ART008: Week 8 Readings

Week 8, MOCA Latte, +Redcat & Chinatown

MOCA | Kippenberger:

One of two retrospectives featured at MOCA, the Kippenberger occupied the greater volume. There was a great variety of works being exhibited from a synthetic forest installation to a series of postcard size works, and everything in between. I gravitated to two, similarly themed pieces of mannequins standing in corners each having a “naughty habit” embedded in them that had caused them to be bad and forced to stand in the corner.

MOCA | Bourgeoise

The other retrospective that had a far greater impact and intimacy this day. The Bourgeoise retrospective was being touted as spanning nearly 100 years of art history since she was 97 years old and still a working artist. A bit of hyperbole, but an immense body of work that saw her vomiting and then commenting on various issues she had faced throughout her life in regards to men, her family and sexuality.

+Redcat:

Seemingly an afterthought for the Disney Concert hall, Redcat occupies a side stretch of space between the parking structure and the street – neither place you want to spend time loitering in looking at art, no matter how upscale. The locale seems like nothing more than afterbirth and comes across with as much appeal. I passed the exhibition area a number of times before I was able to identify my classmates sitting at several listening /viewing stations for an exhibit of a politically-motivated peace meant to draw attention to the inmates at Guantanamo Bay and their plight. It seemed unsuccessful as there wasn’t enough attention being drawn to the space.

Chinatown Gallery:

A lovely hole-in-the-wall place (literally, there were holes in the walls) located so far off the beaten track that we may have been the first one to beat it. On the ground floor were a series of pieces evoking native folk-art pieces produced by indigenous peoples but further modernized to attribute meaning and commentary to the interplay of high-art principles and low-art crafts. There were a number of “eye of God” yarn sculptures that were beyond the normal 2-d framework. Several planes of varying colors were interwoven to push the vernacular into the outer world and dialogue with itself.

On the upper floor there was a bathroom that I seriously had to wonder if it was meant to be a restroom or if it was some kind of participation installation since it had the distinct appearance of something out of the Saw movie franchise. Several pieces were interspersed on the upper level, each representing various contemporary movements ranging from abstract expressionism to post-modern transparency photography.

ART006: Week 10 Readings

Berger, “Ways of Seeing” Ch. 6-7

• We see publicity images every day
• The publicity image belongs in the moment and impacts us briefly every time
• They must be continually renewed to remain in the moment
• They refer to the past to speak of the future
• We accept the totality of publicity images as part of the climate
• Publicity, it is thought, equals choice and freedom
• Every publicity image confirms and enhances every other
• Publicity proposes that we transform ourselves or our live by buying something
• Publicity is the process of manufacturing glamour, is effective because it feeds on the real, is always about the future buyer, is about social relations, not objects
• Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance
• The envied are like bureaucrats
• The purchase of the product will make the purchaser envied by others
• The publicity image steals the love of oneself as one is and offers it back for the price of the product
• A quoted work of art in publicity denotes wealth and spirituality
• Publicity speaks in the same language and about the same things as oil paintings
• Publicity is the culture of the consumer society
• Oil painting was first a celebration of private property
• Publicity has to use the language of the spectator-buyer to achieve its ends
• Oil painting reflected the life of the spectator-owner whereas publicity seeks to make the spectator-buyer dissatisfied with their life
• All publicity works on anxiety
• The power to spend money is the power to live
• The industrial society which has moved towards democracy and then stopped half way is the ideal society for generation the notion of glamour.
• The gap between what publicity actually offers and the future it promises, corresponds with the gap between what the spectator-buyer feels himself to be and what he would like to be.
• Publicity turns consumption into a substitute for democracy
• Publicity is essentially eventless.
• Publicity recognizes nothing except the power to acquire

Wired, “Art Attack”

• Banksey as an art terrorist and culture jammer
• Held a gallery show in a train tunnel
• Alias to escape prosecution for past “works”
• Art as the last of the great cartels: made by a few, bought by a few and shown by a few
• Banksey began as a standard graffiti artist
• His pieces are more accessible than modern art
• Uses animals as stand-ins for humans
• Seeks to carve art out of a sterile environment

Abrupt, “Culture Jamming”

• Change will come if enough people understand the problem rationally and intellectually
• Advertising imagery is has not been rational for a long time
• Culture Jamming is the viral introduction of radical ideas, using the enemies resources against itself which causes damage to blind belief
• Culture Jamming takes the form of “subvertisements”, reclaims public spaces