Friday 27 February 2009

Enjoy the Silence

It's been awhile. I am alive, worry not my friends. Things have been hectic this week... dissertation proposals and presentations, class readings, applying for fellowships... My brain hurts. 

So, I'm taking the night off, headed out to mix and mingle with my art history comrades at a little cocktail soiree, and then perhaps dance partying at Depeche Mode night at the Star and Garter.  Tomorrow, I will find myself once again at the library, desperately searching for some inspiration for my course essays. Until then, my friends, relaxation.

Oh, and anyone fancy a holiday in London? : Volunteer Plea for Plinth Artwork. Artist Anthony Gormley is searching for 2,400 volunteers to stand on his plinth for one hour (24/7 for 100 days) in Trafalgar Square. Evidently, it's a lesson in feeling alone in a crowd. Sounds like an easy task, but must be an uncomfortable and intimidating hour, considering the kind of foot traffic through Trafalgar Square. Yikes

Although, I have always wanted to be part of a piece of group art. Yet, I always hoped it would be in the form of a Spencer Tunick. Iceberg? No problem.

Monday 23 February 2009

The Soul in Limbo

Man Ray, Rayograph, 1922

"All I know is that this substitution of persons stops with you, because nothing can be substituted for you and because for me it was for all eternity that this succession of terrible or charming enigmas was to come to an end at your feet.
You are not an enigma for me.
I say that you have turned me from enigmas forever."
Andre Breton, Nadja, 1928

Friday 20 February 2009

Teapot Opera


Act III: The Final Judgement
... "Our darkest griefs may hold our bright hopes."

Thursday 19 February 2009

Dance of Destruction

Yesterday was really an exercise in academic intelligence for me. My class with Amelia Jones, "Identity and Visual Representation" has be a painful pleasure thus far, with the first few classes focusing on dense philosophical theories of self, Other and art. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of presenting Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness, a beast of existential brilliance. Other texts considered were Lacan, Butler and Hegel... all within a two hour period. Indeed, mental aerobics.

In the evening, I attended the Dominic Johnson's lecture "Glorious Catastrophe: The Rise and Fall of Jack Smith". Johnson is a professor of English and Drama at Queen Mary in London and also a performance artist himself. His work involves an exploration of wound and body through controversial and extreme techniques:


When discussing his work, he was quick to dispel any connection to (or belittling of) the psychological issue of self-harm. He equated, quite humorously, the associations to those of acting and pathological lying. 

The bulk of his talk, however, centered around his presentation of a paper on Jack Smith, a little known American filmmaker and performance artist. Smith himself seems like quite the darkly humorous and tragic character, whose work focused on themes of the exotic and the apocalypse. Johnson's well-constructed discussion of Smith's work drew heavily from Lee Edelmen's No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive and Edward Said's oft-referenced writings on Orientalism. Johnson argued that the theme of Atlantis is central to Smith's work as a pseudo-historical example of what a utopian idea may become. Additionally, Smith's camp aesthetic and burlesque, darkly comedic and paranoid redressings exploit Said's concepts of the theatrical, creating an exploration of space estranged and an uncanny utopia. Of course, it was all said much more elegantly and succinctly than I could possibly do justice here. Anyways, I'm looking forward to the book to explore Johnson's ideas more fully.

Jack Smith

The post-lecture discussion was all the more interesting, as Amelia discussed the work in terms of our class discussion earlier that morning by bringing up the problem of the binary. Johnson explained Smith's work "bears witness to one's own confusion"... in a sense, not to destroy the binary but to scramble it, embracing ambivalence and contradiction. An interesting debate ensued on the ostensible recuperation of Smith and the requirements of exclusion for the maintenance of the artistic 'canon'. 

Jack Smith

It seems that the theme of the Other has been recurring for me over the past few weeks within my academic life. Certainly, the basic mode of human existence is the definition of oneself through one's relation to the Other, and the subsequent exclusion of the Other. The notion of the binary, emerging in the philosophies of Kant in the 18th century, has plagued philosophers (and us academics) ever since. Still, artists such as Jack Smith, and Dominic Johnson himself, offer a "confusion" through their work, which certainly exists on the edge of the canon.

Jack Smith


Dominic Johnson

And a little side note: Post-post lecture we all went for drink at KroBar, where I had a lovely discussion with Monica Pearl, a professor in the American and English Studies department. She plugged the Sexuality Summer School put on by the University of Manchester, which I will subsequently plug here. According to the website,

'The Summer School addresses current debates within queer studies, emphasising in particular its implication for the interdisciplinary study of culture. It offers an opportunity for students to discuss queer debates with researchers in the CSSC as well as international scholars brought in for the event.'

With lectures by Juliana Snapper, Amelia Jones, Joanne Meyerowitz and others, it ought to be a worthwhile event. However, spaces are limited to only 40 people, so register soon if you are interested. (Cough cough, Anchal. You know you want to attend with me!)

Tuesday 17 February 2009

---

Busy, busy, busy. Just got back from the land of the Irish with the McJohnson's and am doing my best to catch up on all of the studying that I didn't do this weekend. Things are a bit crazy, but I came across this artist and had to share. 

Takashi Murakami, from Tokyo. There is a lot of really spectacular pieces coming out of Japan these days... definitely keeping an eye on that market. Here's my favorite from Murakami:

Takashi Murakami, 727-272, 2006


I'll have a proper post with some academic life updates in a few days (after I sleep for three days straight). Also, more on Murakami in the future (he's brilliant, no?).

Sunday 8 February 2009

Obey

Street artist Shephard Fairey was arrested in Boston on Friday for tagging two buildings with images from his Obey Giant campaigns. Most have become familiarized with Fairey due to his recent commissioned work for the Obama campaign: 


Fairey, however, has been an influential force in the graf world for the last few decades. His popular Obey campaign has gained notoriety, with fair reaching influence that even pops up in Manchester, where I have seen first-hand knock offs of the well-known images. For instance, I stumbled upon this little guy near the Thirsty Scholar a few months ago:


Fairey's Obey Giant propaganda campaign was born in the late 80s with sticker bomb movements and graf stenciling. Now, Fairey has moved towards screen prints and pasting, adding a more dynamic quality to these temporal pieces that require fast application due to anti-graffiti laws in most US cities. Here are some of my favorites:



After that unnecessarily long introduction, I've three comments on Fairey's arrest (I won't get angry about neofascist police forces suppressing the creative and political voices of Boston, don't worry). First of all, I find it interesting that Fairey was arrested not because he was caught tagging, but because images from his campaign were discovered on these buildings. This seems a tad circumstantial to me and that the state really doesn't have much of a case without witnesses. I've never heard of a case against a graffiti artist that wasn't based on first-hand witness accounts. Silly.

Second, I find it a bit worrying that Fairey was arrested for images from his Obey campaign. Yet, when he was tagging the hell out of Boston with Obama images, nothing was done. Indeed, the first of his pieces that arose post-Obama were immediately attacked. The implications of this are obvious and I won't patronize you by elaborating on them further. I'll just say that bias and preference ought not exist at any level of political or creative production in terms of 'the law'.

Third, this reminds me of another incident involving the popular graff artist, Banksy, that occurred a year or so ago. Unfortunately I cannot find the news article again as so much time has passed. Basically, the story went that Banksy had tagged a wall in a small town in Spain and, due to his fame in the art world, the town had then declared the wall a public monument that was protected under a plethora of sanctions and whatnot. Still, another unknowing graff artist came along and tagged the same wall, and was promptly arrested not only for tagging but for defacing this now-famous public monument. The parallels between this story and the Fairey incident might not be particularly strong, but both really exemplify the question of who dictates what art is. When one graffiti artist, in the case of Banksy, is considered above the laws of another graffiti artist, or even when one image, in the case of Fairey's Obama, escapes graffiti laws, we enter into a very messy area of contention. In the end, it comes down to the same conservative white male dictating the definition of art that has existed for centuries, all the way to Vasari and even before. Hopefully one of these days we will rise above that, but I'm not holding my breath.

Saturday 7 February 2009

Subversive Spaces

Continuing the Surrealist trend from my last post, I ought to chat about my most recent gallery experience here in Manchester-land. A handful of my very favorite people in the Manc and I went to the opening for Subversive Spaces at the Whitworth Gallery last night. The show itself fell short of my expectations, as I found the pieces lacked harmony with one another. The concept of the show, bringing together historical Surrealist works with contemporary ones through the common subject of space, had the potential to make a very strong argument. Unfortunately, the connections between the two periods were a tad week and the show seemed a bit haphazard. 

Despite its fallbacks, the show wasn't all bad, as the pieces themselves were, in general, quite noteworthy. There were some interesting works by Dora Maar and Brassaï, as well as some spectacular urban scenes by the contemporary photographer Anna Gaskell. There was also a strange room devoted to hysteric women, which seemed a bit out of place considering the show's theme. An interesting and relevant subject, no doubt, but a stretch when relating it to the surreal quality of space.  

All in all, the show was sub-par. I would like to visit it again sometime this coming week, when there are fewer trendy hipsters crowding the galleries and polluting the space with pretentious jargon. That really is the worst part of gallery openings, I must say, as it really makes it difficult to get a complete sense of the show. Ah well, at least there was free champagne.

Afterwards, I went out with my aforementioned favorite people for a few drinks and political conversation that was a refreshing deviation from the world of art theory.  It was lovely and relaxing (although it did get a tad heated, as every good political discussion ought to). Love those kids, fo sho.

I'll leave you with a Mona Hatoum that was in the show...

Mona Hatoum, Marble Slicer, 2002
 
On second thought, perhaps the hysteric women were relevant after all. *Cough*

Tuesday 3 February 2009

Ceci n'est pas un blog.

Humor me while I share this nerdy excerpt from The Levinas Reader. This first paragraph of an otherwise arduous essay is, I feel, an excellent definition of art in the postwar period.

"It is generally, dogmatically, admitted that art is expression, and that artistic expression rests on cognition. An artist -even a painter, even a musician- tells. [S/]He tells of the ineffable. An artwork prolongs, and goes beyond, common perception. What common perception trivializes and misses, an artwork apprehends in its irreducible essence. It thus coincides with metaphysical intuition. Where common language abdicates, a poem or painting speaks. Thus artwork is more real than reality and attests to the dignity of the artistic imagination, which sets itself up as knowledge of the absolute. Though it be disparaged as an aesthetic canon, realism nevertheless retains all its prestige. In fact it is repudiated only in the name of a higher realism. Surrealism is a superlative."
-Emmanuel Levinas, "Reality and Its Shadow" 1948

René Magritte, The Treachery of Images, 1928-9

"Surrealism is a superlative." I. Love it. The Magritte fits so well...

Levinas goes on in a rather controversial direction after this lovely little diddy, claiming, very much in line with Kant, that a work of art is positioned outside of experience as a resemblance of reality. As a mere 'shadow' of reality, art escapes the temporal and exists as an interval, in an interval. The time of art, therefore, is not REAL time, and thus the shadow non-being of art is different from our ('our' meaning natural life) REAL being. All of this I can understand, all of this is relatively logical and fair enough, but it is what this suggests that makes Levinas' ideas controversial. Indeed, if art exists outside of the real, it is disengaged from the real and thus art no longer has anything to offer the real. An art that exists beyond reality has nothing to teach in the real world.

(Levinas tries to amend this dismal conclusion by suggesting that the art critic bridges the gap between the real and art, claiming that criticism makes human the inherent inhumanity of art. Certainly, this suggestion of human dialogue with works of art, which he claims persist as a fixed monologue, seems contradictory, but whatevs.)

Monday 2 February 2009

The Grand Illusion

This post gains its inspiration from my little brother's latest blog post, Illusions!! =D. (Yes, my little brother has a blog, which is mildly entertaining from time to time.) Upon viewing said post, my art nerd brain immediately jumped to M.C. Escher, the Dutch illusionist artist. I'm sure many are familiar with his etchings of 'impossible realities' and symmetrical decorative works... Jason, I think you might enjoy some of them!

Escher, Sky and Water, 1938

Escher, Relativity, 1951

Escher, Reptiles, 1943

I've nothing to add, really, so I'll let Aristotle do it for me:

The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness,
which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.
– Aristotle, ‘Metaphysics’, Book XIII

Of course, Kant repudiates this, as Kant repudiates everything, but that's for another post some other day...


(End note: Yes, my blog title is a Styx song. And yes, Styx is a guilty pleasure. "Lady"? "Come Sail Away"? "MR. ROBOTO"?! Amazing.)