Week of April 4

Monday, April 4



Above is the watercolor by William Powhida entitled "Why You Should Buy Art!". This work takes art to the masses than just the limited pool of collectors who have the ability to buy unique and expensive art objects. This piece is interesting as it is not what people would automatically consider to be art.

We have been discussing collections in class. As a child Christina collected Pogs. I got them from a variety of sources including birthday parties, game rooms and trading them with friends. As a child Katie collected Beanie Babies. Katie received them as presents and when new beanie babies would come out she would purchase them. Although we didn't know it at the time, our collections told us about what we were the most interested in. Collections come in all shapes and sizes and can be defined by collecting many different objects not just art.

Wednesday, April 6

In 1992, Fred Wilson did an installation piece at the Maryland Historical Society. Fred works with various collections to put together exhibits that will mean something else. At the Maryland Historical Society the collection was to highlight the Native and African Americans in Maryland. His unique artist approach is to examine, question and redefine the traditional display of art and artifacts in museums. This leads viewers to recognize that changes in context create changes in meaning. The way Wilson places objects, forces the viewer to question cultural institutions and how they convey historical truth and artistic value.

Week of March 28

Monday, March 28



Above is an image of Doris Salcedo's work called "Shibboleth". This is the first piece of work to ever directly be done in a turbine hall. The walls of the crevice are lined with a steel mesh fence. Salcedo's work focuses the viewers eyes directly to the floor making it the principal focus of this work. "Shibboleth" stirs questions regarding sculpture, space, architecture, and the shaky foundations of which modern objects are built. "Shibboleth" is used to exclude those who do not belong to a particular group. It deems them unsuitable. This work was entitled "Shibboleth" because Salcedo is addressing racism and colonialism. This work enables the viewer to question the truths that we already know by living in the modern world.

Friday, April 1

Today we visited the University Art Museum at the University of Albany. The exhibit that was taking place was Eunjung Hwang - Three Thousand Revisits and Ati Maier - Event Horizon.

Above is a photo of  the work "Sharpie" by Eunjung Hwang. We found this inflated sculpture to be particularly interesting as it is out of the norm. It has a cartoon design to it which we found is unique to Eunjung Hwang's style. This piece of her work derives from a family of quasi-figurative characters from her personal dreams.

Above is another piece of artwork from Eunjung Hwang. This piece is in a series of works of various animations. The animations follow a story line in favor of something that is instinctive. The images derive from an oddly twisted world in which certain behaviors lead to violence. Hwang's characters lead us through a world in which the foolishness of humans actions are played out. Hwang has a fascination about supernatural things (ghosts, superstitious beliefs) and sometimes encounters dreams that show the hidden truth about the human condition. Hwang also gets ideas from comic books. At the exhibit there were also works of Eunjung Hwang's animations in video projections.

Above are two photos taken of works by Ati Maier's - Event Horizon. Ati Maier uses a dizzying variety of colors, lines, warped spaces and swirling movements that attract the viewer to its complexity. She depicts landscapes that use conventions of traditional painting while keeping a connection to historical art and sources of science. Maier has used her works to develop 3D animations which you can see in the second photo. She produces the sensation of actually moving through her paintings.

Week of March 21

Wednesday, March 23

Today we began to watch the video "The Mona Lisa Curse" narrated by Robert Hughes. This video explained that the art world is different from the 1960s as the "Mona Lisa" created new expectations about art. This artwork became a piece of art to an icon of mass consumption. People came to see the "Mona Lisa" at the Met in the 1960s not to enjoy the painting itself but to just simply say that they saw it. It deeply changed the way that art was seen. In 1963, the painting was quickly scanned and then disregarded showing limited viewer interest. This video shows how money and wealth has become a curse in the way art is made, controlled, and experienced. Hughes focuses on New York in this video but speaks to art everywhere.

Week of March 14

Over break we were assigned a reading by Arthur Danto entitled "After the end of Art". This work presents Danto's reformulation of his original insight that art ended in the sixties. With abstract expressionism art has turned from what it was established to be in the Renaissance. Arthur engages the reader in several conversations that discuss the relevant philosophical issues of art. His reading covered art history, pop art, "people's art" the the role of museums. He states that it wasn't the invention of pop art and modernist art that ended the traditional ways of what art seemed to be. Danto challenges readers to think about the role that contemporary art plays and what direction it may be taking in the future. This article was interesting as it allowed us to challenge Danto's propsed thesis and formulate our own thoughts about how we felt about this topic.

Week of March 7

Wednesday, March 9

Today we discussed the work "Sunflower Seeds" by Ai WeiWei. This work was made of millions of sunflower husks in a turbine hall that seemed identical but were each unique in their own ways. Each seed was handcrafted and made out of porcelin. This gave the locals of the Chinese city, Jingdezhen, opportunity for employment as jobs were hard to come by. These workers individually sculpted and painted these porcelin seeds. "Sunflower Seeds" allows people to express powerful commentary on the human condition and the geo-politics of of cultural and economic change that takes place in our world today. In the turbine hall, people can no longer walk across the vast amount of sunflower seeds because of the air quality. The interaction between visitors and the porcelin creates a dust that can be damaging to your health if inhaled for a long amount of time. This work allows people to understand their individual (unique) role in society among the masses.

Week of February 28

Monday, February 28

On October 9, 1999 New York Time Magazine published an article about the importance of Matthew Barney, a performance artist. Barney came onto the scene in 1991 after making the cover of Artforum before his exhibition at Gladstone. His first solo show to be viewed at Gladstone was a videotape called "Blind Perineum." Barney instantly became successful and since then his work has only got better and stranger. His early works consisted of elaborate sexual and biological allusions and references to sports and fashion. His work was gender-bending and body-oriented; however it was also meant to be funny and silly. It was also meant to have its own strange glamour. He produces films and videos, most of which he performs in. Barney and his crew also make all the sculptures and objects for the films. The sculptures, photographs, books, and films are all expressions in different forms of the same ideas. Barney's works of art are a mix of autobiography, history, and private symbolism. He carries out death-defying acts and wears elaborate makeup. One of his most famous works was "Cremaster", a sequence of five films that took several years to complete. The films were wordless and shown on video monitors, along with his sculptures. They were slow-moving and weidly hypnotic taken place in desolate settings. The films became visually more deluxe as the series went on. Barney is now considered to be the most important American artist of his generation due to his big imagination.


Wednesday, March 2

The Installation art movement came into prominence in the 1970's. It describes an artistic genre of three dimensional works that are created to transform a viewers perception of space. It also changes the notion of what the artist does with the space. Space is utilized as energy and allows the viewer to look at many things instead of just one. Many installation art pieces have been created in museums and galleries as well as public places. These pieces incorporate many everyday and natural materials and are site specific (only designed for the space in which they were created in). An example of installation art is "Pharmacy" by Damien Hirst. "Pharmacy" is a room sized installation piece. It represents a real pharmacy setting with cabinets that contain bottles and prescription drugs. On the counter of the pharmacy there are four bottles that represent the four elements: earth, air, fire and water. Damien Hirst's intent was for each of his works to have meaning and contemplation.

 

Week of February 21

Monday, February 21

Movements in various types of visual art and design when stripped down to its original features is called minimalism. Minimalism existed in the late 1960s early 1970s with visual art. Many minimalist artists were sculptors who strived to reduce certain forms to their original simplicity. These artists felt that a work of art should not refer to anything but itself. They attempted to create their works of art without any extra visual effects. Flat surface colors, factory finishes and industrial materials were some of the tools used. Repetition also was entwined in artists work. Minimalism led to the future of process art, land art, performance art, conceptual art and installation art. Some of minimalism's most prominent artists were Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Richard Serra, Donald Judd and Dan Flavin. Minimalism was an attempt to explore art through its elements.

Wednesday, February 23

Performance art began in the United States in the 1960s. Performance art was originally described as any large artistic event that included the actions of a person or a group of people. Their unconventional actions appealed to a large and public audience. Performance art contains four specific elements that include time, space, performance body, and a relationship between the performers and the viewers. An example of a performance artist is Matthew Barney. Barney's earliest works involved sculptural pieces with performance and video. Below is a picture of  one of the images in Matthew Barney's "Guardian of the Veil" which consisted of an exploration ritual of Egyptian symbolism. The "Guardian of the Veil" explores eternal life as the protagonist dies in a fire and begins his journey into seven different stages of death. Matthew Barney is a very successful and imaginative artist with many achievements.