Allan Kaprow's "activity"

It was an interesting experience, making face into the mirror until I couldn’t see Shannon’s face anymore. It really made me aware of so many more things. Like the fact that I had to pay attention to the faces that both Shannon and I were making, but also avoid tripping over something in my apartment as well. Even tough now that I’ve completed the assignment, I still feel like I missed out and I don’t completely understand. It must have been different to have the entire class watching and to be outside. Was there some secret trick that I’m missing, or is it simply the fact that I don’t really appreciate the type of performance art we studied in this class? It was a fun exercise and I understand the basics of putting together a performance piece. I guess I just don’t consider it as my type of art.

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 (:

Duchamp Duchamp

The Large Glass, otherwise known as The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, as become one of the most well known mixed media, three-dimensional works of art to come from the hands of Marcel Duchamp. He began planning for the project in 1913 with a series of notes and sketches. Then he published those preliminary studies as The Green Box and sold many copies. He began work in 1915 and carefully constructed the work from two glass panels, lead foil, fuse wire, and dust and finally finished in 1923. His work not only involved laborious craftsmanship but fortunate mistakes. The glass was broken in 1926 and Duchamp decided that he preferred to leave the glass that way after carefully repairing most of the damage. As time passed on and it’s popularity grew, Duchamp sanctioned replicas. The first was for an exhibition at Maderna Museet in Stockholm and another in 1966 for the Tate Gallery in London.
The most popular interpretation for The Large Glass is that it’s an exploration of female and male desire and the complication that arise. It’s a “love Machine” or more appropriately, “a machine of suffering” according to Janis Mink. “The lower and upper realms are forever separated by the horizon designated as the ‘bride’s clothes’.” The bachelors below are subjected to only being able to experience “the possibility of churning, agonized masturbation.” [Mink]. Andrew Stafford, author of Making Sense of Marcel Duchamp, claims that the title the characteristic ironic humor that many of us know Duchamp’s art for, arguing that “ the Bride bares herself, physically or psychically to incite her suitors’ libidos. Personally, I have never had a taste for Duchamp’s work. While I appreciate his intuitive sense of creativity, his disdain and prickly manner in which he centers his work around has always annoyed me. I have an interest in how he created the work, because I have always found mix media fascinating. But when it comes to the concept behind the work, I take the time to learn what it is, but then I move on. There are other ideas that I prefer to delve into.

sources:
Mink, Janis: Marcel Duchamp, 1887-1968: Art as Anti-Art as reproduced at artchive.com.

Stafford, Andrew: Making Sense of Marcel Duchamp website.

Kills Museums Dead

Our assignment was to analyze the similarities between the two articles on the future of museums and answer the questions that would help us explore the issue further. However, I cannot proceed without pointing out the differences as well because these two articles, while addressing very similar subjects, are oriented on two slightly different paths. Joel Garreau’s Is There a Future for Old-Fashioned Museums is an intriguing article that takes an overall view on how all museums are changing and how the internet it changing how things work. It addressing the question of “Well… what exactly constitutes a museum? A Webster’s dictionary definition of what a museum actually is.” It focuses on what makes a trip to a museum so satisfactory and in others opinion, why the Internet is a better choice. Garreau finished his article with the gist that the Internet may be more convenient, but something about human nature and the desire to explore will continue to bring tourists to museums.
Blake Gopnik has a more specific focus in his article, Art Museum Expansion: A constructive Trend? He starts off as though he’s perched himself up on a soapbox, but his cliché beginning suddenly changes into irresistible humor. Gopnik studies wholly how museums today are expanding and how it can be damaging the whole museum experience while Garreau explored this issue only briefly. He claims that by adding on more wings, the quality of the art shows are lowered. What was once a place of quiet reflection is now a business focus mainly on how many people passed through the doors and how many cappuccinos where sold in the museum’s café.
I agree with both articles completely. Throughout the 21st century museums have been a place of exploration and human interaction. Personally, I think that technology is a wonderful tool, but we’re seriously treading a thin line. Where are museums a commercial monster and where are they a personal place that makes the visitor welcome but at the same time manage to support itself. We have to be careful to not lose the human element of interaction.

Patterns

When it comes to pattern work, Islamic art is the best. The architecture from its culture and religion is beautiful, intensified for their sharp eye for simplified yet complex patterns. Arabesque design work is an elaborate use of repeating geometric forms that represent plans and animals. Muslims believe that when these forms are tacken together, they constitute an infinite and uncentralized nature of the creation of Allah. Basically, Arabesque art conveys a definate spirituality without having iconography like in the art of other religions. The ancient Islamic people had five main shapes that they would manipulate to make many styles and designs. From looking at many patterns on tiled floors, wallcoverings, and prints, I think that the Native American and the Muslim are the masters when it comes to patterns in design. Of all art, patterns, simple or complex, makes the strongest and most solid composition.

(Richard Ettinghausen, Oleg Grabar, and Marilyn Jenkins-Madina, Islamic Art and Architecture, 650-1250. (New Haven: Yale UP, 2001), 66.)