The "Masters" of Fine Art

Just walking into the WSU Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition is enough to put you in a state of confusion.  The seemingly random shapes casting shadows on one wall and the full-size tree surrounded by pillows in the middle of the floor are enough to make you wonder what you just walked into, even without the loud breathing and strange crunching sound blaring from the next room.  The exhibit features the theses of five Masters of Fine Arts students, and even ignoring the sense of utter bewilderment I felt the entire time, I must say I was a little disappointed that this was the best they had produced.

If the five artists had anything in common it was the frustrating, confusing, and possibly intentional ambiguity in each of their works.  It was, for the most part, a display of modern art at its most modern, forsaking visual appeal for a bold statement about life or the human condition.  Unfortunately, this statement was rarely easy to determine and left all but the most motivated observer scratching their heads in confusion rather than thought.

The work of Brad Dinsmore is a good sample of the exhibit.  Dinsmore’s pieces seem to give a sense of the complexity of thought and memory.  His Releasing Ghosts series (2008-2009) consists of several almost identical canvases, each with an almost transparent figure and two Polaroids whose subjects are difficult to determine.  According to Dinsmore, he wants to portray memories in an elusive and general way, focusing on the mood more than sharp detail.  Next come his epistemological pieces, most of which use scribbles and squiggly lines to portray thoughts as being complex and difficult to understand, including his Epistemological Notebooks (2008), several spiral notebooks containing pages of scribbles.  I must give Dinsmore credit here for having the audacity to claim notebooks full of shapeless doodles as comments on the complexity of knowledge, but I am also annoyed by this.  I see his work as a fruitless attempt at depth, and the similarity of his pieces turns an interesting idea into a repetitive, frustrating experience.

Along the same lines as Dinsmore is Dustin Price.  Price’s pieces all show an exceptional attention to detail and a willingness to do tedious work such as weaving the words “We are just fine” into a sweater or organizing small shreds of paper.  His The Sound of Falling Snow (2008) and his untitled tree (full of what appear to be small paper Buddhas) are intricate and, one can imagine, quite time consuming to create.  However, like the rest of Price’s pieces, they lack clarity and any meaning he intended is clouded by thoughts of, “What am I looking at?”  Unfortunately, aside from his large tree (which is quite intriguing), his works lack the aesthetic quality to compensate for their ambiguity or encourage observers to want to look deeper.  Instead of using confusion as an intermediary to provoke thought as he most likely intends, Price confuses his viewers into disinterest and is easily forgotten.

The one artist who I did like was Heather McGeachy.  Her digital paintings utilized light and color very well, and despite being the closest to “traditional” art, her artwork put a new spin on traditional paintings by using clear Plexiglas as a canvas and allowing the piece’s own shadow to contribute to its depth.  Diessa Lowlands (2009) shows a reflected mountain landscape in beautiful shades of red and yellow, while Tyria (2008) is an eerie scene of desolation under ominous gray skies.  Though her paintings may be difficult to discern at first, they invite further examination rather than repel it.  As it turns out, most of her pieces depict scenes from Guild Wars, an online role-playing game.  I feel this detracts a bit from the creativity I initially accredited them with, but on the other hand she is using her art to explore her passions and representing something that I would not normally find interesting in a way that intrigues me.

While the artwork presented in the Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition all required some artistic skill to produce, I can’t help feeling that someone getting a masters degree should be able to present something far better than what I saw.  Only one artist seemed to have brought their best material to the show.  The rest, in my opinion, fell into the trap of trying to say more than they could with their art, and wound up saying little to nothing at all.  I was left pondering the age old question, “Is this really art?”

foucault's view of pollock

Jackson Pollock fits in very well to a foucaultian view of what art should be.  Foucault put more importance in meaning over aesthetic quality, and although I think Pollock's paintings have aesthetic appeal, I think most of their value comes from their meaning. Pollock's art has a sense of chaos and I think that that (along with some other important aspects that I don't really know because I'm not an expert) is what makes a Pollock "good" art and why it would sell for millions of dollars. More importantly, Foucault felt that art should question and push the boundaries of traditional art theory. This is where, to me, Pollock stands out the most. He was one of those artists that in a way defined his own style of art. He pushed the limits of art and, fortunately for him, was seen as a visionary instead of being rejected by the art community. Foucault would see his art as art in its purist form because it questioned the norms and explored new territory.

Erik

art and gender

I don't believe that gender determines the type or style of art that someone makes. As both of the examples of judith beheading holofernes show, men and women are both capable of painting gruesome acts, and they are both also capable of painting flowers and other traditionally "feminine" objects. Both depictions are done skillfully, and I don't think there is any evidence that one gender is more artistically talented than the other. One interesting thing to note about them, though, is that in the one done by a male you can see the tortured look in his face and she appears emotionless.  In the one done by a female, you see the emotion in judith and less pain in holofernes.

I do, however, feel that it can be much harder for females to be successful in the art world as in any other industry because of the traditional male-dominated nature of it as well as women having to fight the traditional roles thrust upon them. The heidi chronicles shows how hard women had to work (and may still have to) to be accepted in art, and i think this is a reflection of the unwillingness of men in the art business to accept change. The odd thing is that there are many talented female artists in history (as shown in heidi's slide shows), yet the average person prbably can't think of one, though they can probably name a few males.

When i watched the wsu production of the heidi chronicles, i was struck by how emotional she was. When i read it myself, she seemed more collected and i didn't imagine her crying like in the production. Particularly in her speech at the alumni event, i saw her as sarcastic and a little frustrated with her life, and in the play she was upset and crying and out of control. It's interesting to see how such different interpretations can be drawn from the same story.

Erik

pollock

When we first started looking at pollock's work, I realized that he was the one who I had previously criticized for doing things that anyone could do (dripping paint on a canvas) without any knowledge of him and probably without even seeing any of his work. Now when I look at a painting he made, I kind of like it. You don't have to deal with figuring out what represents what or why something is painted that color. The chaos of his paintings is appealing to me for reasons I can't exactly figure out. Plus, it's just kind of cool to see how the paint falls on the canvas and the shapes it makes. Having said this, I wouldn't dream of spending 1 million for one, let alone 140.

Looking at Pollock through the Kantian concept of disinterestedness led me to think. I agree with Kant in that if you see a picture of a strawberry and want to eat a strawberry or see a lake and want to go swimming, you're not really appreciating the art so you can't call it good or bad. I find Pollock's work appealing, and I can't find a single thing about it that would lead me to be swayed one way or another due to my interests. Unless you were afraid of fractals or forced to watch your parents die by paint-drizzling, I can't see what would contaminate your Kantian perspective (correct me if there is something). It occurs to me that the only works of art for which you could be an ideal critic are these types of abstract pieces, which ironically i have often criticized for not looking like anything. Long story short: unless everyone in the art world who likes pollock has been lying to fit in, it must be art since it is appealing and makes it difficult for us to be biased, assuming we don't have any problems with the fact that it is just paint dripped on a canvas.

Erik

nietzsche and tolstoy

In his work, nietzsche defines two artistic forces, the apollonian (beautiful and orderly) and the dionysian (intoxicated and emotional). The apollonian is characterized by the principium individuationis, the principle of the individual. When the principium breaks down, the barrier between men breaks down, and we see the intoxicating effects of emotion and instincts.

Tolstoy qualifies art as that which passes on the emotions of the artist to the receiver, "infecting" them with it. The best art, in his opinion, is art that clearly and sincerely passes a strong emotion. I like this definition of art because it is easy to apply and agrees with what I classify as art myself.

I think that the two are talking about the same thing (though tolstoy is a little more concise). Nietzsche does not necessarily say that the apollonian is not art, but as it breaks down and leads to the dionysian, emotion takes the place of rational thought. This is in a sense what tolstoy is saying in that it is the emotions that infect others and cause them to react to art, not cold logic.

Erik

faking it

When we started watching "faking it" in class, what struck me was that Paul was actually a fairly good artist. His self-portraits actually looked like him and he seemed to have an understanding of basic art concepts like proportion etc. I think if most non-artists went on that show, they would have more trouble with this than he did. When he moved on to color, he seemed to be doing the same thing over and over, with some random colors and maybe a picture of his injured teenage self. I don't think he's really becoming an artist, he's just doing what he thinks will please the critics.

As for the image, I would say he looks more like the typical "artist" than he did before. While artists don't always look a particular way, he is trying to infiltrate the elite art scene, where artists have to stand out and be individuals and look like he does. Also, the new look probably makes him feel like more of an artist, since it is different from how he looked before and emphasizes the fact that he is making a transformation. However, I don't think his art is going to be judged on how he looks, so it is probably mostly to make him or other artists feel like he belongs.

From what I have seen so far, I don't think that he will become an artist in a month. Art seems like a slow process to me and to be a really good artist it takes time to practice and experiment with different ideas. I think the judges will to 2-1 either way, depending on whether they phrase it "is he a fake?" or "what do you think of his work?"

Erik

commercialism

When I read the art pawnshop article, I actually wasn't surprised by any of it. As far as I know, people have used art as collateral for regular loans for quite some time and the only difference here is that the company takes possession of it. It was interesting to think of an art gallery made up of pawned masterpieces though. The article showed how the owners of these companies are using the art market to their advantage, and seem to be making quite a bit of money off of the loans and the artworks that they get.

The Kinkade video was very interesting to me. My grandparents have a Kinkade in their living room, and I've been inside a Kinkade gallery, but I had no idea this was how they were produced and that there were so many obsessed Kinkade fans. To be honest, I think he is a genius and if i were in his shoes I would probably be doing the same thing, though probably not as well. I think that art should be less exclusive (and expensive) than it is now, and producing pallets of prints gives anybody the chance to own a piece of good art. The one thing that bothers me, though, is the price. From my small experience in economics, it seems to me that a huge increase in supply should reduce the price, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I was surprised to say the least when I heard that a print with a little paint on it could be worth 50k. Kinkade seems like he's trying to wring every cent he can out of his fans, by adding a dab of paint here or there or signing stacks and stacks of prints to make them worth more. By the looks of that addicted couple shown in the video, I would guess that he's doing a good job of it.

While the art pawnshops are taking people's money in huge sums at a time, Kinkade is doing it with a ton of small purchases. They both show the opposite ends of the art market spectrum. One shows how you can make money off of works that are worth millions, and the other uses cheaper mass-produced art. Both of them bother me a little, but I would have to say that i support Kinkade more. After all, he is producing something that people enjoy and willingly spend money on, but the pawnshops are just taking advantage of people that need money, and then taking their expensive art if they can't pay back. I just hope Kinkade doesn't really turn into Disney, because if I see little chinese children putting frames on thousand dollar prints I will be a little perturbed.

Erik

I like an escalator, man, 'cause an escalator can never break. It can only become stairs. There would never be an "Escalator temporarily out of order" sign, only "Escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience."

-Mitch Hedberg

running the numbers review

The Beauty of Waste

From a few steps back, Chris Jordan’s Cell Phones looks like a 60x100 inch gray blur.  Only upon close inspection can you see that it is actually made up of thousands of tiny cell phones, 426,000 to be precise, equal to the number retired in the US every day.  This is just one example of the works in Jordan’s “Running the Numbers” exhibit, a portrait of American culture through visual representations of statistics.

The messages behind most of Jordan’s works are environmentalist.  The excess waste of electricity, plastic cups, cell phones, and aluminum cans are just some examples of the subjects of his pieces, aimed at increasing awareness and encouraging personal responsibility.  Jordan shows the shortsightedness of America, and sometimes the world, using immense numbers of objects that represent statistics of waste or consumption of our natural resources.

Jordan also makes political statements in his art.  One piece shows the $12.5 million the US spends every hour on the war in Iraq, and his largest piece is a 10x23 feet orange wall showing 2.3 million prison uniforms (one for each American incarcerated in 2005).  It is easy to see Jordan’s liberal perspective in his artwork.  His Handguns (2007, depicting the 29,569 gun-related deaths in the US in 2004) practically screams gun control.  However, since he is simply illustrating statistics, it is hard to ignore his point of view.

On the other hand, some of Jordan’s work lack specificity.  His pieces on wasted resources beg the question: What is waste?  You may attack plastic water bottles as being wasteful because they could easily be replaced by a water filter, but what is it about soda cans and plastic airline cups that is inherently wasteful when there may be no alternative?  America is a large country, and the fact that 106,000 cans are used every thirty seconds may seem shocking, but it says nothing about the number recycled or how many per person that translates to.  Also, some of his works do not necessarily send a clear message.  For instance, Shipping Containers, which shows 38,000 containers (the amount processed through American ports every twelve hours), could be a statement about the huge impact of international trade on our economy, or it could pose questions about national security.  His Prison Uniforms could speak to the strictness of our justice system that incarcerates so many people, or it could illustrate how many people commit crimes that are serious enough to get them imprisoned, two very different meanings.

Whatever Jordan is saying with his works, they are all very well constructed.  In fact, despite doing essentially the same thing in each piece (showing a statistic through replicated pictures), he creates visually stunning pieces and employs a surprisingly wide variety of techniques.  In his images of handguns, cell phones, and prison uniforms, he replicates identical items so that upon stepping back, the piece looks like simply a black, gray, or orange wall, reflecting the fact that we are desensitized when simply hearing these statistics as a whole, but they are very real when seen one at a time.  In some, he copies well-known paintings, such as Cans Seurat, which replicates Seurat’s pointillist painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte with wasted cans, or Skull With Cigarette, which is a copy of Van Gogh’s Skull With Burning Cigarette, except with packs of cigarettes that represent smoking deaths.

His color choices also show thought.  Prison Uniforms is constructed entirely of bright orange uniforms, though many if not most prisons use blue ones.  This may be because orange is so much more of a vibrant and shocking color.  His Oil Barrels shows an Earth-like rust pattern surrounded by ominous black barrels, all pointed inward.

Chris Jordan’s “Running the Numbers” exhibit provides a look into American culture through an interesting avenue, the sheer volume of our consumption.  While it may not cause anyone to change their habits or start a local recycling campaign, it provokes thought and reflection, and does so through pieces that are unique and often darkly beautiful.

Kant and beauty.

Kant writes that "If we judge objects merely according to concepts, then all representation of beauty is lost." (106) This is a good example of Kant's main argument about beauty, that it is objective and universal. To be beautiful, an object must possess a quality that makes it satisfy everyone. A person may find it pleasant, but unless this sentiment is shared by everyone, it is not beautiful. Attempting to judge an object's beauty by logical parameters or following certain guidelines of beauty is inherently a subjective process, and carries with it a cognitive aspect that does not apply to beauty.

This ties in closely to Kant's definition of good: "Whatever by means of reason pleases through the mere concept is good."(100) An object is deemed good if it pleases or conforms to our sense of logic or reason, regardless of its aesthetic properties. We characterize "good" through our thoughts and judgments, while we characterize beauty through some other pleasing aspect. Thus an object may be good, or beautiful, or both.

Erik


"I can't remember names...and I always try to do the nickname thing to get out of it. But everyone knows what you're trying to pull, you know? 'Heeeeyy...buckaroo...'"
-Brian Regan

tastes like chicken.

Hume's article, though incredibly difficult for me to pay attention to, raised some interesting questions concerning taste. Anyone can criticize art, but it takes someone who knows about the background of the piece or the context in which it was produced or received to really speak intelligently about its merits or flaws. Hume attributes good taste to a critic who has "strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice." I think the word taste implies an innate sense or ability to judge something well (though well can be a relative term). I don't think you can learn taste, though you may be able to learn technique or composition or any other criteria for analyzing art. Hume seems to somewhat agree with me here. To him, a critic must practice and have a breadth of experience with artwork, as well as understanding the context of the piece and eliminating prejudice, but all of this hinges on the critic having a good sense and a delicate sentiment, that is, an ability to pick up subtleties and incorporate them into the whole. I think that Hume provides a well-defined criteria for a good critic, but does not really establish a standard of taste. In fact he comments on the variety of subjects and the predispositions of people to appreciate some more than others. "Taste" as I define it incorporates these predispositions, as you would say that someone has a certain taste in art or music, but he seems to define it as an ability to look past them to appreciate art on another level, something that I would call knowledge or understanding.

As for the monkey and the clown guy, my personal tastes make me think that the monkey is the better of the two, though I would not hang either in my house. I like the monkey more because it looks more realistic, which is my personal preference in art, and the other guy is a little creepy. Also, monkeys are funny and I'm not a huge fan of clowns. I would imagine that both pieces are making some sort of statement, but I don't base my choice on this. To me, taste is a sense of what you find beautiful, which I don't associate with an underlying message. I view a work of art first on whether or not I find it beautiful, and second on what it says to me.

Erik


Alcoholism is a disease, but it’s like the only disease that you can get yelled at for having. “DAMMIT, OTTO, YOU’RE AN ALCOHOLIC.” “DAMMIT, OTTO, YOU HAVE LUPUS.” One of those two doesn’t sound right.
-Mitch Hedberg

Paradigms and Purposes

Freeland's section on Versailles and other gardens was particularly interesting to me because it is a very good example of how humans try to control nature. While some find beauty in the randomness with which nature organizes itself, others use nature as a material for constructing a different kind of art. The neat and orderly way that plants, water, and statues are organized and maintained described in the chapter displays the beauty of nature, while hinting at the thought that humans are superior and are able to control it. This is a sharp contrast with other types of gardens which are meant to show nature as it normally occurs, or at least not set in neat rows and columns. From what I gathered, Louis XIV had the garden designed and constructed to show his authority in this manner, and though I have never seen it I would imagine it is pretty effective at doing this.

Kant described the garden as inspiring free play of imagination, yet he said that the less-orderly English gardens allowed the imagination to roam to far in a way that was "grotesque". I wouldn't go so far as to call English gardens grotesque, but I do recognize how humans see nature in Kant's words. People tend to paint landscapes in an orderly fashion, with a background in the distance and plants that exhibit some sort of organization, whether they are separated by a path or some water or grouped together in patches or rows. I think this speaks to the desire of humans to understand the way nature works, and randomness is not usually accepted by most people. However, I believe that the imagination is more stimulated by natural beauty, while organization tends to make us try to understand the intentions of the artist.

By the way, did anyone else notice that Freeland spelled parsifal wrong twice?

Erik


Have you ever read a book that changed your life? ...Neither have I.
~ Jim Gaffigan

Is art preference in our DNA? (response to Conniff)

The primary argument that I drew from Conniff's article is that humans find certain traits (in art or environment or anything else) desirable based on our evolution and the survival instincts we've acquired. I think his idea that people try to make their habitats look like savannas is actually a good point, though the class took it very literally. No matter where you go, people like properties with large lawns and water and a view, and I think this is very hard to ignore. After all, there is no real point to putting a pond on your property, but people do it. However, I don't think he really moved past this point. The fact that I would prefer to live on a lake with a view and no lions doesn't really have any bearing on the art that I like. If I had to choose whether I liked a very realistic painting of a desert or a dense forest versus the ideal landscape that he describes done with fingerpaints, I would choose the uninhabitable one just because I personally prefer realistic paintings.

The section on fear does not seem to me to connect at all to his argument. Our evolution may lead us to avoid things that want to eat us, but the correlation to why we draw them is beyond me. If i were to walk through an art gallery and see a lifesize painting of a snake lunging at me I would most likely be momentarily startled thanks to my snake-fearing instincts, but I would still find it aesthetically pleasing. Being in the open ocean would scare the hell out of me but i still like to look at pictures of the ocean or storms because it is beautiful.

Basically, I think that humans do in fact choose or modify their habitats based at on instincts, but I don't think that a conclusion about art can be drawn from this. And I don't watch shark week so that I can learn to avoid sharks, I already do that. I watch it because I like violence and I want to see something get torn to shreds.

Erik


-"My friend said to me, "This weather's trippy." I said, "No, man, it's not the weather that's trippy, perhaps it is the way that we perceive it that is indeed trippy." Then I thought, "Man, I should've just said, 'Yeah.'"" -Mitch Hedberg

This blog is officially up and running.

blog is a funny word.

ps: this is what part of the alphabet would look like if q and r were eliminated.