Save this piece from McSweeney's for Criticism Seminar next summer...or read it now if you need a laugh:
An Art History Professor Explains to his 4-year-old Daughter Why The Fair Market Value of Her Picture is Actually Far Less and that of a Thousand Words , by Ethan Ryan
It's not like this in my home. Really.
Friday, November 10, 2006
Monday, November 06, 2006
Things I wish I'd seen...Notes on the Remote and the Invisible
I suppose it's maudlin to post about a show I couldn't get to, but I wanted to remark on the Tauba Auerbach show that just closed at Deitch. Or rather, I wanted to remark on the sadness I have for not seeing it. Sometimes you find out about these thigs too late, sometimes they're three thousand miles away. This looked like something I really should have seen...if only to make me feel stuck in my ways and unoriginal. Now and then, a kick in the pants like that is good thing. From the images on the Deitch site, one can see that Auerbach's work is playful with language, if not staggeringly original in its maneuvers or approach to the subject.
Perhaps because I’ve been reading thesis papers and thinking about influence and context a great deal, I feel rather without context these days. I read Steven Millhauser’s story, In the Reign of Harad IV, in a recent New Yorker a few days ago and it’s been haunting me. In it, the master miniaturist (I don’t pretend to that level of authority…) realizes the potential for his craft and embarks on a journey into the invisibly small. At the conclusion, two students come to see his recent work and there is - literally – nothing to see. It’s too small. They compliment him on it nonetheless, and the master miniaturist
This is what I thought being an artist was – finding that thing that you want to see, whether anyone wants to see it or not, and making it visible…if only to yourself. As I think about the humor and charm of Auerbach’s work, I find myself at once humored and charmed and slightly annoyed. Playing in the same field with language, I’m not too terribly interested in the kind of cleverness I see in that work. But I’m interested in something it contains or reflects.
And so, with some impatience, I must return to my work.
Perhaps because I’ve been reading thesis papers and thinking about influence and context a great deal, I feel rather without context these days. I read Steven Millhauser’s story, In the Reign of Harad IV, in a recent New Yorker a few days ago and it’s been haunting me. In it, the master miniaturist (I don’t pretend to that level of authority…) realizes the potential for his craft and embarks on a journey into the invisibly small. At the conclusion, two students come to see his recent work and there is - literally – nothing to see. It’s too small. They compliment him on it nonetheless, and the master miniaturist
…returned with some impatience to his work; and as he sank below the crust of the visible world, into his dazzling kingdom, he understood that he had traveled a long way from the early days, that he still had far to go, and that, from now on, his life would be difficult and without forgiveness.
This is what I thought being an artist was – finding that thing that you want to see, whether anyone wants to see it or not, and making it visible…if only to yourself. As I think about the humor and charm of Auerbach’s work, I find myself at once humored and charmed and slightly annoyed. Playing in the same field with language, I’m not too terribly interested in the kind of cleverness I see in that work. But I’m interested in something it contains or reflects.
And so, with some impatience, I must return to my work.
Saturday, November 04, 2006
2006 MFA Thesis are online
Candidates for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics, Painting, and Sculpture are in the final stages of completing their Thesis Exhibitions. Cards have begun to go out, and Thesis Papers are being recieved. You are invited to review the thesis papers by visiting the class website.
The receptions for the Thesis Exhibitions will take place Friday, December 8 from 6-8pm at the University of the Arts Galleries and Saturday from 5-8pm at Highwire Gallery, 1315 Cherry Street in Center City Philadelphia.
The receptions for the Thesis Exhibitions will take place Friday, December 8 from 6-8pm at the University of the Arts Galleries and Saturday from 5-8pm at Highwire Gallery, 1315 Cherry Street in Center City Philadelphia.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Texas...and something about "mess"
One of the many things I remember Dario Robleto saying when he spoke at UArts was that he liked being in Texas because it was a stand-in for all of American culture. Of course he didn't say this was necessarily a good thing, but it took a turn for the worse recently, if we're to believe a recent report in the New York Times describing the suspension of teacher whose student complained about being exposed to nude statues on a field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art (no nudes on their home page...).
Yes, this is another example of the idea that one upset parent can derail the education of hundreds of students. Yes, this is an examples of how conservatives bent on speaking their minds can intimidate a school and the media (reports that Dallas television stations broadcast pictures taped at the museum's collection with black boxes concealing their sculpted naughty bits hints at how salacious, sensational, and ultimately cowardly local coverage of the event has been). But what's really interesting to me - as a teacher - is the way a cowardly administration can decide that such a complaint is an occasion to reprimand a teacher for past transgressions (as frivolous as "wearing flip flops" (the Times takes issue and reports that the art teacher wore sandals).
Although one gets the feeling that the Times article was intended to depict a Texas in which conservatives wield scary power over teachers and school administrators, it left me thinking more about the expectations to which education is held these days. If no child is left behind, it’s because we’re too afraid to go anywhere with our students. The complaining parents’ argument (I can only infer because they aren’t interviewed) appears to boil down to “Little Timmy got something on the museum trip which we didn’t expect to find bundled into an education and for which we refuse to pay.” Never mind that it’s unsafe to assume that liberal education is goal of any district, it appears now that schools are expected to be in the business of keeping students from experience and knowledge. The uncontrollable assets exceed the narrow limits of what passes for education and expose children to possibilities their parents might not recognize. At all levels, education now appears to be more oriented toward certification than the development of critical thinking, and this is yet another example of that phenomenon.
And, if you followed the above link and want to play devil’s advocate (wait, who am I alienating with that?) by reminding readers that it was the child who complained to the parent about the nude statue, by all means, remind away. I maintain that children are interested in making their parents happy and in combating the institutions in their lives that challenge stability, e.g. school. The complaining parent no doubt thinks his or her little angel has been brutally scarred by the experience. Thank heaven legions of future kids in Marlboro country will almost surely be spared the spectacles of human anatomy of inappropriate footwear, as this will surely linger in one form or another until school budgets are discussed in the next legislative cycle.
Yes, this is another example of the idea that one upset parent can derail the education of hundreds of students. Yes, this is an examples of how conservatives bent on speaking their minds can intimidate a school and the media (reports that Dallas television stations broadcast pictures taped at the museum's collection with black boxes concealing their sculpted naughty bits hints at how salacious, sensational, and ultimately cowardly local coverage of the event has been). But what's really interesting to me - as a teacher - is the way a cowardly administration can decide that such a complaint is an occasion to reprimand a teacher for past transgressions (as frivolous as "wearing flip flops" (the Times takes issue and reports that the art teacher wore sandals).
Although one gets the feeling that the Times article was intended to depict a Texas in which conservatives wield scary power over teachers and school administrators, it left me thinking more about the expectations to which education is held these days. If no child is left behind, it’s because we’re too afraid to go anywhere with our students. The complaining parents’ argument (I can only infer because they aren’t interviewed) appears to boil down to “Little Timmy got something on the museum trip which we didn’t expect to find bundled into an education and for which we refuse to pay.” Never mind that it’s unsafe to assume that liberal education is goal of any district, it appears now that schools are expected to be in the business of keeping students from experience and knowledge. The uncontrollable assets exceed the narrow limits of what passes for education and expose children to possibilities their parents might not recognize. At all levels, education now appears to be more oriented toward certification than the development of critical thinking, and this is yet another example of that phenomenon.
And, if you followed the above link and want to play devil’s advocate (wait, who am I alienating with that?) by reminding readers that it was the child who complained to the parent about the nude statue, by all means, remind away. I maintain that children are interested in making their parents happy and in combating the institutions in their lives that challenge stability, e.g. school. The complaining parent no doubt thinks his or her little angel has been brutally scarred by the experience. Thank heaven legions of future kids in Marlboro country will almost surely be spared the spectacles of human anatomy of inappropriate footwear, as this will surely linger in one form or another until school budgets are discussed in the next legislative cycle.
Monday, August 21, 2006
Spin Art
It's been years since I "liked" making a painting in any way I could explain to someone. I don't consider this tragic, I consider it rather a good sign. I like feeling like my work is work. But today I made some paintings I enjoyed. I made spin art.
Eventually, no matter where I'm teaching, I seem to come across a crit that includes a statement like, "I like it, I had fun making it" as a defense of the work in question. As if liking anything ever mattered in any professional sense. When are people going to realize that art is not there to make artists happy? I take is as a manifestation of entertainment culture that young artists tend to gauge the success or failure of their work by the pleasure its making gave them. Entertainment culture or maybe vestigial therapy culture – after all, the pleasure principle also works nicely with the idea that one should be 'releasing' things through one's art.
Spin art was great fun not for its expressive products (how expressive an they be?) so much as for the formal opportunities I'd never noticed before. I realized that the spinning paper is like a potter's wheel, and that a line pulled straight out from center would result in a spiral on the surface. I realized that even with kindergarten tempera paint, simple color chords could be made. I remembered that keeping the ground available was a good way to keep some energy in the picture.
Of course I'm familiar with Damien Hirst's spin art paintings, and I'm not about to give up my pain-in-the ass methods for a frolic at the fair. I'm not even going to claim special status for the works I'm talking about - I wouldn't even think of them as sketches in any real sense. They’re more like color swatches or something – sort of like pure research rather than applied research. But they are fun, for whatever that’s worth.
Eventually, no matter where I'm teaching, I seem to come across a crit that includes a statement like, "I like it, I had fun making it" as a defense of the work in question. As if liking anything ever mattered in any professional sense. When are people going to realize that art is not there to make artists happy? I take is as a manifestation of entertainment culture that young artists tend to gauge the success or failure of their work by the pleasure its making gave them. Entertainment culture or maybe vestigial therapy culture – after all, the pleasure principle also works nicely with the idea that one should be 'releasing' things through one's art.
Spin art was great fun not for its expressive products (how expressive an they be?) so much as for the formal opportunities I'd never noticed before. I realized that the spinning paper is like a potter's wheel, and that a line pulled straight out from center would result in a spiral on the surface. I realized that even with kindergarten tempera paint, simple color chords could be made. I remembered that keeping the ground available was a good way to keep some energy in the picture.
Of course I'm familiar with Damien Hirst's spin art paintings, and I'm not about to give up my pain-in-the ass methods for a frolic at the fair. I'm not even going to claim special status for the works I'm talking about - I wouldn't even think of them as sketches in any real sense. They’re more like color swatches or something – sort of like pure research rather than applied research. But they are fun, for whatever that’s worth.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Words
Somewhere in the middle of today's studio visits, after I described a painting as being like a date with someone who tells you all about herself before the appetizer has reached the table thus killing any further conversation, I found myself thinking of what I don't say in crits out here that I do say in crits at Art Center. What follows is an evolving lexicon of critical terms that have little or no purchase out here. I imagine this post will grow once I apply myself to the problem (or when someone from there reminds me of all I've left out).
Bling: I realize this may not be a word I'm expected to use in crits anyway, but we seem to be suffering a drought of bling in art in Philadelphia. The word has immense currency among my students, and is applied to photography, product and transportation design, film and fine art. As in its original use, it indicates a level of polish and seductive surface that is intensively attractive. It can be contrasted against other terms of desirablity (like the overworked sexy of a few years ago) not only for its trendiness, but for its embrace of fashion as a positive aspect of a work's content.
Research: This is a problematic term that has been tossed around here a lot lately, usually in a context like I wanted to make this and did a lot of research.... Research is arguably the thing an artist needs to do these days, a self-justifying activity that has no apparent discipline and appears to be quantified only in variations of "lots". To me, research in art is evidence the other major art-making paradigms are not in use - those of inspiration or self-expression. Historicaly, these have been dominant principles of art practice. In the inspiration paradigm, artists were conduits of messages from religious (and later more worldly) authority. The Romantic era replaced this model with the self-expression paradigm, wherein the artist essentially looked inward, rather than upward, for ignition in the studio. Now, we have seen a surge toward looking outward and backward - through research - for fuel.
Bling: I realize this may not be a word I'm expected to use in crits anyway, but we seem to be suffering a drought of bling in art in Philadelphia. The word has immense currency among my students, and is applied to photography, product and transportation design, film and fine art. As in its original use, it indicates a level of polish and seductive surface that is intensively attractive. It can be contrasted against other terms of desirablity (like the overworked sexy of a few years ago) not only for its trendiness, but for its embrace of fashion as a positive aspect of a work's content.
Research: This is a problematic term that has been tossed around here a lot lately, usually in a context like I wanted to make this and did a lot of research.... Research is arguably the thing an artist needs to do these days, a self-justifying activity that has no apparent discipline and appears to be quantified only in variations of "lots". To me, research in art is evidence the other major art-making paradigms are not in use - those of inspiration or self-expression. Historicaly, these have been dominant principles of art practice. In the inspiration paradigm, artists were conduits of messages from religious (and later more worldly) authority. The Romantic era replaced this model with the self-expression paradigm, wherein the artist essentially looked inward, rather than upward, for ignition in the studio. Now, we have seen a surge toward looking outward and backward - through research - for fuel.
Friday, July 28, 2006
Guy Art: Jon Fortmiller's Intelligent Designs
Perhaps it's the news that Floyd Landis is in trouble for "test[ing] positive...for illegally high levels of testosterone" that has me thinking of the studio visit we paid to Jon Fortmiller in the middle of Denise's Vandeville's weekly debauch. For those who've not been there, Jon is hard at work on a troop of plaster monkeys who are occupying themselves, as monkeys do, by flinging poo, masturbating furiously, and same-sex coupling. John basked in the enthusiastic support of his classmates for this work, which he regards as critical of frat boy behavior, and got an especially warm crit from alum Romi Schroeder-Falzone for depicting maleness with such conviction in a culture and art world where the female form is so ubiquitous as to be a trite, formal device rather than a body.
The humor and wisdom of Jon's displacement of human male carnality on to other primates notwithstanding, I think it's time to complicate this critique before the discourse on Guy-Art at UArts gets over-determined. From my perch among the faculty, this seems like the most exaggeratedly raunchy year I've seen since I got here four years ago. I've been in crits framed by S&M, seen the most articulately painted breasts the school has had on view in perhaps decades (painted by both male and female painters, and generally played witness to what has been a more playful and frank atmosphere than we've had around here in a few years. Who threw open the windows?
But guy-ness appears to be everywhere all the sudden - here's what Roberta Smith observed in a piece in today's Times on summer shows in Chelsea:
Chelsea’s group-show summer fray can evoke a farmyard with a surplus of roosters. This was especially the case last summer when male artists and curators seemed to dominate, along with a plethora of Conceptually-based black-on-black appropriation art. At the time the term “boys in black” came to mind, and to a certain extent they’re back.
But it should be remembered that gender is a nuanced thing, not a start division. Lest we fall in to the mirror trap of objectification, perhaps we ought to think twice before getting serious about a formula that reads something like male=sexual=aggressive=primitive. What is lust and who gets to express it openly? What's the meeting ground between the intellectual discourse of gender and rather-more-difficult-to intellectualize arena of sex? (An amusing photo-essay on maculinity can be found at a blog by Graham Milton.) As tired as people might be of the sensitive metrosexual male, essentializing masculinity as restrictively as femininity has been circumscribed isn't necessarily the solution.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Newsletter Pitches
Criticism students - these are the ideas that came over the transom for the newsletter. I've put a few remarks in after each one to help shape the piece, but we will be talking about these and discussing progress on July 19 with me and on July 21 with James Rosenthal. At the end of the list, I've put in some things that no one pitched that are worth considering, so let me know if youy want to change tracks.
Melinda Steffy - "I'm writing a feature on the Bike Parts show at Nexus, a fund-raising auction for a non-profit bike organization, especially considering the dynamics of a non-art organization using 'outsider' art to raise money."
Denise Vandeville - need written pitch!
Aubrey Navarro - need written pitch!
Paul DeMarco - 1. 600 words: Review of Charles Long’s recent ICA exhibit Gone Formalism in the context of his recent UARTS lecture using a completely arbitrary set of standards and condition.
2. Table and 400 words: A brief review of Philadelphia area MFA programs based solely on the available promotional materials. Areas of interest will include: program focus, demographic, goals/mission, accessibility, etc.
Jason Pemberton - need written pitch!
Fred Holcomb - "I plan to write one 1200 word newsletter article on the current “grid” show at Gallery Joe. The use of the grid can be both bold and mundane. But after a half century of minimalism, what more needs to be said of it.? The show is not a historical review. Having recently read Rosiland Krauss’s comments on the grid in her 1981 “The Originality of the Avant-Garde…,” I am particularly interested in this exhibit. After the class discussion yesterday, I agree to shorten the "grid" review and add another gallery review. I mentioned the Black Mountain show in class but am now leaning toward the William T. Wiley show at Locks, but haven't seen it yet."
Mike Reenock - "I intend to write a descriptive piece about Philadelphia painter Robert Goodman’s studio. This piece will be focus primarily on the physical aspects of Goodman’'s studio and its role as something other than merely a “place to paint.”"
Chris Houston - I plan to review the current show, Dialogues: A Group Exhibition at the Sande Webster Gallery, 2006 Walnut St., July 5th though August 23rd. The show opening is Friday July 14th.
Vanessa Juriga - Is writing about Woodmere Art Museum's members' exhibit. need written pitch!
Walter Plotnick - I plan write 6 short reviews, mainly focused on art in the Philadelphia Northern Suburbs. Four of which will be reviews of work that are presently on display at various galleries. Two will be studio visits, seek peeks of new work....behind the scenes of established artists who happen to live in the Northern Suburbs of Philadelphia. First, Anthony Lent, Senior Professor at F.I.T in NYC. Second Jon Clark, Professor & Chair of the Glass Dept. at Tyler School of Art.
Jared Udell - "The article will be a converstation with artist Adam Parker Smith. Adam recieved his MFA at Tyler and has been showing and teaching throughout Philadelphia. He is another painter gone hybrid, who creates soft sculpture which are shown along with his drawings and a paintings. Adam is represented by Peng Gallery. This past month he has made the move to NYC. I will discuss his time in Philadelphia and his decison to move to New York.
I see parallels in our goals and I am interested in this for my own experience, and to hear about the pros and cons of both art worlds; NYC and Philly."
Terri Saulin - "I would like to write a piece discussing the chasm between fine art and craft. Specifically, ceramic art and sculpture. I plan to interview Jeff Guido from the Clay Studio, either Ken Vavrek or Jack Thompson, perhaps Paula Winokour during my critique this wed. I am also interested in a poetic reading of the Louise Bougeois show at The Fabric Workshop."
Other things to think about: Louise Bourgeois @ Fabric Workshop/Lonnie Graham @ Fabric Workshop/ Zoe Strauss July 19 slide show/ Stories based on access to visiting artists (Ellen Harvey!)
Melinda Steffy - "I'm writing a feature on the Bike Parts show at Nexus, a fund-raising auction for a non-profit bike organization, especially considering the dynamics of a non-art organization using 'outsider' art to raise money."
gerard suggests - the big question here may be about the social usefulness of art, and in some ways the story is in line with the debate between Croce and Oates. Do such things diminish or help art? Another example might be the vogue for using art to address issues of violence, as in Goods for Guns
Denise Vandeville - need written pitch!
Aubrey Navarro - need written pitch!
Paul DeMarco - 1. 600 words: Review of Charles Long’s recent ICA exhibit Gone Formalism in the context of his recent UARTS lecture using a completely arbitrary set of standards and condition.
gerard says: Good. Go for it.
2. Table and 400 words: A brief review of Philadelphia area MFA programs based solely on the available promotional materials. Areas of interest will include: program focus, demographic, goals/mission, accessibility, etc.
gerard says: This is good – I assume the schools are Arts, Tyler, Penn and PAFA. The sooner you can specify four-to-six criteria the better, because then the designer can ration out the space for the table.
Jason Pemberton - need written pitch!
Fred Holcomb - "I plan to write one 1200 word newsletter article on the current “grid” show at Gallery Joe. The use of the grid can be both bold and mundane. But after a half century of minimalism, what more needs to be said of it.? The show is not a historical review. Having recently read Rosiland Krauss’s comments on the grid in her 1981 “The Originality of the Avant-Garde…,” I am particularly interested in this exhibit. After the class discussion yesterday, I agree to shorten the "grid" review and add another gallery review. I mentioned the Black Mountain show in class but am now leaning toward the William T. Wiley show at Locks, but haven't seen it yet."
gerard suggests - the histoircally conscious approach to the Gallery Joe show sounds good, and it can probably be addressed n less than 750 words. If you drop the Black Mountain show, some one else should pick it up, but I would encourage you to choose between the Locks and Mayer shows based on your interest in the work.
Mike Reenock - "I intend to write a descriptive piece about Philadelphia painter Robert Goodman’s studio. This piece will be focus primarily on the physical aspects of Goodman’'s studio and its role as something other than merely a “place to paint.”"
gerard suggests:This sounds like a good feature, it's a profile, but it's not. Perhaps we can run it under a department heading like "studio view". The folks in publicaitons who are designing our newsletter said photos are good, and I'll give you the specs. The one caution I have is that you go with an open mind. It's possible that the studiois just a place to paint for some artists: always try to approach your writing as an open question that can be proven or disproven through research.
Chris Houston - I plan to review the current show, Dialogues: A Group Exhibition at the Sande Webster Gallery, 2006 Walnut St., July 5th though August 23rd. The show opening is Friday July 14th.
gerard suggests: it would be good to articulate hte angle of this piece as soon as possible. Is it reportage (this happened, I saw it)? Or in some way critical?
Vanessa Juriga - Is writing about Woodmere Art Museum's members' exhibit. need written pitch!
Walter Plotnick - I plan write 6 short reviews, mainly focused on art in the Philadelphia Northern Suburbs. Four of which will be reviews of work that are presently on display at various galleries. Two will be studio visits, seek peeks of new work....behind the scenes of established artists who happen to live in the Northern Suburbs of Philadelphia. First, Anthony Lent, Senior Professor at F.I.T in NYC. Second Jon Clark, Professor & Chair of the Glass Dept. at Tyler School of Art.
Jared Udell - "The article will be a converstation with artist Adam Parker Smith. Adam recieved his MFA at Tyler and has been showing and teaching throughout Philadelphia. He is another painter gone hybrid, who creates soft sculpture which are shown along with his drawings and a paintings. Adam is represented by Peng Gallery. This past month he has made the move to NYC. I will discuss his time in Philadelphia and his decison to move to New York.
I see parallels in our goals and I am interested in this for my own experience, and to hear about the pros and cons of both art worlds; NYC and Philly."
gerard replies: We've already talked about this not being so much an interview or profile as a piece in which the phenomenon of the artist who migrates to NY is addressed through the example. Because this is the point of the article, I think you should back off the description of his work and focus on his decision to move, the contributing factors that influenced it, and what it's lead to so far.
Terri Saulin - "I would like to write a piece discussing the chasm between fine art and craft. Specifically, ceramic art and sculpture. I plan to interview Jeff Guido from the Clay Studio, either Ken Vavrek or Jack Thompson, perhaps Paula Winokour during my critique this wed. I am also interested in a poetic reading of the Louise Bougeois show at The Fabric Workshop."
gerard replies: This is very, very good. Jeff is a good source, and Paula would be great. I would remember that a good argument is usually built on three points, and choose your interview subjects carefully to express those ideas. I assume we're talking about two things - an essay on craft (a feature? 600-800wds?) and a poetic review of Louise Bourgois (200-400wds.)?
Other things to think about: Louise Bourgeois @ Fabric Workshop/Lonnie Graham @ Fabric Workshop/ Zoe Strauss July 19 slide show/ Stories based on access to visiting artists (Ellen Harvey!)
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Under the Influence
Tonight is the first of our film screenings. and I've been interested in addressing the question of influence for some time now. It seems that now is time.
The Oxford American Dictionary, in defining influence, offers the following word history:
The operative word in the definition since the 16th century seems to be imperceptible or indirect, that the influence of one thing on another is observed by a third party, more than recognized by the changed subject. Somehow or another, that connotation of mysterious or imperceptible action still resides in the word, which perhaps explains why it feels so much like someone is dragging his finger nails across a blackboard when he names his “influences” in a critique or statement.
Influence is, I assert, being too narrowly understood and converted to a neutral, almost clinical term in such instances. When citing their influences, artists often sound more like bibliographers than introspective critics of their practice. In almost all cases, it would be more apt to say “I admire so and so’s work…” or “I have tried to steal this or that property of so and so’s paintings…” (a valuable attempt to re-think this problem came from Keith Gruber in his March 10 post on this blog.) Using the word influence generally allows the artist to behave like an infected person, one who cannot take responsibility for the reference to other art or ideas in his or her work (the word, influenza actually entered the English language from Italian in the mid 1700's by way of the root that influentia, a medieval forerunner of influence).
But artworks are not sneezes, scabs, or otherwise to be confused with the results of infection. They are, if anything, discursive objects and most of them are made with the intent to act in this capacity (those that are not made to do this but instead are selected from all the other objects in the word to function like this are called “found objects”…but that’s another essay). Disregarding the responsibility to intent diminished the force of a work. This doesn’t mean unconscious or spontaneous allusions are impermissible, it means that they should be rigorously and thoroughly understood by the artist as soon as they are identified so their power can be harnessed and directed where the artist wants to employ it.
I’m especially keen to hear form the artists who responded to the call for participation – Jane Irosh, Joe Nanashe, Isaac Resnikoff and Paul Falzone - because they have been thoughtful and deliberate in our correspondence and have indulged me by trying to understand how talking about movies might be a roundabout way of talking about their work.
It doesn’t seem that we’re going to get over the essentially pathological discourse of art practice that dominates contemporary art any time (more obsessive drawings, anyone?) but perhaps we start to be more specific about our relation to the world around us, what enters our making processes through which doors, and how it is greeted.
The Oxford American Dictionary, in defining influence, offers the following word history:
ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French, or from medieval Latin influential| ‘inflow,’ from Latin influere, from in- ‘into’ + fluere ‘to flow.’ The word originally had the general sense [an influx, flowing matter,] also specifically (in astrology) [the flowing in of ethereal fluid (affecting human destiny).] The sense [imperceptible or indirect action exerted to cause changes] was established in Scholastic Latin by the 13th cent., but not recorded in English until the late 16th cent.
The operative word in the definition since the 16th century seems to be imperceptible or indirect, that the influence of one thing on another is observed by a third party, more than recognized by the changed subject. Somehow or another, that connotation of mysterious or imperceptible action still resides in the word, which perhaps explains why it feels so much like someone is dragging his finger nails across a blackboard when he names his “influences” in a critique or statement.
Influence is, I assert, being too narrowly understood and converted to a neutral, almost clinical term in such instances. When citing their influences, artists often sound more like bibliographers than introspective critics of their practice. In almost all cases, it would be more apt to say “I admire so and so’s work…” or “I have tried to steal this or that property of so and so’s paintings…” (a valuable attempt to re-think this problem came from Keith Gruber in his March 10 post on this blog.) Using the word influence generally allows the artist to behave like an infected person, one who cannot take responsibility for the reference to other art or ideas in his or her work (the word, influenza actually entered the English language from Italian in the mid 1700's by way of the root that influentia, a medieval forerunner of influence).
But artworks are not sneezes, scabs, or otherwise to be confused with the results of infection. They are, if anything, discursive objects and most of them are made with the intent to act in this capacity (those that are not made to do this but instead are selected from all the other objects in the word to function like this are called “found objects”…but that’s another essay). Disregarding the responsibility to intent diminished the force of a work. This doesn’t mean unconscious or spontaneous allusions are impermissible, it means that they should be rigorously and thoroughly understood by the artist as soon as they are identified so their power can be harnessed and directed where the artist wants to employ it.
I’m especially keen to hear form the artists who responded to the call for participation – Jane Irosh, Joe Nanashe, Isaac Resnikoff and Paul Falzone - because they have been thoughtful and deliberate in our correspondence and have indulged me by trying to understand how talking about movies might be a roundabout way of talking about their work.
It doesn’t seem that we’re going to get over the essentially pathological discourse of art practice that dominates contemporary art any time (more obsessive drawings, anyone?) but perhaps we start to be more specific about our relation to the world around us, what enters our making processes through which doors, and how it is greeted.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
The dominance of the word
I really should be quoting this to get it right, but the thought is familiar enough that how eloquently it's expressed is really a matter of pitch not substance, but I've been thinking about an idea of communication linguist Steven Pinker puts forth when marvels about how the arrangement of bursts of air from our mouth or marks on a page and accurately and successful transmit an idea from the brain of one person to the brain of another.
While it would be wrong to take the miracle of language for granted, it would be, I think, equally wrong to assume that all communication must be based on this assumed outcome - that what is going on in the head of one person is transmitted accurately to the head of another. This notion seems especially troubling in art. (Maybe I'm just depressed because I get bummed every time I hear someone say he or she wants to 'make a new language' in his or her art - what's wrong with the ones that already exist? Who are you going to talk to in this new language? - and I heard that one in one form or another a half dozen times as I met with the first year grad painters yesterday). It's troubling because it defends an idea of stability of message that threatens some of the most important things art can do.
Art perhaps ought not so often be viewed so much as form of conversation, but perhaps more like a relay game. An artist observes something or invents it. She displays it (there is something etymologically suggestive about display, as if it were to cut off from play, but it's not that at all). Another person sees it. That person is now in the position of the artist, able to make through conversation, literature, or creative practice another thing. And on and on.
Of course the conversation model can't, and shouldn't, be utterly abandoned, but perhaps its dominance should be questioned a little more thoroughly. As if all conversations you’ve ever been invoved in went the way you wanted them...
While it would be wrong to take the miracle of language for granted, it would be, I think, equally wrong to assume that all communication must be based on this assumed outcome - that what is going on in the head of one person is transmitted accurately to the head of another. This notion seems especially troubling in art. (Maybe I'm just depressed because I get bummed every time I hear someone say he or she wants to 'make a new language' in his or her art - what's wrong with the ones that already exist? Who are you going to talk to in this new language? - and I heard that one in one form or another a half dozen times as I met with the first year grad painters yesterday). It's troubling because it defends an idea of stability of message that threatens some of the most important things art can do.
Art perhaps ought not so often be viewed so much as form of conversation, but perhaps more like a relay game. An artist observes something or invents it. She displays it (there is something etymologically suggestive about display, as if it were to cut off from play, but it's not that at all). Another person sees it. That person is now in the position of the artist, able to make through conversation, literature, or creative practice another thing. And on and on.
Of course the conversation model can't, and shouldn't, be utterly abandoned, but perhaps its dominance should be questioned a little more thoroughly. As if all conversations you’ve ever been invoved in went the way you wanted them...
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Pictures of Pictures
One of the oddest things about going to the MoMA the other day was visiting the permanent collection and people-watching. I had heard so much about the building and the re-installation of the collection, but hadn't had a chance to visit. Clearly, the forces of reification had been successfully brought to bear on the works, as evinced by the number of people who whipped out their cellphones and started shooting pictures of their favorite works. (What, the bookstore stopped selling postcards?) I thought I would share these photos, taken with my phone.
I guess I can imagine sending photos to people live ("Look, honey! I'm in New York CIty and they've got a big Picasso!") but I can't quite see what one hopes to capture when one shoots a picture of a painting with the modern equivalent of a pinhole camera.
There were so many people milling around the galleries, and taking pictures - the cell phone came out in the galleries in which Picassos hung, and stayed out through the Impressionist and Post-Impressionists. Before that, one would see people posing next to large works while other took pictures of them. I wished I'd taken a picture of a teenager standing next to a large Warhol making the kind of gesture one sees at a heavy metal concert as her friends took her picture.Perhaps I sound cynical, but I'm not. I really enjoyed watching all these people interacting with the art they were looking at, and the frantic duplication of the museum into pixels was ultimately moving. After all, before it says anything, photography says I was there, and if the museum is an important enough site to click, preserve, and share - as important as the smiles of people out for drinks or whatever we use cell phone cameras for - then something must be right with the world...
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Art & Craft...
Back on the subject of Craft...
I had a chance this spring to be in the cultural Mecca of Northern Florida, Gainsville.
There was an interesting exhibit at the
A Closer Look: Art and Museums.
“This exhibition examines some key issues faced by museums in these areas of their operations. The exhibition is designed to inform visitors about the strategic decisions that underlie the presentation of art in museums, with the hope that this information will heighten the visitors’ critical awareness and enjoyment of those institutions”
The show was divided into five thematic sections: Defining Art, Collecting Art, Displaying Art, Interpreting Art, and Preserving Art. In the Defining Art area there was a display about art and craft.
This was the text panel was posted by the exhibit.
(What, I didn’t take a picture of the exhibit, just the text panel?)
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Ants and Grasshoppers
So another summer begins in Philadelphia and I see that we've got a greater population of grasshoppers than ants. I expect things will get crazy as time goes on, but for now it's awfully quiet in the studios. What are we waiting for?
There have been a few people putting things together, but perhaps the the length of crits has cut into the desire to get going. The heat in the building is pretty bad. Maybe we should just go look at art rather than make it.
There have been a few people putting things together, but perhaps the the length of crits has cut into the desire to get going. The heat in the building is pretty bad. Maybe we should just go look at art rather than make it.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Mastery
A few weeks ago I visited the studios of a graduate program that shall remain nameless. The students – painters, sculptors, performance and video artists, what have you – exhibited work in their studios (which, I was reassured to see, were as much like veal fattening pens as they are at every institution) as visitors poked in, occasionally committing to cross the threshold and see what was inside.
What was inside was an astonishingly uniform arrangement of works. In each studio, the artist appeared to have gone to great lengths to remain casual about work. Evidence of production was apparent (cans of paint, tools) even when they had nothing to do with the objects that were present (ubiquitous videos). Each room suggested a kind of domesticated pathology, as if the student had received a message that he or she should be obsessed with a subject, but not so obsessed as to appear genuinely interested in it.
One student was the exception casting all the others into sharp relief. He had painted the walls with a fresh coat of blinding, gallery-white paint. He’d hung three large canvases that were thematically consistent (all representing fire in a way that called to mind the work of Philadelphia painter Sydney Goodman). These supplemented a group of several similar works hanging in a near by gallery. All were large, thoroughly accomplished (if slightly conventional) works that had been carried to a point that one could reasonably conclude was finished. Taken together, they constituted a body of work, a thesis about painting with a light source in the composition, or perhaps about the transformative violence of fire, or perhaps about something else.
Another student had taken a similar path, painting abstract landscapes that were too vaporous to coalesce into such a concrete thing as a thesis, though they had the consistency and coherence of a body of works. These two, more or less only these two, appeared to working in an engaged mode that allowed new work to be born out of earlier work, as if each piece suggested possibilities and challenges for the next piece – in short, as one might be able to work over the course of a career. The other twenty or twenty five student were more like bees who buzzed from flower to flower, making a video here, making a sculpture, adding a sound track. Their method may have been more organic, may have more accurately reflected the diversity of their interests, but it came across as a profound manifestation of attention deficit disorder.
Now this was an open studio - a very informal event (that just happened to coincide with the formal graduate thesis exhibit that was just too dull to mention) - but it is an occasion to think about how one want to behave at a critical point in one's career. Is it best to let it all hang out, or to try to bring (or force, in some cases) structure to your work by establishing parameters? What is the role of the studio in your practice - workspace? showroom? place to put old sofa and listen to tunes while waiting for the next exhibit opportunity?
What was inside was an astonishingly uniform arrangement of works. In each studio, the artist appeared to have gone to great lengths to remain casual about work. Evidence of production was apparent (cans of paint, tools) even when they had nothing to do with the objects that were present (ubiquitous videos). Each room suggested a kind of domesticated pathology, as if the student had received a message that he or she should be obsessed with a subject, but not so obsessed as to appear genuinely interested in it.
One student was the exception casting all the others into sharp relief. He had painted the walls with a fresh coat of blinding, gallery-white paint. He’d hung three large canvases that were thematically consistent (all representing fire in a way that called to mind the work of Philadelphia painter Sydney Goodman). These supplemented a group of several similar works hanging in a near by gallery. All were large, thoroughly accomplished (if slightly conventional) works that had been carried to a point that one could reasonably conclude was finished. Taken together, they constituted a body of work, a thesis about painting with a light source in the composition, or perhaps about the transformative violence of fire, or perhaps about something else.
Another student had taken a similar path, painting abstract landscapes that were too vaporous to coalesce into such a concrete thing as a thesis, though they had the consistency and coherence of a body of works. These two, more or less only these two, appeared to working in an engaged mode that allowed new work to be born out of earlier work, as if each piece suggested possibilities and challenges for the next piece – in short, as one might be able to work over the course of a career. The other twenty or twenty five student were more like bees who buzzed from flower to flower, making a video here, making a sculpture, adding a sound track. Their method may have been more organic, may have more accurately reflected the diversity of their interests, but it came across as a profound manifestation of attention deficit disorder.
Now this was an open studio - a very informal event (that just happened to coincide with the formal graduate thesis exhibit that was just too dull to mention) - but it is an occasion to think about how one want to behave at a critical point in one's career. Is it best to let it all hang out, or to try to bring (or force, in some cases) structure to your work by establishing parameters? What is the role of the studio in your practice - workspace? showroom? place to put old sofa and listen to tunes while waiting for the next exhibit opportunity?
Monday, April 03, 2006
Thoughts on Craft (Evolving)
I'm going to post some responses to the idea of craft from an email I sent to handful of interesting artists to whom I think such a question would be relevant. This post will evolve as I get responses, so check in a couple of times if you want the whole story.
From Candy Depew
From Mary Barrett
From Bill Gerhard:
From Sumi Maeshima:
From Candy Depew
witches practice "the craft"
ie witchcraft
crafty = sly and devilish
so with this line of thinking, this theory
of craft clearly implies
sly and devilish witches practicing
(or witch practice- singular)
thats pretty radical : )
From Mary Barrett
I wonder if the paleolithic cave painters thought their renderings were more "high art" than the crafters of bowls, clothes or bodily ornamentation? We'll never know, but one can speculate that if paintings of auroch stampeding across the cave wall provided some sort of ritualistc invocation for a good hunt, they may have been seen as fulfilling a magical/spiritual function. But who is to say that the adornment of the body with beads made from shells or teeth or such didn't also fulfill an important spiritual function? Or even an aesthetic function? And why is intellectual sometimes perceived to be more important than spiritual? I think interaction between all aspects is inevitable. At any rate, the beauty of the beast is captured, and humans are fulfilling what I believe to be an innate need to create and connect the physical and spiritual worlds. I also think that so called tradition crafts can also fulfill this need. The difference seems to be that craft, yes, relying heavily on the notion of work and product, also relies on tradition. "Fine Art" at least in modern times, seems at times to want to break tradition, to move forward, to reflect change. But wait a minute, didn't the arts and crafts movement do that too? I guess Radical Craft also seeks to create change, and at the same time to preserve community.
I think that art and craft both involve body mind and spirit. When Adrian Saxe curated the 2001 Scripps College 57th annual Ceramic Annual, he chose for the theme: "Between Thee and Me: Objects of Agency." He noted in the curators statement that this theme is present in some of the most compelling artists today. "It is the potential for an object to become an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace, or of inner conflict and evil, and serve as a conduit of emotion and memory for both the maker and the user of the object."
I think crafts and the communal aspect of crafts is important to identify who we are as humans and how we interact with each other and something else, on a physical, mental and meta-physical(spiritual) basis.
From Bill Gerhard:
I don't know what I think about craft anymore. I guess there are two kinds of thinking, one that has to do with a high level of skill and technique and another that has to do with appropriateness of means, which means you shouldn't have to think about it. I think in grad school someone said the moment you notice craft is when you stop looking. Craft people are very proud and defensive, which is their big problem.
From Sumi Maeshima:
What is curious about the word craft (used provincially in the U.S.) is that it seems to lack autonomy, as if it always needs clarifications of what one means by the word. Or it needs a contrasting word: craft v.s. fine arts, crafting v.s. thinking. At the same time, there is something moralistic about the word craft, and that moralistic stance can be fashionable or unfashionable, radical or conservative, which in turn tells where the speaker stands, instead of what she/he means.
Monday, March 27, 2006
Radical (cr)After Thoughts
So I've been mulling over the conference and the whole notion of radical craft and its intersection with industry and art practice and I keep coming back to the simple idea that craft is a code for labor and that radical craft - building on Harold Koda's thinking - is code for a whole lot of labor. And this has been making me a little sad.
It seems to fundamentally reinforce a notion that craft is something done with the hands and that there is still some un-bridgeable schism between the working hands the thinking brain. Work - almost by definition - must proceed according to plan to minimize waste. If the plan is found to be inefficient and is later revised, existing labor might be unspooled and erased so the product can be completed. The emphasis lands solidly on product despite any attempt to call attention to product.
Perhaps this is what was so striking about Billy Collins' poetry - it's polish speaks to the care with which he selects each word. (Digression: when Collins picks on Paul Valery, as he did in a poem he read at the conference, I think something terribly misleading is happening. I am reminded of a story about Frank O'Hara arriving at a poetry reading on Staten Island and delivering a work he had composed on the ferry on the way to the event. The other poet on the bill - whose name escapes me - brushed this aside, saying something about how he was going to read things he'd composed in advance and implying the superiority of that method. But O'Hara - I believe like Valery - had done unthinkable amounts of work preparing to write that poem in his reading, writing, observing and participating in the world up to the moment in which it was fixed on the paper. It's a little like the Whistler/Ruskin argument about a painting that took an afternoon to make but a lifetime to get ready for, and what's the role of craft in that?) It is not possible for craft to be thought of less as polish than as fuel? Might we not benefit from including in our definition of radical craft such things as edits, false starts, and erasure?
The more I think about it, the more I take comfort in Isaac Mizrahi's response to a question about the relative importance of brand and product. Mizrahi seemed a little stunned by the question - as if it were so fundamental that he had to think about his answer. Like the courtier that a fashion-person must be, he answered without offending anyone yet not without being unequivocal - he said that you needed product - content - to have a brand in the first place. It was reassuring to hear someone so confidently assert that things are where meaning begins (especially after the weirdness of the College Art Association Annual Meeting, wherein people complained that panelists were spending too much time talking about "things and images" rather than "ideas" as if they could be separated in visual art...)
I hope others will weigh in on the subject of craft and its possible radicalism with comments. We're looking forward to a few more posts on the panels I missed from students to whom I offered extra credit for writing. I'll also post links to whatever I see about it here, like this one to Jonathan Ive's site. Or this one, to christung, a design blog.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Part II: Word Craft
As I watched musicians perform on the giant projection screens in the wind tunnel, I figured out what is so strange about the Radical Craft conference...it looks more like an awards show than a conference. Think about it. Musical interludes. Short films (including segments from the Muppets and the Simpsons) to introduce speakers. Big corporate sponsorship. Fashion people. Stars!
Anyway - the first speaker in the wolrd craft segment of the show was Erin McKean(see the picture), whose stand-up lexicography drew cheers. It should be noted that McKean had a better dress than any of the fashionistas present. Setting out to dispell the "nun/librarian" myth of the lexicographer, she introdeced the scientist/reporter metaphor in its place. She cleverly walked the audience through the basics of assembling a dictionary, talking about the importance of the corpus with amusing examples (one can hardly resist adding to the Google footprint of "asshat" by including it here...). But her connection to the subject of craft was tenuous. In fact, her talk appeared to dissolve when it came time to "beg" for a new design for the dictionary itself. One was left questioning what kind of room there is for radicalism in a field as inherently conservative as dictionary compilations.
As she was leaving the stage, I began to wonder what place the dictionary McKean was talking about had in the brave and much-hyped new world of Wiki. And show should take the stage next but Jimmy Wales, founder and CEO of Wikipedia.org, the online encylcopedia. Those who have studied with me in any kind of research capacity know my distrust of the Wikipedia hive mind concept, and I tried ot give Wales a fair listening, but I still felt as though he was missing the point. As amped as he is about making a new encyclopedia available to the world for free, he doesn't seem to realize that the world expects it to be the same kind of authority as the old encylopedia. (Think of Jasper Johns remark about how one who intends to make chewing gum that is used as glue is actually making glue.) So when he points out that half the edits on the site are done by just .7% of the users and that the most active 2% of the users generate more than 70% of the entries, he seems to miss the fact that these are really small percentages - obviously larger than those of conventional authorship but still in figures that sound downright elite. His arguments were weak and biased - after all, can you really trust someone who uses the words "community" and "friends" interchangeably? - and his assertion that Wikipedia's radicalism resided in its open-source ideology struck me as too broad. What's radical and useful about Wiki is the way it reflects its users' understanding of any given subject, and that's also a limitation on it. It may be interesting and, in ways, radical (as if that's really worth anything at the end of the day...) but it's also not an ecylcopedia in the traditional sense.
I really want to dislike poet Billy Collins but one cannot dislike work that's so beautifully crafted. He describes his work as "suburban" and "domestic", and he reiterated a definition of craft offered earlier in the conference ("craft is something made by one person for another") as a way of asserting his reader-consciousness. Rather than lecturing, Collins performed his poems in relaxed way, reading from several collections, including his latest, The Trouble With Poetry. Beyond the exceptional skill with which Collins renders his subjects, his poems are enchanting for the way they are about poetry itself. Just as it seemed that he was going to coast by on the charm of his work itself, Collins let drop a terrific remark about the how art can be evaluated. Talking about haiku, he talked about how the strict, 17-sylable form “offers resistance to your self-expressive tantrum.” That craft might be a form of form – of container or barrier to the fluid nature of content – seemed radical in that instant. And rewarding.
Glamour Craft: From High to Humble
Greetings from the Art Center College Radical Craft design conference, where I'm pleased to be writing through the good graces of a heap of cold medication. This morning's panels included Entrepreneurial Craft (meds hadn't kicked in - I'm trying to find someone who can report on that one for you) and Glamour Craft: From High to Humble, which featured speakers Harold Koda, Claudy Jongstra, and Isaac Mizrahi.
Harold Koda was the epitome of the fashion scholar in his talk about the importance of cut as a basic craft of fashion. Spanning centuries of couture, his most compelling images were perhaps those of Issey Miyake's pieces made from single pieces of cloth. Along the way, he showed some exquisitely made dresses in which craft could be defined as the lavishing of extraordinary labor on a work (moderator John Hockenberry joked about designer jeans made "at the cost of sickening several dozen and killing a few of the laborers"). I was also pleased to see Martin Margiela's clothes dyed by molds and bacteria. But for Koda, it appeared that truly radical craft resided in the modernist adherence to material possibilities and that all the beading and dying was secondary to the cutting and draping. This struck me as a kind of attempt to reassert modernist principles, and a sad one in light of a passing remark that was part of Koda's talk - about the way that couture garments were really lures that attracted audiences for the more profitable lines of a designer's output - fragrances, accessories or ready-to-wear. It was as if to say artists should labor excessively on a few pieces that will attract attention to cheaper, more profitable wares (those that fulfilled what Hockenberry called and “acquisitive” lust.)
Cloudy Jongstra’s talk about her work in felt was staggeringly unfashionable – and, in the context of the group, therefore refreshing. She reminded me of Winifred Lutz in her concentration on the material properties of the wool, silk, cotton, and hay from which her felt is made. If there was anything “radical” about Jongstra’s craft (which she repeatedly asserted was ancient in its origins) it was her insistence on the craftsperson’s knowledge of a material’s properties and possibilities.
Isaac Mizrahi was clearly the star of the morning’s talk – and he appeared to know it. Anyone looking for a working definition of “radical craft” in his talk would be hard pressed to synthesize one from the anecdotes and sound bites he offered in response to Hockenberry’s questions (that Mizrahi was interviewed rather than delivering any prepared remarks made him seem even more like a bauble included to attract attention). This is not to say he wasn’t entertaining, but rather that one felt he’d say anything to earn the temporary love of the audience. And he was successful. Declaring at one point that “craft is getting the meds right” Mizrahi left the impression that he was saying whatever came into his head at the moment (a little like a blogger…), but he had clearly thought a little about some things. When Hockenberry asked him to explain his success at wedding high and low, Mizrahi admitted that he felt it wasn’t because he “did a great job” so much as that we are “culturally, socially and economically ready” for such a phenomenon (a little self deprecation goes a long way with me…). When an audience member asked him about “nostalgia” she clearly touched a nerve. “Everything I do refers tot he past,” Mizrahi said, “because it’s beautiful enough to refer to.” Perhaps the radicalism of Mizrahi’s craft is the construction of a stable identity in so many strata of the market and mass consciousness.
After all this, Target served us a swell lunch on which I’ve been picking as I write. But now, back the conferring.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Radical Craft
I'm pleased to say I scored a couple of session passes for the Art Center College of Design's swanky Radical Craft conference this weekend. Expect posts. Meanwhile, you can visit here for more info.
Others are noticing this event - see the designed objects blog for more hype.
Others are noticing this event - see the designed objects blog for more hype.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Going it alone or getting along
''Who Gets to Call it Art?," Peter Rosen's documentary about the rapid-fire changes in American art in the 1960s, begins with a startling premise that it never really follows up on. ''What will the public think?" asks sculptor John Chamberlain of trends in art. He answers it himself: ''Well, who gives [an expletive]? It's their job to catch up."
Cate McQuiad of the Boston Globe begins her short review of Rosen's movie with this little anecdote, which is very much to the point of something I've been thinking about lately.
The other day in class I mentioned the "avant garde" and was met with blank stares by my students, who needed the idea explained to them (part of me was relieved...I mean, after all, wasn't the avant garde myth something a lot of us were out to get rid of in the first place?) I thought of one of my favorite reflections on an artist's relation to his audience, which appeared in an essay Jonathan Franzen wrote about William Gaddis called "Mr. Difficult". Here's a brief excerpt:
It turns out that I subscribe to two wildly different models of how fiction relates to its audience. In one model...the best novels are great works of art, the people who manage to write them deserve extraordinary credit, and if the average reader rejects the work, it's because the average reader is a philistine; the value of any novel...exists independent of how many people appreciate it. We call this the Status model. It invites a discourse of genius and art historical importance.
In the opposing model a novel represents a compact between the writer and the reader, the writer providing the words out of which the reader creates a pleasurable experience. Writing thus entails a balancing of self-expression and communication within a group...This is the Contract model. The discourse here is one of pleasure and connection.
Substitute "artist" for "writer" and "artwork" for "novel" and you've got a common loggerhead at which artists often find themselves - should we concentrate on the nutrional value of the meal we're serving, or should we be looking for clever dressings to make the vegetables more appealing? Do we want to challenge or please or audiences?
The answers appear to be more complicated than one might expect. Nearly every artist I talk to these days - and maybe it's an LA thing - seems concerned with "serious" subjects and goes out of his or her way to avoid things that could be seen as trivial or self-absorbed. What you get is a lot of art that one feels people ought to be interested in because it's serious - like the problem of rural illiteracy or hunger in the developing world - but which few actually care about, a concerned minority that almost always excludes the artist himself. Everyone gets challenged; no one gets pleased.
I feel like the Dave Hickey of "Frivolity and Unction" - like making a rallying cry for art that artists actually care about enough to debate whether or not it needs to be shown in the first place. Art that they are too pleased by to let go, but too bothered by their own selfishness to keep to themselves. This is closely relates to my other platform these days - a forced anonymity for all artists under the age of 60. Under my scheme, all contemporary art would be sold as "anonymous" and the revenues passed through secret accounts to the artists. Besides destroying the market for fashionable artists whose names are more interesting than their work (insert your favorite example here), this initiative would have the added benefit of discouraging anyone from entering the profession for purposes of seeking fame, as any renown - even recognition - would be off the table for decades. Audiences would be free to choose their own pleasures and their own challenges in a world in which one could no longer call challenge a pleasure or pleasure a challenge as a means of excusing lapses of personal judgment.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Finding Someone to Envy
As a first year painting teacher and MFA student, I find myself regularly evaluating how to best instruct someone in the methods of painting. I waver between step by step, technical tutelage and simply giving the students the supplies and a loose assignment and helping them struggle (currently I live in the later). But all this thinking has got me evaluating how we are taught, or guided, because really I think that is a better description of MFA instruction.
Critiques seem to focus on looking at someone's work, at times I feel, just long enough or deeply enough to make a connection to some other artist, and then directing the artistic-sheep toward a new potential shepherd. Sometimes I feel like this process does more to expand my mental card catalog of artists, rather than expand my abilities to paint, but there is some merit to this method.
Since everything has already been done, more or less, all the wheels have been invented, there is little sense in totally reinventing, when we can get right to "pimping our paintings," taking the valuable framework of another, established artist, combining it with some shiny, chrome-like techniques of a few others, welding it all together with some ideas, and calling the galleries. But seriously as Robert Henri taught "whatever an artist leaves is so much for others to use as stones to step on or stones to avoid." Indeed there is some truth in that quote, another great quote, which really speaks to the value of this teaching method, came from Billy Collins, a Poet Laureate, whom I met last week, and had the pleasure of listening to. Mr Collins was asked how he learned to write, and how he teaches/ can others be taught to write poems, and his response was to the effect that, "all artists need to find people who make them jealous; people who can do the things they wish they could do, then through aspiring to be like that individual, they may discover themselves." He in fact mentioned that he spent years "stealing" from other poets and he turned out alright.
Perhaps artistic individuality is not an inborn idea, but based more on the particular composition of our experiences, influences and all those artists to whom we are directed who fill us with envy.
Critiques seem to focus on looking at someone's work, at times I feel, just long enough or deeply enough to make a connection to some other artist, and then directing the artistic-sheep toward a new potential shepherd. Sometimes I feel like this process does more to expand my mental card catalog of artists, rather than expand my abilities to paint, but there is some merit to this method.
Since everything has already been done, more or less, all the wheels have been invented, there is little sense in totally reinventing, when we can get right to "pimping our paintings," taking the valuable framework of another, established artist, combining it with some shiny, chrome-like techniques of a few others, welding it all together with some ideas, and calling the galleries. But seriously as Robert Henri taught "whatever an artist leaves is so much for others to use as stones to step on or stones to avoid." Indeed there is some truth in that quote, another great quote, which really speaks to the value of this teaching method, came from Billy Collins, a Poet Laureate, whom I met last week, and had the pleasure of listening to. Mr Collins was asked how he learned to write, and how he teaches/ can others be taught to write poems, and his response was to the effect that, "all artists need to find people who make them jealous; people who can do the things they wish they could do, then through aspiring to be like that individual, they may discover themselves." He in fact mentioned that he spent years "stealing" from other poets and he turned out alright.
Perhaps artistic individuality is not an inborn idea, but based more on the particular composition of our experiences, influences and all those artists to whom we are directed who fill us with envy.
Monday, March 06, 2006
Blogstorm
Our first ever BlogStorm, scheduled to begin today, has been postponed (as much in my life has been) by the arrival of the baby and attendant scheduling conflicts. Hopefully, it will be presented before the end of the term; no one will be penalized for this unexpected change of plan. My apologies.
Friday, March 03, 2006
Bill Harris Painting ( I think of Keith)
Hey there! Keith, there is a local artist here at the shop that my studio is located that reminds me of your work. I thought maybe you'd like to check him out. His name is Bill Harris, and he's one of the nicest guys I've ever met. I really enjoy is stuff and there is a quality that reminds me of your work over the summer. Mainly the self portait you did. If you ever want any more info besides his website let me know cause I work almost right next to him. The website is http://www.wcharris.com Have fun!
Monday, February 27, 2006
You're all appropriate
InLiquid.com regulary has get togethers for curators and directors at various watering holes in and around Philadlephia. I cannot make the next one, but it came with a line in the invitiaton encouraging us to "feel free to extend the invitation to anyone who might be appropriate"... And I think you're all appropriate.
Here's the details:
@ N. 3rd, Tuesday evening, February 28th from 6:30-8:30 pm (N. 3rd, incase you are not familiar, is located on the corner of 3rd and Brown in Northern Liberties.)
Enjoy!
Here's the details:
@ N. 3rd, Tuesday evening, February 28th from 6:30-8:30 pm (N. 3rd, incase you are not familiar, is located on the corner of 3rd and Brown in Northern Liberties.)
Enjoy!
Saturday, February 25, 2006
THE LAST FAVOUR
You are cordially invited to a spirited reading from Teresa Jayne's new book, The Last Favour, "a primer for young men on how to woo a woman." The event will take place on Wed., March 1-5:30pm at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, 2008-2010 DeLancey Place in Philadelphia. For more details, call (215) 732-1600, ext. 113 or visit the Rosenbach online at http://www.rosenbach.org. RSVP'S are kindly requested. Jaynes' is a gifted artist who was invited to create this book after her last installation at the Rosenbach in 2000, titled, Red Room. The Last Favour was co-published by the Rosenbach and the Borowsky Center at the University of the Arts, with funding from the Leeway Foundation and the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation. 
Monday, February 20, 2006
Of Patronage
I wanted to shout a little shout for Rebecca Solnit's piece in this weekend's LA Times about the recent sale of Asher B. Durand's Kindred Spirits to Walmart heiress Alice Walton.
Solnit's suggestions that Walmart is trying to clean up its act by opening a museum of all the things it is not is a shrewd bit of linguist prestidigitation, but one wishes she's lingered longer on the history of robber barons cleansing their consciences through acts of public largess than on the preposterous notion that Walton might take an interest in "the art of her time". The fact remains that few have an interest in the "art of their time", especially among the patronage classes, who are inclined to even less interest when said art is critical of them and their business dealings.
Though I find the idea of a Walmart Biennial amusing, it would be foolish to insist it include only artists who protest Walmart’s policies and practices, in part because such a show would be a dreadful bore. As if providing any artist whose work amounts to propaganda - from the right or the left - would be a public service. Better to recognize the terrible complexity of the issue and look for artists who don't pretend to be above it. Perhaps, if they could be found, such artists might rekindle the public's interest in contemporary art, which they might (rightly) feel shares little with their own lives.
Then, we might really be kindred spirits again.
Friday, February 03, 2006
Fred Tomiselli Lecture @ The Fabric Workshop 2/3/06
Hi All, This post comes after the Fred Tomiselli lecture this evening. After a fried Bologna w/potato sandwich and two glasses of wine, I'm watching The Grizzley Man: with Timothy Treadwell, on the Discovery Channel. I think it has scared me to my bones! (I'm contemplating another glass/bottle!) That's another story. Since we Americans are all officially addicted to oil, I thought that I would relate an interesting project that Mr. Tomiselli offered. Tomiselli was talking about his process of collecting images. He showed pages of bird books with the images cut out. The images were haunting. They were perfectly liberated from their former rectangle with a surgeon's precision, like the empty silhouettes of Victorian shadow portraits. He mentioned the enormous amount of catalogues he received in the mail. He thought... Here we are, outside and observing nature, dressed in our petroleum based, weather managing wear! He made the most amazing collages of the birds wearing images of fleece and Gortex that he cut out of catalogues. The colors and textures mimic the actual colors of the creatures studied. More to come! Insightful and witty talk. (Agati, Doreen and I were not the "scruffy" art students he noticed in the audience!) Terri
Thursday, February 02, 2006
NCECA
Just a quick question. Is anyone thinking about going to the Clay conference in Portland Oregan? Jamin London has offered a free place to stay (her house) and so far Tammi and myself have thought about going. I'm pretty sure as UARTS students we get a student discount so the registration is about $155.00. If anyone works in clay and has the time to take off in the middle of March then I'd take the oppurtunity to go.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Artists? We don't need no stinkin' artists!
Anyone else see Holland Carter's piece from today's New York Times about David Hammons: The Unauthorized Retrospective at Harlem's Triple Candie gallery? Excuse me as I muddle through my complex feelings on the subject.
For those who missed it (or are too busy to click through the links) the gallery has long been interested in doing a show with the artist David Hammons, who has, for one reason or another, long not been doing a show with the gallery (collectors of major pieces were also unwilling to lend their holdings, Cotter reports). So, to make a long story short, the gallery Xeroxed and printed from its computers nearly 100 images of Hammons' pieces and taped them to the wall, and voila, instant retrospective. Call it the Kitty Kelly school of curating, but it sounds brilliant. (an image of the installation from their website appears above). A passage from Triple Candies' website notes that
On one level, the exhibition is about David Hammons' art and career. On another, it is about the art world: particularly how the strategic process of ascribing value to an artist's - by galleries, collectors, and even artists - changes the art's relationship to the public. Finally, this collection of reproductions is meant to question the status-quo of exhibition-making itself.
As a teacher, I've asked artists to simulate exhibitions in which they locate their work in the context of other artists with whom they wish to be associated using architectural models and PowerPoint presentations. Asking artists to behave like curators has - for a long time to me - been like asking workers to behave like management for a day. These purely theoretical exhibit projects have expended and attracted only intellectual capital, not the cold hard cash that dealers and institutions use to accomplish their missions, and have demanded from their audience - mostly other students - only the outlay of a few minutes of thought.
But as a curator, I’ve always felt like it’s my job to bring the real deal to audiences. If I cannot obtain the piece I want for a show, I have to reconsider the show (it has always struck me as being like editing a book; if I cannot get a brilliant essay by someone on a certain topic, I can’t take another one they had lying around as a replacement).
Part of me feels like Triple Candie is doing something (through its simulation) that many of us have been engaged in all along. Part of me now realizes the ethical complexity of what we’ve been engaged in all along through simulation. In a world in which the art object is increasingly irrelevant in the first place (see Sunday’s LA Times article on the use of modern architecture as a means of increasing snob appeal for shampoo and car ads…) art images reign supreme. If we want to participate in our culutre in the way it wants or expects us to participate, artists should be making images limited to the palette of web browsers, scalable for printers, and sufficiently graphic for production at any size. We should be ready for whatever we make to be repurposed and incorporated into others' work and products. We should recognize that we are in the raw materials business.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Careers Panel
Hello again everyone!
So I was invited to do a careers panel for the University of Mary Washington. The panel was tonight, Monday the 30th at 4:00 pm in one of my old art history lecture halls. The panel consisted of me (2003 graduate)and three other girls who had graduated in 2004. Basically the panel is put on once a year for students in the art and art history department at UMW. The panel always consists of graduated students from UMW who have found work with thier BA in studio art degrees. Of course, I was asked to come back because the amount of students interested in graduate school, so they thought i'd be able to talk a little bit about how I got into the UARTS program and all the troubles I had getting into graduate school in the first place.
The panel was great! I'd say about twenty students showed up and we talked for about an hour and fourty five minutes. One presenter was a highschool art teacher, one was the productions coordinator for George Washington University and the other was a gallery manager for a gallery in Richmond VA.
It was great to talk with everyone because we all went in such diverse directions with our degrees. It turns out that all the presenters have been considering going back to school to get their MFA's.
I guess why I'm writing this all to you in the first place was that having to explain to the soon-to-be graduates of UMW about the difficulties getting into an art graduate program in the first place, and then explaining a little bit about my work and the work ethic I had to develop, I guess it all energized me a bit to work even harder this semester. Because the truth is that I tried for two years to get into a grad program, and now that I have, I'm sure as hell not going to waste it.
So I was invited to do a careers panel for the University of Mary Washington. The panel was tonight, Monday the 30th at 4:00 pm in one of my old art history lecture halls. The panel consisted of me (2003 graduate)and three other girls who had graduated in 2004. Basically the panel is put on once a year for students in the art and art history department at UMW. The panel always consists of graduated students from UMW who have found work with thier BA in studio art degrees. Of course, I was asked to come back because the amount of students interested in graduate school, so they thought i'd be able to talk a little bit about how I got into the UARTS program and all the troubles I had getting into graduate school in the first place.
The panel was great! I'd say about twenty students showed up and we talked for about an hour and fourty five minutes. One presenter was a highschool art teacher, one was the productions coordinator for George Washington University and the other was a gallery manager for a gallery in Richmond VA.
It was great to talk with everyone because we all went in such diverse directions with our degrees. It turns out that all the presenters have been considering going back to school to get their MFA's.
I guess why I'm writing this all to you in the first place was that having to explain to the soon-to-be graduates of UMW about the difficulties getting into an art graduate program in the first place, and then explaining a little bit about my work and the work ethic I had to develop, I guess it all energized me a bit to work even harder this semester. Because the truth is that I tried for two years to get into a grad program, and now that I have, I'm sure as hell not going to waste it.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Spring bookshelf
As promised, here is a list of what people have said they'll be reading and reearching this semester. Please take it upon yourself to recommend readings to one another if you can think of anything.
Paul DeMarco Will be writing his paper as a mock submission to an academic conference. An abstract will be available in late February.
Keith Gruber intends "to explore two, integral topics that I will be pursuing in the studio; the Seven Virtues (supplemented with the Seven Sins), and the use/ meaning of the white spaces used in my paintings." On his list are the following texts:
Chris Houston wants to "begin an investigation of work by painters and literary artists who present imagery portraying a sense of desolation and social (human) separation, perhaps even despair." In my responses to his proposal, I've sent some specific texts, but I would encourage you to offer your thoughts as well, either in the comments here or by emailing him directly.
Vanessa Juriga "plan[s] to focus on extremely specific points during the spring 2006 semester: Abstract Expressionism, Chinese Calligraphy and landscapes, Sumi-e, and word art." She'll be using:
Tim Murphy will be looking at the art of children and other primates. He will be reading:
Aubrey Navarro plans to do research into a topic of importance to her studio work: folly. She sent a list of titles she'll be looing into:
Mike Reenock is addressing the theme of "representation of the self in narrative" and will be producing a single long paper this semester. Its bibliography will evolve as it is written.
Terri Saulin will be addressing the importance of complexity contemporary art, partly inspired by the Swarm show at the fabric Workshop and Museum. She'll be reading:
Maleese Schick will be writing numerous short papers about her studio work and issues concerning her faith, beginning by revisiting Eve's role in the Fall of Man. Her readings include:
Deb Yarrington moves from fairy tales to myth this term. She'll be reading:
Paul DeMarco Will be writing his paper as a mock submission to an academic conference. An abstract will be available in late February.
Keith Gruber intends "to explore two, integral topics that I will be pursuing in the studio; the Seven Virtues (supplemented with the Seven Sins), and the use/ meaning of the white spaces used in my paintings." On his list are the following texts:
• Batchlor, David. Chromophobia. London. Reaktion Books Ltd: 2000.
• de Goya, Francisco. Los Caprichos. Toronto. Dover Inc: 1969.
• Manguel, Alberto. Reading Pictures: A History of Love and Hate. New York. Random House: 2001.
Chris Houston wants to "begin an investigation of work by painters and literary artists who present imagery portraying a sense of desolation and social (human) separation, perhaps even despair." In my responses to his proposal, I've sent some specific texts, but I would encourage you to offer your thoughts as well, either in the comments here or by emailing him directly.
Vanessa Juriga "plan[s] to focus on extremely specific points during the spring 2006 semester: Abstract Expressionism, Chinese Calligraphy and landscapes, Sumi-e, and word art." She'll be using:
• Clarke, David. Images of Asia: Modern Chinese Art. Oxford University Press. 2000.
• Gaugh, Harry F. The Vital Gesture: Franz Kline. Cross River Press, Ltd. 1085.
• Sato, Shozo. The Art of Sumi-e: Appreciation, Techniques, and Application. Kodansha International Ltd. 1984.
• Silbergeld, Jerome. Mind Landscapes: The Paintings of C.C. Wang. University of Washington Press. 1987.
Tim Murphy will be looking at the art of children and other primates. He will be reading:
• Chaminade, T., Meltzoff, A. N., & Decety, J. “Does the end justify the means? A PET exploration
of the mechanisms involved in human imitation.” NeuroImage, 15, (2002)
• Decety, J., Chaminade, T., Gre`zes, J., & Meltzoff, A. N. “A PET exploration of the neural
mechanisms involved in reciprocal imitation.” NeuroImage, 15, (2002)
• Galef, B.G., Jr., “The question of animal culture.” Human Nature, 3 (1992)
• Morris, Desmond, The Biology of Art: A study of the Picture-Making Behavior of the Great Apes
and Its Relationship to Human Art (New York: Knopf, 1962)
• Shiller, Paul H., “Figural Preferences in the Drawings of a Chimpanzee,” Journal of Comparative
and Physiological Psychology No. 44 (1951)
• Whiten, A., Custance, D. M., Gomez, J. C., Texidor, P., & Bard, K. A.. “Imitative learning of
artificial fruit processing in children (Homo sapiens) and chimpanzees (Pan
troglodytes).” Journal of Comparative Psychology No. ?? (1996)
Aubrey Navarro plans to do research into a topic of importance to her studio work: folly. She sent a list of titles she'll be looing into:
• Firchow, P. “H. G. Wells's "Time Machine": In Search of Time Future--and Time Past”. The Midwest Quarterly v. 45 no. 2 (Winter 2004) p. 123-36
• Tournier, M. “Jules Verne and Around the World in Eighty Days”. World Literature Today v. 76 no. 2 (Spring 2002) p. 107-8
• Gibbs-Smith, Charles Harvard. The Invention of the aeroplane, 1799-1909. New York, Taplinger, 1966
• Van Dulken, Stephen. Inventing the 19th century : 100 inventions that shaped the Victorian Age from aspirin to the Zeppelin. New York : New York University Press, 2001
• Van Dulken, Stephen. Inventing the 20th century : 100 inventions that shaped the world from the airplane to the zipper. New York : New York University Press, 2002
Mike Reenock is addressing the theme of "representation of the self in narrative" and will be producing a single long paper this semester. Its bibliography will evolve as it is written.
Terri Saulin will be addressing the importance of complexity contemporary art, partly inspired by the Swarm show at the fabric Workshop and Museum. She'll be reading:
• Batchelor, David, Chromophobia. Reaktion Books Ltd., London, 2000, 2002 & 2005.
• Beckley, Bill, David Shapiro, Ed. Uncontrollable Beauty. Allworth Press, NY, NY, 1998.
• Danto, Arthur C., After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1997.
• Danto, Arthur C., The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art. Open Court / Carus Publishing, Chicago and La Salle Ill., 2003.
• Del Vecchio, Mark, Garth Clark, Postmodern Ceramics. Thames and Hudson, NY, NY 2001.
Elkins, James, The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing. A Harvest Edition, Harcourt, Inc., San Diego, NY & London, 1996.
• Hickey, Dave, Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy. Art Issues. Press, Los Angeles, CA, 1997.
• Hickey, Dave, The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty. Art Issues. Press, Los Angeles, CA, 1993, 5th impression, 1999.
• Johnson, Steven, Emergence: The connected lives of ants, brains cities and software. Scribner, NY, NY, 2001.
• Miller, Abbott, Ellen Lupton, Swarm. The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Phila. PA, 2005.
• Waldrop, M. Mitchell, Complexity: The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. A Touchstone Book, Simon &Schuster, NY, London, Toronto & Sydney, 1992.
• Wolfram, Stephen, A New Kind of Science. Wolfram Media, Inc., Champaign, Il., 2002.
Maleese Schick will be writing numerous short papers about her studio work and issues concerning her faith, beginning by revisiting Eve's role in the Fall of Man. Her readings include:
• Adler, Rachel.Engendering Judaism : An Inclusive Theology and Ethics.Boston: Beacon Press 1999.
• Baskin, Judith. Midrashic Women: Formations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature. Hanover and London: Bradeis University Press, 199?
• Biale, Rachel. Women and Jewish Law : The Essential Texts, Their History, and Their Relevance for Today New York: Shocken Books inc, 1984
• Cox, Meg, The Heart of Family: Searchung America for New Traditions That Fulfill Us.New York: Random House, 1998.
• Plaskow, Judith,The Coming of Lilith : Essays on Feminism, Judaism, and Sexual Ethics, 1972-2003. Boston, 2005.
• Plaskow, Judith, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminst Perspective. San Francisco, 1991.
• Ochs Vanessa, Sarah Laughed, Modern lessons from thee wisdom and stories of biblical women. New York: Mc Graw Hill, 2005
Deb Yarrington moves from fairy tales to myth this term. She'll be reading:
• Tony Cragg: Signs of LifeWenzel Jacob
• Michael Lucero: Sculpture 1976-199Mark Richard Leach
• Danville Chadbourne (Ceramics Monthly article by Jim LavillaHavelin)
• Son of a Witch Gregory Maguire
• Mirror Mirror Gregory Maguire
• The Power of Myth Joseph Campbell
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces Joseph Campbell
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Hoodwinked
Hello all! Looking Forward to a productive semester! I've decided that one of my goals for this semester is to write on the blog at least once or twice a week. I have a ton of reading on Myth and I just added seven more books on the figure in clay. I just figured if I write a little bit about all the reading and research that I was doing this semester it would not only be a helpful synopsis for me but it might start some great conversations with anyone else who might be heading in similar directions.
So I decided to see the new animated movie "Hoodwinked". I don't know how many of you are into animated movies, but if you haven't guessed it yet, I'm kind of a kid at heart when it comes to animation. Truth be told, I own way to many animated films....and yes...I watch them all...Over and over again....I know all the words...
Anywho, "Hoodwinked" was a cute story. Basically the writer decided to take the tale of Little Red Riding Hood and twist it up a bit. This reminded me greatly of how Gregory Maguire has turned the story of the Wizard of Oz around with his books "Wicked" and "Son of a Witch". The gist is, Little Red, Granny, the Wolf, and the Woodcutter are all caught up in this scandal going on the woods. It seems that somebody has been going around the forest stealing "goody" recipes from all the local sweet stores. It just so happens that Granny heads up the most successful goody industry in all the land, which makes her a prime suspect. The movie picks up where the story leaves off. All the characters converge in Granny's house and that's when the backstories come into play.
You get to see the story from the perspectives of each character as they live their lives and eventually meet up on that fateful day at Granny's house. You see Red as a delivery girl working for her Granny who wishes to get out of the family business. You see the Wolf as a reporter just trying to get the story of the goody thief published and solved. You see Granny as the daredevil, thrill-seeker, who gets caught up in the scandal and finally the Woodsman as an out-of-work actor just trying to "be the part" of a woodsman.
There are a slew of other cute and sarcastic characters that add to the story. I have to say that the sarcasm and wit is non-stop, but its a tame enough movie to bring your kids to. I think if I were to retell a fairy tale, or in that case, if anyone in today's society, witht the sarcasm, wit and humor that tends to run ramped today were to retell a fairy tale, this might be the outcome.
Yes, there is still that happy ending, because it wouldn't be a fairy tale if there wasn't one. Do the characters learn their lessons? Yes, and family members are brought closer together. Is there magic and enchantment involved? Yes, I'm sure I'm not the only one who as a kid thought about jumping off of something with a cape or an umbrella just to see if it truly would make me fly. So I think "Hoodwinked" does its job as a fairy tale and puts a nice spin on an old classic.
Lets face it, Little Red Riding Hood has had a shady past with a lot of sexual innuendo and explicit language. This is a fresh 21st century child-like spin, but with plenty of adult irony and wit to keep any audience interested and entertained. SO, if any of you got an hour and a half, go see it! Its a nice way to spend an evening!
So I decided to see the new animated movie "Hoodwinked". I don't know how many of you are into animated movies, but if you haven't guessed it yet, I'm kind of a kid at heart when it comes to animation. Truth be told, I own way to many animated films....and yes...I watch them all...Over and over again....I know all the words...
Anywho, "Hoodwinked" was a cute story. Basically the writer decided to take the tale of Little Red Riding Hood and twist it up a bit. This reminded me greatly of how Gregory Maguire has turned the story of the Wizard of Oz around with his books "Wicked" and "Son of a Witch". The gist is, Little Red, Granny, the Wolf, and the Woodcutter are all caught up in this scandal going on the woods. It seems that somebody has been going around the forest stealing "goody" recipes from all the local sweet stores. It just so happens that Granny heads up the most successful goody industry in all the land, which makes her a prime suspect. The movie picks up where the story leaves off. All the characters converge in Granny's house and that's when the backstories come into play.
You get to see the story from the perspectives of each character as they live their lives and eventually meet up on that fateful day at Granny's house. You see Red as a delivery girl working for her Granny who wishes to get out of the family business. You see the Wolf as a reporter just trying to get the story of the goody thief published and solved. You see Granny as the daredevil, thrill-seeker, who gets caught up in the scandal and finally the Woodsman as an out-of-work actor just trying to "be the part" of a woodsman.
There are a slew of other cute and sarcastic characters that add to the story. I have to say that the sarcasm and wit is non-stop, but its a tame enough movie to bring your kids to. I think if I were to retell a fairy tale, or in that case, if anyone in today's society, witht the sarcasm, wit and humor that tends to run ramped today were to retell a fairy tale, this might be the outcome.
Yes, there is still that happy ending, because it wouldn't be a fairy tale if there wasn't one. Do the characters learn their lessons? Yes, and family members are brought closer together. Is there magic and enchantment involved? Yes, I'm sure I'm not the only one who as a kid thought about jumping off of something with a cape or an umbrella just to see if it truly would make me fly. So I think "Hoodwinked" does its job as a fairy tale and puts a nice spin on an old classic.
Lets face it, Little Red Riding Hood has had a shady past with a lot of sexual innuendo and explicit language. This is a fresh 21st century child-like spin, but with plenty of adult irony and wit to keep any audience interested and entertained. SO, if any of you got an hour and a half, go see it! Its a nice way to spend an evening!
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Writing Deadlines
A gentle reminder that I am trying to deal with the chaos of last semester by having deadlines this spring. I've cribbed them from Tom and Pat, so please arrange to send writing at the appointed times.
Tuesday, January 17 - Class starts - Email or send instructor study plan by January 20th.
Friday, February 3 - End of week 3 - Email update to instructor summarizing first three weeks of research, plus any corrections to study plan.
Friday, February 17 - End of week 5 - First paper due.
Friday, March 3 - End of week 7 - Email update to instructor.
Week of March 6 - Spring Break - Blog Storm
Friday, March 31 - End of week 10 - Second paper due.
Friday, April 14 - End of week 12 - Progress report on third paper.
Friday, May 6 - End of week 15 - Third paper due. Participants will present papers at a class to be held at the beginning of the summer session.
Tuesday, January 17 - Class starts - Email or send instructor study plan by January 20th.
Friday, February 3 - End of week 3 - Email update to instructor summarizing first three weeks of research, plus any corrections to study plan.
Friday, February 17 - End of week 5 - First paper due.
Friday, March 3 - End of week 7 - Email update to instructor.
Week of March 6 - Spring Break - Blog Storm
Friday, March 31 - End of week 10 - Second paper due.
Friday, April 14 - End of week 12 - Progress report on third paper.
Friday, May 6 - End of week 15 - Third paper due. Participants will present papers at a class to be held at the beginning of the summer session.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Spring Proposal Highlight
Just thought I would pass along a summary of what I plan to be painting/ researching this spring, it is going to be big step for me, both in size/ quantity and meaning. I reckon I can pull it off, I'm just going to have to paint like my hair's on fire. Any and all feedback is welcome, good luck to all with the spring semester, Keith.
"For the spring semester I hope to execute seven life-sized, portraits of teenagers residing in the dorm where I live/ work. I would like to base these paintings on either the Seven Sins or the Seven Virtues, depending on the findings from my preliminary research. These portraits will be painted in the same manner as my recent portraits, using oil on gauche, and placing the figure on a stark white background. Ultimately I will be treating these seven portraits as one work, and devising a composition that establishes a narrative between the painted figures as well as the viewer."
"For the spring semester I hope to execute seven life-sized, portraits of teenagers residing in the dorm where I live/ work. I would like to base these paintings on either the Seven Sins or the Seven Virtues, depending on the findings from my preliminary research. These portraits will be painted in the same manner as my recent portraits, using oil on gauche, and placing the figure on a stark white background. Ultimately I will be treating these seven portraits as one work, and devising a composition that establishes a narrative between the painted figures as well as the viewer."
Saturday, January 07, 2006
So where is this painting hanging?
" My Desktop" by yours truly. 2005, Acrylic on Canvas, 36"x 49.5"Finished or unfinished the bottles are starting to disappear (does he mean the bottles at home or in the painting?), and my direction is in doubt. Is this painting begining to be about light, space, color, atmosphere, social commentary, or something completely different? I invite your comments, opinions, and frank criticism. I'm seeking influence. -C.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)