411 History of 20th
Century Art, Fall 2020
Russell Davis.
Due: Friday 11th
December 2020
Eleven Revisions / Rewrites.
Revision #1
Week two. Symbols and
Semiotics.
I
find it interesting that you say artists are becoming ever richer. There are certainly
some filthy rich artists, but is making a good living from your art common for
most artists these days? I honestly am not sure, especially with how
complicated everything is with the internet.
For your posts, try to organize your thoughts
into a cohesive whole. This can be accomplished even if you are conflicted or
have two divergent points you are trying to make. Creating cohesion allows
readers to understand your position and your ideas more easily.
The Norman Bryson article Semiology and
Visual Interpretation is about interpreting signs and symbols that artists have
included in their artwork. I’ll be answering four main questions mfrom the
reading:
·
Did Turner intended to
stylize his recognizable imagery or not?
·
How can an artist’s
motifs can be used to recognize an artist and their themes?
·
Does Perceptu-alism really makes art banal?
·
What could the intention
of art be in society today if there are so many different patrons?
Norman Bryson references a Victorian era art
critic John Ruskin; “Ruskin's commitment to
this principle gets him into some famous knots. He notices, for example, that
Turner often uses the same device for depicting a particular motif, say, a
bridge.”
While Ruskin
believes that Turner’s bridges might
be the repeated signatures that allow the amateur art lover to recognize at a
glance whether they are just symbols of bridges or a realistic painting created
by Turner we cannot afford to forget that the bridges that Turner depicted were
all real-life bridges. Possibly he European architecture that Turner liked to
paint all looked the same, because they were built at the same time period with
the same available technology. Many of the British bridges have been replaced
since Turners lifetime, but in Venice it is still possible to see the very same
bridges that Turners memorialized in his paintings and they are exactly as
depicted. This may disprove Ruskin’s belief that the bridges in Turner’s
paintings look similar through a choice to abstract and symbolize rather than
Turner simply representing a bridge. “Perceptu-alism always renders art banal, since its view never
lifts above ocular accuracy, and always renders art trivial,” says Bryson, but
what if the scene that we are trying to capture is awe inspiring to begin with.
That majesty of mother nature is what makes some of the best landscape
photography. Capturing a truly beautiful misty morning as the rich orange light
of a low-slung sun shimmers over the ripples of water flowing under an old
stone bridge.
Just because Turner may not have been the
best example for Ruskin to use does not rule out the fact that many artists as
Norman Bryson puts it use; “The same device for depicting a particular motif.”
We as a viewer can
compare repeated painting techniques or styles in an artwork that we have seen
before, and by matching those patterns and symbols to similar patterns and
symbols within artworks in our memory that we are familiar, we are then able to
make an educated guess as to whose artwork we might be looking at. This is what
allows the amateur enthusiast to differentiate at a glance a Turner painting
from a Picasso.
Once we are familiar with the artist of the work,
we can be more confident in interpreting any visual clues that the artist has
included as we will now be familiar with the idiosyncrasies of that artist. A
professional can study these habitually repeated signs that are unique to each
artist and use them to distinguish between a forgery and the genuine article. A
prime example would be a gallery that wanted to distinguish a forged
Michelangelo, from one of his subordinates or a genuine lost work from the
master painter himself.
There are other uses of symbols outside of
the artworld that we can compare to Norman Bryson’s ideas; Both math and the
written 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. Though
a composition and the flow of lines within a painting may draw the viewers eye
across the canvas, art can rarely be confined by such parameters as having
beginning, middle and end points.
“The focus of the
'intention' of the work of art assigns it a 'terminal' role in the life of
culture, a location representing a synthesis of ideas current in the culture of
the patron or patrons who commissioned it.” Materialistic needs influencing art I suspect is still ripe long
after the power of church and royalty has waned. Where nowadays I suspect high
echelon artists such Damien Hirst who has a net worth of $300 million dollars, pander
to the wealthy patrons who no longer commission, but instead frequent the
galleries and auction houses that sell the finished product. Critics must be
pleased in order to influence other affluent bidders to keep the cult of
personality rolling.
Thanks to the internet’s ability to advertise,
sell and disperse merchandise across the globe. There are now many more artists
than ever before who no longer cater to a small elite consisting of Royalty and
Barons of industry, but make a comfortable living selling their work online to
a new set of patrons: Never before has there been such a large middle class
with disposable incomes wanting art to decorate their homes, new careers can be
made in fields that did not exist before such as the television and film industry,
for news and print publishers, clothing and furniture design. These are the
patrons that your average artist now focuses the intention of their work and
how it fits into today’s society.
Walton Bridges (Both are
of the same scene)
Walton
Bridges https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Turner-Walton-
Bridges.jpg
Cardiff bridge mhttps://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-cardiff-bridge-and-castle-d00702
References:
artnet news
Meet the incredible people inside these famous
works.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/10-art-historical-muses-359357
Norman Bryson, “Semiology and Visual Interpretation,” in Visual Theory: Painting
and Interpretation,
1991
Revision #2
Week Three. Aura.
Your
reading post introduce us to two FASCINATING examples of performance art.
But what about them? It would help to 1. bring in some specific ideas from
Benjamin and 2. discuss those ideas in relation to the artworks and your own
perspectives.
Is the aura necessarily gone when the sculptures
have melted? What about the puddle of wax on the floor? Even
though temporary works are often heavily photographed and/or
filmed, those reproductions will never recreate the same experience in that
particular time and place. They also lack the urgency that a visit to a temporary installation has, where you know that what
you are seeing is only in existence for a short time. How do you think
reproductions of temporary works that no longer
exist affect the aura of the original?
While many of the descriptions of works of art
have nothing to do with art itself, I would disagree about the protestant
reformation. In many cases, yes, it was about wealth and poverty, frustration
and violence, but in some other cases, it was a matter of art being viewed
as harmful for religious reasons, a source of idolatry and causing figures
other than god to be worshipped. In some cases, people involved were very aware
of the artistic value of certain things and saved treasured artworks by famous
artists, sending them to private homes or other secure places, while the
remaining artworks within the church were destroyed. In the case of
individuals, rather than organized group, attacking images, there almost always
seems to be something about the specific artwork that provoked the attack.
There's a great chapter on this in Freedberg's The Power of Images.
Hold a Candle up to Nature.
“The presence of the original is the
prerequisite to the concept of authenticity.” Says Walter Benjamin in his 1936
writing “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” which raises the question;
If an artwork existed for just one finite moment in time, does the fact that it
no longer exists diminish the value of the art that was experienced by those
who experienced it?
I hope
to answer that question with a piece of music by John Cage and the series of
candle sculptures by the Swiss anti-artist Urs Fischer. 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. The
art was created especially for the show’s visitors so that they would belong to
the privileged few that got to experience the destruction of artwork. Witnessing
the destruction was as significant an element of the visitor’s experiences as viewing
the sculpture itself whilst it still remained intact.
Urs Fischer’s untitled winning entry at the
at the Venice art biennial back in 2011 featured a life-size wax reproduction
cast of a classical 16th century sculpture; Giovani’s “Rape of
the Sabine Women’ which melted alongside another ephemeral 1;1 scale 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 C19 concept that art is eternal and should outlive the artist. The anti-art
that Urs Fischer makes destroys the original, leaving only memories, Walter
Benjamin suggested that any “technical
reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be
out of reach for the original itself. Above all it enables the original to meet
the beholder halfway.” In order to recreate this event
though we would need to step into a time machine. The memory in itself is a poor substitute for
what has been lost, but the destruction is Urs intent and thus in a paradox the
art relies on not maintaining the original.
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 Urs’ artwork as it was intended again would have to involve the
recreation of the original, but the cache of being the first to see the event
in progress for the first time would be gone and no matter the quality of the audio and video recording of
that event, the experience of being in attendance cannot be duplicated
“Even
the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its
presence intime and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens
to be.” Walter Benjamin
Live music is a
form of performance art that can only be heard through reproductions of the
original, the composer being unable to play all the instruments in their
composition at once. The first and each subsequent performance is unique due to
the performer’s interpretation of the original, the venue, the available
instruments and the audience. John Cage's wrote a silent art performance /
experience 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.
References:
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
Walter Benjamin, “Art in
the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” 1936
Revision #3
Week Five. Why Have
There Been No Great Women Artists?
No
feedback was provided for this week’s essay.
There
are two main questions that Linda Nochlin asks: “Why have there been no great
women artists? The question is crucial,
not merely to women, and not only for social
or ethical reasons, but for purely intellectual ones as well.” And what is the
myth of the Great Artist?
Early
on in her article Linda lays the blame squarely at the feet of those who accept
the status quo; “The white Western male
viewpoint, unconsciously accepted as the viewpoint of the art historian, is
proving to be inadequate.” Linda refers to alternative suggestions to the white
male viewpoint which have been made such as createing a feminist viewpoint of
the art historian “They propose the existence of a distinctive and recognizable
feminine style, differing in both formal and expressive qualities from that of
men artists and posited on the unique character of women's situation and
experience.” She poopoos this idea of there being an established feminist genre
as she gives a long list of Great Women Artists and writers who have indeed
produced great art that “seem to be closer to other artists and writers of
their own period and outlook than they are to each other.” But contradicts
herself very quickly by saying that it is naïve for us to think “that art is
the direct, personal expression of individual emotional experience a
translation of personal life into visual terms.” Which is the essence of having
the experience of being a woman and not a man. Is Linda in favor of women
creating art that expresses their shared experiences of life, or does she not
care for art that is a direct personal expression of female experiences? Without
giving a definitive answer to that question Linda then digresses to say that in
some areas of the arts women have not only gained equality, but a monopoly,
suggesting that there have been and still are a number of Great Women Artists.
“Underlying the question about women as
artists, we find the whole myth of the Great Artist”
In her ‘Golden Nugget’ theory Linda argues
against a suggestion that one explanation for a lack of women artists is that
they didn’t have any natural gift for the arts which she claims is based on two
and a half thousand years’ worth of literary references about old jaded masters
who discovered the raw talent of a lowly peasant boy. I would argue that surely
that happened many times over, for we still celebrate Wolfgang Amadeus for
composing beautiful symphonies whilst still in his teens and in today’s world we
still celebrated the achievements of gifted children seven day a week on our
national news broadcasts. Time magazine has this month published ‘Kid of the
Year’ featuring a fifteen-year-old girl from Colorado; Gitanjali Rao. It is not a myth that Golden Nuggets existed,
but making art has historically been viewed as a male dominated profession.
Being an Artist was a paid job and it was the boys that were apprenticed while
the young girls were expected to be domestic staff. The proportion of girls
that have potential is no different from those of boys, but the opportunity to
take advantage of that raw talent was only ever provided to the boys who would
train to become professional artisans at the expense of the master artist.
Taking on an apprentice was an expensive investment for the master as was
investing in a child’s education prior to modern day free public schools. That
investment was restricted to boys not for a lack of talent but because again like
partnerships women were not expected to enter the workforce outside of domestic
arena. Those few women who got an artist’s training did so not through
apprenticeships or through places of education, but via a parent who was
themselves a male professional artist in the employ of others.
Leaping forward in time and space to the France in the middle of the 19th
century Linda asks why with a third of professional artists being women, none
had received the country’s highest accolade?
It is this bias based on the artists gender
rather than an ability that finally begins to get at the root of Linda’s
original question. Where women have the opportunity to be skilled artists and still
not be recognized, not because of the content of their art regardless of
whether it is deemed masculine or feminine in style. The art itself is not the
hurdle to overcome.
I have chosen Yayoi
Kusama’s self-portrait titled; ‘Hero’ not for the content, but for name of the
piece and the artist who is arguably the most successful female artist alive
today.
References.
Linda Nochlin, “Why have
there been no great women artists?” 1971
Kid of
the Year. by Time Staff,
December 3, 2020 7:00 am est
https://time.com/5916772/kid-of-the-year-2020/
Yayoi Kusama. Photo:
Noriko Takasugi. © the artist. Courtesy Ota Fine Arts, David Zwirner and
Victoria Miro
https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Yayoi-Kusama_hero-1230x600.png
Revision #4
I am concentrating this reflection
on art work whose intended audience is female, but was created by a male to
play on some of Linda Nochlin’s themes of feminist art centering on female
experiences and female artists producing male dominated themes. Here the roles
are reversed.
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 an 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.
Reference
/ Image source.
https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-2018/rosie-riveter-dies-fd.html
Linda Nochlin, “Why have
there been no great women artists?” 1971
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Success_Kid#/media/File:SuccessKid.jpg
http://projectartistx.com/we-can-do-it-poster-j-howard-miller-1943/
Revision #5
Week seven. The
oppositional Gaze.
For
your reading post, you have chosen a good artwork to apply the ideas to, and
have explained the artist's conflicted relationship to Christianity within
that painting well. One thing to work on with your writing is to
explain the main argument of the reading - that Black women tend to view
film with an oppositional gaze - and to integrate the various parts
of your post into a cohesive whole. The thesis statement, which should be
somewhere near the beginning of your writing, is the key that tells readers
what the main point of a post is. This is where you would integrate your ideas
about stereotypes, the oppositional gaze, and the self-portrait, that
would then serve as a guide for readers to know what the post is about.
Your second paragraph begins "It is a double self-portrait." I am
presuming that you are now referring to the painting that you have inserted.
Make sure to explicitly state this and to tell us who the "she" is.
Once you have introduced the artwork, your explanation of how bell hooks' idea
of the oppositional gaze can be applied to it will be clearer to readers.
The artwork that you have chosen is appropriate to this kind of
theoretical position. It can be related to the film A Passion of
Remembrance that bell hooks' discusses because it 1. is made by
a Black woman 2. is about a Black woman examining herself 3. takes a critical,
inquisitive, creative approach to the representation of Black women. Making a
connection between the painting and the film is one way that you could
integrate your two paragraphs. As is, one is about stereotypes in film, while
the other is about a painting, without much overlap of ideas. Try to end
with a few sentences that tie your ideas together to create cohesion. Often
this is referred to as "restating the thesis," but a conclusion is
not always that.
Finally, don't forget your citations, in this case to bell hooks and to
whatever source you used to learn about the painting.
In Bell Hooks’ opening
statement she writes that “The
‘gaze’ has always been political in my life.” That is to say how one looks at
people and how one is perceived has its consequences. As a black American woman
Bell Hooks argues that it possible to not be the victim of the widespread
historic prejudices caused by the stereotypes imposed upon her race. “The
"gaze" has been and is a site of resistance for colonized black
people globally.” Using a stereotype is a quick and
easy way to get your audience to easily understand a narrative. The author
knows that the audience will recognize a stereotype that has already been
portrayed many times before in other formats and they'll understand the
narrative without the author having to explain the character in much detail. Lazy,
unoriginal and insulting to the group being portrayed as the stereotypical
character. The character device is no more than a cheap one-dimensional parody,
shallow and not representational of the groups many facets. Bell Hook retells
the number of American made films that she has seen where film after film black
American actresses portrayed the same stereotypical role of the proud and loud
southern lady repeatedly over and over again. This she says drip fed the
American psyche the tale to the predominantly white audiences that if all the
black American ladies they saw up on the silver screen acted that same
boisterous way, then quite possibly all black American women in the USA must be
that same way too. Even today in the USA there are many rural areas where the
exposure to other races, religions and culture that country folk get are from
their movies and television shows. How a group of people are portrayed is the
only way many isolated Americans get to formulate their opinions of the world
around them. The responsibility of the film industry to fairly portray the many
races that make up this country is immense and has in the past been ignored far
too much. I have faith that things are changing. There are already progressive
nations around the world leading the way when it comes to integrating cultures
respectfully into their domestic film and television productions, hopefully the
USA is going to catch up soon.
Sonia Boyce Missionary Position II
(1985)
This painting that I have chosen
ties into Bell Hooks’ central theme of representation, rebellion and reclaiming
one’s true identity. It is by the
British Afro Caribbean artist Sonia Boyce who is a professor of Black Art and
Design, she has
been selected by the British Council to represent Britain at the Venice
Biennale in 2021. Her painting Missionary Position II is a double self-portrait where
she isn't giving us the viewer an oppositional Gaze, but she sure is to the
black woman beside her (which is also a portrait of herself). Wearing her red
Rastafarian clothing she is putting her hand up to the Christian, who is
condescending to pray for her, she is signaling that she abhors her
oppressively Christian message that has been used by the white Christian
culture to control her ancestors in a defiant stare. Sonia gives her Christian
antithesis a talk to the hand gesture. It is Christianity
that has taught children to be seen and not heard, silent until spoken too,
attitudes that the author Bell Hook references and Sonia Boyce is having none
of it! Sonia recognizes that Christianity has generally oppressed every single
nation it has encountered since leaving the middle east like a contagious rash
some 2,000 years ago. She is rebelling against the call to be submissive ...
this is her defiant oppositional gaze against the evils of Christianity. The
painting tackles many of the points that Bell Hooks raises be confronting the
past and redefining the artists current culture and identity as her own. As
Bell Hook closes her argument “Looking and
looking back, black women involve ourselves in a process whereby we see our
history as counter-memory, using it as a way to know the present and invent the
future.”
References:
Sonia Boyce OBE. Missionary Position II (1985)
Image: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/T/T05/T05020_10.jpg
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/boyce-missionary-position-ii-t05020
"The Oppositional Gaze," Bell Hooks
1992
Revision #6
Your reflection
post creates an evocative picture of theater and cinema. But what is it that
you are trying to get across? You are painting a picture with words, a very
nice word picture! However, in academic writing, we want to have a purpose
(thesis) for our writing. What is it that you are trying to teach your readers,
what idea do you want them to leave with, what do you want to convince us
of?
One way that I can connect your reflection post to the week's topic - and this
may not be what you had in mind - is that this idea of the oppositional gaze
could be related to the idea of breaking the fourth wall. When filmmakers
disrupt the illusion that we are watching a world behind the screen and
disrupting our absorption into that world, they are encouraging us to look with
an oppositional gaze that is critical, analytical, and rebellious rather than
passive. When you reframe your post from a painting to an argument, your point
becomes clearer and is able to persuade. Just some small alterations--moving
things around, adding sentences--can make this change.
The oppositional Gaze is
another term for breaking is the fourth wall?
I want to compare Bell
Hooks’ description of the Oppositional Gaze to that of the theatres’ “Forth
Wall’. They use the same technique for similar purposes. An audience looks at
art, watches a play or a movie by gazing through the "picture frame".
Imagine in your mind a theatre stage. Picture the set filled with various props
and in amongst those the actors walk reading out their lines, they're lit by
the burning hot lights hanging above them in the fly loft, upstage behind them
there are the rolls of canvas backdrops with scenes painted upon them, each
ready to unfurl down as the play moves through each act. To the left and right
of the stage are the curtains that confine the width of the small world that
the actors play out their roles, the last boundary that completes a boxed world
is the apron at the front of the stage that overlooks the orchestra pit. This
is where traditionally the unseen imaginary line, that separates the world of
fiction up upon that stage from the audience sat in their seats watching like
unseen voyeurs, is drawn. Cinema inherited these boundaries, where before
Covid19 we once sat in the dark shadows of reality looking into a flickering
fantasy world, framed by the width of the projection screen. Art has always
since its inception had these same confines. No matter how large the mirror
that artists hold up to life, all of their two-dimensional works have been
framed by the painted horizon line and the confines of the frame, into which
the public peers through to view the artists fictionalized world. The worlds
created in theatre, cinema and art exist only inside the confines of the frame.
As an observer we are unable to act like Alice through the Looking Glass. We
the viewer, unlike she, cannot climb up onto the mantel piece and slip into the
fictional world on the other side of the frame. We cannot participate in the
artist's painting or interact with the actors playing their parts up upon the
stage and screen, that is unless one of painter's subjects or performers
participates with us. When an actor or the model in a painting turns to the
boundary that separates our world from theirs and addresses us directly through
the frame with words or even an 'Oppositional Gaze' they acknowledge our
presence. We are no longer hidden from their world behind the frame's peep
hole, we are no longer free to judge them without being judged ourselves, we
are now being viewed with a critical eye too. No longer are we able to be the
passive observer, we are being confronted by the actor staring defiantly back
at us.
References:
"The Oppositional
Gaze," Bell Hooks, 1992
Revision #7
Week eight. Authorship.
Your
post on Barthes makes the point well that a published text or artwork is
out of the hands of the author. You didn't, however, mention Barthes or his
essay at all. For readers, this is confusing as they will have no idea what you
are talking about. If you started with a few sentences about Barthes and his
idea of the death of the author, and then wrote about how you, having now
published your post, have no control over the ways that it is read, you would
have a post that is likely to persuade readers.
“The removal of the
Author is not merely an historical fact or an act of writing; it utterly
transforms the modern text.” Roland Barthes.
I’m the author of what you are reading, the quotes included
may not have been written by me, but I chose to add them where I did. Having
finished this article, there is no dialogue being exchanged between you the
reader and I the author. The last contribution I made to what you are
doing now (reading and formulating your ideas about this submission) was
several steps ago when I stopped writing this essay, I copied it to this word
document and from the moment I attached this document to an email and clicked
on the send tab these words have not been under my control. I intended to make
this opinion piece both articulate and persuasive, but beyond any skill I may
have in writing I cannot force you, (the readers of this essay) to agree with
me. Since its release, I haven’t had the power to do anything more about
whether you agree with what I’ve written or even improve upon my poor grammar
and lack of humorous quips to keep you entertained. If there is something, that
along the way I forgot to correct and you’ve already read it it’ll be too late.
Even a correction doesn’t stop what has already been seen. Once sent I’ll be
unable to edit this document unlike J.M.W Turner who snuck in like a thief in
the night to add a brush stroke of paint or glaze to a painting already sold, I
won’t be able to change a thing you that read here. If this was published on a
blog that could be edited then once one person had read this I couldn’t then go
back in time and rewrite their first impression of the original posting. My job
is done and the reader who is already on line nineteen has the job of
interpreting my work. You the reader and not I will judge whether my work is an
adequate attempt at completing this week’s assignment. Though without me the author this
essay would not exist. You would not be influenced by my opinions. Roland
Barthes says that the audience and author work in tandem; “We know that to give
writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the
reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.”
It’s exactly the same when I present my
artwork to my class for review. Once it is hung on the wall my opinion no
longer matters, it is my peers and professor who critique my paintings and
decide whether I am any good with pencil and paper. The number of times I’ve
sat chewing my cuticles while listening to a group of my peers critique some
artwork that I’ve submitted for an assignment and found myself wondering how on
earth they’ve arrived at their interpretation of my art. I painted it and
surely everyone can interpret what I was trying to portray, but no. Even if I’m
there flapping my arms about trying to explain my actions, it is the viewer,
not the author that decides for themselves how to interpret a piece of work.
Be it in literature or
in art, I can try to make my life easier when trying to explain something
to my audience by using well known reference points. Quotes are more effective
if they're familiar to the audience and pictorial symbols and references work
best if they can be related to by the viewer. In other words, can I tap into a
well-known narrative effectively? As I get older, I find even those attempts to
relate to my audience fail me when quoting popular songs from my youth that no
one born in the last twenty years have heard of or glibly throwing a
British comedian's catch phrase into a conversation when no American
is familiar with them, when people of my own age and nationality would nod and
agree, those twenty something Americans who surround me in class are bewildered
as they don't know the context. To be honest it works both ways, as I am often
the one giving off a blank stare when someone mid conversation gives me a one
liner from a vine or Tiktok video & it goes totally over my head as I have
no idea what is supposed to be so funny, because I'm an old fart who's missing
the context because I've not seen anything from either of those popular apps. I
am out of the loop. Is this misunderstanding the authors fault for not being
able to relate to me or is it mine for not being able to relate to the author?
We can try to
influence our audience, but will be limited by our similarities, or lack
thereof.
I am going to use
Picasso's most acclaimed art work Guernica to clarify my point;
Without context the painting is nothing but an ugly, chaotic flat, colorless
mess full of badly drawn cows, horses and broken lightbulbs littering the
canvas. Only with knowing the context that it is about a
Spanish atrocity painted in the cubist style that we can begin to
decipher the artist's brilliance. Picasso can't make us understand
these references, we have to learn them before being able
to appreciate his work for its true worth.
References:
The Death of the Author, Roland Barthes,
1967
Guernica, Pablo Picasso, Museo Reina
Sofía in Madrid Spain 1937
https://www.pablopicasso.org/images/paintings/guernica3.jpg
Revision #8
Week Eight Review
We
have the same issue with your reflection post. A reader is going to
be lost since you have two poems side by side but don't begin by telling
us why or what we are supposed to be looking for when we read the poems.
Writing is communication, so clarity is key (unless you're writing poetry but
that's a whole other issues). Starting out with an introduction about the two
poems, then reproducing the poems, and finally explaining how the two poems
relate to ideas in the readings and/or whether you think such borrowings are
acceptable would give clarity and communicate what it is that you are
trying to communicate.
“On the October 25th, 1854 there
was a battle during the Crimean war (October 5th, 1853 - March 30th, 1856)
called the “Battle of Balaclava.’ Due to a dreadful miscommunication between
those in command five regiments of light cavalrymen armed with only spears and
sabers were accidentally ordered to charge the lines of the well defended Russian
artillery. The tragedy was documented by Captain Godfrey Morgan who survived
the maneuver.
“The first shell burst in the air about 100
yards in front of us. The next one dropped in front of Nolan's horse and
exploded on touching the ground. He uttered a wild yell as his horse turned
round, and, with his arms extended, the reins dropped on the animal's neck, he
trotted towards us, but in a few yards dropped dead off his horse. I do not
imagine that anybody except those in the front line of the 17th Lancers saw
what had happened.
We
went on. When we got about two or three hundred yards the battery of the
Russian Horse Artillery opened fire. I do not recollect hearing a word from
anybody as we gradually broke from a trot to a canter, though the noise of the
striking of men and horses by grape and round shot was deafening, while the
dust and gravel struck up by the round shot that fell short was almost
blinding, and irritated my horse so that I could scarcely hold him at all. But
as we came nearer, I could see plainly enough, especially when I was about a
hundred yards from the guns. I appeared to be riding straight on to the muzzle
of one of the guns, and I distinctly saw the gunner apply his fuse. I shut my
eyes then, for I thought that settled the question as far as I was concerned.
But the shot just missed me and struck the man on my right full in the chest.
In
another minute I was on the gun and the leading Russian's grey horse, shot, I
suppose, with a pistol by somebody on my right, fell across my horse, dragging
it over with him and pinning me in between the gun and himself. A Russian
gunner on foot at once covered me with his carbine. He was just within reach of
my sword, and I struck him across his neck. The blow did not do much harm, but
it disconcerted his aim. At the same time a mounted gunner struck my horse on
the forehead with his sabre. Spurring "Sir Briggs," he half jumped,
half blundered, over the fallen horses, and then for a short time bolted with
me. I only remember finding myself alone among the Russians trying to get out
as best I could. This, by some chance, I did, in spite of the attempts of the
Russians to cut me down.”
Within six days of the
Battle Alfred Lord Tennyson
had read the Captain’s account above and published his poem dedicated to the
deadly maneuver in the British newspaper; The Examiner. His words imprinted the
tragedy and bravery of those who died in the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ into
the British psyche. In 1983, 129 years after the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’
Iron maiden the pioneers of British Heavy Metal music released their four-minute-long
song “The Trooper’. The track quickly became a classic metal anthem, not just
for the memorable musical riffs, but for the beautifully crafted lyrics that
took references from both Captain Godfrey Morgan’s account of the battle and Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
(Iron Maiden)
Stephen,
Percy, Harris
The Charge of the Light Brigade 1854
The Trooper
1983
Half a league, half a league,
You'll take my life but I'll
take yours too
Half a league onward,
You'll fire your musket but I'll run
you through
All in the valley of Death
So when you're waiting for the
next attack
Rode the six hundred.
You'd better stand there's no turning back
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
The bugle sounds as the charge begins
Into the valley of Death
But on this battlefield no one wins
Rode the six hundred.
The smell of acrid smoke and horses breath
As you plunge into a certain
death
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Oh oh oh
Not though the soldier knew
Oh oh oh
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
The horse he sweats with fear we break to run
Theirs not to reason why,
The
mighty roar of the Russian guns
Theirs but to do and die.
And as we race towards human wall
Into the valley of Death
The screams
of pain as my comrades fall
Rode the six hundred.
We hurdle bodies that lay on the ground
Cannon to right of them,
And as the
Russians fire another round
Cannon to left of them,
We get so near yet so far away
Cannon in front of them
We won't live to
fight another day
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Oh oh oh
Boldly they rode and well,
Oh oh oh
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
We get so close near enough to fight
Rode the six hundred.
When a Russian gets me in his sights
He pulls the trigger and I feel the blow
Flashed all their sabers bare,
A burst of rounds takes
my horse below
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
And as I lay there gazing at the sky
Charging an army, while
My body's numb and my throat is
dry
All the world wondered.
And as I lay forgotten and alone
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Without a tear I draw my parting
groan
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Oh oh oh
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Oh oh oh
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
Captain Godfrey Morgan was a participant in the event and as
the author of the account of the battle he is trying to convey to the reader
his memory of both the facts of the day and emotions he personally experienced.
Alfred, Lord
Tennyson though was not, he read and used the information in the firsthand
account given by Captain Godfrey Morgan
to recreate the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ in the form of a poem to be
included in a national newspaper. Steve Harris the bassist and founder of Iron
maiden wrote the lyrics to ‘The Trooper’. He took his inspiration from both Captain
Godfrey Morgan and Alfred, Lord
Tennyson. All three works by all three authors have the ability to convey a
detailed story drenched with emotion, all have different sources for their
inspiration fact, story and legend.
The
Charge of the Light Brigade by Richard Caton Woodville Jr., oil on
canvas, 1894.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45319/the-charge-of-the-light-brigade
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/20975840/captain-godfrey-morgan-later-2nd-lord/ n
Revision #9
Week nine. Difference.
The
title of the piece is the title of the special issue of the journal that
Minh-ha was asked to contribute to. It is a journal that was creating a special
issue on "Third World Women," and she was invited. This is what she
is reacting against. If it had been an issue on award-winning art
filmmakers or filmmakers from Viet Nam, she would have written a
different essay with a different title.
As she is arguing against such labeling and
tokenization, it appears that you have misunderstood the essay. Make sure
that you are using specific evidence from the reading to support your thoughts.
Using quotations and then explaining those quotations is a useful method. This
will help you to read the text closely and understand it. Minh-ha's writing is
dense and requires close reading.
Grim Expectations
The central question
in Trinh T. Minh-ha piece is: why do people have a tendency to put others
into predetermined categories?
She
challenges the reader not to categorize people into a homogenous group. It is
all too easy for all men to judge all women to be the same and for every woman to
judge all men to be the same. Personally, I believe anyone who uses the term White
Man or Western Civilization is guilty of exactly the same abhorrent tactic. For
an example; not every Black American shares the same gender, set of ethics,
politics and religion, etc. In the same fashion; not every soul who lives
between the Black Sea and the Pacific shores of Oregon thinks and acts alike,
purely because of the geographic nature of where they were born and raised. The
individual is eradicated when society strives to put us into neat little groups
where each member of that group is tarred with the same brush. Here especially in the United States of America it is
not uncommon to find cliques in society that are based not on what an
individual chooses to become during their lifetime through their; profession,
faith, politics or style, but by what they were born as; Male female, gay, straight, Asian,
black or white. Minh-ha says; “This is called the policy of ‘separate
development’ in apartheid language.” A United States divided. “As you can see,”
Minh-ha says; "’Difference’ is essentially ‘division’ in the understanding
of many. It is no more than a tool of self-defense and conquest.” Despite her
opposition to such pigeon holes Trinh T. Minh-ha she admits that it is hard to
escape even the smaller sub categories
that she says are pre-determined by events in history
which are fixed and immoveable. That prevents cohesiveness and resentment.
In the final pages of Difference: "A Special Third
World Women Issue," the author focuses on how here in the USA a person is
judged to be an American not by their patriotism, but by the color of their
skin. citing the detention of Americans with Japanese ancestry during WWII, she
also looks at how divisive the issue of color is within American feminism.
Reference:
Trinh T. Minh-ha,
Difference: "A Special Third World Women Issue," Trinh T. Minh-ha
1986-7
Revision #10
Week Ten. Phenology.
No
feedback was provided for this week’s essay.
Carle Andre Equivalent VIII 1966
Edmund Husserl founded
in 1905 the philosophical movement Phenomenology to
observe phenomena as
they appear without any further study or explanation.
When an art work has no
obvious story to tell, for when the author did not attempt to make an analogy,
interpretation or statement phenomenology can be used as a tool for
understanding art. Discussing Merleau-Ponty’s
work Amelia Jones say that “A supposedly disembodied viewer is
one who can still retain the illusion of authority attached to the pure mind of
Cartesianism.” René Descartes philosophy Cartesianism has its emphasis on
sensory experience being the source of all knowledge about the world. It is
that philosophy that is to me at the heart of minimalism. Amelia confirms that;
“Merleau-Ponty’s work emerged briefly into public discussions about body art and
Minimalism, two movements pivoting around the reassertion of body / space relations,
during this period.”
The interaction between
the art work and the viewer is the identity of the viewer re writing the “I
think therefor I am” to “I interact therefore I am.” How the viewer perceives
the art tells us more about the viewer than the art
itself, as interpretations vary from viewer to viewer.
I was a
child of the seventies and my parents were art admirers & collectors. Most
weekends I was carted off to a gallery in Guildford to see what new wonders
were up for sale in the galleries or dragged around one of the major museums in
London and being somewhere in the late 1970s my memories were of the "Is
what it is." blunt art work made up of. bricks, bricks, bricks. I was
submersed in minimalism. Not the shiny cubes variety, but the strange dead
monoliths. No floral and unnecessary frills here. I'd argue that
minimalism very almost destroyed art in the UK as it became a cultural joke to
the majority of Brits who did not understand that there was no longer a story
to be told, that they were no longer passive observers. Now they were supposed
to interact with the art they were seeing. This was too much for many to
adjust to and as a result fine art became derided by the average person in the
street, as something easy and cheap “My child could do that!” was often heard
expression when discussing art in the late 1970s.
By the time I started art college at the age
of 16 in the mid-1990s new artists like Damien Hurst were taking up postmodern
minimalism again. Phenomenology was there to say that it was the public
that translated what the art was trying to tell us. Finally, minimalism was
about floating basketballs and vacuum cleaners in glass boxes and the average person who didn't want the to engage with phenology
could begin to get on with their lives without worrying about tripping over expensive
fire bricks left in the middle of museum floors. Amelia state that art is; “Determined and experienced in an
ongoing, reciprocal relation between interpreters and the objects or images we
interpret.” I see those hulking brick monoliths as art that can engage my
senses while others who refuse to engage will never benefit from what the
artwork has to offer.
References:
‘Meaning, Identity, Embodiment: The
Uses of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology in Art History,’ in Art and Thought.
Amelia Jones, 2003
Carle Andre Equivalent VIII 1966 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/T/T01/T01534_9.jpg
Revision #11
Once upon a time not all that time ago
prior to Cartesianism and phenomenology a duck would have been expected to look
like a duck, a duck should have walked like a duck and a duck must have quacked
like a duck. Nowadays there's a very good chance that the modern duck looks
like a blue rubber squiggle, crawls on all fours and barks like a kangaroo.
For millennia tradesmen have advertised their wares to the illiterate
with the use of illustrated hanging awnings and signs outside their premises
that depicted what product or service that they were selling inside. A picture
of a shoe outside the shop meant you were about to enter a cobblers’ shop. A
picture of a hat for a milliner, a boar’s head for a butcher, a tooth for a
dentist and so on. Similarly, not all that long ago there were once charity
boxes on highstreets that were made to represent the cause for which the
charity was raising funds for. Like mediaeval store front signs, they simply
depicted an easy-to-understand representation of what specifically the public
were being asked to donate their money to. The Blind societies were represented
by a child reading a brail book, Guide Dogs for the Blind a golden retriever,
Polio was represented by a child with their leg in a brace, the lifeboat
society was represented by ... yes you guessed it ... a lifeboat. Today though
charities have adopted a far more cartesian and abstract way to represent their
cause with the use of a simple rubber band worn round the wrist or a small
cotton awareness ribbon tied to a lapel, with just a differentiation in color
allowing the public to discern one charity to another. I'd argue that these are
phenomenologist / minimalist tokens, with the viewer recognizing no relatable
link behind either the use of a band, a ribbon or color and the charity to
which these symbols belong to. Phenomenology states that the viewer brings their
own emotional attachment to these products.
https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/13/3f/a6/4b/charity-by-damien-hirst.jpg
https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/courses/architecturebodyperformance/1065.html
‘Meaning, Identity, Embodiment: The
Uses of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology in Art History,’ in Art and Thought.
Amelia Jones, 2003
Select
3 to 5 of your blog posts to revise and include in a Final Portfolio for this
course. Compile the posts into a single file and submit it in the Finals Week module
in Blackboard as a Word document or pdf.
1.
Include
3-5 blog posts.
2.
Avoid
language that generalizes or oversimplifies.
3.
Improve
the original blog posts.
4.
Include
the artworks, their identification, and links to sources from the original blog
posts.
5.
Include
references to specific ideas in your readings.
6.
Cite
your sources.
7.
Organize
your writing to support central arguments that are introduced early on in each
post.
8.
Meet
the word count (350-500 words) for each blog post.
9.
Proofread
for spelling, grammar, and unclear language.
Questions
for Revision:
·
Are
there questions or ideas that appeared in the comments or class discussion that
should be incorporated into your post?
·
Has
your thinking on the subject changed after subsequent readings or discussions?
·
Could
the writing be made more clear and effective (the answer to this is always
yes)?
·
What
feedback did I give on your post (regarding writing, citations, artworks,
ideas...)?
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