Donald Morgan and Leo Castelli

Donald Morgan came to my Art 111 class this week and presented his work.  His work is very reminiscent of the 1960’s artwork.  The first work that he started doing was inspired by Per Kirkeby during his undergraduate work.  He described how he was interested in the quality of the work that someone does.  It’s not the content of the painting that makes it good, it’s the materials itself; the quality of a line (the thickness or thinness of it).  After school he went to work for Mary Heilmann and I believe that it was in New York where he worked for her.  He describes his work as straightforward and that there usually isn’t any underlying meanings or personal anecdotes.  There did seem to be a few pieces that reflected his childhood and the place in which he grew up.  Most of his work is sensitive to the space around him.  He dealt a lot with nature and the different colors and shapes and silhouettes that it makes.

His work was interesting to me because it seemed like some of it was compelling but some of it wasn’t.  His process of making work seemed so simple and it had a simple look to it but it wasn’t simple!  The actual materials and detail of his work looked complicated.  That is really very interesting to me because it takes a lot of hard work to make something look so simple!  He had to do a lot of exacto-knife cutting to make positive and negative space and all of the wood he used to make his sculptures.  Oh yeah, why does he call himself a painter?  It seemed like most of the work that he did was sculpture work.  I understand that he also painted the sculptures but it seemed interesting that ‘painting’ was the profession he chose to define himself in.  I guess it doesn’t really matter which one he wants to be called.  Anyway, whatever he does, his work would fit in well with the 1960’s.

You know, like the Leo Castelli crowd?  He would fit right in!  His work and Lichenstein’s work seemed a lot alike.  They both did sculptures but also a lot of painting and drawing.  And the simplicity of both of their designs went well together.  It seems like Morgan might be stuck in that time frame because his work was brilliantly reminiscent of it.  In the thick of it all though, all of these people seem to be, ultimately, painters at heart.  The discovery of Castelli’s crowd seemed to be obvious to Castelli.  He knew that the artists he had chosen were innovative.  And about the art world today?  Castelli says that the change in social and political interest is because that were are searching for the next best thing still.  I guess the next best thing hasn’t arrived then…

Castelli talked to the author of our class reading material, Suzi Gablik.  He said that “art is struggling again to do something meaningful” (472).  Which, I guess I don’t know enough about the art world to have that great of an opinion.  But it’s hard for me to take advice from a guy who grew up in the institution of galleries.  I mean, it’s good that he’s trying to stay connected with what is going on in the art world, in his old age and all.  I do trust him because of how old he is though, that means he has tons of experience and has important opinions.  I do believe that the people he discovered became famous because they were amazing artists.  I wish that more artists became as well-known as Andy Warhol because then I might be able to actually know more about the art world!

I think it’s interesting because during the 60’s there was a lot of controversy happening.  Times were starting to change then, especially with the Vietnam War and the artists work didn’t reflect any of that.  Nowadays, artist’s works are hugely reflective of the changing times and the “end of the world” scare.  I can’t say that it’s a bad change because I’m sure there are artists out there now who are just as talented and innovative as Castelli’s crew.  And, in a way, Castelli is right about the struggling art world.  It almost seems like the art world is in a state of change and can’t keep fighting to push out of that.  It’s a difficult struggle and I say that whichever direction it is headed, must be the right way.

"It was a matter of silence, not words." -Don Dellilo

“It was a matter of silence, not words.”  -Don Dellilo

To me, art seems like it’s usually a matter of silence.  It makes statements with its aesthetic qualities.  And, from what I’ve experienced, it’s usually most effective in its silence.  But if art is in the everyday aspects of life, then sometimes people take it for granted and end up ignoring the importance of it.  It might not be that they’re ignoring it; it might just be that they’re missing the point.  And if they can’t figure it out on their own, then maybe they need to be given the answers.  Sometimes people need others to give them a wake-up call; to bring them into the light.  Everyone needs help every once in a while and you shouldn’t be afraid to give them it.

This can be a touchy subject because some people don’t know how to tell others who might not understand something as well; it might hurt their feelings to be told that they’re missing the point.  Like with me; I am horrible at telling someone I need my space, or that I can’t do them favors anymore, or that they are annoying the heck out of me.  I think that’s why I like art so much, because it isn’t actually loud!  It’s all in your head; in the way you interpret things.  The definition of a work of art is all up to the viewer!  This means that art is loud.  Art is loud in terms of expression and content; in other words, form and value.

This week in my Art 111 class, it was all about form and value.  At first, I couldn’t understand why everyone was so focused on “form.”  What is the “form” of art, really?  Then I thought of the word “perform” and it all made sense.  The guest speaker from class today was Tannaz Farsi, an innovative sculptor who teaches at the University.  She said that, in art, she was mainly interested in her “form becoming a carrier for content.”  She talked about how she was more invested in the process and the ideas of her work, and not as much with the final product.  As I thought about that, I wondered how I felt about the process of how I create the art that I make.  I realized that my process is very involved, because when I draw, the perfectionist in me comes out.  I obsess over every detail and try and make my work as real as possible.  Sometimes I take that for granted, I know that the process is essentially what makes my art so special to me.  My form is my art.  The final product is simply that; just a product of my form, of how I work.  With Tannaz, she focused a lot on the strategic placements of her many objects.  All of her art seemed to deal with matters that meant a lot to her.  Hopefully that’s what all art deals with; the way in which one person views something.  Then those views are put out into the world for other people to interact with and to respond to.  So in a way, it’s historical.  And if it’s historical, then doesn’t that make something political?

This leads me into the reading this week.  It was a conversation with our author, Suzi Gablik, with a professor in the Performance Studies Department at New York University named Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett.  K.G. talked about the political formalism of art.  This means that the form of art is, essentially, political, no matter how you look at it.  She is exactly right, art and the performance of it will always be political.  It will always be debated and there will always be a group of people trying to make a collective decision about every aspect of it.  The making of art, the ideas that come before art, the viewing of art, the idea of art in general, the galleries or institutions of art.  I could go on forever.  It is an intense subject and the largest I have ever tried to give my opinions towards.  

The last thing I wanted to talk about was how both Tannaz and K.G. thought that everyday objects were important to them.  With Tannaz, it was in her work.  She said that she wanted to “take pedestrian objects and make meaning out of them.”  With K.G., she described it as “the arts of living” (417).  She says that the arts of living involve everything.  Every little detail of life is included into this idea.  Tannaz takes this idea and forces people to recognize it.  She wants people to think about the value of everyday objects; to look at them in multiple ways, as art.  What do the objects imply?  How does it relate to the piece?  All of these questions enter my head when I look at her work and I am forced to be involved in what she creates.  It definitely makes you not take things for granted and to think about them a little bit more each time you see them.

"Chance favors only the prepared mind..."

This week we read two conversations from our text book, “Conversations before the end of time” by Suzi Gablik. We also had a presentation from a photographer named Terri Warpinski this week in class. The first conversation in the book was with Richard Shusterman who is an associate professor of philosophy at Temple University. This professor feels that “we need to infuse our criticism of art with a wider awareness of its social role” (249). He believes in the experience of developing art and what that gives the artist. He wants to expand the roles of the galleries so that they show that “aesthetic experience clearly exceeds the limits of fine art and its objects” (250). I completely think that his ideas of how we should address this are correct, but it would take a lot of funding to incorporate more in the galleries, wouldn’t it? And then he went on to explain why the people who are in the galleries are such snobs! He said “Someone who can look at a landscape in a disinterested and disembodied way in terms of formal properties alone, and in terms of its sensual and emotional satisfactions, rather than in terms of what it means for one’s life practically, is someone who doesn’t have to worry about her needs and who can demonstrate great intellectual control” (252). This is exactly right and I have never realized this before! Someone who doesn’t normally think about the practicality of things is a great art gallery critic. But that’s horrible! Isn’t it? I think it is. Just because they come from a higher standard way of living, does that give them the right to be the critics? Maybe it does because they have more education… But what about the practical side of things? Why can’t someone who isn’t as fortunate critic it? Do you think they might feel intimidated because they know they shouldn’t be doing it? Or because they don’t have as much knowledge about the world as a student might. Then he addressed Aristotle’s view of “what you do affects who you are.” Or is it, who you are affects what you do? Well this made me immediately think about the movie Across the Universe when Max invites Jude over for Thanksgiving. What was interesting, was Jude’s response to the conversation. “Surely it’s not what you do, but how you do it.” And this is all the new way of thinking, which our next conversationalist addresses.

“In 1994, Carol Becker was appointed the dean and vice-president for academic affairs of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, having been a former chair of the graduate division before that” (355). The most interesting idea that Becker noticed about her students was that they have accepted that they won’t all be “art stars.” She says, “As modernists, when we were growing up, there was always the feeling that one was ever moving toward perfecting oneself, to greater and greater levels. Or that one was always trying to transcend the philosophical system that one came out of, to move to the next thing. These students don’t frame their life with that sense of movement or progress. They live much more in a moment-to-moment way that isn’t necessarily based on progression. It may not be going anywhere, and they can live with that” (377). Isn’t that how Max is depicted? He wants to figure out more about the world before he can find out what he wants to do and how he wants to develop himself. And that is exactly what Becker is talking about. She wants to include their academics as “ideas” that frame their school. These “ideas” would always be changing but they would always be thinking about the ideas that would be framing their art. That makes sense, because they would learn more. They would understand more about the world and their opinions of it and who they wanted to be would come from that. Another interesting idea was when they talked about moving out of the physical plane. I thought it was funny, I guess because I’m younger and I don’t see it as a threat at all, I see it as a good thing, a helpful thing. Becker said that she didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing. Well I think we know when to stop, and how much to preserve. Too much of one thing, is never good. Ever. Just because we like to have easier ways to access information doesn’t mean we want the whole world to be screens… They then asked if we even wanted these changes, like we didn’t have a say in it. Well guess what? We wouldn’t make the changes if we didn’t want them! They also say that technology is moving so fast that it’s hard to keep up… My answer to that is, no offense, but maybe they should pay closer attention to it if they don’t want to be scared of it. It’s really not that hard to get a hang of. Anyway, this brings me to our guest speaker: Terri Warpinski.

Warpinski started off painting when she was a little girl, taught by her grandmother because her parents were both teachers. Little did she know, she would grow up to become a teacher just like her parents! She has been teaching since 1982 and mostly, takes black and white photographs. Her work is really beautiful because she adds her own colors and makes her own marks over her photographs. This is really special because she adds her own “language” to her pictures which, to me, makes them more special. She talked about “chance favoring only prepared mind.” Which deals with the idea I addressed before with having a good knowledge base so that it can helps an artist, or an individual, grow. She believes that art should incorporate humans and their relationship with nature, which goes along with the ideas that the conversationalists had. They, too, believe that art should deal with social and political issues. Art needs to be a broader spectrum, and I agree with them. She included the way she felt about her art saying, “my work needs to be meaningful, it needs to help me learn things about the world.” This statement was perfect in recognizing that the world is always changing and your views of it should always be changing as well. She continued this by saying that art guides her intellectual pursuits, it lets her make more multimedia pieces. This shows that the world will always be further developing and everything is a recreation of something else. Nothing is ever new, and I guess that technology could be an enabler for that. But that doesn’t matter because there needs to be continuity, so that we can all be connected. We need to continue to celebrate the beautiful and genius of the past and try and learn from it so we can incorporate it into our lives today. Then we can continue to evolve and better the future.

Guerrilla Girls and Mary Jane Jacob

I had never really heard of the Guerrilla Girls before, because I’ve never been that exposed to the art world.  I have been learning so much in this class about the actual world of art.  In high school they just teach you how to create different kinds of art; they don’t expose you to what the art world actually entails.  So when I opened up “Conversations before the End of Time” to the readings this week and saw that we were reading about a group of girl artists who “periodically streak through the night, disguised in gorilla masks and fishnet stockings, putting up waggish posters that zap the white male establishment for its sexism and racism” (203), I decided I should be ready to accept some radical ideas.  But, to my surprise, their ideas weren’t radical at all.  To me, they seemed like they should be a given.  Maybe the ways that the Guerrilla Girls execute their ideas are a little radical, but their message should already be accepted!  I thought a certain project of theirs was interesting where they make “report cards, which evaluate specific members of the art world on their performance in relation to the underrepresentation of women” (203).  I thought that this was an innovative way to look at the institution because they normally rate the artists instead of the artists rating them.  The girls attend panel discussions and news appearances and lectures at universities to send out “public service messages.” This made me think of a musical artist who created an album with “public service announcements.”  It seems like a silly connection, but my connection was with the rapper Jay-Z and his “Black Album.”  The way they described the Whitney Biennial was amazing!  When they talked about the boom boxes and the music and the funky art!  I wanted to go there immediately.  It sounded like so much fun!  I like the tags that Daniel J. Martinez from Los Angeles made.  The admission buttons that consisted of words that when put together said “I can’t imagine ever wanting to be white.”  I thought that was funny, but I’m not quite sure if I was supposed to think it was funny.  I also liked the comment about how the few people on top can change their opinions and when those opinions change, so does the whole view of the art world.  I didn’t like the comment about how to improve the New York Times, however.  Put a hiring freeze on young white men from the Ivy League?  Okay, so I guess they’re fighting fire with fire…  But those men could have innovative ideas; innovative ideas like they do.  It was funny when Gablik asked them to talk about the serious message of their work and they responded with saying that, because of the small percentage of women in the art world, they felt like they “were in deep shit” (209).  I found them to be very humorous, it seemed like it is positive anger that they are spreading.  This transcends in their idea of the “gorilla.”  The image is oxymoronic because they are women wearing these scary masks trying to fight like “guerrillas” for something that they deeply believe in.  What they’re fighting for makes me angry and it also confuses me.  It angers me because what they’re fighting for shouldn’t be happening.  There shouldn’t be any discrimination.  Ever.  Period.  It makes me so angry!  On a lighter note, I love how they are banding together to fight for the individual women careers.  They’re fighting together to achieve freedom individually.  It is so amazing!  The fact that there aren’t that many women out there in the galleries confuses me because the girls made a good point.  And that is this; there are so many women who go to school to study art, but where do they go?  How do they get so lost?  How can men dominate the art world when there are so many creative women out there?! 

  

Mary Jane Jacob addresses this idea in her conversation with Suzi Gablik.  Her ideas of the new institutions were so amazing!  I wanted to visit those kinds of art shows immediately after reading them!  She wants the audience to become a more of conversation.  She wants to include the audience and not discourage them from interacting with the work of the artist.  She talked about the social and cultural messages that she deals with and said that the “widespread practice of such art has also given is mediocre examples as well as great ones, and it runs the risk of becoming just another style of the moment, soon to be passed over as we look again for something new” (299).  But if the art deals with cultural and social issues then it will always be new because those issues will always be evolving, just like the rest of the world.  I also had no idea that there was a word for purposefully including someone of minority just to make you look good.  I mean tokenism?  Come on…!  But in a way, don’t all institutions do that?  I guess it makes sense because they have to.  Everyone should be included, no matter whom they are.  But if we truly were color blind or shade blind or whatever, then what does it matter whom is included?  It shouldn’t matter what you look like, no one should get horrible treatment or special treatment.  And furthermore, there will always be problems with something because not everyone can be pleased.  We are all different, and it should stay that way because diversity is a good thing.  Otherwise this world would be boring and boring is just so…  Boring.  Some questions: “Do we need to always first build up, and then tear down, the institution to get somewhere else” (303)?  And “can we only arrive at that after we’ve had institutions” (303)?  I think that the idea of the institution is a good idea because the works of artists need to be shown.  But I think that Jacob has the right idea by changing the experience.  It’s hard because artists need the hype and the money that comes with the institution.  But can’t they still receive the money in a different context?  Well that depends on where they show it and who shows up to see it.  It needs to be a place that is accessible; a space that many different kinds of people can get to.  But will more art be sold if it’s in a different context, a better context?  I think so.  I think if the art (and the audience) is magnified by the context, then the change should be made.  Sometimes certain places shouldn’t contain certain types of art because the building won’t do the art justice.  But no matter what inspired the work, the place where it becomes showcased should magnify the work for everyone who interacts with it.  I agree with her final definition of art.  My definition of art is very broad as well.  “I think generically, that art can be just an interaction, or it can be something physical like an object” (311).  “From an avant-garde way of thinking, art can certainly exist in many ways that are temporal, rather than spatial or physical.  However, that decision isn’t mine; that decision is the artists” (311).  But like she says, that decision is always up to the interpretation of the individual and I think that that is exactly what art should be about.  It should be your choice to define it however you please.