Sculpture and Avant-Garde

1) David Smith: Sculptor- Questions the idea that art was for the elite and was a perfection age old process that could only be found in Paris or New York. Upon going to New York and Paris he found that the art was made according to the artist. The finished project is not always clear at the beginning.

2) Louis Nevelson

3) Abstraction in motion: The Beginning of the age of ism’s-
What is the point to geometric abstraction and how does it relate to going back to “primitive” art and breaking away from the preconceived thought of “perfect” art that David Smith talks about.
The “Yellow Manifesto”- What was the problem with the Yellow Manifesto? And what was the big deal about the show?

4) What are your thoughts on Kienholz’s The Psycho-Vendetta Case of 1960. What about Kienholz’s methods compared to Berman and Conner?

5) Back to the basics; How would you define sculpture? Not a wiki definition either. Keeping in mind the key points of Avant-Garde and Kitsch, how do artists like David Smith or groups like Nouveau Realisme?

6) Minimalism and Geometric Abstraction

Cool sites;

Wooster Collective

Phil in the Circle

Sculpture in the 50s & 60s

Readings for this week were:

October text: 1945, 1955b, 1959b, 1960a, 1965, 1966a, 1966b, and from the reading packet: Louise Nevelson and David Smith.

Looking over the texts this week, I think it may be favorable for all of you to read the introductory chapters to the text, which discuss the methodologies and inclinations of various modes of critical theory and art history. Also, crack open the first text of Art Since 1900 and begin to read on Duchamp, Dada, Surrealism, Cubism, Futurism. Flip thru that first part of the text book, pick something of interest and read it. Don't read it cover to cover or by chapter, making the act of reading a creative one, where you follow your interests, this helps in actually acquiring the information because it was selected out of your own interests, and I find that we take in information or knowledge when we are ready and willing to.

As far as the readings on sculpture, wew have much to discuss. We need to understand the legacy of Marcel Duchamp. Why was he so important, and why are artists today still so inspired by his works and his manners for working?

To look up:

1) bricolage and the bricoleur. The concept of bricolage was discussed in the most useful way by a structural anthropologist named Claude Levi-Strauss, in his book The Savage Mind. The definition for bricolage in the text is rather informal and doesn't really get to the idea of bricolage.

2) Marcel Duchamp. Look at several projects of his: The Large Glass (or the Bride Stripped Bare By her Bachelors, Even), Fountain (and I will give anyone extra credit if they can decipher what 'R Mutt' means), then look up his rotoreliefs and compare them to the kineticist art.

3) gestalt

4) the notion of the spectacle and Guy Debord's book, 'The Society of the Spectacle'. Then...

5) the notions of detournement, recuperation, unitary urbanism, the derive and psychogeography again. These are terms used by Situationists, who are really proving to be some of the most influential artists of the 20th century. All of those terms will be used again and again to discuss all kinds of art, for all kinds of reasons. Why is the 'Spectacle' a bad thing to Debord, and a glorious thing to Yves Klein?

6) structuralist anthropology. the world in binaries, we have talked about this already, but it is going to begin to become very important to see how we define and use 'opposites' and 'similarities'.

7) collage and decollage, and when they become objects: Berman, Conner and Kienholz

8) Eccentirc abstraction, Freud and the notion of the 'Uncanny', think of all the cliche things people say in reference to Sigmund Freud and then apply those cliche statements to the work of Duchamp, Bourgeois, Kusama, and Hesse.

Be good and fight the darkness!

Outside Readings

Okay guys,

We talked about essays or books that everyone will have expected you to read, but will probably never assign you to read. I am compiling them based on the textbook, whatever texts are assumed you would have encountered or read to understand the text.

I am going to upload them as PDFs, or HTML links, so you can print them at your own pace. Readings that we tend to keep using are based on how we interpret them or reuse them apart from how they are originally intended. The lack of control an author has over how their work is read, understood and taught is talked about in a 'semiotic discourse' called reader/response theory and an essay called "The Death of an Author" by Roland Barthes from a book he wrote called Image -- Music -- Text.

I have grouped this first set of readings together by subject to expand on their use today in relation to art.

Lens, Aura and the Copy (a sort of 'what-we-see' thing):
Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Jean Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulations"

Art, Kitsch, Camp and Shit (what or how for processing what-we-see):
Clement Greenberg, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch"
Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"
Georges Bataille, "The Story of the Eye"

Author, Reader and You (what-we-see is 'us and them'):
Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author"
Michel Foucault, "The Author Function"

European Painting

Hey people.

This weeks readings focused on the development of painting outside of the United States during the evil regin of the dark wizards known as the Irascibles (Abstract Expressionism). There were some good covens of witches and wizards practicing the bright arts: Tropicalia (or neoconcretism) in Brazil, Gutai in Japan, art brut (or informel) in France, and the Imagist Bauhaus fronted by Asger Jorn which merged with Letrrist International to formed the SI (Situationist International).

We need to discuss the trends that are similar to Ab Ex in the States, and what are different.

Topics for discussion in class:

1) phenomenology
2) scatology
3) the notion of the concrete (especially related to poetry and topology)
4) Hegelian dialectics
5) the existential dread (Sartre's 'man in a situation')
6) avant-garde and kitsch ala Clement Greenberg
7) Georges Bataille and the notion of base materialism

Further readings to understand the text:

Clement Greenberg, 'Avant Garde and Kitsch'
Walter Benjamin, 'Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'
Georges Bataille, 'The Story of the Eye'

As far as some of the other conceptions, google search them or look on Wikipedia, and follow as many links as popssible, it will give you enough examples and thoughts on the subject to be able to talk about it.

Questions for the American Painting Readings

Okay, so this is how we are going to run this blog in the context of this class. People who are scheduled to post questions about the readings will post by 3:00 pm on the day of class. These questions will be a gateway into the seminar discussion. I don't know if it was obvious...but some of the readings assigned from Jan's syllabus were not for the lecture and class tonight, but for later. The readings we will be discussing are only on American Painting after World War II.

My questions, (and you need to post at least two!)

1. How does the Bauhaus continue to play a role in the 'mythemes' of abstract art? That is to say, how does the constant mythologizing of abstract art, from each repetition to the next, draw on the fundamental principles of Bauhaus?

2. What is the function of 'structuralism' in the context of 'modernism' and 'formalism'?


These are the questions we will ponder over our seminar tonight. I know much of the vocabulary is new and probably a little awkward, so be sure to ask anything of me and I will do my best to make it reasonably understandable. Some things to think of though for this seminar tonight: Who is the October group? What is semiotics?

I find a very reasonable way of thinking about the semiotics of artwork is to discuss what we mean when we say "what is the meaning?"

A suggested excercise for this is to define 'terrorism'.

What does it mean, how do we use this term, what do you think of when you hear the word? Come to class tonight ready to tell me the definition of terrorism.

See you guys tonight!

Nathan

Welcome to Defense Against the Dark Visual Arts

Hello you fabulous art students. We met last night, and I look forward to getting into the thick of things with you all. Sorry if the blogspot title is a little silly, but then again we all decided to go to art school, so we got to let it hang out. I am inviting all of you into this blogspot so we can talk to each other over the six days we don't have class together. Art doesn't have to be something confined to a classroom or a gallery, I think it is more like a kung fu code we live by or something. I prefer to think of my personal practice in art as that of a wizard. Sometimes I pretend that Mason Gross is Hogwarts and it makes my days much more rich. Plus I really want to be the defense against the dark visual arts professor. Please allow me this bit of fantasy. Also, if you were confused by my impromptu impersonation of Slavoj Zizek, I am including a link to YouTube of him talking. Remember: every name we come across in the readings, type into YouTube, Wikipedia, Google, whatever. This isn't going to be about memorizing, but questioning, understanding and trying to figure things out.

Check this dude out though!

Slavoj Zizek

It is a big world...Abraca-frickin'-dabra ya'll!

Readings for September 13: AMERICAN PAINTING

The Readings:

You guys need to read the Art Since 1900, volume II, sections 1947a, 1947b, 1949, 1951, 1953, 1957, 1958, 1960b;
and from the packet: Ad Reinhardt, "Twelve Rules for a New Academy", Helen Frankethaler interview with H. Geldzahler, and the Joan Mitchell interview with Yves Michaud.

None of these readings are hard, or require much previous experience with the work, but you have to have the readings done to get what you need to out of the lecture and texts. I am going to show you how I want the seminar discussions to go, by going first. I will post comments on the blogspot, and you can post responses, then we will generate a discussion to start the class off with after the lecture.