Riveting Power. (Reflection)

 

    Naomi Parker-Fraley (1921 - 2018), pictured above, was the 20-year-old Oklahoma born machinist who while working for the Navy in California during WWII inspired the motivational 1943 "We Can Do It!" Rosie the Riveter poster, created by J. Howard Miller.

   It is not painted by a woman, but by a pariah of today’s society; “The White Man.’ It is a piece of art that has become iconic because of its message of female empowerment. The image of Rosie the riveter with her fist clenched and born aloft was for women what the uncle Sam “I WANT YOU” poster was for men.

   The poster was created in order to empower women. By instilling pride and patriotism with its call for women to come and aid the nation. It raised awareness and broke down the traditional stereotypes of how women were traditional portrayed in American culture. Expectations had enclosed women's roles in society as the housemaker, but as men left the workforce to enlist and fight fascism around the world., the centers of industry were left empty of workers and women were required to fill the void and keep the power house of American industry rolling.

   I picked this artwork for a multitude of reasons; in earlier classes we have discussed symbolism and culture. We had looked at 'Success Kid' who is using the same gesture and steely eyed look, despite now knowing that he is just upset that tasting a fist full of sand for the very first time isn't as pleasant as he had hoped it would be. We had also discussed how copying art demeans the value, this image is now seen on socks, tea towels, mouse pads and pretty much any mass produced item that can be decorated, but the only reason we know of this art work is because it was a widely printed piece of wartime propaganda. A portrait surrounded by a plain backdrop of bright primary colors, it is also according to that giant douche bag art critic Clement Greenberg that we studied a week ago; an easily understood narrative for the masses which supposedly debases art, which patently can’t be true as this an iconic artwork that represents power to the people. Finally I wanted to represent the oppression of women by using this piece of art that was created by a white bogeyman for the empowerment of women.

Image source

https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-2018/rosie-riveter-dies-fd.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Success_Kid#/media/File:SuccessKid.jpg

http://projectartistx.com/we-can-do-it-poster-j-howard-miller-1943/

Art by Artisans

BLOG-WORK IN PROGRESS

Disclaimer:

I've been assigned to write an essay on the subject; 'Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?' after having been given Linda Nochlin's essay of the same name from 1971 to read first.

Ivan Bogdanov's The Apprentice 1893

   I despise the fact that we are asked to discuss this in a public forum considering that we are clearly expected to pander to outdated, sexist and racist ideas.

   The answer is in the very word art. Art implies that what you are viewing was made by an artisan. An artisan is a skilled laborer who makes objects with their hands. The making of art was considered a skilled trade until the 19^th Century when the invention of photography allowed relatively affordable unskilled photographers to replace the skilled portrait and landscape artists that were previously appointed by court, state and church.

   Till the twentieth century all types of artisans be they cabinet makers, shoemakers, iron smiths, masons and painters started their careers as apprentices. Training from an early age at the expense of their master who hoped to one day see a financial return on the investment. The investment of capital and time explains why historically the idea of the artistic genius was so very important. The reason we see so many surnames referencing a skilled trade; Smith, Walker, Tanner, Zimmerman or in English; Carpenter is because for thousands of years professions were handed down through the generations, so if a family was in the business of sheepherding there was little to no chance that their offspring would be employed as anything else other than a shepherd, their last name would also probably be ... yup you guessed it Shephard. People simply didn’t have the luxury of being able to pursue a career of their own choice. Up until only 1923 when Oregon became the first state to mandate compulsory education, professional training and education was not readily available to the vast majority of Americans. For millennia prior to then the onus was on the trade master to pay for the room, food, education and training of an apprentice for a fixed period of time until the apprentice became a journeyman. If the family business needed to expand the number of employees the master would need to look outside of the family for a young apprentice and then the master would need to make certain assurances that the person that they were about to invest decades of money, knowledge and trade secrets into would have some natural talent. Employing only children who displayed a gift for the trade in the workshop was the masters best guarantee of a financial payback on years of investment. Society has changed very little in the years since; we still have entrance exams for many of the top schools today. Similarly, universities offer scholarships to talented students and athletes, major league sports teams send out scouts to schools to seek those students who display a gift for sports so they can sponsor them in athletics programs and big city firms head hunt students heading into business and law schools, offering to pay for college costs on the signing of a fixed contract upon leaving education. Aspiring artists can thank their lucky stars that artistic genius is no longer the only ticket to being an artist. Like the parable of the tortoise and the hair, those who may not have a natural gift for art can excel and surpass those who do through hard work education and practice.

   Those few women in history who became artists were typically trained within the family by a father who was himself an artisan  Only those few from the lower ranks of the aristocracy, who could afford not to spend their days at work, could find the time to paint for their own amusement, but they were few and far between as it was seen by the aristocracy and the Landed gentry (an elite social class that made money solely from the rent of their vast farming estates) as vulgar to perform manual labor and art was of course the work of the poor and lowly commoner.

   Class mobility is an outdated term, so I'll refer to its modern reincarnation: Socio economic mobility which in itself is nothing new, but being able to move from poverty to wealth and vice versa is far more common now than ever before in recorded human history. To arrive at this point there have been many historic stages when western civilization gradually freed up the confines of power enough to allow anyone from any gender, class, race or other social background to follow their own chosen career path. 

   Because the USA was initially founded and predominantly colonized by northern Europeans much of what has happened over the last millennia in northern Europe has influenced the 224-year history of the USA, so I have included that in a short list of WASP culture's slow progression away from totalitarian power to equality for all:

Magna Carta (England) 1215 - Bill of rights.

The Black Death (Europe) 1347 - Signaled the beginning of the end of European feudalism.

Peasants revolt (England) 1381 - Demanded the end of servitude.

Reformation (Northern Europe) 1517 - 1648 Decentralization of religious power.

English Civil War 1642 - 1651 - Democratic parliamentarian power replaces hereditary aristocracy.

Industrial revolution (Europe and the USA) 1760 - 1840 Entry of women into the workplace.

American revolution 1775 - 1783 Democratic Republicanism.

Mexican - American War 1846 - 1848 End of Mexican Feudalism in Texas, Colorado, California, Arizona and New Mexico.

American Civil War 1861 – 1865 Signing of the Emancipation proclamation.

Women’s Social and Political Union (USA) 1903 – 1920 Women’s vote.

World War One and WWII - Women filled the vacancies left by the men who enlisted to fight.

American Civil Rights Movement 1954 - 1968 End of segregation.

 In Linda Nochlin's diatribe she points the finger squarely at those who hold the most power in this country. For those who still consider, 49 years later, the race of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant men to be the prime hinderance to female advancement in 2020 I'd point towards the pew research analysis of the 2016 presidential election between a man and a woman. When you look at how the two genders voted you can see that there was just a seven per cent difference when comparing the 41% of American males who voted for a female president and the 48% of American women who voted for a woman, while a nearly equal 46% of American women voted for a man. Within the last four years there was a golden opportunity to have a female president of the USA, and a nearly equal half of American women voters rejected the chance to have a woman hold the highest job on the planet. For those who are still not convinced that American women are as responsible for holding themselves back I'd then point to Europe where women have been for decades regularly elected to become a Prime Minister, Chancellor or President and then conclude that it is currently neither race nor gender, but instead it is the American culture that holds American women back from progressing. If anyone still disagree then I'd ask that reader to provide me an example of a race that has created a culture that has advanced towards equality for all, more than the northern European WASP culture, For decades women have been entitled to receive up to 18 weeks paid maternity leave and 52 weeks protected leave regardless of the length of their current employment across Europe. Even the patriarchal catholic countries of southern Europe are decades ahead of the USA in terms of gender equality and the protected legal rights of women. White men are no longer to blame, it is American culture that is at fault. If you want to change this culture then it is down to you to be proactive. You can start by pressuring schools to end cheerleading teams that promote young women to subserviently hero worship men, you need to vocally dismiss the catholic patriarchal culture, boycott companies that continue to charge more for women's products than men's (pink tax) and pressure those in political office to introduce new progressive laws and for you to get out there and vote for reform. It is your fault if you don’t

.https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/

Laser Cat 2014

"He beams art with his eyes ... it's laser cat!"

https://vimeo.com/78712745 

- (Don't complain to me that there's no image for you to see here; Just because Blogger refuses to play URLs from Vimeo, doesn't mean that I'm about to post an inferior clip from YouTube, so just go ahead and follow the link provided buster.)

   I'd take a wild guess that this all started way back in early 2011 with the YouTube Nyan cat video, but has since morphed into further catnip treats such as SNL's laser cats or anything that pops up when you simply google Laser cats or better still: laser cats on unicorns farting rainbows.

   Laser cat was designed by Irishman Kill Cooper and Australian David Glass who together own a Design agency in Spain called Hungry Castle, their side hustle called 'Cool Shit' lets them leave the advertising world behind and have fun creating public art for their own amusement. Previously they had gained fame after raising funds on Kickstarter to make a giant inflatable Lionel Ritchie Head that festival goers could climb inside and listen to the crooners thoughts. That was for the 2013 Bestival festival in England, after which they were then invited to create an internet meme themed art piece for the Miami ADC Festival of Art & craft in 2014 by Ignacio Oreamuno. Laser Cat projects 10,000 unique original works of art that were sent to the duo from other designers around the world to showcase their personal artwork. To participate you simply climb on board, hit the button and ... "Pew, pew, meow!" art is projected. 

  You can plainly see on their "Coolshit' website that this trend for meme inspired inflatables has since kicked off for them as now they have a baker's dozen that they display at different music festivals around the world. Their success implies that artwork derived from and imitating momentarily popular cultural images and fads that are spread like wildfire through the internet by the masses is chintz, okay everyone is being very ironic about it especially the hipsters, but it's definitely back baby! Bigger, better and bolder than ever.

"You can stick that in your pipe and smoke it Mr. Greenberg."

"Mumble, mumble"

"Sorry Clement, what was that you said?"

"Ceci nes pas une pipe."

"Oh go stuff your head up a pig you pompous prig!"

Laser cat projecting a pair of Carlton Banks dancing either side of ballet cat,
probably to the dulcet tones of Tom Jones' "It's Not Unusual".

Links  and References:

https://vimeo.com/78712745 

-What I want you to watch, so what are you waiting for?

https://coolshit.art/art/laser-cat

-Their art and merchandise site. Go spend your money biatches.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/daveglass/lionel-richies-head-bestival-2013

-Get on in there ... Lionel's head I mean.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH2-TGUlwu4

-Nyan Cat ... nuff said.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/mar/25/laser-cat-digital-art-projector-technology

-Someone else's viewpoint which is not as good as mine ... obviously.

Kitsch is King

 

Before getting you teeth stuck into the meat of my opinions below, I'd suggest that anyone who is taking our class view the following video from the time counter 16:16 as teacher, author, illustrator and artists Pete Loveday eloquently covers the subject of both aura and Kitsch.

Celebrated designers strive to turn a mundane object into something that is pleasing to the eye, thus increasing its commercial viability. What the best designers intend for their creations be it for an example Corbussier’s architecture, Terrance Conran’s furniture or the high-tech gadgets designed by Johny Ive is not to make grandiose fine art, but something that is aesthetically pleasing to the paying public. Design school teaches its pupils to make what Clement Greenburg would describe as kitsch. Art that is not the result of the artist’s free expression, but commissioned for the sole purpose of using beauty, shape and color to sell more product. Thankfully society has since elevated kitsch to such a highly respected level that across the world there are now museums dedicated not to Fine Art, but its commercial cousin; Design. (Singapore’s Red Dot, the Bauhaus in Berlin and the Design Museum in London just to name a few)

Advertising is the epitome of Clement Greenbergs’ definition of kitsch; Being a commercial transaction made between the manufacturer of a product who wants to see a rise in the number of sales of their merchandise and a design team who has been paid by that manufacturer to make another product that has the sole purpose of persuading the public to purchase the manufacturer’s product. In order to be successful in any of the visual medias such as bill board posters, or television and film the advert has to be designed to elicit a direct response from the viewer by catching the eye of its target audience, the visual design and its message has to stand out from other competing adverts, it has to tell a convincing story be it true or false about the product that is has been commissioned to sell while bestowing certain characteristics upon the companies brand. If misused for a political purpose it can be seen as extremely similar to the fascist propaganda that Clement Greenberg wrote about. There is also very little to differentiate between modern capitalists commissioning advertising agents and the Christian authorities that have historically commissioned artists to install church art that had the sole purpose of selling the bible’s religious messages to their congregants. There is a distinctly beautiful irony that Brothers Charles and Maurice Saatchi have become King makers in the upper echelons of modern art, because for the last 50 years they have together been among Europe’s most successful advertisers. By selling their talent for creating Kitsch they have been able to acquire one of the world’s greatest private collections of fine art. Their combined purchasing power and influence has made famous the names of many emerging artists.

 The Saatchi brothers own a number of websites, their premiere website is their advertising website: http://saatchi.com/en-us/ while their art gallery website is: https://www.saatchiart.com/

A Saatchi and Saatchi advert

https://media-assets-05.thedrum.com/cache/images/thedrum-prod/s3-news-tmp-90538-1_0--2x1--940.png

Artwork displayed at the Saatchi and Saatchi museum.

Civilisation Bai Yilu 2007

https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/artpages/bai_yiluo_civilization_a_china_art.htm

Iconoclasts

History and art are two very different subjects and it is frustrating to see them getting so entangled here, when some insist on confirming the validity of the term aura.

When the English Puritans pulled down entire churches, forced the dissolution of the monasteries and destroyed Christian iconography during the English reformation and civil war (1534 - 1651) and when ISIS destroyed Muslim, Christian and Buddhist places of worship, statues, monuments. sculptures and even ancient palaces and historic cities across Libya, Iraq and Syria during their bloody jihad (2014 - 2017), it was not for the sake of art that these religious zealots destroyed such vast amounts of irreplaceable cultural wealth, they did not have a travelling panel of art critics deciding whether an object would be obliterated on aesthetic grounds, that's something we can leave to the Nazis and their theory of degenerate art (1920 - 1945), but rather it was the history associated with those places and objects that sealed their fate. The art so to speak was an innocent victim of their ideological lunacy. Despite being hewn from the same rock the art in those statues, monuments and sculptures have always been truly separate from the history. Thankfully with the blessing of modern technology we have been able to reproduce some of the lost art from the middle east in the form of film, pictures, casts and scanning has allowed 3D printing to bring back to life the art created thousands of years ago, while those countless numbers of artworks destroyed during the English Reformation have been be lost to eternity. The ability to copy and replicate is an amazing human invention that we should cherish and celebrate.

Statues of saints in Durham Cathedral, UK beheaded by the British puritans.

Remnants on a museum floor of a statue, destroyed by Daesh.

https://www.durhamworldheritagesite.com/history/reformation

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/world-history/church-desecration

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/12/unesco-united-nations-isis-islamic-state-cultural-antiquities-trade-irina-bokova-refugees-heritage/

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/09/150901-isis-destruction-looting-ancient-sites-iraq-syria-archaeology/ 

Melt with me in silence.

 

It is the series of candle sculptures by the Swiss anti-artist Urs Fischer that I am interested in. Over the course of a month’s long show his sculptures slowly self-destruct, melting away into long gnarly rivulets and pools of grey and red wax that puddle on the gallery floor. One of the two ephemeral sculptures I particularly want to share with you is a reproduction of a classical 16^th century sculpture that towers on its plinth above another 1;1 scale statue this time made from the mold of a living breathing person from today’s world. His untitled winning entry at the at the Venice art biennial back in 2011 featured a life-size wax cast of Giovani’s “Rape of the Sabine Women’ which melted alongside another wax sculpture of an observant modern-day viewer. More than a simple memento mori as here the pair of disintegrating statues represented the ultimate antithesis of the stuffy C19 concept that art is eternal and should outlive the artist. Here the child dies before the parent. The aura of this artwork was associated with Bologna’s original marble sculpture back Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence. By the end of the show when the candle light flickered out for the final time there was no aura at all other than in the collective memory of those who had attended and documented the gradual demise of the show's instillation. It is in reproducing the film and photographs taken during the 2011 Venice art biennale and disseminating them in books, magazines and in online websites that allows the art to live on outside of the memory of those who witnessed its brief existence. To personally experience this artwork as it was intended again would have to involve the recreation of the original.

Then there is this film below capturing and thus replicating a sound art performance of John Cage's 4'33" which represents with its 273 seconds of silence the 273 Celsius it takes to achieve absolute zero. Here during this performance there is literally nothing to capture on film, but that is the very point of John Cage's composition. Outside of being played by a musician the composition only exists as silent notes on sheet music and has to repeatedly be performed for the silence to be witnessed, unless film captures the nothingness and in doing so the film too becomes art.

Then there is this film capturing and thus replicating a performance of John Cage's 4'33 which represents with its 273 seconds of silence the 273 celsius it takes to achieve absolute zero. Here there is literally nothing to capture on film, but that is the very point of the  composition and film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTEFKFiXSx4

https://www.themoderninstitute.com/img/55fc448600757-large.jpg https://whitehotmagazine.com/UserFiles/image/2011/Venice%20Biennale%202011/UrsFischer_Rudolf-StingelCandle.jpg 

https://www.designboom.com/art/urs-fischer-at-venice-art-biennale-2011/

http://www.ursfischer.com/images/560839

Week 2

 I posted this on the 411 annotations page instead of here prior to the Wednesday deadline.

Turner’s bridges might be the repeated signatures that allow the amateur art lover to recognize at a glance whether a painting was created by either Turner or say Picasso this we can do even though we may have never seen the particular artwork before. We can use our familiarity with the artists previous works to recognize the telltale signs that repeat themselves across an artist’s line of works. A professional can study these habitually repeated signs and use them to distinguish between a forgery and the genuine article. Either that or the European architecture that Turner liked to paint all looked the same,which is as we who are familiar with the artists work know that the overwhelming majority of Turners' artwork consist mainly of harbors and rivers as dawn breaks over the mist.  I have posted a couple of pictures below just to show that he simply liked a bridge and painted it multiple times in the same way for example August Rodin has umpteen number of works of his muse Camille Claude.

Both math and language use symbols that once we have learnt their meanings allow us to stitch them together in a linear pattern and formulate either a formula or structured sentence that has a clearly defined start, middle and an end whereas even art that draws the viewers eye across the canvas art can rarely be confined by such parameters as having beginning, middle and end points

Materialistic needs influencing art I suspect is still ripe long after the power of church and royalty has waned. Where nowadays I suspect successful artists pander to the wealthy patrons who no longer commission, but instead frequent the galleries and auctions that sell the finished product. Critics must be pleased in order to influence other affluent bidders. Art has become ever more disposable while artists have become ever richer. Damien Hirst has a net worth of $300 million dollars while Banksy who is famed for his temporary graffiti and shredded art can still afford to buy his extravagant hotels and fund his charitable works such as purchasing the migrant rescue vessel currently patrolling the Mediterranean.

1. To recognize similarities in a series of artists work is what allows the amateur enthusiast to differentiate at a glance a Turner painting from a Picasso as we recognize an artists style of painting by recognizing the similarities that each painting shares, which gives us the ability to guess the painter even if it is the first time that we've seen a particular artwork.

 For those professionals who have studied these tell-tale signs work as repeated signatures that allow them to distinguish a forged Michelangelo, from one of his subordinates or a genuine lost work from the master painter himself.

2. The comparison to math and reading where we collect meaning to the words and mathematical symbols assembling them in to either a sentence or formula of an equation is understandable, but both math and language are linear with a defined start, middle and an end where as a painting has no discernible start or end even though we are taught that there is a flow of line that some paintings have that leads the eye across the canvas, however that is subjective rather than definitive.

Walton Bridges (See another one of the same bridge below)

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/jul/10/early-turner-landscape-walton-bridges-saved-for-the-nation#img-1

Cardiff bridge mhttps://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-cardiff-bridge-and-castle-d00702

Walton Bridges https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Turner-Walton-Bridges.jpg

Referance

artnet news

Meet the incredible people inside these famous works.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/10-art-historical-muses-359357