kaitlyn morrison's blog

Nicholas Bourriaud, a famous French art critic and writer, published a book in 1998 called Relational Aesthetics. He defined relational aesthetics as, “A set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space”-Tate. In his opinion, art should capture the mood of visual communication today. He believed “social relations are vanishing as communication becomes restricted”. In the reading Bourriaud mentioned how art has changed. He had said art was intended to prepare and announce a future world. But today, it is modeling possible universes. He makes a valid point about the Old Avant Garde versus the New, “The old avant-gardes, Bourriaud tells us, were oriented toward conflict and social struggle; relieved of this dogmatic radical antagonism and macro-focus on the global system, relational-alleviational art “is concerned with negotiations, bonds, and co-existences. The new relational avant-gardistes “are not naïve or cynical enough ‘to go about things as if’ the radical and universalist utopia were still on the agenda”. In my opinion, the way society is today has a huge impact on art in many different ways. Today, technology plays a massive part in our lives which takes away from things that use to matter. Art created an “escape” and created a voice for individuals. It was a way to bring people together and to connect on the same level. The way both art and society was, there was one goal and one “dream” of how the future would be. But now, art and society couldn’t be more divergent.

Throughout the reading, art is often compared to as a game. “Art is a game between all people of all periods”. I think this is constantly mentioned because it is true in a sense because art in never ending. It is all around us. It always has been and always will be. When a new artist comes along, there is always another artist that is trying to outshine him/her. It is a constant competition between artists. But I will say that art is not like a game in a sense that art has no rules. There are no boundaries for art. For example, ‘Fountain’ by Duchamp. “Fountain is an example of what Duchamp called a ‘ready made’, an ordinary manufactured object designated by the artist as a work of art. It epitomises the assault on convention and good taste for which he and the Dada movement are best known”. The purpose of Relational Aesthetics is to explore art by fabricating moments or encounters. Bourriaud saw artists as, “facilitators rather than makers. He regarded art as information exchanged between the artist and the viewers. The artist, in this sense, gives audiences access to power and the means to change the world”.

 

http://transform.eipcp.net/correspondence/1196340894#redir

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573

file:///Users/Downloads/Bourriaud%20Relational%20Aesthetics%20(3).pdf

 

The Pictures Generation was referred to as the time when appropriation became one with the works the artists produced. Appropriation was the use of pre-existing objects or images with little or no transformation applied to them. “Appropriation artists wants the viewer to recognize the images they copy, and they hope that the viewer will bring all of his/her original associations with the image to the artist’s new context, be it a painting, a sculpture, a collage, a combine or an entire installation”.

This allowed the artists to develop new meanings in a whole different context. Douglas Crimp truly believed that they have witnessed a break from Modernism. What lead him to believe this was the meaning that was hidden behind the paintings and work. There was an underlying and hidden “story”. Underneath each picture, there’s another picture. “Corruption of art mediums, the lines that separated mediums have finally been blurred”.

The exhibition “Pictures” and art in the 1970’s was under the influence of postmodernism because the artists were engaged with appropriation. Before, the artists focused on new ideas and new objects. It broke away from the concept of “originality” where the artist was viewed or thought to have been a creator of art works and their meanings. All art has to be representational. Without an audience, art would have no meaning. The use of photography made the artist a mere chronically rather than a creative individual genius. Roslin Crowst’s opinion was that a lot came before pieces of work. Nothing was new and nothing was original. For example, the male nude is nothing new to art. It is just recycled like all art is recycled.

Edward Weston                                  Cindy Sherman 1978

Torso of Neil 1927                                      Untitled Film

     

“Warhol isolated the image of these products to stimulate product recognition (just like in advertising) and stir up associations with the idea of Campbell’s soup – that mmm mmm good feeling. He also tapped into a whole bunch of other associations, such as consumerism, commercialism, big business, fast food, middle class values, and food representing love. As an appropriated image, these specific soup labels could resonate with meaning (like a stone tossed into a pond) and so much more”.

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/global-culture/identity-body/identity-body-united-states/a/the-pictures-generation

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/global-culture/identity-body/identity-body-united-states/a/what-is-appropriation

file:///Users/morrison/Downloads/Crimp_Pictures%20(1).pdf

http://artistsspace.org/exhibitions/pictures

 

 

 

Chris Burden was a famous artist in the early 1970’s. He is well known for his jaw dropping performances such as Shoot. “At 7:45 p.m. I was shot in the left arm by a friend. The bullet was a copper jacket 22 long rifle. My friend was standing about fifteen feet from me”. His performances were shocking and daring. Burden would do what most people would never dare to do. He would endure pain, which is what most people try to avoid. “Chris Burden’s seemingly outrageous performances were in fact authentically intentioned. His art explores the nature of suffering by setting up extreme situations that he, himself, has to endure. Theoretically, a viewer can interrupt the work at any point, but usually they do not; thus, his work challenges viewers themselves to act – both within the sphere of his art and within the larger context of humanity in general” -the art story.

Throughout this time in history the Vietnam War was being fought. Soldiers fighting for our lives. Innocent people dying left and right. “More than 3 million people, including 58,000 Americans, were killed in the conflict”. This was the first war to ever be televised in history. The public was able to see the tragedy that was happening. Burden tried to tie his performances into the Vietnam war in a sense that pain and suffering was real. He “wanted to portray the reality of pain to the audience at a time when people had become desensitized to the plethora of television images of injured and dead American soldiers in Vietnam and the general dominance of violence in media imagery”- the art story. In class we talked about the difference between being a hero and being a terrorist. The difference between a soldier and a murder. Chris Burden thought about these differences too and tied them into his paintings. He wanted to prove that no matter who you are, the hero or the terrorist, the murderer or the soldier, pain is pain. Everyone goes through pain and suffering in their lives. The thing that separates us from one another is how we go about expressing that pain and suffering. How we chose to deal with it. That is what makes us a hero or a terrorist. A murderer or a soldier.  

 

http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war

http://www.jstor.org/stable/779202?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Robert Smithson inspired many artists with his diverse style of art. His style was altered, starting with paintings and collages then transforming to sculptures. He is very famous for his Earthwork, also known as Land Art, “The Spiral Jetty, a remarkable coil of rock composed in the colored waters of the shore of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. In 1973, he died in an aircraft accident when he was surveying the site for another Earthwork in Texas”. -the art story. This new style of art was viewed as Post-Minimalism. It intended to eliminate any association with what was considered “traditional” art. Smithson constructed his art sculpture from pieces of material. His main goal was to make the viewer question art and to “confuse the viewer’s understanding of sculpture”-the art story. He wanted to create a relationship between man and landscape. Smithson believed that the best type of earth art to work with and recreate was the one that has already been disrupted by man.  

“Much of Smithson’s output was shaped by his interest in the concept of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics that predicts the eventual exhaustion and collapse of any given system. His interest in geology and mineralogy confirmed this law to him, since in rocks and rubble he saw evidence of how the earth slows and cools. But the idea also informed his outlook on culture and civilization more generally; his famous essay Entropy and the New Monuments (1969) draws analogies between the quarries and the strip malls and tract housing of New Jersey, suggesting that ultimately the later will also perish and return to rubble” -the art story.

 

The pop art movement intended to eliminate any separation between what was considered high and low art culture. Pop art incorporated a variety of styles but some people would argue that emotion was removed from the art work. “It could be argued that the Abstract Expressionists searched for trauma in the soul, while Pop artists searched for traces of the same trauma in the mediated world of advertising, cartoons, and popular imagery at large. But it is perhaps more precise to say that Pop artists were the first to recognize that there is no unmediated access to anything, be it the soul, the natural world, or the built environment. Pop artists believed everything is inter-connected, and therefore sought to make those connections literal in their artwork”-the art story.

Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, and Claes Oldenburg are usually the artists associated with the pop art movement. The focus was peoples every day life. This art was also used as propaganda. Propaganda was “used to promote a particular political cause or point of view”. 

Andy Warhol  Roy Lichtenstein

James Rosenquist

 

Gutai art was first started in Japan by Jiro Yoshihara. “The kangi used to write ‘gu’ means tool, measures, and a way of doing something, while ‘tai’ means body”. This style of art focused on the beauty of destruction and gave it a deeper meaning to life. It was really important to become one with the tools and because of this, you would get a final product.

 

In Japanese culture they incorporate art in many different ways. For example, Kabuki, which is the art of performing by singing and dancing. Their style of art is aggressive but has a much deeper meaning to it. With Kabuki theater, every single movement tells a story. The costumes used and the way the make up is applied adds to portraying the story.      Geishas symbolize their style of art. They use specific brushes and tools to apply their make up. When they apply their make up, they compare their face to a canvas and they are creating art when the make up if applied. Because of the brushes they use, theres art. 

Action Painting was a unique style of painting because of how it was applied to the canvas. Everyone was use to witnessing artists paint with caution while they applied the paint delicately on the canvas. The term Action painting came about from Harold Rosenberg who was a famous critic. “It emphasizes the process of making art, often through a variety of techniques that include dripping, dabbing, smearing, and even flinging paint onto the surface of the canvas”.

 This Action Painting was created by Jackson Pollock. Pollock played a major role   in the Abstract Expressionist Movement. His style consisted of dripping the  paint onto the canvas.This style of painting allowed the painter to express  themselves on another level. “To Greenberg, it was the physicality of the  paintings’ clotted and oil-caked surfaces that was the key to understanding them.  ‘Some of the labels that became attached to Abstract Expressionism, like  “informal” and “Action Painting,’ definitely implied this; one was given to  understand that what was involved was an utterly new kind of art that was no  longer art in any accepted sense”.