So I’ve made it this far. Who knew when I started out in september 2008 that I could keep up with a visual blogging diary for so so long. Thank you to all who have visited the blog over the year and a bit, and to all those who will visit in the future.

This piece is an invite to Hirst’s opening with his older characters. They say how delightfully unpleasant, but it mirrors what the critics said about them once upon a time. This piece probably doesn’t have much to do with value, but I suppose in a way it does.

“We need more simon skull toys” is the quote written here in this disneyland/artland scenario where two employees have noticed the damien hirst themed items are selling quicker than the others.

This is a take on the piece before as I couldn’t be bothered with making the cartoon in cel format. It portrays pluto as duchamp’s fountain this time as pluto is seen as not one of the frontrunners in the commercial success.

These pieces are thoughful representations of simon skull, a mickey mouse/damien hirst hybrid. The second is painted bad because Hirst is seen as a terrible painter.

Pandora’s Box Part 2

by Michael Newberry

… pathetically, only Hope remained inside. In the other version the box held all of humanity’s glories. When she opened the box progress, knowledge, and exaltation vanished into oblivion, forever lost to humanity. Art, in all its forms, plays an exalted role as one of humanity’s glories. It also plays a profoundly personal role. Think, for instance, of the impact your favorite artwork has had on your life. Has it moved you to tears, to resolution, to moments of joy? Have you felt that an artwork was as close to you as a lover, a friend, or a child? Have you imagined what your life would be like without art? Picture your most beloved painting or recall your favorite song or regard your most treasured book and ask yourself what if it had never existed. Would that leave a gaping hole in your soul where once something precious had been? When Pandora opened the box, marvelous things rose up and vanished into space before her eyes. Without grasping the nature of this phenomenon, she unleashed Postmodernism on humanity. Artistic creation is fragile. For most artists creation calls on the limits of their intellectual, sensory, and psychological resources; each artwork is, in essence, the artist’s summation of what is important from all of existence. Additionally, it is usual that an artist’s career calls on the limits of their financial resources. Given the nature of such a daunting task it is no wonder that artists suffer profound doubts in one form or another. Imagine young students impatient to express their visions and passions on canvas and imagine their vulnerability in hoping they will have what it takes to realize their dreams. Without the certainty of accomplished works behind them, they are, indeed, vulnerable to peer pressure, authoritative experts, and the influence of the icons of their day. If their profoundly personal visions and attempts are not acknowledged and supported, then it merely takes an air of disapproval to blow away the sparks that would blaze their future. Several years ago I taught foundation classes at Otis College of Art and Design, one of the most reputable art colleges in the United States. While there, I offered seven students a private apprenticeship program outside of their schoolwork. These students had everything one could ask for: they had fire, talent, intelligence, and drive; they had that “light-bulb” look in their eyes. They studied with other foundation teachers who taught them rock-solid basics, but in the following year they entered into the fine art program, which was dominated by postmodern teachers. During a critique, one teacher and his students called my 18-year old apprentice a “fascist”, an “imperialist pig”, and “naïve” because he had exhibited a realistic oil self-portrait with studies that documented his creative process, which was dramatically lit. He was not criticized for lack of sincerity, passion, or talent. By contrast, another student received the highest mark and praise for a goldfish cast in resin which had its eyes plucked out and sewn to its tail. A day after the critique my student came to me crying and passionately asked “why?” What horrible things did my student do to deserve such nasty condemnation from the teacher and his cohorts? Could it possibly be that they were chastising him because he displayed skill and passion in painting? Another apprentice of mine took classes with an abstract expressionist teacher (in the style of Pollock) who deflected answering to students’ direct questions. In the third week of class this apprentice came to me with tears bursting from her eyes and blurted out, “what does this teacher want from me?”  I guessed that the teacher was looking for expression divorced from thought so I recommended that my apprentice use a stream of consciousness technique for this class. I told her to unscrew her head and leave it on the shelf before entering this class. She followed my advice to the letter. She did not “think”, did not ask questions, and did nothing to aim for a realization. Later in that class, the teacher waltzed around the room with my apprentice’s “creation” and claimed that it was a museum piece and that she was a genius. Overnight she became the teacher’s star pupil. My apprentice said in a mood of distaste “that work took only 5% of my capacity”. Was this teacher so out of touch with these students that she confined their potential by ignorance? Or did she do it on purpose? During our apprenticeship program every one of the seven broke down in frustration due to their postmodern education. “What do they want?” Was the unanswerable query. After witnessing two years of these episodes, it became apparent to me that it wasn’t knowledge, dedication, skill, or love of art that was wanted by these teachers. It was both obvious and inconceivable that the teachers acted to thwart these students’ minds and abilities. Did the teachers really want to turn students into confused wrecks? What sort of people embrace such a stance? Rarely have I seen genius and rarely have I seen the completely hopeless. One student was sent to my class with the aim that she would finally pass, having failed the course given by other teachers twice before. She had no interest, had no touch, and had no understanding for drawing; she had no “light bulb” in her eyes. Shockingly, just before our holidays she presented me with an invitation to her exhibition at a modern art gallery. I will never forget the look on her face after she watched me read her invitation; she was gloating. I thought of the struggles of my apprentices pouring their passion, their egos, and their overtime into developing their potential for art; I thought of the psychological abuse they were taking for it, and I thought it unjust. Was it the way of the art world that this pathetic student should displace them? I don’t mean to imply that all postmodernists are untalented, but talent in the sense of mastery of drawing and painting is not a consideration for a postmodern art education. Before their second year, my apprentices were advised by the Dean of Otis College, by the Director of Foundation, and by the Director of Fine Art that if they wanted to continue drawing the figure they would have to go into Graphic Design and forgo Fine Art. If the postmodern community does not want skill, could it be that they want students who embody a “getting away with it” mentality? A few years ago I went to an artist’s talk given by a postmodern teacher/artist at a prestigious university gallery. Her works were camouflaged within the architectural setting. One of them was a 3″ x 1″ wide plaster band that wound around on the floor of the room. It was there to be “sensed” and to subtlely affect movement within the room, changing the traffic flow of the space intended by the architect. In her talk she proudly stated that she couldn’t draw, couldn’t paint, and didn’t know anything about architectural design. Yet all her works were dependent on architectural settings designed by others. She condescendingly referred to one of the buildings as a “fascist”. When asked if she had ever created directly from nature she said she had never “thought of that.” Without any skill in art she had several museum exhibitions in which she presented her deliberate acts of subtle subversion. Could it be possible that subversion was the standard by which this postmodern exhibition was chosen? With every postmodern exhibition, with every class, with every critic’s praise, clues emerge as to the motives of the postmodernists and the general direction of the postmodern movement. I believe there is a key concept guiding postmodernists but they, in their obscure way, don’t want us or perhaps themselves to understand what it is. Let us dig deeper and see if we can find what that key is. Museum directors are the guardians of art. They strive to protect art by heightening cultural awareness: they give artists venues in which to exhibit; they cultivate public interest in their exhibitions; they arrange recognition of artists through critics and media; they raise funds to pay for their initiatives; and they produce educational programs for adults and children. They have media, millions of dollars, and educational institutions at their disposal to influence culture. Directors are the middlemen between important new artists and the public; their influence is profound in shaping “high” culture. The mission statements of many contemporary art museums include aims to express the “aesthetics of our time,” to seek out artists that are creating “new inroads,” and to exhibit the “best” artists alive today. “Best” here does not have the meaning that it has in sports, where the winner is the better athlete. Artistic value is interpreted, meaning that it is up to the curators to evaluate who are the best artists based on contemporary aesthetics, which is postmodernism, and to support them accordingly. The Encyclopedia Encarta describes the aims of Dadaists’ (the first postmodern artists) works as “… designed to shock or bewilder, in order to provoke a reconsideration of accepted aesthetic values”. But postmodern art goes deeper than merely raising challenges to specific values; it is meant to disrupt your psychological and epistemological processes or, in other words, to shatter your sanity and throttle your mind. To accomplish this, postmodern artists mangle either or both the content and means:1) They can choose a subject matter that will stretch your capacity for the unimaginable, usually by projecting a thoroughly disgusting state. Cultural Gothic by P. McCarthy is a good example of this in sculpture. It is a mechanized sculpture group in which a father encourages his adolescent son to fuck a goat. A Postmodern version of a close family? Branded by J. Saville is an example in painting. It is a self-portrait in which the obese woman thrusts out a fistful of her flesh towards us in an angry and defensive gesture. Incised scalpel-like wounds that spell out words “delicate” and “decorative” cover her rotten-colored flesh. Both these works intentionally take us into psychotic states. Saville, Self-portrait Parenthetically, it could be implied that I take issue with the artists’ right to express themselves, which is not the case. My point here is that these works are esteemed by the postmodern establishment for their shocking content and not for their quality as painting or sculpture. Strictly speaking, Saville and McCarthy aren’t postmodern purists; they compromise their postmodern, grotesque subject matters with figurative painting and sculpture. For purists, matching the means to the ends is a hallmark of the highest reaches of art, postmodern or not. “…art cannot be art and anti-art at the same time.” 2) The other method of shock aesthetics is to redefine art as anything but painting or sculpture. The classic example is The Fountain by Duchamp, a urinal presented as an artwork. The simple device of substituting anything but art, such as a toilet, as an artwork creates an epistemological disturbance in our minds. Think of substituting “table” for “egg”, “ice-cream” for “go”, “car” for “food”, etc. It is something like a computer virus that plays havoc with your system and ultimately renders your computer’s programs useless. In this way postmodernists have substituted Rauschenberg’s Erased De Kooning for drawing, Christo’s Umbrellas for sculpture, and Creed’s Empty Room for substance. Shock aesthetics are also commonly known in art history as part of the anti-art movement. Oddly, modern art historians gloss over the fact that, logically, art cannot be art and anti-art at the same time. In Part I of this series I stated that the theme of Christo’s Umbrellas magnified the contrast between the huge cost, effort, and scale of the project and its end of non-existence. The thematic idea is that this nihilistic work is not about “nothing” but it is about the non-existence, the absence, of something that had existed before. Stay with me on this idea; it is important because nihilism is one of the key aesthetic concepts of postmodernism. Now let us tweak the context and think of the entire postmodern art movement as one gigantic Christo project, in which “absence” is the theme. The postmodern movement has taken on the universality of representational art, with its history of 30,000 years, and succeeded in, in the eyes of the contemporary art world establishment, of virtually wiping it off the face of the planet. It has ripped the lid off Pandora’s box and replaced “progress, knowledge, and exaltation” with bile. Notice what this does to the status of the art director as a guardian of art, it creates a grotesque paradox; the directors of contemporary art museums are the promoters and protectors of anti-art. One important way in which they protect postmodernism is by ignoring any alternative; they are silent when it comes to value-orientated, representational art. Far from being harmless, silence from the art establishment delivers a deathblow to viable representational artists. I discussed this issue of postmodern silence with Dr. Chris Sciabarra and he replied: “[A] dominant ideology “brackets out” of the equation real alternatives: it just doesn’t allow fundamentally revolutionary alternatives to even be considered. I think this is not simply a conscious conspiracy, but a method of silence, of omission. It becomes part of the overall worldview, this tacit exclusion.” Silence is a very clever weapon for postmodernists to use; it implies that representational art is dead and that even if something is out there it doesn’t merit notice. Tom Wolfe tells the sickening story of young Fredrick Hart scanning art magazines, hoping for a review of Ex Nihilo, the facade of the Washington National Cathedral, an eleven-year sculpture project. “Months went by…nothing.” The exceptional representational artist faces another kind of wall of incomprehensibility as a consequence of this “silence.” In my long career as an artist I have met many “regular” people, who don’t know art in depth. Though some of them have mentioned the “silliness” of contemporary museum exhibitions. Yet, they have reverence for the title of “museum” and they do not understand why representational artists should have problems in getting critical recognition. They feel this is something that they cannot judge and it should be left to the experts to decide. The undertone of their unstated words is, “if the experts do not acknowledge you then there must be a good reason for it”. It is also unfortunate that if artists try to retaliate against the silence of the postmodern establishment, then it sounds like “sour grapes.” In an Agatha Christie story there is a small aside about the theft of a brooch. In the novel everyone suspected the maid, as she was the only one in the house at the time of the theft. No one accused her of the theft because she was an elderly woman and had always been very conscientious. The assumption of the locals and her employers was that she desperately needed money. The maid was terribly upset because she could see suspicion in their eyes and she could do nothing about it. The maid died before the mystery was solved. The brooch had been attached to a blouse that had been sent to the cleaners; the laundress had stolen it. The horror of this case was that the maid, in the absence of the solution to the mystery, died without ever being granted recognition for her goodness and honesty. Just as the solution to this mystery is crucial to clear up where the crime lay and redeem the innocent, understanding the mysterious motives of the postmodern movement is crucial to bringing about recognition of the goodness and honesty of benevolent, representational artists. Earlier I asked questions and raised the issue about the key concept guiding the postmodern movement. Now it should be clear. Postmodernism is literally an anti-art movement. Its objective, ostensibly, is the elevation of postmodern artists but its motive is the eradication of art. The postmodern aesthetic is a virus composed of the unstable components of nihilism for its means and disgust for its ends. It will take innovative contemporary representational art and reason-based aesthetic criticism to remedy this plague. Stay tuned for Pandora’s Box Part 3, the last of the series, in which I contrast two contemporary views of the sublime; the postmodern and the integrated. Michael Newberry 2002, revised in New York, 2006

I’m telling you now… you ain’t never heard anything like THIS before…

James Alaska is one of the most marvelous people I’ve ever met. He’s also one of the most persistent musical train spotters I have ever known. In metaphorical terms, his beard of knowledge has grown to such gargantuan proportions that sometimes in bad weather, light aircraft attempt to set down on it. His love of disco knows no bounds and for this, I must salute him. Having played storming sets as a resident at Magnet in the late nineties he then went on to deliver repeated nights of musical passion as one half of the Love Thy Neighbour duo James Shakti & Stuart Principal, between 2001 and 2006 in various salubrious venues in London.

James has now arrived in another age of musical knowledge, having recently completed an MA in Sonic Art, he’s now creating music compositions as part of experimental electronicists Vlk and The Alaska None. The beard situation has worsened. Now, on top of the impromptu run-downs of Chic catalogue numbers and release dates, we are blessed with further knowledge about the source of sound itself. Its bloody mind boggling – so I thought I’d share… brace yourselves.

What we have here is a 10 minute edit of MFSB’s Love is The Message by James (the full piece is a whole 19 minutes long!) called Paradise Dust. If you’re expecting disco, please readjust your head, but consider first that this was generated from disco – from the very essence of our dear godfather of groove Larry Levan:

And here’s what James has to say about his composition – yes, it’s an essay, but if you’re into vinyl, disco, Levan and a bit of musical philosophy, then you should probably trim your beard, grab yourself a cup of tea and settle down to a story. A story about how James found Larry, and Larry found James…

Inspired by the spirit of Gavin Bryars’ ‘The Sinking of The Titanic’ (1969), the composition ‘Paradise Dust’ explores issues surrounding the vinyl record as a sonic medium, cultural artefact and physical object, in relation to the themes of music and memory, decay, and the passage of time.

The piece is part homage to Larry Levan, widely cited as the most influential DJ of all time, who died age 38 in 1992. The piece utilises a vinyl copy of ‘Love is The Message’ by MFSB, which I sampled only after allowing it to be covered with a thick coating of dust; the final, locked groove left playing until the stylus lost touch with the vinyl. I also utilise field recordings made at 84 King Street, SoHo, New York; a site of central importance for the city’s underground dance music scene in the late 1970s and 80s, where the Paradise Garage once stood. Here Levan inspired “an unparalleled reverence” in his devotees – the club’s 15,000 or so members, dancers and fellow DJs.

Larry Levan began DJing in 1971 at the age of 16, but it was at the Paradise Garage from 1977 to 1987 that he had a profound impact of the development of DJing as an art form. Levan lived and worked at the Paradise Garage, literally sleeping in his DJ booth. He was obsessed with perfecting every tiny detail of the environment, spending days fine-tuning the custom made sound system or adjusting and redesigning the lighting rigs.

According to fellow DJ and producer Francois Kevorkian, “outside, insurance men were knocking their knees to Abba and the Bee Gees, dreaming of the coke and celebrity fuelled nonsense of Studio 54. Inside the Garage the original disco family were continuing and amplifying their tribal rituals. At the centre was Levan himself, a DJ who enjoyed such a passionate relationship with the people on his dance-floor that they worshipped him more or less as a god….and for everyone there, it really was the temple, it was sacred ground.”

The Paradise Garage played host to life changing experiences for thousands of people and Levan has become a legend due to his DJing, production and remixing skills. For those of his devotees who remain, they may have fragmented memories, but physical objects, once charged with significance and meaning from that era, also remain somewhere. These are a cultural residue, no longer significant as they once were, in the same way that 84 King Street, no longer the Paradise Garage, remains.

Vinyl records offer us a curious paradox – the more they are heard, the more they decay. Valued, treasured and played, vinyl is a victim of its own form. As David Toop notes in ‘Haunted Weather’ “Record (player) design encapsulates the idea of self destruction in perpetuity. The needle ploughs through the spiralled groove, wearing away at both itself and the message it transmits.”

Records, as sound artist Christian Marclay has pointed out, will almost always have once been, “bought and sold, loved and protected, played and collected.” Yet many years before vinyl began to disappear as the DJ’s primary tool, domestic record collections, victims of technological advancement, began to be discarded, given away, donated to charity shops and relegated to attics and storage spaces. Although occasionally bought up by a few remaining vinyl enthusiasts, the record’s fate more often than not is to fade in significance, at some point the once prized object invariably finds itself on a slow, downward trajectory.

Now the same is true of DJ’s vinyl collections. Replaced by CDs and sophisticated DJing software, attics and charity shops house once treasured records which are destined to fade into obscurity. Yet, rarely is vinyl afforded any kind of definitive final passing. Often these objects are not dumped or destroyed, perhaps due in part to their status as a once valuable object, but nor are they ever esteemed or played again in the way they once were. Fluxus artist Milan Knizak scored, marked and broke records during musical performances in the 1960s, shocking and dismaying his audiences at a time when vinyl was sacred. One can’t help feeling that in our present age, most records sitting in attics, car boot sales, or in one of a handful of the few surviving second hand record shops, would jump at the chance for such a merciful release from their un-dead state. Instead, denied an end, most of them sit unwanted, unheard and ignored, ‘gathering dust’, in a literal or metaphorical sense.

This fading, forgetting and slow decay of vinyl, imbues the object with a certain poignancy. As Josh Davis (DJ Shadow) explained while being interviewed in a warehouse full of records for the ultimate DJ movie ‘Scratch’, “just being in here is a humbling experience to me, because you’re looking through all these records and it’s sort of like a big pile of broken dreams.”

Cultural theorist Theodore Adorno spoke of records as “freezing, this life into itself”, fixing a musical moment “that otherwise would flee”. Toop goes further describing records thus; “a spiral scratch, a gleaming hole into which memories are poured, only to emerge again as ghost voices, life preserved beyond death. Frozen in time within the grooves, a voice, an instrument, becomes the living dead.” It is this sense of suspension or of being frozen in limbo which I’m recreating in this composition.

I significantly chose “Love is the Message” as my source material. Described by Bill Brewster as “the lodestar of New York Disco”, ‘Love is the Message’ was one of Levan’s signature songs, integral to his DJ sets. He produced and remixed several versions of the track for the band MFSB. In a curious echo of Toop and Adorno’s comments on vinyl as a medium which ‘freezes’ and suspends, Levan’s fellow producer Tom Moulton described the track thus; “when I got to certain parts of it, it was like being pushed off a cliff and not falling. Suspended. Because that’s what the song does to you”. Levan is reported to have listened endlessly to the track, telling Moulton that he heard ‘ghost voices’ in the grooves of the record.

Gavin Bryars’ 1969 piece “The Sinking of The Titanic” centres around similar themes, the freezing in time of a musical moment. Bryars’ piece draws out and extends the episcopal hymn “Autumn” which was played by the Ships’ band as the Titanic sank beneath the waves of the Atlantic. Bryars notes the efficiency of water as an acoustic medium, and therefore invites the listener to imagine “The prolongation of the music into eternity”. In the sleeve notes for a 2006 performance of the piece, Bryars also notes the first use of Marconi’s wireless telegraphy in the Titanic’s rescue operation, reporting that one of the rescue ships, the Birma, heard radio signals originating from the titanic, 1 hour and 28 minutes after the ship had finally sunk. Furthermore, Bryars cites Marconi’s belief that “sounds, once generated never die, they simply become fainter and fainter until we can no longer perceive them. Marconi’s hope was to develop sufficiently sensitive equipment… to pick up and hear these past, feint sounds”. I’m employing a similar methodology, a sonic ‘stretching out’ of one of the final records to be played at the Paradise Garage, as if in to some distant musical horizon.

The composition share’s a central parallel with Man Ray’s Elevage de Poussière (Dust Breeding – 1920). By photographing dust which had been purposely gathered on Duchamp’s work in progress ‘The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even’, Man Ray incorporated and appropriated the work of another artist he admired, fashioning a new creation, founded on the obfuscation of another.

By exposing to the air the unsheathed copy of “Love is the message” which was the sound source for this piece, allowing it to gather a thick layer of dust, I’m highlighting my chosen compositional themes through an exaggerated symbolic gesture. Fusing Vinyl’s physicality and status as an object with broader, conceptual issues, this makes for thought provoking listening.

One could say that the layer of dust accumulated on this particular vinyl record is emblematic of the inevitable falling into obsolescence of vinyl as a medium, and of the accompanying slow obscuration of all of the memories embedded within the world’s discarded record collections. By encouraging the dust gathering process, and by featuring and employing it as a compositional device, I attempt to draw attention to the passage of time, making it, and the displacement and fading of those memories by the present, audible.

MFSB? OMFG.

Rich

Stage one includes evidence of my work continuing from already completed materials, mainly to do with Fountain.

First is a picture of me with balloon, an excited boy whose ecstatic to see fountain for real possibly? Second is a wall drawing of fountain with hirst dots all over it. Third is a fountain playing a basketball whistle and wearing fetching mickey mouse gloves: A kind of cheerleader for newer pieces of art? Fourth is a wrecked studio, putting across my feelings and attempts to be able not to sell something, a concept. Upon coming in the next day I found Carrie drawing a chalkline around it, making it sellable as it can be measured.

Duchamp ao xadrez

“Desocupado leitor, ñ preciso de prestar aqui um juramento para que creias que com toda a minha vontade quisera que este livro, como filho do entendimento, fosse o mais formoso, o mais galhardo e discreto que se pudesse imaginar: porém não esteve na minha mão contravir à ordem da natureza, na qual cada coisa gera outra que lhe seja semelhante; que podia portanto o meu engenho, estéril e mal cultivado, produzir neste mundo, senão a história de um filho magro, seco e enrugado, caprichoso e cheio de pensamentos vários, e nunca imaginados de outra alguma(…)? Bem como quem foi gerado em um cárcere, onde toda a incomodidade tem seu assento, e onde todo o triste ruído faz a sua habitação? O descanso, o lugar aprazível, a amenidade dos campos, a serenidade dos céus, o murmurar das fontes e a tranquilidade do espírito entram sempre em grande parte, quando as musas estéreis se mostram fecundas, e oferecem ao mundo partos, que o enchem de admiração e de contentamento. Acontece muitas vezes ter um pai um filho feio e extremamente desengraçado, mas o amor paternal lhe põe uma venda nos olhos para que não veja as próprias deficiências; antes as julga como discrições e lindezas, e está sempre a contá-las aos seus amigos, como agudezas e donaires.”

I wrote this essay for the artists Bik Van Der Pol (http://www.bikvanderpol.net/) in connection with their recent exhibition at the CCA, Glasgow.

MICHAEL STONE: INVOKING THE GHOSTS OF GULLIVER

In the UK, we are used to the popular derision of contemporary art practice – if tabloids relish the opportunity for incredulous puns about the antics of crackpot artists, elsewhere  commentators deplore the loss of virtuosity and pronounce discomfort at the thought that someone somewhere might be taking us all for (an expensive) ride: the Emperor’s new clothes are (not) on show. There is something liberating in the fact that the popular consciousness allows for “crackpot” art, even if that is only in derision. But what does it mean for someone like Michael Stone, a convicted loyalist terrorist, to claim his action in throwing a rucksack packed with assorted weaponry into Stormont was “performance art’?

Stone was jailed in 1989 for killing 3 men, and injuring dozens more, in a sectarian attack on mourners attending a funeral at Milltown cemetery, North Belfast, 2 years previously. Sentenced to a total of 684 years, he was released in 2000 from HMP Maze under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, by which time he had taken up painting as a hobby. In the years between his release and his Stormont re-arrest, he occupied himself as an artist, whose paintings fetched between a few hundred and a few thousand pounds per work. In 2001, the Engine Room gallery in Belfast hosted an exhibition of Stone’s work, the Belfast Telegraph noting that “he seems genuinely committed to an artistic career” and (approvingly) that “There is no suggestion that he is involved in any of the rackets – drugs, prostitution, protection – that have become a career for so many of the other men released early under the Good Friday Agreement”. Even though Stone sometimes tackled contentious subjects in his paintings without engendering much effect, gun-touting poses he re-enacted for photographs in 2004 were condemned, and the Stormont action – apparently titled “Never Say Never” – had Stone jailed and branded a lunatic. If prisoners are encouraged to pursue an interest in art while incarcerated, as Stone was, are we to impose limits on how that interest manifests itself, or impose restrictions on the subject matter they can tackle? Stone was very much isolated, (the volatile, misunderstood artist of Romantic construction), but if we want art to converge with social practice, are there caveats to that? How far does art encroach on criminality?

In some respects Stone’s story resonates with the experience of one of Scotland’s ex-con cause celebres, Jimmy Boyle. Styled by himself (and others), as “’Scotland’s Most Violent Man”, “ the most notorious criminal in Scotland, a violent product of the Glasgow slums”, Boyle was a celebrity inmate and hardman serving a life sentence for the murder of a renown gangster, William “Babs” Rooney. Art therapy at HMP Barlinnie led to an apparently Damascene conversion, and, in 1976, while he was still in prison, he was commissioned by the Craigmillar Festival Society to design a large recumbent sculpture -“Gulliver”- for them. The Craigmillar Festival Society was pioneering in many ways, not least in its genesis amongst a group of local women exasperated with municipal indifference to the area and its people. In the 1970s, its profile as a model promoting the efficacy of community arts initiatives was international. Without doubt, this worked in Boyle’s favour, and on release, he enjoyed a high profile and reportedly high earnings as an artist. His transformation from lawless gangland enforcer to well-heeled, well-behaved sculptor is something of a civic and national proverb. We see the city in the man: we see the social and political value of art in its redemptive powers to integrate the disenfranchised individual with the powers of his own expression, in uniting the divided self and more than this, we see evidence of an economic miracle. These days – with notable contemporaneity  – Boyle appears in newspaper interviews as a multi-millionaire property developer, doing up riads in Marrakesh, while current cultural policy promotes the arts as almost failsafe engines for recession-proof growth, making Boyle something of a poster boy for the benefits of exploiting “creative skills”.

Boyle generates the type of expressive work that formed the bedrock of art therapy in its infancy and is still, in some contexts, pursued as an irrefutable good. It conforms to a model of practice long regarded as defunct in art schools – if it is good enough to provide respite from those personal or social problems identified by mental health or regeneration committees, it is not really good enough for professional art education (even if those so educated administer or deliver the therapy). Consequently, like Jack Vettriano, Fife’s self-taught king of stiffly nostalgic soft-core noir, the outmoded Boyle has been blindsided by the critical art establishment; his success has more to do with his notoriety than his significance as an artist.  Reciprocally, Boyle has dismissed contemporary art, emblematically marking “Sensation” “the biggest pile of rubbish” he’d ever seen, and making claims that he will not sell to Saatchi: “Because I don’t like what he does and can afford not to.” “Not selling to Saatchi” has become a well -rehearsed cliché even amongst currents of the contemporary mainstream, as if it were some guarantee of artistic integrity, of concern with “higher” imperatives than those of the market. So where does this take Stone, who not only claims he has sold to Saatchi, but whose declared forays into performance and re-enactment are much more in keeping with the general trends in the academy, in the museums, in critical analysis and the market? Can his action be determined “art”? Is he precluded from performance practice because he has not earned a degree? Because of his criminal record, and the specific nature of that criminal record? He has a demonstrable commitment to artistic practice, what does this count for? Are we to admit that there are, after all, objective standards by which art succeeds or fails? Are such standards moral, ethical or political, assuming they are not formal?

There are many interesting parallels between the propensities and systems of art and crime, not least of which is intent. Marcel Duchamp foregrounded the notion of artistic intent through the Readymade – particularly “Fountain” – proposing that a work of art could be enacted through choice (rather than manufactured through craft). Rejected from the open, avowedly non-selective, non-hierarchical exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in 1917, Fountain was deliberately adjudicated “not art”. In 1967, interviewed on Canadian radio, Duchamp said “It’s not the visual aspect of the Readymade that matters, it’s simply the fact that it exists.… Visuality is no longer a question: the Readymade is no longer visible, so to speak. It is completely gray matter. It is no longer retinal.” This statement came at a time when his influence on a generation was well established. Though he tacitly implies that at some point in it’s conception the Readymade was necessarily visible, it was in principle an idea which merely required the service of objects for its enactment. The object forms it adopted between 1913 and 1917 are important only so far as they are conceptual facilitators: conceptual and performative practice in the 60s and 70s developed and extended the remit of the Readymade beyond the object.

Despite the Readymade’s initial and most complete realisation being in its exclusion from exhibition, presented in exhibition (from the late 1950s on), its effect in influence was to devolve the power of choice to the artist within the confines of the “White Cube”. However, just as the object form had a limited lifespan in relation to the Readymade, it seems that the “White Cube” context could be dispensible too: the gallery is only a surrogate for audience. Through enacting the Readymade, Duchamp imposed an active duty of intent on the viewer. This active duty is where the Readymade abuts with Situationist theory: Duchamp may have had to use an institutional context to effect the Readymade, but its true legacy is in the creative potential of the viewer, not the affirmation of the hegemony of gallery or museum. Situationist culture “introduces total participation…it is the organization of the directly lived moment…(in which) everyone will become an artist, i.e. a producer-consumer of total culture creation.” Some notion of “participation” has framed the development of recent cultural policy – much of the Creative Scotland Bill hangs off it. If everyone is (and can “participate” as) an artist, if active viewing is the minimum necessary foundation for establishing art, what is there to prevent Stone formulating his action as art?

It is maybe appropriate at this point to consider Joseph Beuys’s conception of “Social Sculpture/Social Architecture”. In 1980, 4 years after Boyle’s “Gulliver” was installed in a field at Craigmillar, Beuys created a blackboard diptych during the Edinburgh Festival entitled “Jimmy Boyle Days”. Quite what Beuys made of Boyle’s output is hard to determine, suffice to say that Beuys was not suggesting that everyone should paint or sculpt in pursuit of being an artist: he was concerned with developing art as a “politically productive force, coursing through each person, and shaping history… This is the concept of art that carries within itself not only the revolutionizing of the historic bourgeois concept of knowledge (materialism, positivism), but also of religious activity….” “Creativity isn’t the monopoly of artists. This is the crucial fact I’ve come to realise, and this broader concept of creativity is my concept of art. When I say everybody is an artist, I mean everybody can determine the content of life in his particular sphere, whether in painting, music, engineering, caring for the sick, the economy or whatever.”

In this sense, and bearing in mind his abolition of entry requirements to the class of “Monumental Sculpture” in Dusseldorf, Beuys moved towards rubbishing the notion that “artist” is, or should be, a specialised, professional status. Indeed, in fulfilling Beuys’s ambitions for art to become a “politically productive force”, there must be universal creative emancipation – there can be no professional status: the artist claiming such status is a Pharisee. Equally, in terms of the Situationist imperative to introduce “total participation”, there can be no qualifications, no hierarchies. Art is whatever is chosen – and enacted – by the artist, that is by anyone behaving as an artist. Significantly that includes recognising art, “active aesthetics”, (perhaps in the tradition of the flaneur, who configures urban experience in accordance with personal  narratives). Karlheniz Stockhausen was widely condemned for declaring 9/11 “the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos”, but if 9/11 functioned as art for him, if his experience of 9/11 produced an aesthetic apprehension, who can deny it?

If everybody can be an artist (the current drive for participation underscores this); if art can be any choice, enactment or aesthetic experience – must art always be benign, therapeutic and economically productive? Are these values basic determinants of what art is? Is there a place for art to be anything else or does that necessarily take art into the ever expanding scope of illegality and criminality? Is art always “good”, “acceptable”? Stone was found guilty of attempted murder and criminal damage. In Stone’s trial, Peter Bond, an artist and senior lecturer at Central St Martins, was called as an expert witness in whose opinion Stone’s action could “come under the ambit” of performance art as long as there was no intention of using the weaponry or exploding the devices. Imputing Stone’s artistic intent depends on the planned failure of his criminal activity, what does this add – or take away from – the range of artistic practice?

To give my work some (more) context I will now look at works of artist who have done or attempted similar things to myself.

Robert Gober: when making my fountain mask I was told about the artist Robert Gober who works with objects that look like readymades but are actually handmade. He even alludes to Duchamp in his work three urinals. Maybe he’s referencing the holy trinity in a triptych like manner. I hope not, cos thats kinda the idea I’m leading into. I think the main reason I was told about the artist was due to whether I need to finish my mask off to the extremes of precision. Couldn’t find a picture of the three urinals but I did find one of this installation.

Fiona Jardine: Need to look up this artist more, but what I’ve seen is rather good. Rather.

I think its about representation, but it may also be about wall drawings, can’t remember what was the point of me looking at her right now, but I’m sure I will.

This is based on an earlier post but with additional favorites:

I am a huge art fanatic, dedicating as much time to it as writing and music. These aren’t new artists. They are the masters from the past who I’ve admired for years and years. My all-time favorites.

…

Name: Henri Matisse

Country: France

Style: Fauvism, Modernism

…

Name: Salvador Dali

Country: Spain

Style: Dadaism, Surrealism

…

Name: Hieronymus Bosch

Country: Netherlands

Style: Renaissance

…

Name: Rene Magritte

Country: Belgium

Style: Surrealism

…

Name: Giorgio De Chirico

Country: Greek, Italy

Style: Surrealism

…

Name: Diego Rivera

Country: Mexico

Style: Mexican Muralist, Social Realism

…

Name: Paul Klee

Country: Germany, Swiss

Style: Expressionism, Surrealism

…

Name: Edvard Munch

Country: Norway

Style: Expressionism

…

Name: Pablo Picasso

Country: Spain

Style: Cubism

…

Name: Rufino Tamayo

Country: Mexico

Style: Muralist, Mixografia

…

Name: Wasily Kandinsky

Country: Russia

Style: Expressionism, Bauhaus

…

Name: Franz Marc

Country: Germany

Style: Expressionism

…

Name: Eugene Delacroix

Country: France

Style: Romanticism

…

Name: David Alfaro Siqueiros

Country: Mexico

Style: Mexican Muralist, Social Realism

…

Name: Marcel Duchamp

Country: France, U.S.

Style: Dadaism, Surrealism

…

Name: Francisco Goya

Country: Mexico

Style: Romanticism

…

Name: Juan Gris

Country: Spanish

Style: Cubism

…

Name: Willem de Kooning

Country: Netherlands

Style: Abstract Expressionism

…

Name: George Grosz

Country: Germany

Style: Dadaism, New Objectivity

…

Name: Joan Miro

Country: Spain

Style: Dadaism, Surrealism

…

Name: Paul Signac

Country: France

Style: Pointilism, Neo-Impressionism

…

Name: Georges Rouault

Country: France

Style: Fauvism, Expressionism

…

Name: Wilfredo Lam

Country: Cuba

Style: Modernism, Cubism, Surrealism

…

Name: Vincent Van Gogh

Country: Netherlands

Style: Post-Impressionism

To be a vagabond;

roaming the schizophrenic streets

enveloping my body, my essence

with the cockeyed man

urinating on a crucifix

his raspy slur—The apocalypse is near

fondling my virgin ears.

so much for carpe diem.

To be a voyeur;

my Jezebel eyes

stalking lovers

while they climax

eyes stutter, loins shudder

as if being pierced

by Jesus himself.

 To be a swinger;

drinking the sickle-celled blood of strangers      

erect bodies

pounding to the beat of djembes

a monsoon of bodily fluid

breeding across the white floor.

To be a patient;

 licking the shaft of the cell

 urine slithering down the white walls

 quenching thirst

my injections for the week.

To be loved;

a foreign concept

hardens between my crotch

in fact, absurd, with a capital A

like Duchamp’s urinal

draining the gaze of

capitalistic Draculas.

To be a poet;

committing ANARCHY on paper

 prose as ammunition

exorcizing readers from the mundane

to a realm of blasphemous pleasure!

Continuing with development:

I liked how all the previous wall drawings looked together; my subconscious working up again.

May develop this later.These two pieces stemmed from the cel idea. They work by playing the character of the fountain against the recognisable mickey mouse. In the first, the fountain is given two ears, in the second the pipes of the urinals make a mickey mouse emblem.

Simply a small mickey mouse wall painting.

The above is a reaction to disney balloons. It is however not a reaction against, but merely a celebration of commercial success.

That is something that must be stressed in my work, it is not to put down anything, it is truthful and happy that disney has become such a huge prominence in society (thats worded poorly, but the jist is that I like disney, and my work is intended to celebrate and appreciate the hard work that the collective minds at disney have produce over the years). bracketed bit is far superior to normal sentence,

(i like the balloon) There’s a certain beauty to something as shiny and reflective as this. It reminds me of Koons work, an artist which I admire greatly and think is along the same lines in regards to opinion to commercialism. The balloon piece has to reference him as his work includes a variety of inflatables. My work is maybe saying that instead of deceiving people with fake inflatable objects, I choose to have the real thing. This maybe says something about me as a person as I trust people and expect people to trust me. I do not wish to play with people’s perceptions.

This piece was to emphasise the art as the celebrity, the moving away from the artist as the celebrity. Inside the book is a collection of Duchamp’s most famous works names scribed as signatures. The viewer is encouraged to imagine their own disneyland filled with Duchamp works instead of characters; duchampland.

here sit fountain, portrait of gustav calrod’s mother, jeune homme triste dans le train, fresh widow, and another window piece’s signatures.

L.H.O.O.Q. Mariee, nu descendant un escalier no 2, portrait of Dr R Dumachel’s signatures.

Also nadine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-wEmGqkYAI

keep on living everyone, I’ll post again soon.

Nude Descending Staircase, Marcel Duchamp

In 1909, with the first Cubist show in the works, the Futurist Manifesto in the papers, Three Lives self-published and The Waste Land being penned, what Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, F.T. Marinetti, Gertrude Stein and T.S. Eliot were doing was ‘Making the New’.  Ezra Pound moved to Europe to become the chief cheerleader for this, the Modern Movement.  Hard to pinpoint exactly, Modern stared primitively from canvases, ran multi-footed from printing presses, danced heavily to strange bassoon notes.  Max Jacob and Guilliame Apollonaire wrote Cubist poetry inspired by the art and Wyndam Lewis used Vorticist writing as a muse for his painting.  Tristan Tzara headed to Switzerland to take nothing to a whole other level, and James Joyce dictated endless sentences to the most patient of ears, streaming thoughts Freud himself couldn’t codify.

Speaking of Freud, I guess you want me to get to the sex part, huh?  I mean, it does come first in my tagline, doesn’t it?  One hundred years ago, Freud was developing his manly Pleasure Principles, noting “…the vulva is a void while the phallus is a presence….”

Well, here I am, one hundred years later, finding myself in bitter agreement.  In man, Freud saw two things- the drive for life and the drive toward death.  The life drive – survival, propagation, hunger, thirst, sex- he called the libido.  Notice my blog isn’t called Modern Soup or Ego?

In 2009, with my marriage ended, my business bankrupt, my father’s cancer finally cashed in and my fortieth birthday looming, what I am doing is ‘making the new’ out of my new disillusionment.  Much like my compatriots of the previous fin de siecle, I seek meaning in this meaningless world.  But what if there isn’t any?  That was really the question a century ago.

I like art that touches my emptiness.   I like poetry that surprises me mid-sentence.  I like literature that speaks to me when it knows I’m hard to reach.  But I like sex more than any of those things.  I think that was really the point a century ago, too.

Lee Miller neck by Man Ray

 Recuerdo

We were very tired, we were very merry-

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable,

But we looked into a fire, we leaned across the table,

We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;

And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry-

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;

And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,

From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;

And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,

And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry,

We hailed “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,

And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;

And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and the pears, 

And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

                                         -Edna St. Vincent Millay

SUGGESTED READING:  Makers of the New: The Revolution in Literature, 1912-1939, Julian Symons (1987)

Its only the beginning, but its going well.

and hopefully I never need to use plaster again.

Acest referat este o cercetare asupra artei și culturii postmoderne. Sunt puse in discuție atât teorii cu privire la postmodernism( dacă acesta este o mișcare nouă sau o continuare a modernismului, ce este și ce nu este postmodernismul etc) cât și idei cu privire la arta postmodernă(mijloace de exprimare ale artei, arta digitală, televiziunea etc).

O scurtă privire asupra postmodernismului

Această cercetare a pornit din dorința personală de familiarizare cu arta și cultura postmodernă in mijlocul căreia trăim. Cercetarea a pornit de la întrebarea -”Ce este postmodernismul de fapt?”-și a continuat cu studiul câtorva cărti(indicate in bibliografie) și al câtorva site-uri(indicate in siteografie),și s-a concretizat cu acest referat.

După moartea modernismului, aproximativ in anii ‘70 , arta trebuia să urmeze o nouă directie.Totuși nu a existat o intoarcere spre vechile stiluri (clasicism, romantism, sau realism) ci era nevoie de noi forme și conținuturi. Totuși postmodernismul nu merge departe de modernism ci e mai degraba un fel de continuare logică a acestuia.

“Pe la sfarșitul secolului al XIX-lea, lumea artistică a ajuns și a trecut granița intelectuală și culturală a contextului sfârșitului anilor 1960 și 1970. A absorbit universul absurd al existentialismului care pe atunci era la modă, eșecul reducției pozitivismului, și căderea socialismului Noii Stângi. S-a conectat la greii intelectuali ca Thomas Kuhn, Michael Focault si Jacques Derrida, și a luat indicații din temele lor abstracte despre antirealism, deconstructie și din pozitia lor puternic impotriva culturii vestice. Din aceste teme, postmodernismul a introdus patru variații asupra modernismului. “

Mai întâi, ca și filozofii postmoderni , artiștii acestei perioade au devenit antirealiști respingând orice formă de realism. Postmodernismul a reintrodus conținuturi dar numai cele ironice și cu referire la sine însuși.

În al doilea rând postmodernismul a stabilit mai multe deconstrucții ale categoriilor tradiționale decât a făcut modernismul.

Cea de-a treia caracteristică a postmodernismului este tendința sa spre distrugere (ex, opera L.H.O.O.Q. a lui Duchamp în care Monalisa lui DaVinci este reprezentată cu barbă si mustață) .

Postmodernismul permite oricui să expună conținuturi atâta timp cât acestea vorbesc despre realitatea socială si nu despre cea naturală sau obiectivă.

Conform lui Andreas Huyssen postmodernismul timpuriu are patru faze. Prima dintre acestea se referă la postmodernismul anilor ‘60 definit de un tip particular de imaginație care punea in evidentă un acut simț al viitorului și al noilor frontiere, al discontinuitații, al crizei și al conflictului dintre generații. Acesta amintea de primele avangarde europene de felul dadaismului și al suprarealismului. A doua fază a postmodernismului includea un atac iconoclast împotriva “artei instituționalizate” (Peter Bürger). În cea de-a treia faza partizanii din occident ai postmodernismului împărtășeau optimismul tehnologic al unor grupări din avangarda anilor ‘20. Cea de-a patra fază este definită de încercarea de validare a culturii populare fată de “arta inaltă” modernistă sau tradiționalistă.Tendinta “populistă” din deceniul al șaptelea și-a dobânidit in bună parte energia în contextul unei contraculturii și a unei abandonări aproape totale a tradiției americane intemeiată, până nu demult, pe critica culturii moderne de masă.

“J.F.Lyotard a scos la iveală și a identificat o filieră alternativă a postmodernismului, și anume antimodernismul. Înca din anii ‘80, s-a făcut auzită din ce in ce mai mult pretenția de a pune capăt experimentelor, care s-a bucurat de o intensă mediatizare populistă. Conservatorismul antimodernist face parte in mare măsură din așa-zisa “perspectivă” postmodernă, o încâlceală de păreri contradictorii, acesta fiind unul dintre motivele pentru care este imposibil să se ajungă la un consens rațional in privința postmodernismului.”

O alta falsă filieră a postmodernismului este postmodernismul eclectic. Același Lyotard spunea “eclectismul este gradul zero al culturii generale contemporane: se ascultă muzică reggae, se văd westernuri, se mănancă la McDonalds la prânz și se gătește în casă la cină, se poartă parfumuri pariziene la Tokio și haine “retro” la Hong Kong; cultura este utilă doar la concursurile Tv. Același lucru se intamplă și în arta-kitsch, confuzie și stilul “merge orice”. Neexistând criterii estetice, singura unitate de masura rămân banii.Toate “gusturile” precum și toate “nevoile” sunt satisfăcute de piață.”

Adevaratul postmodernism poate fi recunoscut dupa trei caracteristici esentiale: prima dintre ele este dilema reproductibilității. Cea de-a doua este o aură consumeristă care se extinde asupra a tot ceea ce apartine trecutului: obiecte cu design retro, haine vintage, aparate de radio din perioada Art Deco, cutii metalice de biscuiți etc. Cea de-a treia caracteristică a postmodernismului este consumerismul axat pe imagine. Reproducerile iau locul realității sau o înlocuiesc printr-o hiper-realitate. Noi trăim ceea ce deja a fost trăit și reprodus, iar realitatea noastră nu e decât cea a imaginii descompuse in fragmente.

Arta postmodernă

Postmodernismul rastoarna paradigma antropocentrică înlocuind artistul cu un bricoleur -un individ care pune laolaltă fragmente ale sensurilor create de altcineva, nu de el. Artiștii postmoderni folosesc mijloace neortodoxe pentru a “crea”: grăsimea de la liposucție(Evaristti), paie(Kiefer), excremente umane (Manzoni) sau de elefant (Ofili), urină(Serrano), sânge(Quinn), pietre(Smithson), maioneză, hotdog, ketchup(McCarthy) .

“Arta postmodernă este un fenomen unic in istorie. Oricare altă cultură din istoria umanității a produs si onorat cu mândrie pictura, sculptura, arhitectura, muzica si literatura. Dar, arta postmodernă, in teorie si in practică, este o mișcare antiartă. Se mândrește cu distrugerea formelor artei mai sus menționate și cu șocarea audienței.

“Stravechea Mimesis s-a întors pare-se, dar de data aceasta, ca zeiță a răzbunarii. Nu se mai pune problema imaginilor reprezentând o realitate transcendentă: însusi conceptul unei astfel de realități e astazi denunțat ca un efect al iluziei. Oglinda paradigmei postmoderne nu reflectă nici lumea exterioară, a naturii, nici pe cea launtrică a subiectivitații: ea se reflectă pe sine într-o oglidă, într-o oglindă, într-o oglindă…”

“Warhol “papă al artei pop”, refuză ideea, îndelung acreditată, a operei de artă ca supremă creație originală într-un spațiu și într-un timp unice si lansează mesajul postmodern care proclamă transformarea imaginii intr-o marfă, reproductibilă mecanic, parte a unui “set total de acte ale comunicării” in care stilurile, concepute și transmisibile global, pot fi semnalate concomitent, în diverse puncte ale hărții culturale a lumii, radiind în toate direcțiile, de la un continent la altul.”

Plecând de la afirmația lui Warhol “totul e drăguț” artiștii pop au luat imagistica banală și timidă a vieții cotidiene la valoarea ei declarată ca produs comercial, astfel încât subjugarea artei de către legile mărfii parea un proces încheiat pentru totdeauna.

Una dintre caracteristicile artei postmoderne este inserarea imaginilor apocaliptice, caracteristică ce o putem vedea și in televiziunea zilelor noastre (știrile Pro Tv de la ora 17, filmele dar și desenele animate(!) tot mai violente.”Consecinta a fost o criză in relații. logica bunului simt si credința, nu se sugereaza de fel existenta unui moment istoric in care aceste relații să fi fost întemeiate pe o corespondență perfectă, ci a unei diferențe istorice a modurilor de articulare a bunului simț cu credința. Schimbarea e de ordin cantitativ si e parțială, dar efectele ei sunt reale și din ce in ce mai vizibile.”

Lewis P.Thorpe afirmă ca televiziunea nu e o oglindă a lumii, ci lumea este o oglinda a televiziunii.Televiziunea este creatoare de mituri (vedete care nu își merită statutul apărute în urma mediatizării excesive), este un surogat al culturii și dă privitorului senzația că află tot și știe tot.

Trecerea de la Galaxia Guttenberg la Satul Mondial al lui McLuhan a pus în pericol egalitatea dintre educație și alfabetizare. Rezultatul acesteia a fost înlocuirea culturii cărtii cu o cultura a imaginii (tendința de a ne informa privind la televizor). Efectul invaziei imaginii e înlocuirea realului cu aceasta care este investita cu o valoare care nu poate concura cu realitatea.

Termenul de spatiu cibernetic a fost inventat de scriitorul de romane știintifico-fantastice William Gibson în cartea “Neuromancierul” și era definit ca o “halucinație consensuală”. Termenul este aplicat unui spațiu generat de software într-un calculator care creaza experiențe în realitatea virtuală. În lumea virtuală poți comunica cu oameni din diferite colțuri ale lumii, poti face cumpărături sau poți face artă. Arta electronică este considerată limita esteticii postmoderne .”Când tehnologia în ultima ei fază, “ultramodernistă”, se leaga din nou de primitivism sau spaima mitologică “devenită esențială și radicală”, nu ne mai aflăm in fața unei lumi a simulacrului și a hiperrealismului, ci a unui nou orizont al tehnologiei virtuale și al sfârșitului definitiv al fanteziilor realului.”

Concluzii

Postmodernismul este nu o miscare opusă modernismului ci o continuare a acestuia. Practic, postmodernismul a preluat scheletul modernismului pe care a construit noi ințelesuri. Făcând referire la cultura de la sfarșitul istoriei, Heidegger susține că cel mai stabil criteriu al acesteia va fi “starea de spirit”.

Arta postmodernă- fie ca vorbim de arta propriu-zisă, de arta digitală sau de televiziune- este axată pe imagine. Principala caracteristică este reproductibilitatea iar scopul principal este să șocheze audiența. Valoarea artei este data piată (arta este făcută pentru a fi vândută).

Bibliografie

• Appignasnesi , Richard și Garratt , Chris în colaborare cu Sardar , Ziauddin și Curry , Patrick – Cte ceva despre postmodernism-ed. Curtea Veche -București- 2003- pag 48

• Grigorescu , Dan – Între cucută si Coca-cola -ed.Minerva, București ,1994

• Grossberg, Lawrance – Putting the pop back into postmodernism, in -The universal abandon? : the politics of postmodernism, ed.Andrew Ross,Mineapollis ,University of Minesota Press ,1988,pag 189 citat în D.G-Între cucută si Coca-cola

Siteografie

• http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ct-958-Why_Art_Became_Ugly.aspx la 24-08-2009

• http://www.michaelnewberry.com la 24-08-2009

• http://michaelnewberry.com/av/fat/fat.html -24-08-2009

 *habar n-am cum se pun note de subsol in wordpress-daca stie cineva sa imi spuna si mie

*acesta nu e un referat de pe net e referatul meu de anul trecut la estetica .Asa ca va rog: usor cu copiatul.

I belive that the artist doesn’t know what he does. I attach even more importance to the spectator than to the artist

Sooooo

get that? its an interpretation of Hal Foster’s views on art, which I kinda agree with.

The (postmodern) artist becomes a manipulator of signs more than a producer ofart objects, and the viewer and active reader of messages rather than a passive contemplator of the aesthetic.

From that drawing I could go in a number of directions, which is why I went back to the smaller drawings.

I started combining disney and artworks, and artworks and other artworks to create art that was a culmination of efforts by me (the sign-manipulator) and the artists of yore.

Apologies for the photographs as I had already linked my camera to the computer and could not be bothered to unlink it so its done with photobooth.

From these I began to make different products:

With these drawings I’d taken a different step into both the commercialism of art, and the success of contemporary artists.

In the top one, “mickey koons” I morphed mickey into a work which although was a found-object piece before, had more symbolism to the Jeff Koons piece. Thus showing the power of contemporary painters compared to a great like walt disney whose company has become a major company of commercial success. Also brings back to the fact that artists are modern day heroes, in comparison with heroes I had when I was younger.

In the latter, “Minnie Hirst” I feel the success is even greater. Its all about success in this one. The famous business artist Hirst is draped over an unsuspecting Minnie Mouse. The tres chic polka dot dress is but one of Hirst’s most recognisable paintings. It is painted onto acetate in the same way my other cel objects where made. This represents the collector’s value of the artwork as well as the value of Hirst and Disney’s work. It raises questions of success and if the value of an art should be based entirely around its price-tag. I feel this second piece is more successful, mainly due to the simplicity and the cryptic nature. Even though the dots represent the over-success of Hirst, they can also be seen as what his work originally meant, faith in medicine (something that is completely unindulgent), and juxtaposed next to something that has become so much of an indulgence (disneyland) it becomes a battle for what is more important in life, indulgence of necessities. Tis also quite nice due to the fact that Minnie Mouse wears a polka dot dress already and its just a slight modification of a well-known image.

Am gonna start working with 3D things possibly next time, so stay tuned.

Till next time.

“Dear Tutor”

“It has been 32 days since my last successful artwork was completed.”

“I have sinned, tutor. I have been having negative thoughts about my art practice. I have been doubting my artistic ability and have thought about giving up, I no longer know where my future lies. I can no longer express my concepts successfully and I do not know where to turn.”

“Oh Dear Duchamp, I am sorry that I have sinned, please forgive me. I know you want me to learn, I want to learn from you, and to be good to all artkind. Help me make up for my sins. I will try to do better from now on.”

National Art Hate Week

Marcel Duchamp

ALL ART IS TAINTED

Damien Hirst

NATIONAL ART HATE WEEK has been instigated for the disruptive betterment of culture.

2009 propaganda

NATIONAL ART HATE WEEK is a call for direct action against the mass acceptance of art as a phantom economy for the smug manipulative elite and their ensuing grip of control over culture as a tool for mediated emotion, market lead non-critical homogeny, and boring popularism.

NATIONAL ART HATE WEEK presents a unified front of non-unified creative individuals against all that is despicable and loved by the people. We oppose the deliberate socio-economic strategy to make us all complicit in our own idiocy. We oppose the affront of state endorsed auto-cryptic balderdash and oppose the ruffians who have been pulled from the ghetto and polished up for elevated status and easy consumption by the masses.

Bride stripped bear by her bachelors, even

So I realised the similarities between the cels and another important marcel duchamp piece, large glass. The piece is about a woman being sexually pleasured with a machine being run by nine men.

So with this in mind I started jotting down idea for an artwork which oded to this brilliant piece but with keeping in the ideas of commercialism, value, and money.

I can’t talk too much about the piece as of yet because its hard to even know what its a cover of.

Its lightly provocative in nature what with Minnie being naked and all. I replaced the bride with her, and obviously she has been stripped bare by her bachelors (a host of male disney villains). There is even a question mark as to whether the image is suitable, there is a kind of uneasiness in their smiles that make us think of the worst.

The sort of idea behind it was to have disney take over a piece of art, but I don’t actually know if its worked. Its certainly recognisable to me as a piece of art, and as a reference to Duchamp. There’s also the alluding to my heroes nowadays, vs the villains of my past. But I really don’t know.

I personally love the piece but I need to think more abput why it is art, and why it is so brilliant (in my most humble opinion)

hahaha

So here are some cels that I created with the idea of having them as valuable collector’s items from a cartoon that was never made.

So I quite like them, especially the first one. Freddy Fountain as a young character (based on steamboat willie/plane crazy mickey). This naivity tries to evoke nostalgia to the days where disney was not so commercialised. Or in the case of the fountain part, a nostalgia to when art was not so commercialised.

The Grand Opening of the Cafesjian Center for Arts is honored to show hospitality to the lead art critic of the New York Times. Mr. Michael Kimmelman is visiting Armenia to take part in a number of special events, including the Grand Opening of the Center on November 8th, 2009. Kimmelman will deliver a lecture on his book nominated for Pulitzer Prize, The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa. After the lecture the guests will take part in the book signing ceremony that will lead a wonderful and unique opportunity to meet the author of the book.

As Kimmelman mentions, “Good art is generous. It’s about encouraging people to look more closely at what’s around them.”

The introductory part of the book tells about the studies of the author how “…art provides us with clues about how to live our own life more fully. Put differently, this book is, in part, about how creating, collecting, and even just appreciating art can make living a daily masterpiece.”

One can also find discussions on such well-known artists as Bonnard, Vermur, de Kooning, and Duchamp, it also includes a chapter about Bonnard, Vermur, de Kooning, and Duchamp, the book also includes a chapter about Dr. Hugh Hicks who runs a private museum from his basement showcasing his collection of over 75,000 light bulbs.

The leader art critic Michael Kimmelman was born in Greenwich Village, New York. Attending Yale College he did his graduate work in Art History at Harvard University. Now Kimmelman has moved to Berlin as he works on his Abroad column for the Times on culture and society across Europe.

Those who wish to be present in these unique lecture can reserve tickets by phone at (374 10) 54 19 32 or e-mail (info@cmf.am). You can also purchase tickets in the Visitor Center on the day of the event. The book can be purchased at the Museum Store.

The Cafesjian Center for the Arts reminds the public that its Grand Opening Celebration will begin on the evening of Saturday, November 7^th with a spectacular fireworks display near the Cascade monument.  Taking over seven years to complete, the Cascade has been completely transformed into one of the world’s outstanding contemporary art centers.  On Sunday, November 8th, the Center invites the public to view all the renovations that have taken place inside the Cascade and to enjoy an outstanding schedule of exhibitions, visiting lecturers, book-signings, concerts and events.  For a detailed schedule of events, please visit our website at www.cmf.am.

So I’m heading on down to the disney idea. I think its really quite a nice idea, with disney characters being my heroes at the time, as compared to now when artists are my heroes.

So I’m going to make an action figure. Probably using an existing disney characters body with the fountain as a head like my idea in sketchbook. Gonna have to think about a recognisable body for the character so disney is obviously seeen.

I think this is quite relevant.

It doesnt reference koons though, but in a small way it references Sherry Levine who did a copy version of fountain plating it in gold. I dont know which territory that takes this art into, referencing a referencer?

Here’s a link on how to make action figures which I’ll need to look back at soon and read it in depth.

http://highlyflammabletoys.com/hft.php?page=tutorial

So here is the continuation of the money/value/art hating piece haha

Is art an unnecessary indulgence? I was in complete awe of fountain by Marcel Duchamp and when looking at the picture it reminded me of pictures taken with disney characters at disneyland.

My act of taking this picture proved the point and potency of art. It answers the question of representation also. I believe the reputation and representations of the work are quite vital to the final piece, they increase popularity and the fame of the pieces.

Indulgence is the real question about art. Does art have an actual purpose in society. In my opinion right now, no it doesn’t. It seems like it only influences the art world and makes no impact outside it. I will have to think about it more though me tinks.

These pictures are some sketches from sketchbooks and some other wall based works.

They mainly deal with the idea that art is purely an indulgence that can be dipped into. It deals with the parallels between commercial success and art by creating a theme park where art is celebrated in a way but it also used completely for commercial success.

“Fountainhead” is an imaginary character in this land such as mickey or goofy would be in disneyland. The wall piece is a comparison between fountainhead and me as a young boy and young me and goofy at a trip to disneyland earlier in my life.

The final pieces here are a different take on this indulgence aspect. They look into the idea that art is similar in ways to sport. Art is a competition with the spectators being the bourgeouisie, the collectors, the art students, the people who want to be cultured.

I think these pieces are quite potent in the way they reference another artist Jeff Koons, I had to look into his equilibrium work to make sure it was the right thing to slot into my own artwork. I believe it is: it is a representation of how art is used by white middle-class kids for social mobility just how other ethnic groups in new york at the time used basketball for theirs. It is also about it being impossible to become the perfect person, equal in every way. Koons presents the balls in a water mixed with sodium something or other solution which makes them stay central, but gradually moving down to the bottom of the tank through a process which takes about six months. This shows that nothing can be kept completely central.

The idea presented in these two sketchbook images is one of combining art with sport, as I see sport being a completely useless part of society. Maybe if I get over my feelings about sport I will be able to overcome this hurdle in art.

Anyhoos wish me luck in my crit tomorrow, byah