Iconography

As a traveler in a foreign country, symbols or icons are the main source of relief and navigation. For example, the fork and knife symbols are widely used and tell the observer that food is in such a direction. The simplified figures of male and females are the universal sign for bathrooms. There are symbols out there that are so well known that the brain recognizes it and the connotations that go along with it. These commonly used symbols are known as Icon’s and humanity has been using them to communicate with one another for centuries.
Christianity used icons in the medieval ages to teach the illiterate lower class religious values and lessons from the Bible. Other religions used icons in the same way. Today their own distinct icon can identify different religions. Christianity is the cross; Judaism has the Star of David, and so on. An icon can link to completely different worlds. A Muslim can recognize another person as a Christian without ever having to say a word. A necklace with a crucifix is enough.
Aside from religion, people have used icons in advertising. People are more likely to know your product and buy it if they can immediately recognize it. Children grow excited when they see their favorite character on cereal boxes, or their favorite cartoon character on apparel. The more people know you, the more success you will have. Being able to make that immediate connection with your audience is vital.
Basically, the study of Iconography is about how human beings can communicate with the use of symbols that are universally known instead of spoken words. It is a language in itself that almost every human being on the planet knows. From personal experience, simple communication with the use of pictures works beautifully. Three years ago, I had a young Japanese exchange student come and stay with my family and I for a month. The two of us got along perfectly by drawing what we wanted to do on a notepad that we carried along with us. Humanity is amazing in that it can be so completely divided by nationality, race, and tongue, but at the same time inevitably connected by the fact that we are human, and have a brain.

*there are no citations because this blog is based off of my own observations and common knowledge.

Yet another blog... about Performance Art

Performance art is vague, painfully vague, but therein lay the point. The movements that helped to bring performance art into the spotlight, Fluxus, Gutai, Nouveau Realism, and Dada are all about breaking the traditional confines of how we perceive art and breaking away from influences to portray the artistic idea in its pure form. This way of thinking challenges how we regard art by its lack of guidelines. People who embrace it are those who craving for newer ways to express the ideas in their heads, free from the long history of art that can be, at times, a weight around our necks. Art is a free form, and the ways in which to express it are limitless.
Artists during the first half of the 20th century came together to break the bonds of what they considered as “commercialized art”. They functioned as groups in different areas of artistic thinking, artists, composers, writers, and designers to become the international network known as Fluxus. The inventors of this movement took its name from Latin, meaning, “to flow” and indeed it seems to be justly named. The network “flows” together by accepting the artistic differences among the participants so that “Intermedia” became a phrase commonly used in describing it.
Another interesting group that helped shape the thought process involved with performance art is Gutai, a movement in Japan that was started by Jiro Yoshihara in 1954. This movement was preoccupied with the idea of the “beauty that arises when things become decayed or damaged”. Yoshihara wrote a manifesto that explained that damage or destruction is “celebrated” as a way of revealing the inner “life” of an object.

"Yet what is interesting in this respect is the novel beauty to be found in works of art and architecture of the past which have changed their appearance due to the damage of time or destruction by disasters in the course of the centuries. This is described as the beauty of decay, but is it not perhaps that beauty which material assumes when it is freed from artificial make-up and reveals its original characteristics? The fact that the ruins receive us warmly and kindly after all, and that they attract us with their cracks and flaking surfaces, could this not really be a sign of the material taking revenge, having recaptured its original life?...."
- Jiro Yoshihara

This was of thinking is fascinating. I’m glad for the sharp minds that took the time to challenge what was the norm and create a way for people to express their art in more ways. Nouveau Realism and Dada are all about breaking the mold and the ability to think freely about their ideas. It’s a challenge, in my opinion, to other artists. Take the road that’s less traveled, be bold and daring about your thinking. So many of us try to hide behind what is normal. We limit ourselves with what we’ve already seen or the fears we have over the reaction of our work might be. I know that I have a fear of how my viewers will react, but that’s why I’m here. The reason I’m studying art in the first place is, even more so than gathering skills, is to learn how to be fresh in how I approach my ideas and expressing them without any hesitancy.



References:
- Françoise Bonnefoy; Sarah Clément; Isabelle Sauvage; Galerie nationale du jeu de paume (France). Gutai (Paris : Galerie nationale du jeu de paume : Réunion des musées nationaux, 1999) ISBN 2908901684 9782908901689
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutai_group
- O'Dell, Kathy (Spring 1997). "Fluxus Feminus". The Drama Review 41 (1): 43–60. ISSN 10542043. Retrieved on 2007-05-05.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus

Performance art.

Thanks guys (: