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

Art 101-Week 2

This week in class we had a guest speaker named Laura Vandenburg who talked to us about drawing. She started out the class by saying that drawing is “a distinct human activity as a way of communication.” I thought this idea was very interesting because I had never seen drawings as a mode of communication until she brought this concept to my attention. Looking at maps and cave drawing for directions and story telling as modes of communication was a very new way of experiencing art.

I also liked how Laura pointed out that many ideas start with drawing and that drawing is a preparation process for almost any forms of art. Sometimes I like to paint, and before I start I always sketch out the shape of objects and where I want things to be. It turns out this is common with pretty much all artist. For example, Vandenburg showed us a few slides of some of Michelangelo’s sketches where he practiced drawing various body parts and angles before painting them.

Laura showed us many slides of drawings that ranged from doodles on notebook paper, to gunpowder on a wall, to barbed wire hanging from the ceiling. Now my understanding of drawing before this lecture was that it is anything done using graphite, ink, or charcoal on a surface. Boy was I wrong. What I learned from Laura was that drawing is basically anything that makes a mark in society.

The reading for this week Art Theory For Beginners was fairly long and a bit hard to follow. The main idea I got from it was understanding how the idea of art has evolved over centuries and how certain artists and movements have been responsible for those changes. The reading talks about the different periods of art such as surrealism, futurism/vorticism, expressionism, and modernism.  

My favorite part of the article was when it talked about Marcel Duchamp. I had never heard of this artist until this class and he has definitely become one of my favorites because he really has tested to boundaries of what art truly is and can be.  I love how he says that “choosing and presenting, rather than making, was the prime act of the artist” (P. 109). I like this quote because I believe that art is more intriguing when the idea behind it is unique rather than how the work is executed.

Looking at Margaret Kilgallen’s work, I really like the feeling that her artwork gives off. To me I get a retro vibe when looking at her paintings, which is a style of art I enjoy. A quote of hers reminded me of something Laura Vandenburg said in class on Tuesday. “I like things that are handmade and I like to see people's hand in the world, anywhere in the world; it doesn't matter to me where it is.” I remember Laura saying that she loved drawings because you can see how the human hand and body moved when making the pencil strokes and something about that made it real.

I thought the Art Theory For Beginners article easily related to Margaret Kilgallen’s work when it talked about Bells formalism of high and low quality art. According to him “High Art which was serious, complex, beautiful, and elite, and Low Art, which was frivolous, sentimental, cheap and popular” (P.116). Most people believe that graffiti follows the guidelines of low quality art due to the fact that anyone can do it but Kilgallen thinks of it as a beautiful way of networking.

This is a picture that I found online of graffiti artwork. It reminded me of Margaret Kilgallen when she talked about graffiti art. It’s very simple but still made me stop and think about it. It also reminded me of when Laura our guest speaker was showing us slides of drawing pouring onto the floor.