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.