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Week 2 Notes: Thursday March 29th

Possibility for grants for projects at CoGG – for MtoM and GAD – around $500 for artists

Hard copy – Revision of last week’s lecture –

WHEN LOOKING AT A VISUAL IMAGE various cultural and ethnographic issues will give each viewer a different unique opinion – we bring our own baggage when we look at visual images

LOOKING AT DUCHAMP Fountain – is this art? Relocating of ready-made objects and calling them art.  NB Duchamp –‘the father of conceptual art’ – testing the concept of art.  The first documented case of ‘found object’ in the history of art.  (also Picasso Still life with chair caning – but this is collage)

Today we look at the huge question – what is art?

Today we also look at artists who use image and text. 

Student response: 

  • ‘Art reflects life’

ASIDE FROM MERINDA – in western culture we have a ‘classification’ mentality – put things into a place which classifies them.  Hence – e.g. art/non art

What is art?

  • Art is what we say it is

  • Things experts call art

  • Things that I call art

  • All things in galleries that are classified as art

  • All things that the artists says are art are art

  • Common sense – looks like art, makes sense as art, is in a gallery

  • May be aesthetic/beautiful/skill of artist/materials used to make art works (all this disrupted by Duchamp)

  • There is an aesthetic response to a work of art – ???

UNDERSTANDING AESTHETICS – ‘if you’re anaesthetised – you have no emotions, your sense are not stimulated – when you see an art work – your emotions, senses are stimulated – ‘ There is a reaction from the viewer'.  (I dispute this – this is not the usually accepted definition of aesthetics. ) WEBSTER DICTIONARY DEFINITION OF AESTHETICS is  a :  of, relating to, or dealing with aesthetics or the beautiful b :  artistic c :  pleasing in appearance :  attractive 2:  appreciative of, responsive to, or zealous about the beautiful; also :  responsive to or appreciative of what is pleasurable to the senses

 

  • Shock can be a tactic to arrive at an aesthetic response (I’m not sure if this is the commonly accepted view of aesthetic) – talking about the art of Paul McCarthy

Text and image

What is the place for text in art?  - Typography – the actual text shapes may be quite beautiful – the font has an aesthetic/beauty  - Text goes back to great  illuminated manuscripts. 

Now artists are incorporating text into their practice. 

Some designers are using text artfully – e.g. Can art be design and design art?  Design and art are now fused.  E.g. we see architecture as art. 

Mambo – Chris O’Doherty

Luisa La Fornara – Geelong After Dark Artistic Director

Talking about GAD – May 8th – 6-10pm

Last year was the first year – something to put on the CV.  Stretching the imagination and practice. 

Context of art. 

Will be rostered – for Deakin students – opportuties also at T&G - window and ground floor. 

Back to NTVW
Barbara Kruger
  • Appropriation of images and texts – e.g. Manipulating ‘I think, therefore I am’ into ‘I shop therefore I am’

  • Use of the images of American perfection to point up its rottenness. 

  • Feminism – the embodiment of female stereotype. 

  • Happy balance between text and image – how do they speak to each other

  • Irony, parody, pastiche –

  • Spot colour red on black and white –

  • Images early – would have been on film – so non-digital collage. 

  • Consumerism – a bag that says ‘I shop therefore I am’

  • We buy items because they are signifiers of the self-identity. 

Play with these ideas in your work for images and text. 

Aside – images of men that make them feel inadequate – e.g. personal training is necessary for men to make them stay in shape. 

The medium is the message – Marshall McLuhan

Aside – Merinda – 3 years from now landfill – a walk around K-Mart finding tomorrow’s rubbish items. 

We have to take risks, experiment – phases in thinking before the final images

Other artists to look at for image and text – Picasso – using chair caning, also Kurt Schwitters (used found objects), Ellissitizky, Dada artists, also contemporary artists who also use text in their works. 

When working with text, does not have to be a Kruger look alike. 

John Baldessari – I will not make any more boring art.  (MoMa) 

 

One can detach from the meaning and look at it as an image in its own right. 

Is it a metaphor for artists – is art boring? 

Are we bamboozled by art – into fear that we’ll look bad if we don’t understand it? 

The artist has an ‘instruction-based practice’ – does the artist have to make the work for it to be classified as their art?  A blurring of the line between artist/artisan/curator/facilitator.  

e.g. Patricia Piccinnini – does not touch her work – is all made off-site, under her direction. 

Exhibitions of work produced entirely on 3-D printers. 

Language has made up rules we all follow. 

http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/john-baldessari-i-will-not-make-any-more-boring-art-1971

For GAD – think about making a gif – use light.  E.g. footage of iconic building – changing light around that. 

Final time to work on the text-based piece. 

39 short films about Glen Gould – consider in light of Darryn Lyons

Post-modernism

  • Is about critiquing life and art – MK

  • Disruption of truth, the hallowed, questions everything! 

  • Questions the dominant in society – e.g. white Anglo-Saxon males

NB Radio National – current show on portraiture – series from The National Portrait Gallery. 

 

 

Summary from Merinda Kelly - Week 2:

Artists who use text Text based art: What is art?

Below are some possible avenues for you to explore in addition to the cloud content:

 

  • lnvestigate the seminal work of El Lissitizky

  • Look at the work of Kurt schwitters, Magritte and DADA artists

Below is a diverse list of some international artists who have explored text in aspects of their

practice:

Lawrence Weiner John Baldessari Mark Titchner April Greiman Saul Bass Jon Barnbrook Alan Michael Fiona Banner Christopher Wool Bruce Nauman Lawrence Weiner Tracy Emin David Shrigley Cy Twombly Gajin Fujita, Andy Warhol Richard Serra

Some Australian artists who have explored text in their artistic practices are: Jon Campbell, Peter

Tyndall, Juan da Vila, Susan Norrie, VNS MATRIX, Tandanori Yokoo

Consider:

  • Possibilities of Linguistic art and language group of artists and theorists, including Joseph Kosuth

  • Explore Tom Humument's refiguration of the 1892 novel, a human Document, by W H Mallock

  • Text as socio-political, artistic mechanism: Bank, Jean Michel Basquait, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger (see Cloud based material)

  • Text as instructional

  • Use of typographic materials for visual and representational means: a strategy common to : the work of El Lissitzky and Vlad Mayakovsky...for the voice

  • Some artists are combining verbal language and plastic art and contemporary text appears to find itself lobated at the intersection of contemporary thinking on art and contemporary theories of language. (David Beech)

  • Text appropriated/referenced from cultura l/historical contexts

  • lntegration of word and image I

What is art?­

Like Kruger, Warhol initially began as a commercial artist. He used advertising slogans and product logos to challenge verities of art history and to raise the perennial question "What is art"?

What roles do text and type play in art?

The publication, Art and Text, by Aimee Selby, introduces the use of text as a new mode of thought in artistic practice, describing it as "one of the most defining developments in visual art of the twentieth century”.

You are encouraged to explore the various ways artists have used and are currently using text. Annotate your research, reflecting on how their wolk has scaff6lded your thinking with respect to assignment 1.

 

 

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