressed was that he loves to ask questions about things that he sees. He asks himself “What’s my relationship with the things I look at?”  With Michael’s work he tries to make them simple and leave the viewer asking questions such as “Who made this? What does it mean? How does this relate?” In “The Vocabulary of Comics” chapter, it says “By stripping down an image to its essential meaning an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t” (30). I love this quote because I think it directly relates to Michael Salter’s artwork, especially with the collected of faces that he created. They are so simple and yet they make you look and think and relate.

I chose this image because I thought that it embodied both Michael Salter's and the reading ideas of simplicity. It really made me think about the photo and ask questions which is something Salter stressed to do. 

 This photo was taken by Lucy Ridges