Grad Student Exhibit Review

Caution: Don’t Lose the Message
Art is one of those things that everyone has a distinctly unique approach to, which has never been as clear as when walking into the latest grad student display in the art museum here on campus. Among the varied mediums of art displayed were the installations, paintings, multimedia video, ceramics, and sketches. For one reason or another, one of the simplest displays became this reviewer’s favorite.
By Brad Dinsmore, the piece is named Nervous Rabbit. At first glance, there sits an enthusiastic ceramic cat named Cat with Flowers, anxiously presenting flowers to its audience. Whether the cat is funny or cute is irrelevant to the true observer. What is particularly engaging about this piece is that on the floor, just peeking around the corner of the pedestal, sits a ceramic rabbit with flowers of his own, politely and cautiously offering them to the audience. The two in tandem intrigue me because there is more to it than at that first glance. In fact, the rabbit seems to be the significant one that would be noticed if only someone would look closer. The rabbit is so subtle that most people probably overlook it entirely and leave thinking they have seen everything to see, which is a mistake. There is always more to see. In that way, the rabbit represents the true nature of art; by peeking around the corner, the rabbit offers the audience more than just flowers and more than what is seen at a superficial glance.
As a whole, the exhibit is disconnected, which is understandable because they are several artists with their own visions. In some ways, the artists’ ideas converge. For example, Dinsmore’s People and Proverbs intersects with Dustin Price’s Untitled pillow tree installation in the center of the room. Both pieces demonstrate a theme of acquired knowledge and wisdom. Dinsmore features phrases we often hear in daily life and common sayings that have become empty thanks to exhaustion; Price’s tree emphasizes peace and perhaps a new approach to ideas in general, treating them with gentle respect. When the pieces in this exhibit work together, they are much more impactful than on their own.
Some of the pieces on display such as Sailor, the video featuring barriers, tunnels, and doors, are pleasantly ambiguous while achieving a level of coherency. Others, such as the installation in the corner with lights, a cut-out cow, and paper chains, make me think that the modern artist is a professional marijuana smoker who needs to legitimize his or her hobby by making money to buy more marijuana. It is clear that modern art is not for everyone or the faint of heart (or lungs). Usually I can find a reason to respect an artist, but the installation in the corner (of which I unfortunately neglected to record the name) weakens my resolve to respect art that I do not understand. As far as collective messages go, I could not find one hidden in the layers of installations. Individual pieces had more clearly discernable purposes, but the collective exhibit was not orchestrated to be so articulate.
Art these days seems to be less about representing what is and has been as provoking the audience to think about abstract ideas. Sometimes, however, it appears that in attempting to reach that upper echelon the messages are lost completely.

The Met!

Among the exhibits we visited was the hall of medieval art. One of the major themes was of course pious humility. Most pieces featured the Madonna. This makes sense because at the time, most everything in the world was explained in terms of religious perspective and was defined be relationship to God. Therefore, it also makes sense that people of the time would feature the Madonna on their walls, entryways, and fireplaces. If religion was the most important aspect of their lives, and it certainly played a large part, it is only natural that the likeness of Jesus and His mother be prominent in their daily lives.
Another of the exhibits that we had time to visit was the American wing. Mostly in this section were furniture (which looked comfortable and appealing after running around New York all day) and portraits. Something that I thought a lot about while walking through the exhibit was why these two forms of art might be so prominent in early American culture as opposed to something like clay working or architecture or statues like one might find in Europe. My answer to myself is primarily that people create art with the supplies to which they have access. Based on the fact that the nation was merely trying to establish itself, consider the idea that people are also trying to establish a social hierarchy, and one way of doing that is by possessing art pieces. Coming to a new continent, while not completely equalizing, certainly leveled the playing field a bit. At the same time, people needed furniture. Maybe the two needs collided, and suddenly having ornamental furniture filled that purpose. That is not to say that having elaborate furniture did not fill that purpose before, but it possibly became the primary means to identify someone’s status within those high-flying circles.
Finally, we ended our tour of the museum with the suits of armor. There is little to say about them except that it is surprising how much ornament and effort was put into something that had a lot of potential to be beaten in.
Overall, I wish we had had more time to spend in the Met. As it was, we only got to spend a few measly hours. One could certainly spend days exploring without seeing everything.

Heidi Chronicles

There's certainly a lot one can say about the Heidi Chronicles, and a lot of things have been said in class about it. I did like the set (which I thought looked more symbolically like a hangman game than a picture frame), and I liked the omnipresent music and how it lightly complemented the mood of the scene without being so blatant that it was overbearing. Even so, I cannot honestly say that I am a fan of the play as a whole.

I thought it was without direction, discernible theme, or overall message. I know the ending is somewhat ambiguous, probably on purpose, but it frustrates me that the final scene does not put a capstone on the play like it should. If either the rest of the play or the ending was opaque, I would be fine with it, but it wasn't. I spent the entire time reading/watching it wondering exactly what the author was trying to tell me about... something... as a woman. Perhaps I was just not in the right mood to be exposed to the story.

Possible "morals of the story":
1. Feminists can't be happy.
2. You can't have it all as a woman.
3. Heidi expected too much too fast from her life as a feminist.
4. Feminism is more about the right to choose your path than "having it all".
5. Don't make the same mistakes that Heidi did, being too preoccupied with her status as a woman and forgetting to live her life according to what she actually wanted.
6. The depth of womanhood knows few bounds, but the bounds are delineated by men.
7. Wasserstein only wants "equal time and consideration" for women.

I know that in whatever people read or see, they bring different backgrounds to it and therefore get something different out of it--individual differences in the audience can change the art piece that is interpreted. Therefore, I suppose there might not be any way to agree on what the message of the play was, but mostly it just depressed me.

Note: It's certainly interesting that in the painting she mentions, The Beheading of Holofernes, the woman committing the act is named Judith. Coincidence?

Pollock and Danto

Pollock is an interesting guy. A drunken womanizer and splatter painter, he definitely made an impact on the art world. I personally like his work but think that it is way overpriced. When Allison and I began researching, we discovered that his painting Number 5 sold as the most expensive painting ever at $140,000,000 in 2006. Not only that, but most of the sources we found focused very little on him as a person. It was interesting mostly because most other artists are scrutinized as a person and an artist, which is to say that critics sometimes (most times) pull the artist's character or "artsy-ness" into the analysis. The absence of such a thing when it comes to the critiques of Pollock is telling because he seems to be above that. People clearly separate him from his work, even though he himself tells us that the line is blurred if there at all.
I like him. I'm not sure I would pay much more than cost of materials for his work just because it doesn't seem that skillful, even if there is energy-driven order to the chaos (like fractals). Even so, I could understand why someone would pay a lot for his work--the fame, the influence, the originality of someone at that scale--I just wouldn't pay that myself.

My favorite philosophical musing toward Pollock with regard to our class is Danto. In the presentation, I mentioned that Pollock's work if often accepted as art even if someone doesn't like it. I think that's particularly fascinating because there's also the debate over whether it's art if someone else could create it, or even create it by accident. (Don't we usually assign a level of intent to artistic creation?) Therefore, it leaves me to wonder what it is about Pollock's splatter paint that speaks as art even to those who think they could create something similar just as easily. Firstly, I think it's the fame. If he weren't so famous, so universally celebrated or well-known, the case would not be so. Secondly, it's the fact that he was groundbreaking in abstract expressionism and opened the doors to more controversial pieces, and because his was first and perhaps less challenging (and uses colors and traditional materials), his is automatically art by comparison.

Neitzsche and Tolstoy

Philosophy has never been my strong suit--I'm pretty easily confused by its density. I really cannot tell if it is that aspect of my thinking or something else, but I seriously do not see how Neitzsche and Tolstoy could possibly be talking about the same thing other than the umbrella topic "art theory".

Neitzsche discusses in his writing dichotomous nature, the Apollonian and Dionysian perspective on things. In the former's world, there is fantastic order, and in the latter's, the chaos of reality. Most importantly, as I am lead to understand it, the Apollonian world is self-illusion of rationality via religion, which is classified as an overall order or truth that we can get to (reminiscent of Plato?) that is conceptualized with the notion that there is a higher power. In contrast to this Apollonian world and the art in it, Neitzsche tells us that we can get certain things from Dionysian art based in this relatively real world that we could not from the purity of Apollonian.
So Neitzsche is talking about types of art and what we can do with it.

Tolstoy, on the other hand (or maybe I should say foot because they are relatively unrelated), writes of contagion--that art is the connection between two people forged by some medium of communication. Pure and simple, that is what he says. So Tolstoy is talking about what makes art "art" and what it can do.

I suppose from the perspective that both Philosophers discuss what art can do or what we can get from it, they debate the same topic, but honestly, that's the only true similarity I see with a superficial knowledge.

Faking It

Can a person actually fake their way into the art world, or do they just enter it as anyone else might and have an accelerated introduction? In other words, does the crash course in faking being an artist really faking it, or did he just actually learn to be an artist? It seems to me that all he's doing is creating art in his own way and shown how to B.S. his way through refining the ability to express his thoughts.

Another thing I thought was interesting was the fact that the guy very clearly had some talent before going into the challenge. His initial drawings show some skill in illustrating his self-portrait. That leads me to think that if the "experts" really thought they could turn a common person into an artist by letting them fake the things that go with the art world, one of two things must have happened:

1. They must have taken a person with no talent and trained them in how to create art without influencing the product, which is essentially impossible, or...
2. They would have had to present the art to critics the way they did in the video, without the "artist" present, with a statement by the artist himself as the way to fake art.

As it was, it's more about fooling the critics into thinking he's an artist by giving him glasses and a new wardrobe. As it is, the guy really was an artist. I reiterate the thing I've been standing by since the beginning of the class: It is art, so he is an artist, but it falls on the individual audience member to decide whether it's good or bad.

In the video, the statement is given: "To talk about art, you need to understand it." Understanding art, in my view, is a spectrum that doesn't include a lack of understanding. Everyone understands art in their own unique way.

Therefore, I think that the guy will succeed, because with art, it's really really hard to be wrong, if you believe that it's possible to be.

Kinkade

Kinkade. Where to begin.

Honestly, the man is a capitalism genius. He's got everything from mass-produced prints to puzzles to plates to chairs to figurines to a neighborhood of real cottages built to look like the ones depicted in his paintings. There's probably even more production in the works that we don't know about, and it's all for sale for more than it's worth in this blogger's humble opinion. The reason? Kinkade is not an artist--he's a business man.

That is not to say that his work is not art. By my definition, I have to identify his cottage fetish as art, but under no circumstances would I call it good art. That right I reserve entirely.

In regards to the article, the things Kinkade peddles to middle America via his galleries is reminiscent of a pawn shop. When the author discusses the worth of the paintings, I begin to wonder why certain paintings are "worth" more. One possible reason would be the price rises with who will pay most for it in a bidding war, like stocks in the stock market.

Now my favorite part about this is the fact that if someone were to hock a Kinkade, it would not catch a higher price than some less well-known artists just because he's more famous. I would guess that that is attributable to saturation and dilution of the market: Since he mass-produced his work, it is not as rare, and rarity is often the final word on how expensive something is. Inflated prices to show quality can only bring someone so far.

In today's video, Kinkade claimed that a Picasso will not be worth as much in the future as it is now, and he alludes to the fact that a Picasso will not be worth as much as Kinkade's own work because Kinkade creates art that people can understand and appreciate. While I agree with one Kinkade fan that he should hang what he likes on his wall regardless of deeper meaning, I do not think that is a good enough reason to write off the value of a Picasso.

Overall, I personally feel that the value of art is inflated overall. Sure, someone could have bought a painting for a million dollars before the economic slump, but after, the price may have dropped to half that because the price is only determined by what someone will pay for it. And that is unfortunately what we sometimes base our judgment of talent on as well. It's all inherent to the subjectivity of art.