A Day Trip Round Today's Art World
Timothy Mason
Stopovers :
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Start
This page began as a site for an English class designed for Art students at Paris 8. Although the class is now finished, people are still visiting, so I'm leaving it here for the time being. The course is mainly based on Weintraub's 'Making Contemporary Art', and offers pointers to artists that she includes in her work. I've added a few of my own, and end up bending it back into my own anthropological concerns.
Who is Patricia Faure?
Trace her history. What can you say about her?
Stopover 2 (02/03)
We'll start by reading an extract from Linda Weintraub's "Making Contemporary Art".
She says "viewers are as essential to art's consequence as are artists and works of art."
She says some artists are "populist". As an example of a populist artist, she cites Thomas Kinkade
(Compare "Everett's Cottage" (use the search function on Kinkade's site) with Gainsborough's "Cottage Door with Children Playing ")some artists work for a minority audience. As an example, she cites Isaac Julien
(Watch Julien's "The Attendant" . See how he uses François Auguste Briard's Slaves on the West Coast of Africa)
Compare the image from 'The Attendant" with Kinkade's "Cottage". what can you say?
Compare both with Ford Madox Brown's Work (click on the Image Viewer for best results)
Predictable Texts
Moving the camera (from Monaco)
"In 2001, the first of 101 Kinkade-inspired homes - set on narrow streets with picket fences - became available for sale in Vallejo, California, with prices starting at $425,000. "The Village" promises life in a setting of wholesome faith and tranquility, and the models are furnished exclusively with Kinkade products" (Weintraub, p. 23)
Stopover 3 (09/03)
Read John Barrell on "Cottage Door". Does it throw any light on Kinkade's painting?
Gainsborough had to sell his work to rich patrons. He was quite successful. A very successful artist today is Matthew Barney, who is well-known for his Cremaster cycle. Barney is an American success story. Read what Weintraub has to say about his career. (pp. 392-99)
Then read John Haber's review of Cremaster. (Haber has a large number of reviews on his site, and can put you in touch with American (post)modernism).
Barney himself takes a number of acting roles in the Cremaster Cycle. Another artist who puts herself in the middle of her own fantasies is Mariko Mori (in "Birth of a Star", for example - and see a mildly jaundiced view of a cyborg scratching her nose .
Barney - Georgic or Pastoral?
("Those words don't mean anything any more")
Get your binaries here!
English painters I mentioned when talking about the relationship between Kinkade's cottage and Gainsborough's
Jeff McMillan and Cornelia Parker invite you to participate in a mass christening of babies that will include their firstborn, Lily, at Jeff’s East End project space, PEARL. Reverend Acres will anoint all willing children at 4 pm on Saturday, 19 October. Children of all ages are invited to come dressed as their favourite flower to be watered by the angel / gardener Reverend Acres and his holy watering can.
For more details visit the PEARL website: www.pearlprojects.com
Stopover 4 (16/03)
Is the Reverend Ethan Acres a populist or an exclusivist? Like Barney and Mori, he also puts himself into his art works. Here he is preaching, for example. But his performances are also in reality : he will baptise your children for you, if they want it.
Acres weaves art into his calling - see his roadside chapel (Weintraub, p. 246) - and uses it to punch home a message - see his way of putting across a biblical metaphor on p.232 of Weintraub.
Follow the links to find out about him. Then read the interview (Weintraub p. 245 ff.) .
Predictable texts :
- Theatre Read the description of Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre.
- Painting : click on Caravaggio (list of artists on left hand side of the page) and then follow links (Criticism on Caravaggio) to Alfred Moir's discussion of "The Decapitation of John The Baptist". Click to see the painting.
- Music - Follow Link "Visit Site", then "Orchestra", read articles on the violin, the viola, and add the article on the cello
- Cinema : extract from Monaco's "How to Read a Film", pp. 117-19 (Color in the Movies)
fundamentalist religion without irony,
as Kiefer embraces the beast of German
Romanticism, but with more ludic flair"
Dave Hickey
Stopover 5 (23/03)
Compare Acres' exuberance with the sobriety of Rachel Whiteread. See what the BBC had to say about "House". Then read Richard Cork's account of what happened to it. (Cork, p. 1)
Read the Xan Brooks on how Whiteread is to take on the Tate Modern
Which works of art would you like to destroy? You can get your matches here.
Stopover 6 (30/03)
First the interview with Laverdiere in Weintraub. Then look at and compare the images here and here. What can you say?
Read what Laverdiere has to say about art school in Weintraub. Compare it with what Acres says about his own experience of school.
Is there any relationship between Whiteread's work and that of LaVerdiere & Myoda?
Look through the links on the right. Think ritual, art and death.
Subjects
Stopover 7 (06/04)
Written test : Talk about the first seven week's work.
Stopover 8 (27/04)
Public work and private work. Grand works and small-scale.
Every morning, Marco Maggi sits at his desk and warms up. First he practices free-hand drawing, until he can, for example, produce a pair of perfectly parallel lines. Then he scratches at the skin of a Macintosh apple, creating tiny incisions, but never piercing the skin. Only when he has done that to his satisfaction does he start work. He will make a line on his material - paper, or aluminium foil, for example. This first mark generates others.
See more of Maggi's works here and here.
Maggi seems to turn his back on the world when he works, alone, at his table. Alix Lambert places herself in the world, experiments in living. For example, she learned how to box - as an art project. Read this synopsis of her career
Look at the photos from The Wedding Series in Weintraub
Compare Alix Lambert's work to Cindy Sherman's.
Talk :
- Ekondy, Apendi
- Yadan, Déborah
- Zurbach, Clémence
Our time is so preoccupied with the spectacle of macro drama that delicacy is subversive. It is like a scandal. We need to build a slow scandal. This is the possible revolution - we cannot choose the big things, but we can choose the little things." Marco Maggi.
Stopover 9 (04/05)
Tracey Moffat's work is both personal and political. So is Isaac Julien's. Both can legitimately claim to speak from the viewpoint of those who are oppressed by the societies in which they live. When they do so, they lay themselves open to a political response. (See texts on Whiteread and Epstein)
Stopover 10 (11/05)
Ofili is an African; his work relates directly to the European tradition, but interrupts it - elephant dung on the Virgin's breast. But there are other traditions which, at least at first glance, are completely autonomous. (You will need to browse this site - have a look at the essays in the Forum section).
(Compare the Arrernte ground paintings with Navajo sand-paintings)
Stopover 11(18/05)
To understand an Aboriginal ground painting fully, one needs to possess esoteric knowledge. This returns us to Weintraub's distinctions between populist and exclusivist modes of artistic production. People purchase Aboriginal paintings even though they cannot possibly read them correctly. But perhaps people are willing to "appreciate" other forms of art without knowing what the artist has brought to them. Look at Scott Grieger's "Be Here Now!"
Describe what you see. What concepts are put to work in this piece?
After you have analysed it, try looking at the following web-pages and see if you change your reading :
- http://solo23.abac.com/davidcornell/CJam/swooshtika.htm
- http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/12.11.97/nike-9750.html
- http://www.umma.lsa.umich.edu/Orient/Koelz/Tankas/estate-1/estate-1.html
- http://www.ecochoices.com/shop/yoga/zafuzabuton.html
- http://camouflage_fabric.manufacturers.alibaba.com/
"I am in a wilderness surrounded by the heights of technology. This is an extreme contextual reversal. One evening I am immersed in meditation when BOOM! For an instant I believed this must be the boom of enlightenment. But no, it was only the boom of distant firearms. And I heard a voice in my head sing out, 'You're in the Dharmy now!"
Scott Geiger, whose closest neigbour is a Marine base, quoted in Weintraub, p. 153.
Stopover 12 (25/05)
Can one enjoy or appreciate Grieger's work if one does not know much about Buddhist meditation techniques, about the traditional designs of Tankas, about how zafus are strewn across the floor, and if one thinks that Nike makes nifty shoes, and where can I buy some?
One answer has been that the artist puts us in touch with forces that are beyond our day-to-day knowledge. The artist as shaman summons up demons from another world that neither he nor his audience fully understand or control.
Stopover 13 (01/06)
During a shamanic trance, the shaman is possessed by a spirit. To demonstrate that he has passed over into another world, he may slash his body, or pierce it with a knife, or stuff broken glass into his mouth and eat it. He appears to feel no pain, or to master his body sufficiently to control his reactions. He dances, beating on a drum, and throws his body into incredible contortions. The clothes he wears, the food he eats, the voices that he speaks with are all marked by his condition.The shaman makes full use of his body as raw material for his performance.
In some cultures the distinction between the shaman and the other is not marked as clearly as it is in Siberia. In Haitian Vaudou, or among the possession cults of North Africa that Hell talks about, almost anyone present at a seance may be possessed by one or another of the spirits. Although there is a central actor who owns the temple and who organizes the seance, every person there may play a role in the ritual.
Individually and collectively, in ritualistically induced trance, people put their bodies to the test. It is possible to claim that the first canvas was human skin, and the first paint was human blood.
Stopover 14 (08/06)
Exam
Hand in class-work
Stopover 15 (15/06)
Results and "entretiens 'coup de pouce'
Partial Bibliography :
- Barrell, John, The Dark Side of the Landscape; The Rural Poor in English Painting 1730-1840.
- Brown, Michael F, Who Owns Native Culture?, Harvard University Press, 2003.
- Collective work, The Art Book, Phaidon Press, 1994.
- Cork, Richard, Breaking Down the Barriers; Art in the 1990s, Yale University Press, 1999.
- Harrison, Charles & Paul Wood, Art in theory 1900 - 1990; An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Blackwell, 1992.
- Hell, Bertrand, Possession & Chamanisme; les maîtres du désordre, Flammarion, 1999.
- Lucie-Smith, Edward, Sexuality in Western Art, Thames & Hudson, 1991.
- Monaco, James, How to Read a Film; Movies, Media, Multimedia, 3rd edition, Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford, 2000.
- Taussig, Michael, The Magic of the State, Routledge, 1997.
- Weintraub, Linda, "Making Contemporary Art ; How Today's Artists Think and Work", Thames & Hudson, 2003.