Blog Number 10

Out of all the speakers we've had this term, I believe that the one this week (Donald Morgan) was the perfect one to end our last guest speaker lecture. I immensely enjoyed this week's focus on arts transition throughout the last couple of decades. From the shift to simply aesthetically pleasing and beautiful pieces of art, to the post-modernist work that we see today that I believe conveys a much more powerful meaning then what was previously done prior to this new type of arts existence. Donald Morgan is a professor at the University of Oregon and has taught art at different universities as well. Morgans speciality is sculptures, but he still paints and draws occasionally which I thought was cool. Morgan reminded me of the other sculptor that lectured our class because the two of them are so different from one another. I believe that Morgan values aesthetic more then the other sculptor, who I believe seemed to  focus more on simply explaining or conveying a given "message" through her art. She (I apologize but I forgot her name.. the previous sculptor) was much more modern I believe then Morgan was.
Our reading this week, which involved an interview with the famous Leo Castelli, explained in much detail the change that we've seen in art within the last couple of decades. Mr. Castelli was an art curator in the 60's and was exposed to and saw many varieties and different types of art. Society is changing and so is the world of art. We have seen the development of different types of art medias in the last half century and nowadays everything is considered art. "There is clear evident involvement with social problems of all kinds, and they're not filtered." (461) Art, and what it explains to convey, has changed dramatically in the last half century from simple aesthetically pleasing pieces to pieces that epitomize beauty and promote protest and change.
I believe that studios and art shows have somewhat lost there credibility in the last couple of decades simply because of the rise of the Internet, allowing anyone and everyone the ability to show and exhibit there work to the rest of the world. I believe that in a sense art has also lost some of its practicality. Art used to be just pictures and sculptures created to be displayed on a wall or a stand and to be looked at by the public. I think art has become less about its aesthetic beauty and simply looking at a piece, and has turned more into a way of created ideas and making people think outside of the box. Take Morgan's drunk robot sculptures for example. They in no way provide any practicality to the public besides being interpreted in the viewers own mind. I still find them aesthetically pleasing, I just don't believe that they have provide any function or practicality.
After taking this class I've realized that art is literally around us. We are all artists and the world is our canvas, pallet, block of wood, or whatever you want to create, its there's for your making. I have a much bigger appreciate for art in general after this class, but at the same time am sad that art has become such a hugely globalized thing. With the rise of the Internet and of societies increase in appreciating art, anyone and everyone can become an artist, which is a great thing but at the same time I believe takes away some credibility from the truly great artists.

I believe that this picture below exemplifies more then any other piece of art, societies change from classical art to the new contemporary art that we see everywhere today.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://site.icanvasart.com/DvdPoster/Andy_Warhol_Pop_Art206b.jpg&imgrefurl=http://celebritiessite.blogspot.com/2009/11/pop-art-andy-warhol-marilyn-monroe.html&usg=__oZmKilvgbnYbDmns1WLKNmmVAtw=&h=343&w=530&sz=131&hl=en&start=0&sig2=RECWzfLPCXpIDePia3EOmQ&zoom=1&tbnid=mLoXXPPkkBjtGM:&tbnh=128&tbnw=177&ei=CQ33TOS1FYGisQPX_aTODg&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dandy%2Bwarhol%2Bpop%2Bart%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D1020%26bih%3D707%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=108&vpy=422&dur=515&hovh=181&hovw=279&tx=142&ty=143&oei=CQ33TOS1FYGisQPX_aTODg&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=24&ved=1t:429,r:18,s:0

Blog Number 8

Our guest speaker this week was a female sculptor by the name of Tannaz Farsi who creates different installations designed to make dull, or seeming-less boring objects contain meaning in a different setting and experience. Her first image she showed was of a man (I didn't catch his name) who had shown his eyes and mouth shut. She had carried this image around with her for two years in an almost experimental way to see how long it would take her before she was completely desensitized by this grotesque image. I would consider myself pretty desensitized in the sense that I have seen some pretty disgusting things on the internet, movies, and in video games, but this single image was easily one of the top 5 grossest, interesting, stunning, captivating, and experimental things that I have ever seen in my 20 years of being on this planet. I couldn’t imagine inflicting that type of pain on myself just for the sake of art.

Farsi was an extremely intelligent artist whose work reflected not only her intelligence, but also her passion, creativity and philanthropist views. She created sculptures and described them in an extremely powerful way which conveyed the meaning the sculptures were attempting to make perfectly. Her work reinforces our overall question this entire year (What is art?) because of the fact that it contains meaning through a different mode of expression. My favorite sculptures of hers were the fluorescent light ones. Being a college student at a university as large as Oregon’s, I am surrounded and immersed with these types of lights on an everyday basis. I’ll admit that I have never stopped ONCE and taken a second to look at these lights and think to myself if they are an artistic piece or not. Farsi took these lights out of the institutionalized areas that they are commonly in and put them into a gallery, changing the environment that the piece was originally attended for. I believe that these pieces of work she created supports her viewpoint on how government and society culture should, and needs to be, separated so that the government cannot institutionalize us anymore than they already have.

The readings/interviews this week I believe completely backed up Farsi’s idea on the idea of the separation between government and the world of art. The two interviewers were Suzi Gablik and Barbara Kishenblatt-Gimblett and when Gimblett was asked whether or not art should have an agenda or be political her response is that it is impossible for art to be removed from those. “Viewing itself as if it were a universal culture, the hegemonic never acknowledges how it marginalizes certain cultures and elevates others.” (p. 414). This quote only further supports Farsi’s ideas that government needs to be separate from the art world in order to maintain some time of balance between the two of them.

I believe this sculpture exemplifies our speaker and interviewees ideologies perfect in the sense that it describes political involvement in creating views that most Americans hold, holding us down and restricting our views on art and creativity. 

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://richeart.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/meltingflag.jpg&imgrefurl=http://richeart.com/blog/index.php/category/political-art/&usg=__wlaf8zEgTDER0gmq78qOtYoX7fs=&h=792&w=549&sz=56&hl=en&start=0&sig2=7mskFFNzEe0SrMXMci1RdA&zoom=1&tbnid=vTA3ntaisonvhM:&tbnh=169&tbnw=150&ei=yYvkTKLJA4W6sQPUwYHBCA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpolitical%2Bsculpture%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D1203%26bih%3D639%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=174&oei=yYvkTKLJA4W6sQPUwYHBCA&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:4,s:0&tx=138&ty=93

Blog Number 7

This week's guest speaker, Terri Warpinski, was without a doubt my favorite lecturer we have had so far. I believe she was the most down to Earth, and I don't want to use the word "normal", but I think she seemed to be the most ordinary out of all the other speakers. I was (and still somewhat am), an avid photographer and I loved seeing some of the exposures that Terri captured. When I first came to the U of O I wanted to go into printmaking and was really into that kind of stuff, I think that Terri's origins as a printmaker is very apparent in her overall work. I love how she would use different mediums to put her photographs on, like the pillowcase for example. I made a shirt in high school with one of my shots on it and I was able to connect with Terri a little bit because of that. She creates a signature look in her shots by hand drawing on some of them, something I tried doing in high school which is ridiculously hard.
I drew a direct connection between Terri's work and the first reading this week with Richard Shusterman. Shusterman discusses the aesthetic attitude towards art and how it should not be separated from the world but rather more connected to the world and nature. I agree with this view that art should be more connected with nature and the world around us, not created to be displayed in museums and studios. I loved his quote, "the end of art is the external object you create," (p. 257). 

The second reading, with Carol Becker, I was also able to draw some connections with what Warpinkski was describing. Warpinksi described the relationship with art and society, and I believe Becker discussed something along the same lines. Warpinksi describes this with her travels to Berlin and parts of the Middle East, which she depicts social issues within these societies in a very real and beautiful way. Becker describes this by encouraging her students to be a part of society and not against it. To connect with the community around them and to not draw away from it. Becker discusses about how some artists tend to walk away or isolate themselves from the societies that they live in and that is not what they should be doing she says, and I believe is true as well. She says that they need to connect with society and think about where they are in relation to it. I believe that Becker can, and is, adding a lot to society and the art world. I think more artists should listen to Becker and take her initiative in being apart of society, and not simply turning there backs on it and walking away.



 Black and White photo with hand coloring -

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.designerprint.co.uk/images/digital/larger/black-and-white.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.designerprint.co.uk/services/digital-editing/black-and-white.htm&usg=__o2qOG2F9iCfUa4pWOsjgeal7PGw=&h=304&w=410&sz=64&hl=en&start=0&sig2=iKpyCTZYG_8ywe2nct-TGw&zoom=1&tbnid=s--a6mZr9P26kM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=189&ei=e1zbTIOKJIHCsAPZy4jlAw&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dblack%2Band%2Bwhite%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D748%26bih%3D599%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=176&oei=e1zbTIOKJIHCsAPZy4jlAw&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=10&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0&tx=77&ty=34

Blog Number 6

The most intriguing piece of the reading I believe was the statistic on the art shows displaying over 100 artists and less then 10 were female. When I began reading I thought this was going to be another feminist rant about the inequalities women face in today's society, specifically art. I liked the term that the artists named themselves, The Guerilla Girls. I think the name itself explains there thoughts and ideas very well. Guerilla in the dictionary means, " a member of a small independent group taking part in irregular fighting, typically against larger regular forces," which is exactly what these females are doing. The name also gives the impression of a large angry 'Gorilla', so you have the combination of the two different words playing off of each other very nicely.
I definitely realize there are inequalities in today's society aimed at females but didn't realize to what extent, particular in the world of art and artists. Back up to my first sentence, less then 10 females of over a 100 are featured at art shows, which is not a legitimate statistic representing female artists in the art world. There is no way in Hell that only 10% of the art population is female, this statistic undermining there credibility and there hard work.
I enjoyed the readings and believe that the world of art, in particular 'art shows' and 'galleries', are giving a negative outlook on female artists and what they have done for the art world. Just because its in a museum I don't believe that should add any more credibility to the artist. A quote that caught my attention was on from the Mary Jane James reading, "Its totally about frame. When we take work that is physically constructed or crafted and put it in the museum, it's the museum that say's its art" (pg. 310). I think this raises a question to exactly what is art? Why have humans since the dawn of time had a physiological desire to make and create art? Nowadays I think that art is made for the sole purpose of being displayed and sold to a museum or a private party, which should not be the case. Art was created by humans exploring themselves and figuring out what they are capable of artistically, not to be sold in art shows and museums.



I googled Guerrilla Girls and this was one of the first pictures that came up. I think it fits nicely into what I have just described above and what our reading discussed.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/Images/ARTH200/Women/Body/guerilla_naked.GIF&imgrefurl=http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth200/body.html&usg=__RyqyOx7vzhbi_OSuAlrJux_fGfc=&h=270&w=345&sz=34&hl=en&start=0&sig2=pjGyznL_0J1U8AQLn9X80Q&zoom=1&tbnid=Rv7JRutv3ei4PM:&tbnh=127&tbnw=162&ei=a-_STIWaLYiasAOdg_3ZCg&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dguerrilla%2Bgirls%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D1255%26bih%3D705%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=289&vpy=369&dur=323&hovh=199&hovw=254&tx=134&ty=91&oei=a-_STIWaLYiasAOdg_3ZCg&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=28&ved=1t:429,r:15,s:0

Blog Number 5

Our guest speaker this week was my favorite lecturer we've had so far. His name was Ron Graff. He's a painter, a great public speaker, and a badass. When he was younger he stole a motorcycle and got to choose between going into the military service or going to jail, he chose the service. During his time in the Navy, he had a studio the entire time. When he got out of the Navy he went to school with the thought of following in his fathers footsteps and become an engineer, that thought went away quickly once he was in school.. He said one day he walked passed an art class and "the fumes sucked me (him) in", and I believe that was the end of his attemptive career at being an engineer.
He went to an art institute and one of his first paintings was the one of the naked lady lying on a sofa. "I started this painting with the nipple, and it extended it out from there," he said which I thought was pretty funny. I believe Ron is a realist, he began painting what he saw, looking at things and copying them down with paint on a canvas. He painted a lot of landscapes outdoors and was able to get permission in Iowa to go on top of roofs and paint cityscapes. I thought the story were he was painting the city with the river going through the middle of it and the object "bobbing" around in the water was pretty eerie..
Ron is somewhat of a perfectionist, and I believe he may have a small case of ADD. He said that every morning he would force himself to remain in his studio from 8 to 11 and strictly paint. He wouldn't even get up to go to the bathroom. He got tired of painting things he saw and wanted to get away from the realist look of his work that he had for so long. He would add a quarter inch of a different color of paint to the canvas, and have to peel away at it and add new colors on top of it, I thought that idea in itself was pretty amazing.
Ron is extremely different from the two artists that we read about this week. Coco Fusco is an artist who doesn't give a damn about what people think about her work. She's an extremely independent artist who does what she wants and displays her work in an unusual way. I like Fusco more then the other artist we read about, Arthur Danto. Danto doesn't think art can solve problems and I thought that he was a little bland and depressing. He was almost the complete opposite of Fusco who is full of energy and her own thoughts and ideas.


This picture somewhat reminding me of Ron's first painting he did of the naked lady (not exactly though..) Its of a naked lady who has been painted on to make her appear as if she's wearing clothes.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://funnyartpictures.com/funnypictures-images/best-body-art-picture.jpg&imgrefurl=http://funnyartpictures.com/01funny-pictures-art/&usg=__s3KtQkJlDKEI4xDMPpWNleKmY0Q=&h=666&w=500&sz=76&hl=en&start=20&sig2=cFAbwlE5O_4_dBS2qfTN1A&zoom=1&tbnid=NtbJK0Y019VvHM:&tbnh=174&tbnw=131&ei=WLvITI_GDIqosQOo07idCw&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbody%2Bart%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D1204%26bih%3D674%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C856&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=566&vpy=127&dur=2574&hovh=259&hovw=194&tx=124&ty=111&oei=T7vITOazNIOqsAPQ7-ngCg&esq=2&page=2&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:14,s:20&biw=1204&bih=674

Blog Number 4

I believe that our speaker that we had on Tuesday, Dan Powell, was a much different lecturer then our previous guests. He said something along the lines of, "I don't consider myself an artist, rather a photographer or manipulator." (I actually didn't hear exactly what he said word for word.. I was sitting towards the back and had a rather difficult time hearing him sometimes). His art was unique, and much different from what we have previously seen with the other guest speakers. I found his art to be more engaging then the other artists, besides Colin Ives whose art was strictly engaging with his viewers. I enjoyed how Dan would manipulate his photographs with different types of writing and materials that he had found lying around his old studio. I found this to be creative, different, unique, and engaging. His Flow Chart series is what I really enjoyed. I liked how dynamic each image was but at the same time pretty similar. I liked how he would take computer codes and place them on his pictures, allowing the viewer to decipher and create whatever he or she wanted to create. I took photography classes extensively in high school and some art classes as well. So I especially enjoyed Dan's work and creative genius in combining his art with photographs, or vice versus. His landscape photographs were truly spectacular. In high school, when I had the time and a car, I would go on hiking and camping trips with a few buddies of mine up to the gorge and up on Mt. Hood. Every time I went I would bring both of my cameras, one film and one digital. I would take tons of pictures of the landscapes up there because of the breathtaking views and scenic panoramas. So seeing his landscape photographs from Washington, I had almost a sense of euphoria, taking me back to the times when I was able to leave school early to go shoot and hike. One of my favorite quotes in our reading this week and one that I thought went side by side with Dan's and my landscape photography was "Beauty is absolutely fundamental to life; it is not a cultural accessory, or something that belongs to the exclusive province of the arts." (179)

I'm bummed because I left all my pictures on my external hard-drive which I left at my house... I wanted to share and post it but don't have any with me! I got this off the internet and its a picture of the Columbia River Gorge, much like the one's I have taken. Enjoy = )   

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Columbia_River_Gorge_2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Columbia_River_Gorge_2.jpg&usg=__kyDBQmF7XG3mLDveywydHt8LWg8=&h=960&w=1280&sz=421&hl=en&start=86&sig2=c-awfg_Wq9lzYfLbtD7-Rg&zoom=1&tbnid=RnQotdgCDZy6XM:&tbnh=150&tbnw=201&ei=05a_TN_pN4nQsAOb_fj-BA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcolumbia%2Briver%2Bgorge%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D955%26bih%3D646%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C3882&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=359&vpy=294&dur=234&hovh=172&hovw=229&tx=167&ty=64&oei=tpa_TPn4NYucsQOphJH-BA&esq=6&page=8&ndsp=12&ved=1t:429,r:9,s:86&biw=955&bih=646

If art makes noise, can we hear it?? Blog 3.

On Tuesday, our guest speaker for the day began the class by "showering us with isochromic beats". Jack Ryan had developed a computer program that played isochromic beats and binary code. The noise sounded unorganized and dysfunctional, it was hard to pick up any consistency from it although I do believe that the main background beat was playing consistently periodically. Was it art? Or was it just noise generated by a computer program? To me it was both. Jack Ryan showed us a picture of a urinal and said, " This urinal is art because I said it is." After the last couple of weeks in class my art awareness level has skyrocketed and I personally now consider anything aesthetically or emotionally appealing to someone as art. Even if that is just random sound generated by a computer, someone doing pushups until they pass out, or a whale being blown up on a beach.
Jack then turned his discussion and showed us this other computer program that he developed that would take live video feed from a webcam and display it with extremely large pixels, distorting what we were seeing and reducing what we perceived as reality. I thought not only the computer program was well done but the thought process behind the whole thing as well. The concept that what we perceive to be reality, and if that is distorted or changed slightly our idea and concept of reality changes. Mr. Ryan's presentation on the whale being blown up on the Oregon beach and his response to it I thought was very intriguing. I believe that it is almost a 180 degree turn then what Hilton Kramers response would have been.
Hilton Kramer believes that anything beyond the scope of traditional art is not considered art. I do not believe that he would think our professor doing pushups until she passes out, or Jack playing binary code to be considered art. Kramer does not have much of a humor for art and would not appreciate to much Jack's video of the naked guy on the floor in the warehouse jumping around making weird noises. He is extremely traditional when it comes to constructing and viewing art and I believe that he has a very boring and small outlook on what is and what is not art.
Satish Kumar has a very different view towards art then Kramer does. I believe that Kumar has a bit more faith for humanity in general. I would consider Kramer a pessimist and would consider Kumar and possibly even Jack Ryan an optimist. Kramer states that the artist is a "bridge for developing a sense of reverence and beauty" (139). I believe this quote to parallel our first readings almost perfectly in the sense that nature is extremely vital and important to us, and if nature disappears, beauty follows because the two correlate and interact so much together. Beauty is all around us, if we're aware of it or not it still exists and we need to take that into consideration and stop destroying nature. Because once we destroy nature, we destroy beauty, and in doing so destroy ourselves.

This picture is a picture of Bob Marley. The picture is composed of hundreds, if not thousands of individual pictures of of Bob, all compiled and rearranged together to make it appear as if its just one picture. I think that this picture and the concept of the image, very closely relates to Jack Ryan's computer program he created to make pixels appear larger and "Reduce Reality".