Monday, November 29, 2010
PAM curators & 50/50 exhibition
Pam Curators and the 50/50 Exhibition
I really enjoyed the 50/50 exhibition at the Portland Art Museum. Not necessarily for the works of art in the exhibition themselves, although they too were appealing, but rather the story behind the exhibition. I found it endearing and refreshing that all the works belonged to a modest couple in New York who had been collecting for decades. They were able to collect over 4,500 works of art on a modest income and stored them all in their small apartment. Their personalities came through in their collection within the pieces that they had, and the similarities between them. Their collection also said a lot about them by having many of the pieces been given to them personally by the artists themselves. They developed relationships with the artists and a name for themselves as collectors. It was interesting looking at the exhibition from the stand point of the curator. It was decided that the collection would be split up and divided into 50 pieces for 50 states. The pieces were randomly selected, after DC got their picks and then sent to museums around America. As the curator it was their job to figure out a way to display the works in a cohesive manor. The exhibition flowed like this; the first works to be displayed were those of more well known artists. Then it moved on to technique and process of making the art. The voice that sang out most from the collection was those of the collectors and their personalities along with the thought that most of the pieces wouldn’t have had the chance to be shown in such a way if not for them as well.
When were able to have one on one time and learn about everything that goes on and all the work involved in making exhibits and how the Portland Art Museum operates I was astounded by all the efforts. I didn’t know the time, money and science that goes into making the Portland Art Museum what it is. They already have exhibitions planned two years in advance, and they cost millions to bring to actuality. There is science behind the lighting, the temperature and the wall color. And they even pay attention to tribe affiliation and wishes when it comes to Native American exhibitions. One thing that was said that really stuck with me was, “curators do more than just hang up art work with a hammer and a nail. The should be called preservers, because that’s what they do. They Preserve art.” I thought that was really neat and encapsulated all that a curator does.
I really enjoyed the 50/50 exhibition at the Portland Art Museum. Not necessarily for the works of art in the exhibition themselves, although they too were appealing, but rather the story behind the exhibition. I found it endearing and refreshing that all the works belonged to a modest couple in New York who had been collecting for decades. They were able to collect over 4,500 works of art on a modest income and stored them all in their small apartment. Their personalities came through in their collection within the pieces that they had, and the similarities between them. Their collection also said a lot about them by having many of the pieces been given to them personally by the artists themselves. They developed relationships with the artists and a name for themselves as collectors. It was interesting looking at the exhibition from the stand point of the curator. It was decided that the collection would be split up and divided into 50 pieces for 50 states. The pieces were randomly selected, after DC got their picks and then sent to museums around America. As the curator it was their job to figure out a way to display the works in a cohesive manor. The exhibition flowed like this; the first works to be displayed were those of more well known artists. Then it moved on to technique and process of making the art. The voice that sang out most from the collection was those of the collectors and their personalities along with the thought that most of the pieces wouldn’t have had the chance to be shown in such a way if not for them as well.
When were able to have one on one time and learn about everything that goes on and all the work involved in making exhibits and how the Portland Art Museum operates I was astounded by all the efforts. I didn’t know the time, money and science that goes into making the Portland Art Museum what it is. They already have exhibitions planned two years in advance, and they cost millions to bring to actuality. There is science behind the lighting, the temperature and the wall color. And they even pay attention to tribe affiliation and wishes when it comes to Native American exhibitions. One thing that was said that really stuck with me was, “curators do more than just hang up art work with a hammer and a nail. The should be called preservers, because that’s what they do. They Preserve art.” I thought that was really neat and encapsulated all that a curator does.
collateral matters @MCC
Upon first entering the exhibit, my first instinct was to reach out and start touching and navigating through the paperwork that was neatly hanging in slip covers along the first two walls. It is a know fact, that in most museums, the displays and works are off limits to the curiosity of your fingers, and so I only quickly flipped through a few pages after noticing my fellow classmates were doing the same. After listening to Kate Bingaman and Clifton Burt speak about the exhibit that they collaborated on, everything made sense. The exhibit called for interaction. Everything was intentional from the way things were hung, to the time line on the far wall of the exhibit. They wanted the visitor to have a similar experience to the one they had when going through the paperwork and collateral trying to figure out how they were going to put together the exhibition. They thoughtfully picked out the most interesting pieces from each file and ordered them in chronological order and placed each individual paperwork in each individual case in a cover slip and then hung them together on a orange clip board. These hung all over two whole walls. Each one telling a story. On the far wall was a time line, spanning from the 1940’s to the 1980’s. Having the collateral from the different eras lined up in juxtaposition called attention to the changes that were taking place due to advancement in technology and society. In the 40’s the collateral was small, imageless and painstakingly hand written or typed on a typewriter. Further along the time line images start appearing, works start to get larger, there becomes a focus on the artist and color appears. The time line ends in the 80’s because collateral takes a turn as the world starts to get logged into the web. After Kate and Clifton finish speaking and give us free range to play and explore I tried out the type writer, making a spelling error in almost every sentence, while others practiced their penmanship at the stationary station and some read through the clips boards or other collateral story lines behind the glass panels. The fascinating thing about this exhibit is that it calls your attention to all the unseen work that goes on behind an exhibit that makes it actually happen. It shows the changes of our society, from single handedly writing every resume one did and snail mail to looking at where our society stands now with all our technological advances. The exhibit shows the hard work of the people behind the scenes and brings them into the foreground, who would have never guessed that what they were doing would be looked at as a form of art within itself. These collections of collateral should be appreciated for their stories and personalities, for the work and the time that is represented by all the many, many pieces of paperwork. They give a look into people’s lives and of our society’s past that is seemingly being replaced with e-mail, internet and monotone Times New Roman. It’s not that, how we do behind the scenes today is bad, indeed it’s quite quick and handy, but rather our past should be appreciated and thoughtfully perused.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
5. Five images of five artworks by artists who use appropriation.
Artist:Aleksandra Mir
Title: Che Guevarra Collage
Media: Collage on paper
Year: 2006
Bio: Born 1967 Lubin, Poland. Citizen of Sweden. Lives in NYC, USA and Palermo, Sicily.
Artist: Barbara Kruger
Title: Untitled, Your Every Wish is Our Command
Media: Gelatin silver print
Year: 1982
Bio: Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist. Much of her work consists of black and white photographs overlaid with declarative captions—in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique. The phrases in her works often include use of pronouns such as "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they".
Artist: Jeff Koons
Title: Balloon Flower
Media: High chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating
Year: 1995-2000
Bio: Jeff Koons (born January 21, 1955) is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces.
Title: Clown Skull
Date: 1989
Media: Plastic
Description: Relics Series
Bio: Vik Muniz was born in São Paulo, Brazil in 1961. He is a visual artist who lives in New York City, USA. Muniz began his career as a sculptor in the late 1980s after relocating from Brazil to Chicago and later to New York. His early work grew out of a post-Fluxus aesthetic and often involved visual puns and jokes. His most famous work from this period is “Clown Skull”, a human skull augmented w/ a clown-nose shaped protuberance.
Artist: Mark Tribe
Site specific public art project
Title: Carpark
Media: Film
Date:1994
Bio:Mark Tribe (born 1966, San Francisco, CA) is an artist and curator interested art, technology, and politics. He is focused on developing a critical understanding of the complex
and interdependent relationships between technology and culture.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Michael Reinsch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJvo3dKK3U0&feature=related :a link to Michael's video of Maypole located on YouTube. There are other videos of his performance art on YouTube as well.
Today when Michael walked into our class to present his manifesto, based on his appearance of a white button up, tie and black slacks, I would have never guessed he would have presented the performance that he did. All I could think, in between mentally acknowledging the truth in which he was speaking and literally laughing out loud, was this guy has balls. And, yes, I am speaking about more than just the one's visible through his long johns.
At first, when he started stripping I presumed that this guy was nutty, only to find out that he truly is, but in an interesting and intriguing way. Behind what may seem like insanity is actually a lot of thought and creativity that ultimately puts out a very understandable and relatable message.
When he brought up how he likes to use the Internet as a place for his art to exist and derive from, it related perfectly with what we have been spending so much time talking about in class. Especially with the last article we just read “Technical Reproduction and its Significance”. Michael is able to utilize the Internet to keep an archive of his visual work and also a way to spread it. However, watching the recordings of his work is immensely different than experiencing his work first hand in class today.
I found it incredibly intriguing that he accumulates other people's blogs that he finds online and meshes them together in a very well thought out monologue of sorts. I would have never thought of turning other people's blogs into art, (a story perhaps, however he is also doing that as well) but the way in which Michael has decided to truly bring them to life in an art performance, I find to be quite unique. I also really enjoy the irony that I have experienced in his work. Not only in his manifesto from class today where he was “for an art“ using blurbs from blogs about hating art, but even in watching his recorded pieces as well. For example, in the video link above of his performance in Salem, Maypole, having his setting look like a party with streamers while reciting commentary on the recession and work while physically being entangled and trapped in the streamers as he spins and becomes fatigued. Definitaly not a party.
Today when Michael walked into our class to present his manifesto, based on his appearance of a white button up, tie and black slacks, I would have never guessed he would have presented the performance that he did. All I could think, in between mentally acknowledging the truth in which he was speaking and literally laughing out loud, was this guy has balls. And, yes, I am speaking about more than just the one's visible through his long johns.
At first, when he started stripping I presumed that this guy was nutty, only to find out that he truly is, but in an interesting and intriguing way. Behind what may seem like insanity is actually a lot of thought and creativity that ultimately puts out a very understandable and relatable message.
When he brought up how he likes to use the Internet as a place for his art to exist and derive from, it related perfectly with what we have been spending so much time talking about in class. Especially with the last article we just read “Technical Reproduction and its Significance”. Michael is able to utilize the Internet to keep an archive of his visual work and also a way to spread it. However, watching the recordings of his work is immensely different than experiencing his work first hand in class today.
I found it incredibly intriguing that he accumulates other people's blogs that he finds online and meshes them together in a very well thought out monologue of sorts. I would have never thought of turning other people's blogs into art, (a story perhaps, however he is also doing that as well) but the way in which Michael has decided to truly bring them to life in an art performance, I find to be quite unique. I also really enjoy the irony that I have experienced in his work. Not only in his manifesto from class today where he was “for an art“ using blurbs from blogs about hating art, but even in watching his recorded pieces as well. For example, in the video link above of his performance in Salem, Maypole, having his setting look like a party with streamers while reciting commentary on the recession and work while physically being entangled and trapped in the streamers as he spins and becomes fatigued. Definitaly not a party.
Reading response for 13. Technical Reproduction and its Significance by Ruth Pelzer p197-213
Summary of main points:
The woodcut from the early 1400's represents the earliest form of the reproducible image. Later came engravings, etchings in the sixteenth century and in the eighteenth century, the lithograph. Which for those times was a huge invention resulting in faster drawings and better quality of prints. Now of course there are many forms of technical produced images. There is photography, cinema films, television and most recently the Internet and web. All of these forms have had there affects on art, the world, culture and modernity. It may have been thought that with the next new invention of a way to create technical images would lead to an extinction of the previous ways. However, in art and the media, every creation still holds it's place in one way or another. For example, the television is a way for us to receive our news, however during the time of 9/11 newspaper sales went up because television doesn't do the same exact job as the newspaper and the photographs. As the article states, "Different media complement rather than replace one another. In the case of the current events, television gives the viewer as sense of participation almost as the events unfold, whereas the written word and printed photographic image provide relative permanence and hence carry more authority" (200). Today, because there are so many technically reproduced and produced images around us it has affected our notion of reality, into a state of 'hyperreality'. T.V and cinema largely affect this. T.V is such a hug part of American culture that we are incredibly and perhaps unknowingly greatly affected by it, thus concerning Baudrillards statement regarding 'the dissolution of TV into life and life into T.V'. Also in film and television we, the audience, are seeing everything repeated, similar ideas, story lines, plots, meaning etc. Everything is recycled, but everything is pushed further in order to keep up the viewers excitement. What may have seemed provocative 40 years ago, could be thought of as boring today, and culturally what we are viewing is setting the tone for our society.
Another aspect of 'hyperreality' is being able to experience something without actually experiencing it. You may feel you know Rome, because you have seen pictures or viewed it on T.V, but you have never been there, never smelled it, tasted the food, encountered the culture and history, but yet you feel you know Rome. This is very true about art in the same regards. Many people would say they know Michelangelo's The Sistine Chapel, yet few could say they have actual been physically there and witnessed it first hand. The reproduction of art through technological advances has its pluses and minuses. The artist's work because of this can have a greater audience then they ever imagined. The masses can be able to view such things even if they do not have the privilege of experiencing them first hand. But, it is true that the 'aura' of the work can be lost by not witnessing it firsthand. But what is worse, to never witness at all, or to witness reproduced? Also art can be reproduced in a different context. It can be turned into something completely different then attended. Art can be reproduced and brought into popular culture and then having a market value, where the 'aura' is actually intensified in terms of commodity fetishism.
Personal reflection:
I agree that different media complement rather than replace. If even their intentions are to do relatively the same thing, the outcome is different, therefore they both are needed or retain their importance. However, I feel that with the last decade's explosion of technology it is compromising other media forms. The Internet, could be used to replace nearly everything, beside the experience. You can watch movies on the web, watch T.V on the web, view art on the web, read articles, news, you can even create art on the computer. I just fear that the place for the artist will be lost. We have already explored the loss of the author and this is very true because of technical reproduction. Don't get me wrong, I love the availability, but in a way I do feel that technical reproduction and technical production is killing the old paint and canvas. It also helps to spread the revenue and audience but the demand for technological images is calling for flat copy of something multidimensional. Technical reproduction opens many doors and closes some windows. I feel it subtracts from the grittiness of the work, the fingerprints of the audience, but yet it is able to help the art commercially. In our daily lives I feel we are so bombarded by technological media that we are loosing authenticity and being emerged into a solely technical world.
The woodcut from the early 1400's represents the earliest form of the reproducible image. Later came engravings, etchings in the sixteenth century and in the eighteenth century, the lithograph. Which for those times was a huge invention resulting in faster drawings and better quality of prints. Now of course there are many forms of technical produced images. There is photography, cinema films, television and most recently the Internet and web. All of these forms have had there affects on art, the world, culture and modernity. It may have been thought that with the next new invention of a way to create technical images would lead to an extinction of the previous ways. However, in art and the media, every creation still holds it's place in one way or another. For example, the television is a way for us to receive our news, however during the time of 9/11 newspaper sales went up because television doesn't do the same exact job as the newspaper and the photographs. As the article states, "Different media complement rather than replace one another. In the case of the current events, television gives the viewer as sense of participation almost as the events unfold, whereas the written word and printed photographic image provide relative permanence and hence carry more authority" (200). Today, because there are so many technically reproduced and produced images around us it has affected our notion of reality, into a state of 'hyperreality'. T.V and cinema largely affect this. T.V is such a hug part of American culture that we are incredibly and perhaps unknowingly greatly affected by it, thus concerning Baudrillards statement regarding 'the dissolution of TV into life and life into T.V'. Also in film and television we, the audience, are seeing everything repeated, similar ideas, story lines, plots, meaning etc. Everything is recycled, but everything is pushed further in order to keep up the viewers excitement. What may have seemed provocative 40 years ago, could be thought of as boring today, and culturally what we are viewing is setting the tone for our society.
Another aspect of 'hyperreality' is being able to experience something without actually experiencing it. You may feel you know Rome, because you have seen pictures or viewed it on T.V, but you have never been there, never smelled it, tasted the food, encountered the culture and history, but yet you feel you know Rome. This is very true about art in the same regards. Many people would say they know Michelangelo's The Sistine Chapel, yet few could say they have actual been physically there and witnessed it first hand. The reproduction of art through technological advances has its pluses and minuses. The artist's work because of this can have a greater audience then they ever imagined. The masses can be able to view such things even if they do not have the privilege of experiencing them first hand. But, it is true that the 'aura' of the work can be lost by not witnessing it firsthand. But what is worse, to never witness at all, or to witness reproduced? Also art can be reproduced in a different context. It can be turned into something completely different then attended. Art can be reproduced and brought into popular culture and then having a market value, where the 'aura' is actually intensified in terms of commodity fetishism.
Personal reflection:
I agree that different media complement rather than replace. If even their intentions are to do relatively the same thing, the outcome is different, therefore they both are needed or retain their importance. However, I feel that with the last decade's explosion of technology it is compromising other media forms. The Internet, could be used to replace nearly everything, beside the experience. You can watch movies on the web, watch T.V on the web, view art on the web, read articles, news, you can even create art on the computer. I just fear that the place for the artist will be lost. We have already explored the loss of the author and this is very true because of technical reproduction. Don't get me wrong, I love the availability, but in a way I do feel that technical reproduction and technical production is killing the old paint and canvas. It also helps to spread the revenue and audience but the demand for technological images is calling for flat copy of something multidimensional. Technical reproduction opens many doors and closes some windows. I feel it subtracts from the grittiness of the work, the fingerprints of the audience, but yet it is able to help the art commercially. In our daily lives I feel we are so bombarded by technological media that we are loosing authenticity and being emerged into a solely technical world.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
What world views are brought together in the 2010 Murakami exhibition at versailles and what meaning do you think arises from the contact?
Murakami himself, as an artist is reaching iconic status. In 2008 he was on the list of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People and was the only visual artist on the list. Murakami is a power house dominating in Japanese contemporary art. He is a master of Kawaii and Manga. Murakami started out doing traditional Japanese art, but found it to be irrelevant and switched to contemporary art with a focus on marketing. He has been deemed the “Andy Warhol of Japan” except he isn’t replicating already iconic images, he is creating his own. Murakami’s work is so popular it is on Louie Vuitton bags, key chains, T-shirts, mouse pads, dolls, blackberry cases and ranges from cheap to extremely expensive. He has even worked with Western Pop icons such as Britney Spears and Kanye West. His Paintings and Sculptures are bringing in upwards of 9 million each and his merchandise brings in a yearly turnover of 13 million.
By bringing his work into the Château de Versailles it is bringing together two dream worlds. The Château de Versailles is known for its extreme extravagance and seems like it could be the only place that make Murakami’s sculptures with a price tag of 9 million seem like no big thing. The Château de Versailles is one of Western History’s most lavish symbols and seemingly Murakami is turning into one of Japan’s most influential and recognizable symbols. When at first these two might seem like an odd pair, in fact go hand in hand when looked at from a the perspective of consumerism, consumption and cultural relevance.
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