How I Felt
April 29, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
How I felt measures approximately 40”x 26”x 40” and is constructed out of chicken wire, felt, plaster, fiberglass and a press mold of the artist’s genitals. The piece addresses fears of sexual inadequacy and obsessive preoccupation with external appearance. The artist combined elements of mutilated human and animal anatomy and exaggerated their proportions to the point of grotesqueness to communicate feelings of desperation and frustration. The use of saturated colors and a deliberately erratic manipulation of materials, however, make the piece humorous and dismissible, implying that the ego rather than the physical self is the source of the artist’s sexual disempowerment. The viewer is left to contemplate the absurdity of his own insecurities.
Untitled II
April 29, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
The sculpture Untitled measures approximately 6′x30″x12″ and is loosely inspired by the work of Jan Svankmajer and the Brother’s Quay as used in their film making. The piece consists of seven dolls, constructed of various materials including nylons, make-up, Vaseline and fiberglass that sit on a distressed wooden shelf at eye level. The formal space of the sculpture is extended toward the floor by the doll’s cast shadows that is accentuated by the lipstick applied to the wall by the artist’s lips. The diffuse shadows cast by light filtering through the nylons and onto the wall of kisses address the concept of drawing, which is reaffirmed by the placement of the dolls on a shelf on the wall. The shelf also acts as an architectural element, whose shadow casts a more solid, geometric shadow in contrast to the more organic forms cast by the dolls themselves. The piece contrasts the childhood innocence associated with dolls with disturbing sexual imagery that makes the viewer question whether sexuality can be divorced from the notion of innocence, while alluding to the sometimes distressing desires every individual chooses to either embrace or bury.
Untitled I
March 16, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 3 Comments
Untitled I measures approximately 4′x5′ and consists of seven opossums of varying sizes on a faux wood surface. Materials used in its construction include caulking, packaging tape, pipe cleaners and bubble gum. The animals’ deformities are a reflection on the anatomical banality and arbitrariness of the opossum’s bifurcated genitalia. A deliberately erratic manipulation of materials lightheartedly alludes to the myriad design flaws of organic life forms and encourages the viewer to envision further physical permutations of the subject matter.
Final Videos for Class
December 13, 2007 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 3 Comments
WOW–
December 6, 2007 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Pipilotti Rist. Her video I’m not the girl who misses much is truly amazing. At first I watched it and I wasn’t really sure what she was saying with it, other recognizing she was taking a statement (that I didn’t recognize as a Beatles lyric) that actually sounds quite poignant when read normally aloud, and through speeding it up and slowing it down, making it into something that really is almost perverse sounding. Her movements are choppy and doll-like, almost making her appear as a puppet or a poorly operated robot. After doing a bit of research I discovered that she’s making commentary on the repetitive and absurd portrayal of women in art. Great stuff, Pipilotti…
Bruce Nauman
December 6, 2007 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
This may not be video, but I did run across it on youtube. Ignore the wierd dubbed in music. This piece is amazing.
Linda Montano
December 6, 2007 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Well, this piece certainly made me gag:
Wow.
William Kentridge
December 6, 2007 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
I just watched his piece Felix in Exile and I recommend that everyone watch it, especially current and past students of Drawing. His mark making is sublime and narrates so poignantly the bloody history of imperialism, while acknowledging that without it, the nation in which the artist grew up and his experiences in it would have never existed. Take a look:
What distinguishes video art from artful video?
December 5, 2007 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
At the beginning of the semester Carole asked us this question, and although I had some vague ideas and made some relevant assertions, mostly I was perplexed. Now, after a semester exploring this topic I am prepared to deliver a succinct and coherent response to this question, but before I do, I think it’s important to briefly recap the progression of works we’ve viewed in class.
To understand video art, we began at the beginning, long before technological innovations made video possible. It was important to understand that video had its roots in film, and that film had its roots in all other preexisting modes of expression including literature, theater, music , dance and photography; intertexuality with existing works of art and art forms determines in many ways the nature of contemporary art. In its infancy, the lines between film and these other art forms was more blurred. Thus it makes sense began our studies by watching the Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis, which although it is arguably the most cinematic of the films we watched, though it’s story the creative force behind the work is a deeply artistic one. Metropolis‘ message synthesized from prevalent social and political ideas being contemplated by thinkers in Europe during that time period and was executed in the style of German Expressionism. The second film we watched, Triadic Ballet coming out of the Bauhaus movement, also shows early film’s relationship to these other modes of expression, primarily theater and dance.
As we watched the avant-garde films of the 20s and 30s, film as an artistic medium began to develop a more distinct identity. These artistic predecessors to modern video explored the artistic possibilities of film and synthesized the dimensions and characteristics of other art forms. From two dimensional arts they drew upon their knowledge of the importance of proportion, repetition, rhythm, economy and so on. From their knowledge of the performing arts, their films also introduced elements such as plot, narrative, sound and setting. Many of these films capture the spirit and mantras of the Dada movement which was prevalent at that time which are a prelude to surrealism.
One of the key characteristics of film and video as a vehicle for artistic expression is time, and arguably the artist Maya Deren’s film making explored its nature in film as art as deeply. Her surrealist works eloquently and beautifully use editing to create a parallel reality filled with psychological symbolism. Her vision in other works begin to meld film and dance into one.
Warhol’s films, although they do not technically mark the beginning of video art, begin to display more of the characteristics we associate with the video art of today. Having captured the “now” of the 60s in his printmaking techniques, he began to capture that “now” using film at the Factory, and what medium could have been more appropriate? His films that at once question and glorify the things our society labels desirable, particularly Chelsea Girls, present the viewer with the paradoxical nature of glamor and celebrity in the 60s.
Soon after discussing Warhol, we moved onto view the first works of actual video art, starting with Nam June Paik and his work using the portapak. At this point, though video in the technological sense has just begun, freeing up artists to work more unencumbered than ever before, film making in the artistic sense has come into its own. All of the things we watched began to come together to lend us an understanding of what video art is, where it is headed and what it had evolved from. All of this knowledge is critical to possess if one intends to begin creating ones own videos. From Acconci to Hill to Viola, from student works to McCarthy and Barney, we were introduced to and became more and more familiar with the characteristics of video art that truly separate it from artful video.
That being said, it’s time for an answer to that question. Fundamentally, there are divergences in format, intention and audience that separate video art from artful video, though there are some pieces that blur and defy the lines between the two. (One instance of this is musician David Byrne’s film that we watched, incorporating elements of music video, video art and cinema into a humorous independent film.) Essentially, when we think of a film that we would view in a theater or on television, there are things in it we as viewers expect to see: a relatively long duration, a plot or narrative, developed characters portrayed by actors or depicted in animation, a well defined setting, a sense of temporality and sequence or chronology, and often special effects. Their budgets are typically large, although some films are produced relatively cheaply. Video art can include some or even most of these elements, but in almost all cases video artists opt to exercise economy and only incorporate a few of them. That is a key difference. Video art can be complex, but often times it is quite simple, presenting an uncomplicated act in a relatively short amount of time to a viewer in such a way that leaves him to reflect critically on the content of the piece. The viewer thus invents his own interpretation of the material and construes his own meaning of it. Cinema may leave one hanging with an ambiguous ending at the end of a film, but this is not the same thing. I have never walked out of a theater having no idea what I had just seen, not even after movies with very innovative temporal order such as Momento. However, I have watched some video art and failed to grasp what the artist was trying to say before I sat down to think—which is so uncomfortably beautiful. Further, the manner in which these films are produced is drastically different. Although video art by artists like Matthew Barney may have a lengthy and very involved production process, it’s hard to argue that it would compare to the making of a film such as Titanic or other such films in which literally hundreds and probably thousands of people are involved in the production including costume making staff, make-up artists, editors, computer animators and so on; just think about the credits that run at the end of the film, they are usually longer than most works of video art in their entirety. Indeed often times, video art is just the artist and his camera. That is not to say that the production processes of these films are not tedious, as is certainly the case for the films of Svankmajer or the Brothers Quay. But these aren’t the only differences. Cinematic films are often highly edited and have a temporal duration that can last from a few days to the course of many years, video art most often does not possess this quality, and if a long time span it is implied, it is very ambiguous and open to interpretation. Cinema is intended to be viewed on one’s TV or in a theater, video art however is not, and is often largely unaccessible to the public unless its in a gallery or in short clips on YouTube. The differences between artful video, cinema and video art are so vast. In a gallery, looped video art is transformed into sculpture as the shadow of the viewer is cast upon the projection screen.
To me, the differences between what is video art and what is not are really quite tangible. I think the argument that all film can be artful is valid, but when one examines the contrasts between video art and all other video, it’s clear that video art falls into a distinct category that is indeed worthy of the label of fine art. Though Casablanca may be a masterpiece in its genre, I don’t think it belongs installed in an art gallery; instances of film outside the realm of video art, interesting or innovative or appreciable though they may be, really are, at most, artful.
Vormittagsspuk/Golconda
December 3, 2007 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
I’m not sure if I realized it when we initially watched Hans Richter’s Vormittagsspuk, but as I was watching it a few minutes ago on Youtube (I ran across it again while watching film clips by Joan Jonas) I couldn’t help but associate the bowler-hats flying through the air with Magritte’s paintings from the 50s and early 60s. His painting Golconda, which depicts identical men dressed all in black wearing bowler-hats that appear to either be floating upward like helium balloons over a town, or raining down upon it resembles Richter’s film most directly. As a surrealist who joined the movement a year before Richter made this surrealist film, Magritte would have definitely have been familiar with Richter’s work. Take a look and decide for yourself!
