Both of these reading feature a person or persons going against public opinion and their criticisms. Whereas the article about America's First Art War is about a group of people's breaking free from their intellectual bonds and being exposed to European art as well as being able to create the art that they want that isn't completely photographic, the other article speaks of a man who wants to title an art movement. The reading about the war was incredibly interesting. I was most drawn to this article because I really like cubism and abstraction in art, however, this mentions people who don't think that it is very good art at all. Throughout history, there are multiple times that the public doesn't agree with an rt movement, and that's what makes it so revolutionary and large every time. However, during this movement, Theodore Roosevelt himself said that Americans should in fact be exposed to European contemporary art, which I found suprising. This is very admirable for any person, not to mention the president, to state that even though he doesn't like something, it is still important. In relation to the reading that we read last time, we have already discussed the importance of everyone being exposed to as much contemporary and non-contemporary art from all the places that they can. If everyone felt this way, then artists would've had a much easier time throughout history. This article has a very optimistic feel about the art movements, in contrast to the other reading, which was extremely critical. The article about Charles Saatchi naming an art movement is extremely critical. The writer is biased against Saatchi very strongly, and the things that Saatchi likes. He speaks of nature as elegant and beautiful but criticizes artwork by calling it awful and mentioning that some see it as a "psychotic breakdown" Though the author is biased at the beginning and the end, he is very informative throughout the body of the article. He gives lots of information about the different art movements and their rise into the world, including multiple mentions of many artists and other things that we have learned about in class, including Impressionism, Courbet, and Picasso. The Saatchi article does in fact give a ton of information in most of the article, it gives a little too much. This article is mostly fact, and no argument whatsoever. The writer states his claim but does not argue it, he just goes into the history of other art movements, mentioning his claim scarcely. This weakens his argument tremendously, and makes the article harder to follow because I wasn't sure if I was reading an argumentative article or an informative article. This article is rich with information, but has an extremely weak argument, and while I learned many things about various art movements, I learned very little about Saatchi and what he's trying to do. In comparison, the article on the war, is actually informing people. It isn't arguing anything, ans is written in chronological order which makes it much easier to read and much more sensible. A frustration that I experienced while reading the other article was that they kept talking about pieces of art but included no picture, so I was virtually lost until i began searching them for myself. I feel that the addition of pictures is another thing that added to the success of this article. Also, I was not able to detect any bias, it was solely to inform, and it achieved it's goal. The article on Saatchi also begins to mention "identity politics" and psychologically repressed desires. This caught my attention because of the large recent problems with gay marriage, and this paragraph connected surrealism with gay marriage. I thought that this was a very powerful addition to the end of the article to spark one's attention, and leave you thinking. Now, I'm very curious to see what work I can find about "identity politics," one could take that topic and run with it in the art world.
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I actually saw this piece at the VMFA over the summer. My dad and I visited the VMFA right in the middle of the whole confederate flag debate over the summer and this piece really caught my eye. That night I went home and compromised a collage of her artist statement and such alongside this work and show it to a few good friends to get their opinion, given the controversy going on at the time. I absolutely love everything about this piece. Most importantly however, is the meaning behind the art. Sonya Clark, an African American herself, created this piece to intertwine the histories of the two Americans. She states, "as soon as I cornrowed the stripes and Bantu knotted the stars the battle flag emerges, so those complicated histories get interwoven and that’s what was missing." I idolize this work because of the intense meaning behind it. This piece is one of the strongest pieces I've ever seen. I hope to one day be able to make some piece of work with as much meaning as this. However, I then created a work of art inspired by this piece and I hope to continue adding meaning behind my work, just as she does: Emily Smith is the director of 1708 Gallery. This gallery is a non-profit organization that wanted to provide a space for artists to display their work when it didn't quite fit in with museums and such, it's also used by emerging artists. One artist, Sonya Clark, who created a very interesting piece of art on display at the VMFA, used this space to for a hair craft project. I found this hair craft project incredibly interesting, she had woven hair like strings into a canvas, or some other paper like thing, and gave these to hair stylists and asked them to use it as they would a person's head, and create art. The interesting part of this project is that Ms. Smith mentioned that these beauticians felt a little weird in that their work wasn't usually considered art in this way. Ms. Smith mentioned that this is a gallery for the obscure. Another interesting thing that she talked about as the emergence of another gallery near their location. Typically one would assume that intense competition would then follow, and being as this gallery was non profit, and small, they didn't have much chance. However, the two galleries ended up fueling each other instead of competing. The larger gallery would bring well known critics and people their and these people would see 1708 and become curious. I found it very interesting how the two galleries got along rather than competed. She also mentioned a number of other interesting events that they hold, for example, the Monster Drawing Rally seemed very interesting! However, my favorite event that she mentioned was the InLight. The whole idea of art being made to light up the dark just sounds enticing, because I love things that glow. As soon as she mentioned this, I immediately began looking up information and making plans to go. I really hope to one day incorporate some sort of glow/light up piece to a work of art. This reminded me a lot of Isamu Noguchi's lunars. I especially hope to use some sort of glow in the dark paint in my work in the future. |
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May 2017
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