"Walking Through Walls: Marina Abramovic's performance art" by Judith Thurman 2010

Marina Abramovic

This article looks at Marina Abramovic's life and the evolution of her performance art.  Soon to have a retrospective at MoMA, Abramovic is training performers to do recreations of some of her past works, and also participating in the exhibit herself, of course, Abramovic has created the idea for a new performance called "The Artist is Present."  In her work, Abramovic was greatly influenced by her upbringing.  Her mother was extremely stoic and expected her daughter to be the same.  Abramovic uses this learned stoicism to her advantage in that she has trained herself to tolerate considerable pain in the name of a performance.  Often seemingly masochistic, many of her performances, at least many of her older ones, were more "ordeal"-focused, similar to the work of many of her contemporaries.  In recent years, she has been criticized by some for reviving past performances.  People then question what makes her art different from a theatrical performance.  Performance art is often characterized by being completely in the moment and open to anything, with the artist having some particular jumping off point, but letting whatever happens happen.  Abramovic believes that it is important for new spectators to view and participate in her works.  She doesn't think that words on a page or a recording are an adequate way for people to look back on and understand her work.     

Ana Mendieta 'Art and Politics' and Marcel Duchamp 'The Richard Mutt Case'

In this speech, Mendieta discusses why she makes art, why she believes art is important, and criticizes the culture of the 1970s/80s.  First, she makes clear that she believes that art is kind of a job.  She can only make the art that she can make--no other kind.  She emphasizes she has no choice in the matter.  Mendieta believes it is important to know oneself, because only then can one begin to know the world.  Turning to culture, she believes art is crucial because it can greatly influence culture and society.  She questions current (1982) U.S. culture, believing that it is mostly controlled by advertising agencies and the wealthy, who create products for mass consumption and through these products, a fake world.  She complains of the effects of mass communication and how it is coming to influence the arts as well.  Many important artists are getting ignored in the wake of this all-encompassing cultural consumerism.

Ana Mendieta, work from Silueta series, 1970s

Duchamp's excerpt is his response to the Society of Independent Artists for refusing his submission of a urinal to their open exhibition in New York, 1917.  He questions why, when he paid the $6 to exhibit, his piece--"Fountain"--was not exhibited.  He then assumes that people considered it "vulgar" and/or that it was just a piece of plumbing, therefore not an artwork.  His response to the first is that a urinal is no more immoral than a bathtub.  As for the second objection, he believes the fact that he chose the piece to exhibit is what matters, not whether he made it with his own hands.  By taking an ordinary object and placing it in a different context, he "created a new thought for that object."  

R. Mutt (Marcel Duchamp), Fountain, 1917

  

"Imitation of Art: John Currin's sleight of hand" by Lance Esplund, 2004

John Currin, Standing Nude, 1993

In this article, Esplund discusses the copying of other painter's work, specifically as this practice is employed by John Currin.  Esplund disagrees with many critics' glowing admiration of Currin, those who cite him as a modern day master.  He believes Currin's art is only similar to the old masters on a superficial level and that Currin just picks and chooses styles of painting or subject matter at random, employing each on a whim.  He borrows from painters but does not create a cohesive, intelligent work through his borrowings.  Often characterized by distorted figures, Esplund believes Currin's pieces are flat and lack depth inherent in better artists' work.  Currin uses solid background colors to isolate the figure, whereas old masters would use black (among other colors) as an agent of depth to create many different sensations, ranging anywhere from enveloping to closing off.  Each black would have a different feel to it and would not just be a solid wall.  Esplund believes that critics love Currin's works because they are like a treasure hunt for references to old artists and paintings.  In his closing paragraph, Esplund is particularly blunt in talking about artists he believes are real modern masters: "The mission of these artists is to paint, not to titillate and entertain; to engage with the poetic, universal language of painting instead of the fashionable chatter of a fickle art world.  And, as such, their works, along with the tradition of painting, will endure" (91).   

Shoot an Iraqi: pg. 128-177

This last portion of the book finds Wafaa in his final week of his installation.  Amidst some paintball supplier and technological difficulties, Wafaa is heartened by a peace lily (2 actually) sent to him by some friends.  The next day, a girl figures out that if she constantly moves the gun to the left, she can shield Wafaa and gets a bunch of other people involved, creating what they term "The Virtual Human Shield."  Though aided by the shield, Wafaa is dispirited by how much weight he has gained and how tired and unhealthy he feels due to the stress he has undergone during the month.  On Day 30, he decides to continue the project one additional day, as a message to the people who didn't think he would do it.  On the last day Wafaa silences the gun and proclaims, "We silenced one gun today and I hope we will silence all guns in the future" (162).  

Wafaa Bilal during his project Domestic Tension

Wafaa's alternate narrative about his past details his time in the Saudi refugee camp, the abusive treatment by the guards, and the ensuing uprising of the refugees. Finally, some people in the camp were selected to possibly be taken to the U.S.  Wafaa's name was among those on the list and so he was interviewed.  Both him and his brother were allowed to come to the U.S. and were sent to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Wafaa began to learn English and eventually enrolled at the University of New Mexico, studying art.  He continued to pursue political art and began to take his work down a more interactive vein, a crucial aspect to his art today.   

Shoot an Iraqi: pg. 45-127

Wafaa Bilal during his art installation, Domestic Tension

This section of the book begins with Wafaa's server for his project's website being overloaded by the amount of traffic, but the problem is soon solved thanks to his new programmer friend Jason.  A couple days later, Wafaa got an unexpected visit from a Marine who brought him a new lamp (because people had shot his old one) and wanted to tell Wafaa that his project really meant a lot to him.  Wafaa was moved by such a simple, honest gesture.   He also discussed how people visiting the website soon discovered that they could turn the paintball gun into a machine gun, shooting paintballs in quick succession.  As the days passed, the project continued to become more and more widely known, with some people posting really explicit and awful things.  Wafaa was able to have some intelligent conversations with people about his work but a lot of them either didn't care or just wanted someone to talk to.  He continued to develop more post-traumatic stress symptoms and often found it difficult to sleep, in addition to being paranoid and exhausted. 

In the sections discussing Wafaa's past, he talked about the major exams he had to take in order to get into college.  He was excited to get away from home and study art, but unfortunately he was not admitted into the art program because of a cousin who had run afoul of the government.  In college, Saddam tried to keep students from organizing and spreading dissent.  He would send them to military camps during the summer and banned dormitory housing for students the year that Wafaa began school.  Classes and professors were heavily pressured by the Ba'ath Party to teach their philosophy.  Wafaa later left school, convinced that he was being closely watched by Ba'ath Party members and student spies because of his refusal to keep his head down.  He eventually traveled to a refugee camp just over the border in Kuwait and lived there for a time before being transported with the other refugees to Saudi Arabia by American soldiers.        

Shoot an Iraqi: pg. 1-44

 
I have actually finished this book already so I think I'm a little ahead of schedule but I got so into it that I had to continue!  Plus I was on a long plane ride over break so that also factored into my decision.  :)  

The first part of the book introduces Wafaa Bilal and his art project, Domestic Tension.  He decided to live in a room of an art gallery for one month, with a paintball gun aimed at him, that people could fire through a website.  His installation was meant to bring attention to the war in Iraq and to make people think about what it means for soldiers and members of the U.S. military to be able drop bombs on other countries while sitting safely here in the U.S., often not really seeing their target.  He also had more personal motivations for the project, in that his brother and father had recently died back home in Iraq and he wanted to channel his sadness about their deaths and his self-consciousness about living comfortably in the U.S. into a thought-provoking, somewhat controversial installation piece.  

The book continues in an alternating sort of way, switching between narratives about his experiences during the month-long installation and narratives telling bits and pieces of his experience growing up in Iraq.  His family life was characterized by almost constant tension exuded by his father, a man depressed and frustrated with his lot in life.  Wafaa's parents separated several times and so life at home was somewhat unpredictable.  Interspersed with this dialogue, he also talks about the beginnings of his project and people that he met to help him construct the gun, program and website.  The first day that Domestic Tension opened, the atmosphere was somewhat awkward as people did not really know how to respond and Wafaa felt somewhat separate from the people in the gallery but still tried to interact with them.  The beginnings of his project were a little unremarkable otherwise.  The gun would not go off that frequently and so living in the gallery room was pretty bearable.           

ArtBreak with James Mullen 3/9/11

James Mullen did a nice job on his talk today.  I liked how he talked a little about the impact that UNH and the faculty here had on his artwork (I feel like most of the other art talks I have been to about the current Museum of Art exhibit haven't more than mentioned the subject).  He mentioned Craig Hood and Scott Schnepf, as well as a couple other professors before my time.  I was really impressed with the variety of media that he has explored in his years as an artist--how he began as an undergrad in printmaking and sculpture, later on got into painting, and more recently into photography.  That is something that I want to do.  Even right now, when I'm doing crafts and other things, I'll get really inspired by a certain material or technique and then do that for a while until I get tired of it and pick up something else.  

I quite enjoyed his landscape work.  I could really see his respect for and appreciation of landscapes and the environment.  Although some of compositions of his earlier paintings seemed a bit awkward, I liked how he incorporated both landscape and still life in order to look at man's relationship with nature--both how we view it and interact with it.  In the below painting, Nature, he really played with many different images of the landscape. 

James Mullen, Nature, 1998

His panoramic work was quite lovely, though for some reason I was a little disappointed when he told us that he projected photographs on his canvas, then traced the forms with charcoal, then painted the landscape.  I guess I just have it instilled in me from school that copying from photographs is somehow cheating.  

James Mullen, 17th Hole Spring Island, 2011

I liked the above piece a lot because he plays with the idea of man-made nature/landscape juxtaposed with natural landscape.  The little pond on the left is a man-made water feature for a golf course, the 17th hole of which is in the middle of the painting, while just off the golf course on the right is this great big salt marsh.  

James also talked a lot about his recent interest in photography, and how it really started when he purchased a digital camera and started taking photographs of everyday things whenever he saw something that interested him--this resulting in a lot of photographs of normal, recognizable objects, but from a unique perspective.  A lot of these also played with light and shadow.  I loved all the different oranges in the below photograph and the beautiful textures created by the netting and the shadows.

James Mullen, Chelsea Construction, 2004

 

"The Artist Interrogated: Interviews and Other Inquisitions"

This reading is an excerpt of some interviews and conversations with artists about their work and art in general.  The artists included are Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Balthus, Jackson Pollock, and Veronese (mostly modern artists, though not all).  Here are some short summaries of a few of the interviews:  Damien Hirst's involves questioning from the trial of Mark Bridger, an artist who defaced Hirst's work of a lamb in formaldehyde by pouring black ink into it.  Apparently Bridger thought that Hirst would appreciate the unconventional quality of the stunt, but Hirst did not seem to be very pleased.  He said that he thought about leaving the work, but then decided that would make it seem ok for people to come in and do whatever they wanted to works of art.  

Damien Hirst, Away from the Flock, 1994

Andy Warhol converses with a girl Damian about artists, taking risks, and "new" art.  Warhol sees Damian as naive and possessing a hopelessly romantic vision of artists as risk-takers who must make something people may consider bad initially in order to be successful.  Jasper Johns comes across as not being very thoughtful and premeditated about the decision-making in his works, at least until the end of the interview.  Balthus observes to David Bowie that subjects to him often have little or no importance, they are just an excuse to make a painting and to reach an inner feeling or truth.  

Field Trip to ICA 3/3/11

I was so glad to be able to go to the Institute of Contemporary Art because I had been wanting to go for a while.  I did like the building quite a bit, although I was somewhat disappointed in that only one of the floors was being used for exhibit space.  It just seemed like quite a large building to have only one floor of exhibits.  I think my two favorite aspects of the building were the huge glass elevator and the wonderful long glass window at the back of the fourth floor, looking out onto the water.  It was too bad that it was so dark out at that point because it was a little hard to see the view.  

Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA

As for the exhibits, I enjoyed some of Mark Bradford's work.  I liked that he used found materials and that his pieces were often brightly colored and map-like.  Some of them had a wonderful fuzzy depth to them created by the repetition and overlapping of the small rectangular pieces of paper/posterboard/fabric/etc that he used.  The other exhibit was amusing at times--I thought often very stereotypically "contemporary art."  My favorite pieces were the enormous receipt blankets.  I also liked the can on the conveyor belt.  

drawing from "The Lost Thing"

Seeing the animated shorts was so fun!  I loved all of them so much...they were so creative and such wonderful stories.  Madagascar had absolutely gorgeous animation--I loved how all different types of media were included in it.  Let's Pollute was clever and really sad at the same time.  It was very effective at using humor to bring home how much we waste as a society.  I had seen The Gruffalo before and enjoyed seeing it again.  I think one of my favorites was The Lost Thing.  I was just really drawn to the quirky animation and the somewhat distopian world that the animators created. 


Overall I had a lovely time and am so glad we went!    

"Off the Rim: Jim Carroll's 'The Petting Zoo'" by Thomas Mallon

Mallon reviews Jim Carroll's The Petting Zoo.  He believes that Carroll's last book, put together posthumously, was an unnecessary, somewhat lackluster addendum to a set of much more interesting earlier works.  Carroll, through The Basketball Diaries, gave a gritty window into his life as a teenager in New York City in the 60s and gathered many followers in the process.  A heroin addict from a young age, Carroll struggled with the drug, while believing that it originally got him into poetry and writing.  Mallon thinks The Petting Zoo lacks much of the honest realism and pizazz--"sex, drugs and rock 'n roll"--that Carroll's earlier works successfully employed.  The main character is somewhat of a bore, though there are some moments of beauty in Carroll's writing.  Mallon almost seems to imply that by the artist's last years, his creativity had been spent, helped in no part by an obsession with drugs all those years.     

"Serra Smiles: The new friendliness of America's most fearsome sculptor" by Peter Schjeldahl, 2000

Richard Serra, Switch, 1999

This article is quite similar to the one summarized in the previous post.  Schjeldahl sees Richard Serra's current sculpture as a dramatic, positive departure from his older works, making installations that have a real playful quality to them.  The author seems to really like "Switch," one of Serra's most recent works, which consists of three pairs of steel walls, all of which curve towards a central point, creating a triangular interior space.  People respond to Switch's beauty, as they move in and around the work.  As Schjeldahl most articulately states, "You cannot use up 'Switch.'"  He believes Serra's work has a lot to teach public spaces where many people congregate and walk through, such as airports, malls and casinos.  Schjeldahl sees Frank Gehry, one of Serra's close friends, as a major influence in his growth as an artist from the depths of "the most menacing paladin of Minimalism." 

"Abstract Art's New World, Forged for All" by Michael Kimmelman, 2005

Richard Serra, The Matter of Time, 2005

A review of Richard Serra's permanent installation in the Guggenheim, this article looks at the installation as evidence of a major turning point in the artist's career.  Kimmelman believes that this work "rejuvenates and pushes abstraction to a fresh level."  He contrasts this with a somewhat more negative view of Serra's work back in the late 80s when his sculptures were perceived to be "menacing," especially "Tilted Arc."    

Richard Serra, Tilted Arc, 1981

He believes Serra has grown as an artist and this growth has helped people realize the fun, almost playground-like quality to his work.  All of his works are focused on the individual experience of people walking in and around his sculptures, the time it takes them, what memories each person creates of the work, and an element of the surprise/unexpected as one travels through his organic forms, wondering what will be around the next corner.  The installation in the Guggenheim really makes use of the particular space in which it is housed, creating different feelings of openness and closure, forcing people to movie in a certain direction here while subtly prodding them in another there.  What is important is not the overall work but the experience of navigating the work.    

"Ladies Wild: How not dumb is Gaga?" by Sasha Frere-Jones

Frere-Jones begins the article by discussing the endurance of pop music.  He observes that there is not one path in pop music to follow in order to be successful or remembered, citing Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Bob Marley, and Prince.  Some stars who only existed for a time as one-hit wonders are brought back into the scene again years later, through references and homages by current artists, so much so that no one knows how much of an impact any singer/group will continue to have in the future.  

 
Lady Gaga certainly fits into the ridiculous, anything goes attitude of successful pop music and has been very smart about planning her continued domination of the genre.  She has talent but also has an eye for important collaborators, both of which helped to make her album, "The Fame," the success that it is.  Her songs bring a new life to old staples of dance/disco music.  Frere-Jones ends the article by observing that Lady Gaga seems to appreciate the odd craziness of the one-hit wonder artists but wonders whether she will be able to keep this up for a more extended career: "Germanotta knows that the one-hit wonders are weirder and cooler than the well-paid musicians who stretch their careers over seven years on the stage and twenty more behind it.  Can she have it both ways?" (63).           

"Fancy Footwork: 'Black Swan' and 'Love and Other Drugs'" by David Denby

Denby begins his review by looking at the movie Black Swan.  He emphasizes heartily that he believes most of the movie is overdone and is too obsessed with tension and horror movie-esque mutilation that has been all too present in Arronofsky's other movies, "The Wrestler" and "Requiem for a Dream."  Arronofsky is stuck on artists' destruction of themselves and their bodies in order to achieve art.  Though Denby sees a lot of the movie as "ridiculous," he acknowledges that the scenes of dancing are often quite graceful and beautiful. 

       

In his look at Love and Other Drugs, Denby seems to see Hathaway as the standout of the movie in that her acting takes a cliche role to a realistic level.  He thinks that the sex scenes in the movie are honest and intimate, and that Hathaway and Gyllenhaal really work as a couple--delivering something that he hasn't seen in many movies. 

"Anytime, Anywhere: Kanye West's Relentless Enthusiasms" by Sasha Frere-Jones

This article is a review of Kanye West's album, "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" as well as a reflection on the artist himself.  It begins with an observation of all the different Kanye Wests that have been seen this year, from his personality on Twitter to subdued interviews on the internet, to the couple awkward public outbursts about Taylor Swift and George W. Bush (from a few years ago).  His newest album is seen as just another facet to this artist's conflicting public image.  Frere-Jones is of the opinion that West has very good, but particular (and somewhat odd) taste in music and collaborators.  The author sees West not as another obnoxious ego-obsessed rapper, but one with enthusiasm and a drive to work that is admirable.  West's album spans quite a bit of musical territory, with collaboration by Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) in a more subtle, brooding track, to the more sprawling, crazy "Runaway," the track that Frere-Jones feels best embodies the album's "restless hunger and ambition" (95).  By the end of the piece, Frere-Jones appreciates that West sometimes blurs the line between what is "acceptable" and "normal" and what is not.  It makes his art and his persona all the more interesting.   

"Criticizing Art" Chapter 4: pg. 87-96

William Wegman, Red Toy, 2006

This is the first section of the chapter on interpreting art where the focus is on William Wegman's photographs.  The section begins with the question: because Wegman's art is so accessible, is it still necessary to interpret it?  His work is enjoyed both by the public (including children as well as adults) and the art world.  Some biographical information on Wegman is provided and excerpts from critic interpretations of his various works are shown in this section.  The consensus is that Wegman's work is witty and humorous--often commenting on other art and issues in art (as well as the fashion industry and advertising).  Critics see his work as somewhat mysterious, in that his photographs of his dogs have a sense of the "other" about them.  Another theme visible in his work is that of dog and master.  Many critics saw a psychological undertone in these photographs.  This section shows that though Wegman's work is enjoyed by a variety of people, there is still plenty to analyze and interpret and that no one interpretation will ever be the "right" one.      

Clifton Peacock: Visiting Artist 3/3/11

Clifton Peacock, Untitled

I was almost unable to go to this talk because of a science exam but everything ended up working out which was great.  In seeing the small images on the signs for Clifton's talk, I was not sure what to think--whether I'd like his work or not.  Although some of it was not my thing, I was drawn to his later, more narrative work.  One thing that also struck me about his paintings was how sculptural they were.  The forms/figures really had a lot of weight.  I also quite enjoyed his use of color in many of his pieces.  The earlier paintings had a sort of otherworldly quality to them with the neon colors that he used (I'm assuming that wasn't just the projector's distortion--unfortunately I cannot seem to find any of his older work online to picture here.  I think the one above and below are from the last decade).  

During his talk, he really seemed to see painting as a somewhat experimental process, that he would often embrace "mistakes" or things he did not expect to happen.  Also another thing I remember him mentioning was that students have asked him when do you know when you're "done" with a painting.  His response was, "What do you want to get out of it (the painting)?"  I thought this was very insightful because I have often wondered about being "finished" with a work and how different artists decide when something is finished.  I often decide that I am finished with something when I don't feel like working on it anymore, but there are also many times where it just feels right to leave the piece alone and consider myself done.  

I think one of my favorite paintings of Clifton's was the one he did of his dog, where the dog is quite small and in almost the middle of the painting, surrounded by a huge space.  The atmosphere in this work is just gorgeous and I liked his composition of such a tiny figure in such an enveloping space.  Overall, I enjoyed the talk--he seems like a really interesting person with a lot of ideas about art.  My only complaint was that it was a little hard to follow at times because he jumped around so much when talking.  I feel like I should have taken some notes about all that he said so I could remember it better!      

Clifton Peacock, Woman with Boar

ArtBreak with Trisha Coates 3/2/11

Trisha Coates, Sprouting Garlic Tea Set

I love Trisha's work--I had actually seen some of her pieces on display at the Community Church in Durham a few years ago and so I was quite excited to see them in the current show at the Museum of Art.  I love the whimsical quality of her pieces and their organic beauty and playfulness.  I had always wondered what the thought process was behind her work and so it was fascinating to hear her speak.  

Trisha Coates, Petite Pepper Teapot

Trisha is inspired by the Chinese tea ceremony and the traditional yixing teapots.  These sorts of pots were made to be more rustic, through use of materials like clay, and would also often resemble a food or plant (though a lot less obviously than hers).  She began her talk with a quote from a poem and said that she often reads poetry and is inspired by a certain line in a poem, many times borrowing lines as titles of pieces.  In her work, she celebrates everyday activities, like cutting vegetables, that can be moments of quiet reflection, contemplation, and realization.  Through her work she emphasizes her observation of the importance of these seemingly mundane moments.  Her appreciation of food and the preparation/eating of a meal as a social occasion are also ideas that factor into her work.  She said that she is fascinated by the idea of "we are what we eat," and the food we eat becoming a part of us, just as we become the food.  Each of her pieces will hold and pour water, but she says their purpose is not to be used as a teapot.      

Trisha Coates, Lemongrass Bundle on Rice Teapot

I really like the appreciation of the everyday and mundane in her work.  I think it is always interesting to bring people's attention to things they normally would not think twice about.  Each of her pieces has so much character--they make me want to cook!