Fine 319: Moira Roth

Way back in high school, I was on the path to become a scientist -- but then I discovered Marcel Duchamp. Doing some research on Encarta 2002 (which was brand new at the time!) on some topic I don't even remember, I came across his name. "Du-champ? Who's that?" So I clicked on the name. Behold! A urinal!

Well, I was hooked from the beginning. After reading a few paragraphs, an epiphany occurred: "I get this." It was intuitive. Indeed, why must art be pretty? There is simply no need for it. Why can't an artist declare a urinal a piece of art, if he says so? Over a few short months, I read everything I could about Dadaism. As I said, I was hooked.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm a science student at UW. For my birthday, my (ex-)boyfriend bought me a book: Differece/Indifference: Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage. By this point, I was getting pretty sick of science, and found myself constantly on the internet, reading about art and culture... but I had never actually picked up a book. It all changed with this! A collection of essays, interviews and diary entries, Roth muses on the connection between Duchamp and Cage, as well as their impact on her research. Roth's expertise is on feminist and performance art -- areas very much influenced by Duchamp.

Coming across the various artists in Fine 319, I'm often thinking about the influence of Duchamp and Cage. So much so that I think I need to pull this book out again. I enjoy Moira Roth's writing style: very little jargon, very personal, and just a great read. I haven't looked up any of her other works since; perhaps there are some recommendations out there?

Fine 319: Trees and Chairs

Joseph Kosuth's One and Three Chairs I think is an excellent example of conceptual art to use for beginners. It's so concise, so easy to explain, and so much fun. It has it all: found objects, the use of text, playing with mental images, and easily reproducible. You could do it with any object and get the same result.

Which makes me think: why a chair? I can come up with a few reasons. First off, a chair is pretty ubiquitous in global culture. Every society has a variation of a chair; yet this particular chair he uses is distinctly Western. You can define a chair, yet there are still variations. A chair is also a rather tactile object: you use it for no other reason than to sit, and simply thinking of a chair conjures up feelings in your body. They're also everywhere -- and yet an object we don't always think of. And of course, there's the property of the chair itself. Easy to transport, a mid-size object that stands up by itself, you don't need to build a shelf to display the piece, nor is it so large that you need to scramble to find a space to place it. And what about the word itself? A simple word that is easy to pronounce, with no trick spellings.

Let's compare that to another conceptual piece with some similarities: An Oak Tree by Michael Craig-Martin.

A pamphlet argues that the glass of water displayed is, in fact, a fully grown oak tree. The text is as follows:

Q. To begin with, could you describe this work?

A. Yes, of course. What I've done is change a glass of water into a full-grown oak tree without altering the accidents of the glass of water.

Q. The accidents?

A. Yes. The colour, feel, weight, size ...

Q. Do you mean that the glass of water is a symbol of an oak tree?

A. No. It's not a symbol. I've changed the physical substance of the glass of water into that of an oak tree.

Q. It looks like a glass of water.

A. Of course it does. I didn't change its appearance. But it's not a glass of water, it's an oak tree.

Q. Can you prove what you've claimed to have done?

A. Well, yes and no. I claim to have maintained the physical form of the glass of water and, as you can see, I have. However, as one normally looks for evidence of physical change in terms of altered form, no such proof exists.

Q. Haven't you simply called this glass of water an oak tree?

A. Absolutely not. It is not a glass of water anymore. I have changed its actual substance. It would no longer be accurate to call it a glass of water. One could call it anything one wished but that would not alter the fact that it is an oak tree.

Q. Isn't this just a case of the emperor's new clothes?

A. No. With the emperor's new clothes people claimed to see something that wasn't there because they felt they should. I would be very surprised if anyone told me they saw an oak tree.

Q. Was it difficult to effect the change?

A. No effort at all. But it took me years of work before I realised I could do it.

Q. When precisely did the glass of water become an oak tree?

A. When I put the water in the glass.

Q. Does this happen every time you fill a glass with water?

A. No, of course not. Only when I intend to change it into an oak tree.

Q. Then intention causes the change?

A. I would say it precipitates the change.

Q. You don't know how you do it?

A. It contradicts what I feel I know about cause and effect.

Q. It seems to me that you are claiming to have worked a miracle. Isn't that the case?

A. I'm flattered that you think so.

Q. But aren't you the only person who can do something like this?

A. How could I know?

Q. Could you teach others to do it?

A. No, it's not something one can teach.

Q. Do you consider that changing the glass of water into an oak tree constitutes an art work?

A. Yes.

Q. What precisely is the art work? The glass of water?

A. There is no glass of water anymore.

Q. The process of change?

A. There is no process involved in the change.

Q. The oak tree?

A. Yes. The oak tree.

Q. But the oak tree only exists in the mind.

A. No. The actual oak tree is physically present but in the form of the glass of water. As the glass of water was a particular glass of water, the oak tree is also a particular oak tree. To conceive the category 'oak tree' or to picture a particular oak tree is not to understand and experience what appears to be a glass of water as an oak tree. Just as it is imperceivable it also inconceivable.

Q. Did the particular oak tree exist somewhere else before it took the form of a glass of water?

A. No. This particular oak tree did not exist previously. I should also point out that it does not and will not ever have any other form than that of a glass of water.

Q. How long will it continue to be an oak tree?

A. Until I change it.

Source

In Kosuth's piece, each of the three representations match. In Craig-Martin's work, they obviously do not. Yet what we are confronted with is the nature of reality, of sensory experience, and the authority of the written word, the artist, and even of God. Craig-Martin is referencing transubstantiation; this bread is the body of Christ, this blood is the blood. Why? Because I said so. Or, because of (insert theological logic here). How much faith do we place in the written word, or how often do we simply agree with whatever logic is presented to us, despite how dubious it actually is?

Fine 319: Nova Scotia College of Art & Design

http://nscad.ca/en/home/default.aspx

(Expand on this post later)

Fine 319: Parameters and Kittens/Musing on "Anti-Form"

Minimalism/post-minimalism/Minimal Art/process art -- whatever you want to call it -- tickles my fancy. In particular, I'm intrigued by "process art" and its emergence in a variety of art forms. In this class, we briefly touched on the works of Robert Morris, and when we did, I immediately connected the dots with some of my favourite 20th century composers: John Adams, Steve Reich, Michael Nyman.

Their concepts are quite similar: set up a process, create the parameters of it, and let it go. Sit back and enjoy the tumbling dominoes.

This seems to be to be an evolution of John Cage's experiments in chance, but with a different flavour. While Cage would create pieces that were utterly random at points, seemingly chaotic, these composers strike me as more... how to put this? Mathematical? Tight? Patient? I'm not quite sure of the word to use here. What I'm trying to get at is that Cage took a more Dadaist delight in confusion and entropy: what sounds from the audience will emerge during a performance of 4'33"? These process artists, on the other hand, seem to be interested in complex patterns and the recombination of them. I'm imagining a puzzle. Someone like Reich would take a puzzle and try to make it into as many different combinations as possible, seeing what new forms will come out of it. Cage, on the other hand, would take the pieces and let a kitten with a blowtorch and a plastic bag of new pieces loose on them. Some pieces would be lost, some cut up, some burnt, and new ones added. It's a new combination of what we saw before, but changed by chance and nature. Reich would create parameters for the piece to play within. Cage would prefer to have no parameters at all, and see what happens.

So to get back to Robert Morris, I think he's much more of a Reich man than a Cage one. Take a piece of felt, slash it a few times, hang it up on a gallery wall, and see what shape comes out of it. How is this not Cageian? We're anticipating gravity, a sterile environment, and that it will return to a state of equilibrium if someone happens to touch it. I think the point would be lost, or at least the meaning of the piece vastly changed, if we were to let loose the blowtorch-kitten on it. Why? Because the parameters have been altered.

If anything, Morris' anti-form seems to me to be a celebration of the mathematical precision and predictability of the universe. "Isn't it amazing all the natural processes out there and how they effect us?" he seems to be asking.

Cage seems to be a celebration of the chaos and unpredictability of the universe. "Isn't it neat how things can blow up sometimes when you least expect it?"

Fine 319 Journal: The Commercial Legacy of Abstract Expressionism

Voice of Fire

Barnett Newman, 1967

As we all know, when the National Gallery of Canada purchased this piece in 1989 for $1.8 million, controversy erupted. How could they spend so much money on a canvas covered with three acrylic stripes?

I have very mixed feelings around both the controversy and the price itself. Indeed, two million dollars for a painting is ridiculous. How much did this piece cost to produce? A few thousand, at most? Let's say, for simplicity's sake, $1800. That's a ten thousand percent mark-up. And for what? Some paint on a stretched piece of cloth?

What we have come to here is a discussion of value. How do we value art? Can we place a commercial value -- a price -- on art, and what we value about it? I believe it is fair to say that in the late 20th century, the art market went a bit haywire. Never before have we seen such inflated prices for artworks, or people purchasing art as an investment. When Japanese businessman Ryoei Saito purchased van Gogh's Portrait of Doctor Gachet for $82.5 million in 1990, did he purchase it for his aesthetic appreciation of it? Did he purchase it to hang in his home or business, for people to appreciate and enjoy? Or did he purchase it as collateral -- to get himself out of financial troubles when he lost his money a few years later with the Japanese bubble burst? (No one knows where the painting is now. He sold it to an anonymous buyer when he went bust.)

Trying to assign monetary value in a post-capitalist society to works of art, often made before this period, is trouble waiting to happen. Did van Gogh expect his Irises painting to fetch over a hundred million dollars sometime in the next century? Of course not. But a more interesting question is whether he would approve. If you spoke to any artist in the late 19th century, what would their reaction be? I choose this period because it one that exists after the invention of the museum (yes, the invention) and after the 'art world' began to take off, yet before the hyper-inflation and use of art as a commodity. My bet is that van Gogh would be horrified.

So what is an artist to do in such a climate? You could join it and make 'commercially viable' pieces to sell; make a living out of selling your pieces, hoping to make it into the upper echelons of the likes of Satchi. Or you could rebel, and make pieces that are impossible to sell. How do you sell a performance? How do you sell an installation piece that will be destroyed once the show is over? What about a plot of land? A hill? A building covered with fabric?

Has Modernism Failed? is an intriguing book by Suzi Gablik, written in 1984, a time when the art world seemed lost and directionless, with no guiding moral authority and no bloody point. Beauty was no longer a concern -- abstraction had erased that point. But we could go no further with abstraction. How do you go further than an monochrome canvas? Even moving off a canvas entirely was done. A single action could be declared art. And if everything is art, then nothing is. But if everything is art, then why do some pieces fetch millions, while others are left to the wayside? How can anyone own a piece of art, if art can be a naked woman reading poetry out loud while covered in chocolate? How can you own what is un-ownable?

I think what my wandering thoughts have lead to is a recognition that the hyper-inflation of the art market is simply ludicrous. Then again, we all know this. This discussion has lead nowhere. Without boundaries laid out between what is art and what is not, and what art is valuable and which isn't, we are lost. John Carey has something going on when he asks:

what good are the arts?

Fine 319: The Sunset Strip

Something I'm curious to look into is Edward Ruscha's Every Building on the Sunset Strip's potential connection or reference to film culture and theory.

Is this a comment on the nature of film itself -- simply a series of flickering images that masquerades as a real-time re-presentation of reality? Furthermore, it is the masquerading of the Sunset Strip as the stuff of Hollywood dreams, when in fact the street is rather drab. This calls to mind Billy Wilder's masterpiece Sunset Blvd. (1951): the delusion/illusion of Hollywood, the everyday experiences of those that live there, how dreams are destroyed daily on the Strip, and all of this presented in a neo-Expressionist noir format -- an uneasy combination of Truth and Fiction.

Fine 319: Schlegels

In class, we came across Andrea Schlegel's Toiletpapersofa. So, on google I go to find out more about this artist. And what do I find? "Do you mean Andreas Schlegel?"

Now, I'm confused. I can't find Toiletpapersofa anywhere. There is a young German artist named Andreas Schlegel, born in 1975 and who works in Singapore. But looking on his works, I can't find this piece anywhere. And I swear in class we were presented with the name Andrea, not Andreas. So is this a different person I've come across?

If it is, then he's damned interesting. Media arts are an area I'm not too familiar with, but it is something that I've had a strange pull towards. Schlegel, according to his website, likes to "write programs that generate audio, visual and physical output", often creating what he calls "Objects". These are machines that he builds and programs. One such piece is groundpulse (2009), a modified seismometer that measures vibrations and creates an audial output. I have a background in earth sciences, and initially came to university to become a seismologist or volcanologist -- so I am quite fond of this piece. I would like to learn more about this piece, as I have some questions: does the artist have the ability to manipulate the output? What kind of output is it: only audial, or visual, too? Is he interested in using this as an instrument that responds to the natural movements around it, or does he like to, say, jump around it or purposely create vibrations for it to respond to? Real Time Visuals (2005) is an LED wall that features visualizations which are generated in response to a connected electronic reed instrument (like a clarinet). Depending on which notes are played, the tempo, the dynamics, etc., new, nebulous computer-generated images are displayed. I think the possibilities are endless with this one; but once again, I would be interested to know if he prefers a more zen approach or an interactive one. Does he want to learn how to control which images are being displayed? Does he want to compose a 'film' of sorts -- play these notes, and this pattern of colours and images will emerge? Or is he simply content with people playing random notes at will, just seeing what will pop up in front of them?

Real Time Images, 2005

LED Wall

Source

Fine 319: Richard Serra's "The Shift"

The piece we saw in class by Richard Serra in King City? Y'know, the bisecting concrete forms in a soy field?

I found better photos of it, and discovered that it actually does have a name, contrary to what the slide said!

http://viewoncanadianart.com/2009/09/09/sculpture-in-nature-richard-serra-in-king-city-ontario/

Fine 319: Donald Judd

I don't know how much I like Donald Judd.

Which is strange, because I tend to adore minimal art. Richard Serra? Yes, please. Charles Ray's Pepto-Bismol box? I almost died from ardor when I saw that in class. But Judd? I don't know...

I'm having difficulties explaining why I don't like him. Then again, so far I've only seen what's been presented in class. So I'm off to do some google searching of images...

[10 minutes later]

Yeah. Judd just doesn't do it for me. A lot of his pieces strike me as cheap Ikea shelves or chairs, with a slight pompousness in their presentation. One of the reasons why I like Charles Ray so much is that he has a sense of humour to his work, like with the Pepto-Bismol. But at the same time, there are some other minimal artists that are equally sombre as Judd, yet I find their work extraordinary. What is it with Judd?

FIne 319: To Read

This is a reminder to myself to check out ABC Art by Barbara Rose, from 1965. Jane has recommended it as a contemporary account of the beginnings of minimal art. It should provide a more personal 'feel' of the situation these artists were working in.

Checking out Trellis, it doesn't look like they have it. Plenty of other books by her, though: I may have to check out Autocritique: Essays on Art and Anti-art, 1963-1987. This title alone piques my interest.

Fine 319: Chocolate Gnaw

Source

I loved the class reaction to Janine Antoni's Chocolate Gnaw. I wonder how they would react if they knew the rest of the details?

After chewing the chocolate, she spat it out and reconstituted them into heart-shape empty 'chocolate boxes'. And what about the companion piece, Lard Gnaw? Chewing on a 600-pound block of lard, and reconstituting the chewed lard into bright red lipstick.

I think these pieces are extraordinary: it hits you in the gut. It's so visceral -- I'd be surprised if there was anybody who didn't feel something after looking at this piece. It's so personal, so delicious.

It reminds me of the classic Surrealist piece, Meret Oppenheim's Fur Covered Cup and Saucer, from 1936. You can't help but recreate the feeling in your mouth when you see these pieces, and it's startling. If art is about communicating feelings, then these pieces are bang-on.

Fine 319 Research Journal

On this blog I shall be posting entries for my Fine 319 (Contemporary Art) Research Journal. It will be a venue for me to post about interesting artists and concepts we have come across in class, my meanderings about contemporary art, additional artists and pieces I have come across, and anything else that pops into my head from minimal art to the present day.

So, what topics will this cover? In no particular order, I'm anticipating:

Minimal Art

Post-minimalism

Conceptual Art

Performance Art

Hard Edge Painting

Neo-expressionism

Earthworks

Installation Art

And of course, discussions on late formalism, Abstract Expressionism, late 'modernism', and probably lots of Duchamp. (Please!) I think a blog is an interesting format to use for this project -- as I always carry my laptop with me around campus, this allows me to quickly jot down my thoughts whenever they magically appear in my head. I also quite enjoy researching online. I find myself constantly opening new tabs on my browser, ready to explore a vast array of topics and artists. This is how I discovered some of my favourites, such as Dan Flavin, whom I came across a number of years ago purely by chance. The interconnectivity of contemporary art and the myriad of references that is often distilled in many postmodern pieces means that I have to go find out just what these artists or critics are talking about. "Bürger? Who's that? I have to do a Google search!" "Lyotard? Maybe the library will have some journal articles."

And so, let's begin!