David Sedaris (not art)

So you know when you have not real friendships with people you’ve never met? Yeah, I totally have one with David Sedaris. You know how you think you’d be great friends if you met? Yeah, that’s how I feel about David (we’re on a first name basis in my not real friendship with him). So the thing is, I actually have met him. I met him last week.

I went to his reading for the Edinburgh Festival and it was magical. The whole room was belly laughing through the whole show. Sedaris’ wit was sharp and poignant, just like his books. After his reading, everyone queued up to have him sign our books. I held my copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day and imagined a world where we were best ex-pat pals, and went shopping for wax anatomical models and human skeletons together. I hoped we could have dinner parties and discuss openly how much he spent on each tchotchke in the amazing Sedaris household dining room room.

As I approached David, I became more and more nervous. What should I say? How will we become best friends! When I get nervous, historically, I go into boring, dumb version of me mode. I become, quite possibly, the most bland and polite person ever. I resolved to not be that person! So when I got up to the folding table with the lovely Mr. Sedaris, pen in hand, looking up at me with his knowing eyes all I said was ‘I work at a book shop and i insisted they buy in copies of all of your books’ how tacky is that!?

I meant to say that I wanted more people in Scotland to love his books as much as I do; and that I meant it as an expression of my admiration. We ended up chatting briefly about laptops and computers. I came off as boring and bland and frankly, forgettable.

He handed me my book back. I felt a pang of sadness. Like I had incurred a loss. He smiled, his greying hair and warm smile made me melancholy.  I had met him in person. I wanted to say ‘I’ve been listening to, and reading your work for years! But I thanked him and left. As I was walking away, I opened my book. He had drawn a cat and written ‘Thanks for making me rich!’ underneath it.

I should have said ‘You’re my favourite’ and left it at that. But I didn’t. So, David, in our not real friendship, thank you for my wonderful cat drawing. And also, thank you for putting up with boring nervous me.

Love, Allie  xx

(Yes I did put a picture of myself on here. Just in case.)

Dirty Words

Traditional art history will have you believe in masterpieces, artistic geniuses and beautiful paintings. The kind of art history that has two or three movements like the Renaissance and Impressionism and maybe even ‘Picasso’ ’cause that’s a movement.

Its fun to believe in Masterpieces like its fun to believe in Romance novels. They are a sugary romanticisation of what art is or can be. Its like how art can be ‘beautiful’ in a ‘Pre-Raphaelite, Alphonse Mucha, you totally hung that in your room when you were sixteen’ kind of way.

The words ‘Masterpiece’, ‘good’, ‘beautiful’ and ‘artistic genius’ are dirty words in the contemporary art world. And as we see painting becoming a minority in the plethora of mediums in the art world; we also see a reduction in the number of artists who are producing pieces that instill timeless praise.

There are a few reasons for this  of course. If we compare the art market and environment with others in different (pretty much all pre 1950s) time periods we’ll notice one glaringly obvious difference: television, and later the internet. We can mainly blame it aalll on the interwebs though.  Art movements, trends, notions, ideas, or anything, can be transmitted instantly. Art movements have gone from hundreds of years long, to weeks long.

Another good reason would be that evolution of art from a technical standpoint such as academy paintings in 19th century fluffly, big butt, everything is pink styles to the avant garde ‘I just paint light’ style to a consistent and very well documented constant pushing of boundaries until Post-Expressionism where conceptual art was born. Conceptual art has killed the artistic genius, murdered the masterpiece and redefined the permanence and validity of a lasting and timeless piece.

I’m not knockin’ Conceptual Art though. I think it’s just great. BUT, it has redefined how artists work, how the world views it, and why we look at art.  Artists seek out unique directions to take concepts and explore each aspect through research, media and the tortured reworking of an over-critted piece. The public is met with galleries full of cerebral winks  and aesthetic in-jokes.  All the while saleability looms over each piece and the viewers can feel it, like the weight of what is cool and now. But that’s exactly it, the contemporary art world has redefined how we look at the history of art.

I think though, that viewing ALL of art history, through a nowish lens is pretty uselss. Artists did have masterpieces in the Renaissance. Some art is clearly beautiful (yes I know beauty is a judgment value, and yes I’ve read aalll about it). So, there are not three art movements; there are lots and lots of precise changes in the history of art due to complex socio-political happenings and economic fluctuations etc.. But, there is such a thing as a Masterpiece and all of those other dirty words.

© Allison Everett 2011

 

Sparkly Jesuses

      

     

I used to be able to name almost every major period in art history along with a piece from that period. I’d start with Paleolithic Cave Art and Venus of Willendorf and and go on from there. Art History for me, was a promise of a future full of beautiful things. If I studied art, then my life and career would be exciting, changing and constantly filled with lovely and curious things.

I think that’s why I love Tchotchke so much. Knick knacks are a visual plethora of colour and beauty (in a deliciously unforgivable cheesy and terrible manner, I know). Putting a sparkly Jesus next to a Japanese wood block print and a marble replica of Nike of Samothrace is like a pile of beautiful clutter. I want a life like that. I want my daily life to be as exciting as a sparkly Jesus.

Conceptual Art Is Ridiculous, But Here’s Why You Should Give It A Chance

Conceptual Art is one of those tricky mine fields that art professionals often have to navigate with the public. The Tate, capital and self-insisting institution of contemporary art defines Conceptual art as: ‘a wide range of types of art that no longer take the form of a conventional art object.’ They explain that the term came into use in the late 1960′s and in 1973 a solid and very bold summation of the early years of the movement appeared in the form of a book called Six Years, by the American critic Lucy Lippard. Lippard theorizes that the between 1966-72 ‘so-called conceptual or information or idea art’ was created and brought to the forefront of the art world. The Tate then further explains that:

‘conceptual artists do not set out to make a painting or a sculpture and then fit their ideas to that existing form. Instead they think beyond the limits of those traditional media, and then work out their concept or idea in whatever materials and whatever form is appropriate. They were thus giving the concept priority over the traditional media. Hence Conceptual art.’

Which basically means conceptual can be ANYTHING. In late 1960s people decided that art was Performance art (or Action) art, There’s also Land Art and the Italian movement Arte Povera (poor art). Poor here meant using low-value materials such as twigs, cloth, fat, and all kinds of found objects and scrap. The Tate also explains that ‘some Conceptual art consisted simply of written statements or instructions.’ and that ‘many artists began to use photography, film and video.’ and concludes with ‘conceptual art was initially a movement of the 1960s and 1970s but has been hugely influential since.’ So essentially, according to the Tate Modern, Conceptual art is whatever an artist wants it to be.

There are a lot of artists who have made very profitable careers from finding crap and calling it art. One of the first of these crap finding artists would be the very clever and very successful Marcel Duchamp. He literally found stuff and called it art. He found a urinal, turned it upside down and wrote the name ‘R. Mutt’ on it and titled it ‘La Fontaine’. If you’ve read any of my other pieces (I don’t expect you to though,) you will have read about the dissection of Mr. Duchamp’s fountain and found that firstly, the piece has become one of the most important points in the history of Western art and secondly, that the name ‘R. Mutt’ is both a play on the French term ‘armut’ for being poor and the name ‘Richard’ as a nickname for being rich.

Duchamp’s Fountain actually is a good piece of Conceptual art, not because he signed a urinal, but for the fact that he made the piece and then worked hard throughout his career to assert the ever evolving part the piece had in the art world. The Fountain was a piece that was not purely based in the aesthetic of its presence or even the curation (of which they experimented with quite a lot), it was about the concept that began to change, grow stronger and eventually solidify in the eyes of the art world. R. Mutt’s urinal became a memorable start to the infamous art of the conceptual artist.

Art, as the Western world would like to know it, is paintings; and it was until the 1950s. There was high art and low art, that’s why, for a long time art history texts were based solely on big paintings, their formal components such as composition and colour, and maybe even a statue and a triptych or two. A lot of people who maybe enjoy art, but haven’t really looked into it more than frequenting some galleries and museums still hold this consensus. Sure the formal aspect has changed a bit, pop culture art enthusiasm has spread the sexed up versions of high profile artists in the history of art to the public so a Van Gogh painting is more about suicide or cutting his ear off than colour and impasto painting techniques; And the supposed discovery that Caravaggio fancied boys is far more important that his use of light or his frequent pentimenti. But if its in a gilded frame, then it’s art right?

What happens when a piece doesn’t have something to name in it? A famous example of lacking-stuff-to-label art would be Jackson Pollock. But The mid-century artist’s work was still pleasant enough to find a place in the popular culture art history. Pollock had made it into the 10-12 artists the general public can name when asked about famous artists. Picasso, quite obviously did both of those things as well. But those are safe choices. A lot of people get pretty annoyed when it goes any further than Picasso, or Braque or even Miro. So when artists like Mondrian (Partidge family square guy), Duchamp and getting into Contemporary stuff, Damien Hirst, come up, the word ‘conceptual art’ becomes a dirty one.

Conceptual art is dirty. There is a game that’s being played. The artist is creating something for the critics to play with. A lot of it is tongue-placed-firmly-in-cheek kind of work and a lot is seeing how far they can go, pushing inch, by inch the boundaries they were told never, ever to cross. If the Tate’s definition of Conceptual art is correct, there are no boundaries, just light suggestions and gasp, horror; trends and fashions.

One of the most memorable and hard to break down into working components types of Conceptual art is Performance or Action Art. Performance art is definitely a type of art that the general public often has difficulty embracing. Performance art is usually a fine balance of sensationalism and insistence on an idea. Some pieces are very clear and intriguing, other’s a little more sensationalist. Some Performance art enthusiasts will tell you that performance art can be boiled down to the human essence and motion or some crap like that. Performance art, real, bloody, sweaty, gross and uncomfortable performance art began truly in the 60s and 70s with some brief stints in the early 20th century with the Futurist and Dada movements.

Carolee Schneeman’s 1960 and 70s work all centred to some extent around meat and erotic pleasure is a perfect example of the atmosphere of the time. Two of her pieces very concisely sum up the craziness of how people were working. Her 1964 piece ‘Meat Joy’ involved 8 partially nude people interacting with objects and substances such as wet paint, sausage, raw fish, scraps of paper, and raw chickens. The Parisian based performance was filmed at a later point and marks a very distinct point in the history of performance art. The second piece I feel really sums up the sensationalist and visceral quality of early performance art is her very infamous piece entitled ‘Interior Scroll’ in which the artist entered the stage wrapped in a sheet which she then removed to reveal the apron she wore which was then removed as well to reveal her full nudity. She then laid upon a table where she would enact poses commonly seen in life drawing courses and outline each with a dark line. She then read from her book ‘Cezanne, She was a Great Painter’, dropped it and proceeded to pull a scroll out of her vagina that she then read aloud as well. The Scroll read a feminist speech that Schneemann used essentially as a means to reverse the beginning or inspirations of art from the phallus to the vagina.

Schneemann’s work is essentially whacky when seen, but once considered quite effective and also very thought provoking. Her contribution to Conceptual art inspired a lot of other artists to use their body as a medium and create pieces meant to question gender and places in in society. Janine Antoni’s 1992 Piece Loving Care in which the artist uses her hair as a paintbrush and a brand of hair dye called ‘loving care’ as her paint. She essentially uses an aspect of female beauty to create an artistic process.

Then there’s filmed performance art such as the eccentric Mathew Barney’s 1994-2002 Cremaster Cycle in which the artist uses 5 feature-length films to explore the concept of gender and sex. The artist who happens to be married to the equally bizarre and wonderful Bjork used all sorts of concepts, allusions, characters and notions to explore the abstract and mysterious moment a child’s gender is decided.

Barney’s piece was received with mixed reviews but has become a canonical piece for film art. It is a great example of Conceptual art in the art world. Barney films hours and hours (and hours) of curious representations of gender and sex to explore the notion of becoming a man or a woman and becomes a veritable convention of filmed Conceptual Art.

Conceptual art is, in the end, whatever an artist makes of it. Which makes it a crazy easy target and also an easily exploited method of art creation. We can all admit that there are A LOT of artists who are maybe taking the piss and making decidedly crap art with a lot of explanation behind it. But that also taints a lot of good art that maybe does need explaining. Its a double-edged sword and also a very tricky and difficult path to navigate with someone who maybe just wants to hear about Monet painting in his garden.

Another type of art people have difficulty with is Land Art or Earthworks. Robert Smithson made this famous with his 1970 Spiral Jetty . Something that strikes me instantly when I look at a Smithson is his use of the colour of the Earth he uses. He not only uses large-scale land-based pieces, but smaller installations in galleries constructed of earth and mirrors. The dirt and rocks are always so vibrant and beautiful. There is something to be said about the success of his aesthetic.

But when you dissect the piece into it’s components, he piled some dirt on a floor and put a mirror in it. Conceptual art is the space between the viewer and the artist. What makes the dirt and mirrors Smithson has brought into the gallery something is something cerebral and frankly, lovely. The art of Conceptual art is a puzzle the viewer has to solve.

I love me some crazy, whacky, off the wall conceptual art. The weirder and more daring the better. But I’ve spent a wee while looking at art and its bones. A friend I went to high school with wrote about how she refused to watch a horrible art film her teacher was making her watch. I asked her what film it was and she replied ‘some guy called Barney’s film’. The Cremaster Cycle is no more rude and terrible than some Renaissance and Baroque paintings, look at Ribera’s Drunken Silenus! But because the film was not a painting and because it existed in the vague and lofty space between artist and viewer, it was dubbed, by my friend as horrible.

I think conceptual art is the heartbeat of the art world just now. Its useful to know its context before you attend a gallery. There is something to be appreciated by successful pieces, but mostly Conceptual art is something to experience. So go experience things. Plus, look at that Ribera painting I just mentioned, its pretty gross.

Allison Everett © 2011

The Inside Out Gaze, Judy Chicago

‘Judy Chicago changed the world’. That’s what the talk I went to at the Scottish National Gallery discussed last night. Ms. Chicago herself was at the talk and it was very interesting to hear her take on it. She has the changed the world, or at least the art world. The feminist artist most well known for her painted plates in her piece The Dinner Party (1974-79), discussed her career in its entirety and it evolution.

One of the things that most impresses me about Judy is that she’s in both Jansen’s and Gardner’s History of Art books. Her work is part on the canon of the Western art historical survey. Which means her art had such a profound impact on the way art was moving and changing in the world, that she can be remembered and studied. She’s in the same flipping book as Michelangelo, as Ingres, as Delacroix and even Rubens. What’s curious though, is that her Dinner Party work is the only piece that is really recognized or remembered.

She began in the 1960s in Southern California. She was working predictably amongst a lot of men. She was a minimalist surprisingly. Rainbow Picket, a sort of dated but interesting and bold piece shows this. The piece is successful, but not memorable. The Getty plans on using her work in an upcoming show on LA in the 1960s. I bet the Getty press and advert team are having a ball. It sounds like a concisely and perfectly hip show. A lot of artists, in their early career did some amazing but curiously out of character pieces. Georgia O’keeffe of whom, Chicago is often compared to, painted breathtaking pieces of skyscrapers in her early career. She would depict the sun winking off the top of glassy buildings as you looked up at them. They were strong and effective takes on the fleeting and overhwhelming feelings of being little in a big city.  How curious that both artists created art surrounding strong and enormous phallic like objects and then moved into creating pieces that were more interior and a lot more like a vagina. Yes I said vagina, vagina, vagina.

The words Chicago and Vagina are often found together as are O’Keeffe and vagina. Judy Chicago was in Edinburgh to talk about her new book about her work and Frida Kahlo’s work and how they might relate to each other. I would like to read a book about Chicago and O’Keeffe, or even just an essay. It’s interesting that Frida Kahlo, an artist who had quite a sentimental and interior life could be compared to the very external, feminist and decidedly yenta-like Chicago. The American artist on several occasions during the talk asserted that she and Kahlo have different views on men and relationships. Well, obviously. But the feminist artist managed to find some really interesting parallels in the way they saw the world aesthetically and emotionally. I quite liked her take on colours and emotions, which apparently, is something Kahlo did as well. But Chicago and Kahlo just don’t seem like a good mix. I would like to see the powerhouses of ‘feminine art’ be compared to The Jewish American artist.

Ms. Chicago confronted the topic of ‘feminine art’ during the talk as well. Its a tricky subject and also one laden with hidden mines. Chicago asserted that to know feminine art you ‘just have to look at a lot of it.’ I would like to look at a lot of it. I think there is a unique context to be discovered within the femininity of the feminine art. It has nothing to do with pretty or pink art; no I’m interested in the female eye. I’d like to see something that takes Berger’s gaze theory and turns it inside out. Berger wrote about the gaze, the view of the nude woman and the famous ‘nude vs. naked’ theory in which one is about being looked at as an object and one being looked at as someone who know’s they’re nekkid.

Chicago did that. She took the most internal parts of nudity, intimacy and identity and shoved it into the public’s face. The artist cleverly simplified the wishy washy seduction of implying that a woman has a vagina and placed it on a plate for all to view. O’keeffe did something similar but in a less direct way. She denied she was painting something direct. She created the sly and seductive Odalisque out an orchid and made it about something veiled, something not graphically apparent, but there. Other female artists such as Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger and Tracy Emin have been working the same fabric.

Cindy Sherman tackles identity. She uses herself as the main medium creating entirely different identities with makeup and gesture. She embodies the concept of the gaze, but not in a nude and naked way (though’s she done that); but in a way that never takes away from the fact that she is a female artist. Kruger is much the same, her explorations into the female identity and the places a feminine identity take one in modern society Yes that is an incredibly brief summing up of her career, but I’m not writing a book). And lastly the unsavoury Tracy Emin essentially takes the pain of what it is to be an unwanted and unbalanced woman and puts it out there for all to see. You can feel her insecurities, her angst and her anger against the trouble she’s experienced in her life in her pieces. I still don’t like her though.

 

Pushing or even throwing the feminine identity into the public eye is bold and also pretty neat. Chicago did this is in a memorably and visually stunning way. The kind of essence that can be distilled from this piece can be compared quite easily to Sherman, Kruger and Emin’s oeuvre.  There is kind of core to each of these pieces that relate to one another. Yes that sounds simple because they’re all women, duh, right? It’s not just that. These feminine pieces have balls.

They each have a successful means to accomplish their point. Making a successful piece of art is profoundly difficult. Their styles differ, their mediums vary and their processes are all entirely different. The feminine boldness of the their pieces is what makes them amazing. Its kind of unfeminist to assert that it is their femaleness that makes them successful, but it is what makes them successful. So looking at feminine art, as Chicago suggested, there is an essence unique to it. Though admittedly I’ve only just looked at feminist female art, not like other art by women, which is what I probably should do as well.

Artists like Vigee LuBrun andRosa Bonheur had great careers as painters. Le Brun painted tender and beautiful pictures of the court and Bonheur painted lovely canvases of horses and landscapes. Both painted in France, Le Brun in the late 18th and early 19th century and Bonheur in the 19th. We can also mentioned Mary Cassat, The French Impressionist and even Artemesia Gentileschi, the Italian Baroque artist known for her graphic and wonderful canvases of Judith beheading Holofernes. Each of these female artists were not feminist painters in the socio-political definition of the word. They were female artists who were extraordinary and painted successful pieces.

To distill the ‘ness’ of these women’s pieces seems unfair and also sexist. That they were women is the only thing that relates them in this discussion. However, I am talking about feminine art, art that was created by women. The one thing that meshes each piece with the next is that they came from a female eye. They are unique, they are different and, they are really good.

I would say that if I HAD to think of something that unites each piece together as a whole, it would be a plain and simple and also predictable answer, they feel like a woman painted them. Yes that sounds stupid, but I mean it. The first time I saw Gentileschi’s Esther Before the King I paused. There was something strong and beautiful and female to the painter’s rendering. I think Rubens had a feminine eye. His sensitive renderings were full of small and wonderful observations especially of the female form.

All in all, there is something to art created by a woman.

Though getting back to my main point, Judy Chicago is someone who deals in the idea of art created by women. I have to admit something though. I’m not really convinced of Chicago’s body of work aside from her Dinner Party. The 1970s piece is bold, curious and also very clear and unmistakable. Her other work lacks the direction and the dedication. I also just don’t like her palette or her aesthetic. I don’t find it successful or effective. I think her 1970s body of work is where her potency lies.

Which is sad because it is her sensationalist feminist work. Am I only in awe of it because it is Feminist and controversial. Would i like her body of work if she were a man? No. I’m just not convinced of her other work.

It was really lovely hearing her speak. She definitely has the gift of the gab. She’s fiercely clever as well. Which I think is a necessity to be successful and stay successful in the art world. She discussed her struggles as an artist who made almost nothing until her later career. ‘I was a very determined artist’ she repeated a few times during the talk. And it seems her determination paid; She changed the world.

Flatty

Picasso’s 1907 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was at one point deemed the single most influential piece in Modern art history. It has since been replaced by Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 La Fontaine (see previous post). But Picasso’s ‘Demoiselles’ is still considered a paramount piece that changed the way art was developing profoundly.

Picasso constructs 5 female figures out of angular shapes. They all pose for the viewer. Is the viewer the painter? Where is this picture set? What does the title mean? Once you know these answers, the picture comes to life. I think when you first view the piece, the women look quietly savage. Their large eyes bore through you and their small mouths make them seem unimpressed. You suddenly become the one being viewed.

The title translates to: The women of Avignon. Avignon is a port town in France that was known for its brothels during Picasso’s time. Picasso has essentially painted the interior of a brothel. It was only recently that Picasso’s sketches and slow evolution of Demoiselles came to the public’s eye. In the first sketches, Picasso includes two men viewing the women, but as the he re-worked the image, the men are taken out and the viewer becomes the men. You, the viewer are those men (just go with it).

So you are now a man in a brothel and hey what’s that in front of you? A table with some fruit. Fruit being a very old artistic convention that means fertility, sensuality and generally, boobs. Sure the table looks like a wonky shark’s fin and some of the fruit looks slightly like pieces of steak, but its in front of you. You are sitting down at a table and you are viewing five women. When you stand in front of this painting the table invites into the picture. It’s your pathway into the room.

So if you are a man viewing women How do you feel? Aroused? fearful? A little confused? This piece I think, makes a forest out of women. Picasso robs them of their sexuality and makes them alien giantesses. He takes their dimensions, their roundness, their femininity and replaces it with an impenetrable wall of eyes looking back at you. He takes the convention of lush, inviting Harem that beckons the viewer to enter and chucks you out. You become a fearful viewer who wouldn’t dare try to enter the impossible room.

The reinvented harem convention is further explored with the two central figures. They each are based off of reclining Odalisque poses. The Odalisque refers to an Orientalist-like figure of a Middle-Eastern-like woman who reclines on a couch or the floor. Even though these women appear to be standing they are representing the reclining figure. Picasso has taken each figure and made them planes of colour and space that attack and assault the viewer by not moving deeper into their space, but becoming a wall of figures.

The masks are also an extension of the distance, the impenetrable and unreachable quality of the women. The unmasked women wear Picasso’s Iberian face convention. Picasso saw these wide-eyed, round-faced figures and was inspired to paint them endlessly. he also owned several (thought to be stolen from the Louvre) African masks. He studied and painted these masks a lot as well. The combination of these two foreign faces make the women more and more alien. They become inhuman.

The main theme in the picture is most certainly impenetrability; Which was a huge factor in Picasso’s cubist pieces. The idea of deconstructing a notion or an object and presenting it in fragments for a viewer to see all at once makes for a spectacularly stunning image of the destruction of the conventional concept of space. Which is what was happening before Picasso showed up. the Impressionist school of painting was already throwing the classic notion of perspective out the window and reinventing it entirely.

Impressonism was strongly influenced by Japanese wood block prints and paintings. The 19th Century prints the Impressionists were looking at often had large, flat planes of colour and tilted floors (think Degas’s stages and Caillebotte’s streets). The idea of depth was slowly tilting towards the viewer.

Once Post-Impressionism and Fauvism hit the scene all of this perspective business was on its way out. It was Picasso, Georges Braque and Henri Matisse who found ways to present the notion of something all in one go. So when Picasso painted his Demoiselles it became a solid marker for how art was to change solidly and very memorably.

Modern and Post-Modern art took Picasso’s work to heart and were leant a great lesson in flat planes of space. Today in the Contemporary art arena, conceptual art has taken precedence, but Picasso’s lesson in using space and planes of colour are undeniable.

© Allison Everett 2011

Bigger Than Jesus?

Is Art Bigger Than Jesus? Were the Beatles bigger than Jesus? The answers to those questions are possibly and probably. Religion in art has to some extent, been born out of desire for power and a means of persuasion. It evolved from ancient Paleolithic fertility icons, moved onto god-like kings and changed into appeals to a higher power.  Babylonian, Egyptian, Estruscan, Roman, Greek, all of these cultures have utilised a visual means to create a dialogue with their own respective religions.

 

Early Christian art can safely be called ‘a take on Roman religious art’. Apollo had a halo too; like way way way before Jesus was even around. The angry benevolent god image wasn’t new either. Zues had that one covered before Jesus was a twinkle in Mary’s eye (or a flying baby if you’d like to envision the annunciation).  In fact, most of early Christian art was from the Roman civic religion that so many people often incorrectly label ‘Paganism.’  The roots of Abrahamic art in the Western world are Roman. No doubt about it. When Christianity took over for a while in the Westernish world after the fall of the Roman empire, they promptly removed all of the juicy, real and exciting stuff and created a new and very curiously stylised period of art based in representation rather than likeness. The style is sweet, earnest and trying very hard to communicate a precise message. That message can very predictable be, ‘hey Jesus is great, do all of this stuff and you won’t get in trouble.’ I think it looks more like ‘these demons are going to bite off your head and god is going to hate you if you don’t listen k?’ But the main point is, Byzantine art, a period of art that flourished and sparkled within a Christian Kingdom, was meant mainly as a propagandistic tool. It kind of stayed that way too.

From Byzantium,  Christianity moves into a series of very long periods that involve lots of Cathedrals, paintings, mosaics and sculptures that all talk about Jesus and his friends and family. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good Jesus painting. I have a special place in my heart for Medieval Jesuses, but its purpose stays the same, the art is consistently a tool of both worship and also propaganda.

Just as the Gothic period is getting absurdly decorative and churches appear to be made of spun sugar, The Renaissance explodes onto the scene. The Renaissance is like ‘hey this whole big stone flatty painting business is kind of boring, what’s exciting? Oh yeah, remember Ancient Greece and Rome, with the bodies, and the people, and the proportions, yeah that was just great, let’s do that.’ Renaissance  artists spend their lifetimes perfecting the notions of Classic proportions and lending an entirely new school of thought to their antiquity-inspired creations. The Renaissance reinvents the image of Christian-related art and veils its old purpose subtly. Art is not only for beauty’s sake, and for the the love of art, but its still has its agenda.

The people paying for a beautiful penitent Mary, or a tortured Jesus, were wealthy; and the church like them there. The church also liked the whole thing where the rich people paid them to buy sins. Paying for indulgences is one of the things that really got  Martin Luther’s goat. It can’t really be confirmed that Martin Luther nailed his letter to the church door, but his main point was definitely understood; and that’s when Christian-related art gets really, really good.

Art is no longer simply a display of wealth and power, now its a weapon. The Reformation, the creation of Protestantism in Christianity makes a lot of powerful Catholics pretty angry. So how do you influence people to stay on your side? Propaganda. Art becomes a tool to incite powerful emotions about religion. Crying, screaming, penitent Mary Magdalene became a favourite of Counter-Reformation artists and patrons. The Counter-Reformation, ie rich Catholics with Rich taste who aren’t afraid to go too far fuel the already mad Baroque period commissioned a mountain of over-the-top displays of religious devotion. I adore the extreme and passionate canvases that were painted by Baroque artists and paid for by Catholic purses. There is a desperation and an overwhelming sense of trying to show you how much each figure loves their god. I find it easy to view these pictures. They are monumental, entertaining and ultimately portraits of the human condition. But again, these pictures are propaganda.

After The Baroque period moves down to Naples (where it gets crazytastic, look it up, so much crazy), and deflates, Rome takes a back seat in Western art history and France takes the limelight for a while. Everybody else is still doing their thing, art movements are happening all over the place, but the French manage to impress everyone by curing themselves first of Jesus, and then of Rococo *shudder*.    Rococo being the crazy nonsense frilliness of women in grey wigs, gigantic skirts and very expensive furniture.  The art world as a whole moves on from the dusty notion of ONLY painting Jesus because, there are a lot of way more important things happening, like Kings being sexy. Oh, and the French Revolution.

So with the Western world deciding that Science is pretty handy and art is good for stuff about politics, socio-political  nonsense, naked women and sometimes mythology, Jesus is still creeping in the background.  Also, a little note, I am not explaining the entire history of Western art, I’ve skimmed over about a million things, I am telling you my Jesus-centric version of why I think art is bigger than Jesus (just a little fyi). If we zoom into the 19th century which is a pretty good century. Photography gets invented, painting changes entirely, Monet paints a picture that will be printed on umbrellas for old ladies to buy in about 100-something years and the Fin de siècle (end of the century) scares the bajeezus out of everybody (just like the one after it!)  Religious art is still pretty prominent, but slightly more veiled and subtle.

I’ve always viewed the progression of Impressionism to Modern art as an evolution that’s based on pushing a boundary just a little but further each time. We start with painting light like looks like stuff, then painting shapes that make up stuff, and then just painting shapes. Impressionism, Post-Impressionsim and Fauvism are all related and extensions of the period that preceded them. yeah, I know that’s obvious, so is all art pretty much.  But these three periods kind of define a new way of looking at art. Fauvism leads the way into more radical ways of interpreting the world visually. Matisse and Picasso took beautiful things and made pictures of the idea of them. I didn’t understand Picasso until I saw picture he had painted of his son playing with toys. He had painted the feeling and the notion of a little kid in the midst of play. Picasso was painting effortlessly and perfectly, the concept of things. Matisse was doing much the same. Matisse was taking something lovely and pairing it down to its essence so you could simply experience it.

With the advent of Modern Art and its creepy crawling constant move forward  breaking boundaries, everything had to be questioned. Marcel Duchamp signed a urinal and then everything was up for grabs, nothing was, ahem, sacred.  So how does Jesus fit into this? Piss Christ. Yeah, you heard me.   In 1987 Andres Serrano photographed a crucifix submerged in human urine. The image itself is ghostly and actually, quite pretty, but the idea is very clearly offensive to lots of people who might like Jesus. And if we’re talking about excrement, we may as well include the infamous Chris Ofili’s 1999 The Holy Virgin Mary in which a black Virgin Mary is depicted with a breast made out of cow dung and being surrounded by flying cut-outs of photographs of nude butts. A bunch of people got angry in New York about that one. You know what I have to say about that? You guys are a bunch of ignorant stupidheads.

 

Neither picture on first inspection is blatantly offensive. Both are pleasant to look at. But there were a lot of people very angry about both. Understandably. Both works are clearly fueled by sensationalism. Art has been pushing back boundaries for so long, that sensationalism is the dust that’s left after there’s nothing left to push back or break.  But its fun anyways.  Shocking art is like a circus, a really fun one that is pretty unpredictable.  Offending a general public is basically playing the game. The people who do get offended are really kind of playing a part in what the artist, I think, hoped would happen. Stupidheads.

But if we go back to the origins of religious art, a means of communicating power and influence; art, even if it isn’t all about empowering the image of Jesus, is still about power and influence. Making sensationalist art that is basically the logical extension of art periods before it is challenging an old symbol of all encompassing power and using it against itself. Which is wickedly clever.  Its basically the redefining of an icon’s place in the contemporary world. Intellectualising the abuse of a religious image doesn’t make it any less offensive though.  It does however, make its history a little more dimensional and interesting. So is art bigger than Jesus? What is bigger than Jesus?

Alexander Kosolapov’s My Blood My Body series seems to think that popular culture is.. The pictures show Jesus next to both a Mcdonald’s and a CocaCola logo explaining that the soft-drink was his blood and the fast-food chain restaurant was his body. The series has garnered a momentous amount of attention because it was associated with Yury Samodurov and Andrei Yerofeyev’s exhibtion that showcased works that were previously banned in Russia in an exhibition called ‘Forbidden Art’ at the Sakharov Museum. Both curators were proscuted and given hefty fines to pay for inciting religious hatred. Most of Russia was appalled to hear that the curators were punished and felt that the trial said more about Russia’s archaic views on art, culture and censorship. A lot of people believe that the ruling will hurt Russia’s arts scene and deter artists from being provocative and ultimately destroy their reputation as an avant garde place for artists. I think this says more about the power of art than it does about religion. It makes religion seem cheap, desperate and silly.

But to get back to Kosolapov’s work; can popular culture be viewed as more prominent than religion in the public eye? I have to yes to that. I seriously doubt that the majority of the world when shown a picture of saint or a scene from the passion, will be able to identify correctly what is happening and who precisely is in that picture. I also know that quite a few people wouldn’t be able to tell me roughly what years the gospels were written down, or even the history of the gospels. Quick! tell me what details are different in each gospel. If you know the answer that question, I am impressed. Did you know that its been theorised that each gospel was chosen to appeal to a specific demographic? I only know this crap because I studied art history, but I have found that my knowledge of the history of Abrahamic religions and their texts is a little more extensive than the average Westerner (and sometimes Fundamentalist).

To extend the definition of popular culture into art is stretching it I know. Its hard to apply a section of culture known for its elitism and going over people’s heads as being more well-known than a religious icon. BUT, Art is what got Jesus where he is. Art has crept its way into every part of the world’s visual culture. Art is everywhere. I’m not going to go into the one million year long definition of what art is, (see previous blog post about context) but its everywhere. It son your cereal box, its the bag you carry, its the print you have on your wall, it’s the building you’re sitting in. Also, note: I’m talking about the notoriety of the concept of Jesus, not Hesus himself. SO don’t get all whacky on me.

Art is bigger than Jesus.   I’m not saying that either Christianity or whatever religion isn’t important. I’m happy for all of the people who like religion. I’m also happy for all of the artists who have found  a voice in using religious iconography to put forth their ideas about the world. I just think, as a whole, as a concept, Art is more encompassing and further reaching as a means of communication in the world. Art and religion could in some points in history, not have survived without one another. I’m looking at both as concepts, so don’t get angry at me, I’m not slagging off Jesus. What I’ve tried to say basically, is that Art has surpassed religion in Modern day culture on so many levels.

© Allison Everett 2011

Ga Ga and Kanye Do Art

Ga Ga and Kanye have, as expected, made crazytastic expensive music videos for their new super kewel musics. While I’m not a massive fan of either of their artistic pursuits, I had a very good time watching their music videos. I looove music videos. I’ve always been one for the visual side of things. I also think music videos are the sugary sweet candy crack of popular culture. They’re like bursts of fun and colour that make you excited about life for about 3 minutes (500 hours if you’re watching Ga Ga though, her videos are sooooo long).

The neatest thing about their videos (and the reason I am writing about them) is that both are based in art history. Both have some subtle (and not so subtle) winks at some famous periods, pieces and concepts. I was inspired to ponder this by my lovely friend and fellow traveller Natalie Johnson who spent many a day trespassing into closed down wings of Palazzi, climbing Italian mountain hills and lying on the floors of museums with me. She sent me the Kanye West music video and wrote ‘Barberini Ceiling!’   IT SO IS. We spent a few hours lying on the couches in the gallery staring up at the massive Baroque painted ceiling. It was painted by Pietro da Cortona for Pope Urban VIII. It was entitled Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power which is pretty much exactly what it is. Its a massive and utterly blatant depiction of why the Pope thought he should be Pope.

Barberini famously changed his family crest from horse flies to bumble bees. He made up a legend that a crown of bees flew over his head one day and that’s how he knew that he should be Pope. First of all, that’s so cheesy, and second of all, really? So When Barberini became Pope Urban VIII, he puts bees on ev-ery-thing.  I quite like them. A friend of mine once licked a Barberini stone bee, for those of you interested, it tastes salty.

So he had this gigantical fresco painted in the very fashionable style of quadratura. Quadratura means the artist uses trompe-l’oeil (or uses of perspective and colour to trick the eye) to make the image look as if it is an extension of the already existing architecture the building the ceiling is located in. Da Cortona paints a scene in which the building is opened up to the sky and Divine Providence looks onto a scene of putti (small flying winged babies) and flying maidens holding the papal key, crown and belt over a swarm of bees. While time with his scythe looks upon the crown of immortality which is being brought up to the bees as well.  Its well known that Barberini’s papal election was rigged, so this may have been a very unsubtle attempt at showing that it was in fact divine providence that got him all the fancy hookups and Pope hat and not money.

So the fresco is about power and why Pope Urban VIII had it. Sooooo, when Kanye decided to write a song about power his art director decided to go back to the basics.  Where do you find images of power? Art History.  A lot of art was made with the sole purpose of making people think the patron was powerful. This whole power play thing has been going on since the beginning. Ashurbanipal? Ancient Egypt? Ur? Power.

Kanye’s video was directed by artist Marco Brambilla and featured models Irena Shayk and Diandra Forrest. Brambilla calls it ‘a moving painting’. He also cites several allusions and references, many of  them Ancient Egyptian. The necklace Kanye wears is the symbol of Horus, the Ancient Egyptian god. There are also versions of Isis and Hathor within the two-minute ‘painting’. The other concepts were mentioned as: The devil, judgement, the symbol for having the world (an Early Christian and Roman convention), freemasons, The concept of the hanged man, the sword of Damocles, The Page of Swords and the Queen’s Cup. A lot of references interestingly have origins in Tarot cards. Most of the tarot-related images had to do with decision making, decisiveness and being successful.

The music video, or sorry, ‘moving painting,’ is a contemplation on power that looks an awful lot like an Italian Baroque ceiling. Its first off all, the way that the columns are framed with a very frame-like edging reminiscent of the quadro riportato or painting within frames on a ceiling look. It’s also the use of allegories, of symbols and the massive amount of didacticism within the short. It is fantastically done.  The piece as a whole, is fun to watch too. Its a successful nod to art history that’s not too literal and not too cheesy; Just big-headed and deliciously egotistical in that display of power kind of way. Kanye wins with super neat music video.

Lady Ga Ga does not. I like Ga Ga. I like that she brings crazy to a whole new level. She is first and foremost a pop-based performance artist, she just happens to sing a lot and rework lots of Madonna songs. Madonna was a pop-performance artist as well. Ga Ga adds a little more couture, a little more art and just a little more story into her work though. Madonna kind of led the way and Ga Ga followed but redecorated the path as she went (and is still going). SO I like her, but her music videos are madness. They are a jumble of so many things that you feel like you’ve tangled all of your favourite jewellery together and have to sit and pick all of the tiny little chains out of the big clunky bracelets and earrings and its going to take FOR-EVER.

Her latest video ‘Born This Way’ is a clusterf*&%$ of concepts. On first view the main concept I noticed was that there were three levels: Heaven, Hell and People or Earth I suppose. She sets the idea of good and bad being born simultaneously, a god who has two sides that cannot exist without one another, which is an old sect of Christian and pre-Christian thoughts called Gnosticism in which a dark and a light existed simultaneously. But then she has this Krishna thing going on where a god is giving birth to gods which, is kind of like Krishna where Krishna is a god but also a all other gods at the same time.  Then she shows the breed or type of people presumably lady Ga Gas who are supreme beings like angels or humans. She also shows them writhing around in black goop, primordial goo anyone?  So I guess the over-all theme is creation and divine powers looking over creation.

But then there’s more. Director Nick Knight and Executive Producer Vincent Herbert add a Death element. Ga Ga in skeleton face paint and Rick ‘Zombie Boy’ Genest of tattooed fame are suited up to be Day of The Dead dancing skeletons. Death has a lot to do with religion and whatnot but tuxedoed skeletons dancing with each other while most of the living writhe amongst each other is taking this whole religion thing in a million other directions. They also go into the concept of hell as a layered place. they use registers like a a lot of cathedrals did. A lot of people are saying it looks like Bosch, I kind of see it but I think they ought to take a look at judgement day scenes in cathedrals and they’ll get a much clearer reference. They’re also simulteaneously referencing popular culture images like Rocky Horror Picture Show, Madonna and Michael Jackson, but that’s just it; its too too too much.

Lady Ga Ga’s infamous ‘Alejandro’ was slightly more simple. The story had a lot to do with desire and longing. It also tackled the idea of androgeny in fashion and in Ga Ga’s young career. Her other videos like ‘Alejandro’ such as ‘Bad Romance’ told stories, albeit abstract ones but they had a solid idea. Poker Face was a flashy pop video through and through. But ‘Born This Way’ took on art historical and religious references and lost everyone. This video failed hard.

Art history belongs in Popular culture. Popular culture has a lot to thank art history for. Popular culture is art to some extent. Mind you, its hard to see it as high art, but it has its own value and process. But yeah, when it comes to Music videos, it makes me super excited to see clear references in directors’ work. Sometimes it works and its really neat and a breath of fresh air…And sometimes its a crazy nonsensical maze of half-references that don’t really gel. Either way its exciting.

© Allison Everett 2011

On Education, Anger and Not Really Art So Much

So most of my entries are ramblings on something I think I have a lot to say about.  My husband will tell you that I have a lot to say about a lot of things. No seriously we have endless debates about anything from the importance of what a band looks like (he doesn’t think it’s important, I think it is), Does man flu exhist (I say yes, he says it’s counter-sexism), or,  whether or not 90s music is great (I like some, but loathe when music sounds lame, unimaginative or cheesy like a take-yourself-too-seriously-leather-jacket-song *cough cough, Bono cough*).

One thing I have a lot to say about is education. I intitally got involved in the history of art so I could teach. But as the tuition rates increase, student loan interest rates soar, I find pursuing more school, another step towards finding a way to carve an academic pathway, more of a stupid and impossible choice. All I want to do is write about art and recieve a silly piece of paper that will allow me to be considered for a position in a university.  But for now, that’s on hold.  Its kind of like getting stuck in a deep pit of quicksand and all you can do is look up at the beautiful trees and sunshine above and know that you’re probably not going to enjoy them for a while.

But all you can do in a place like that is revel. Just find a way to revel in all the good things that you have. Wow, that sounds cheesy (not as cheesy as a leather-jacket-song or a move-your-eyebrows-while-you-sing song though).   But its education that is the problem.  Universities started as places to pursue academia, and now they are businesses. Succesful lecturers, professors and doctors have found their chairs and tenures by being not only brilliant and determined, but people who learned how to play the game and work for the business. But isn’t that life? Most success stories feature a clever, go-getter who figures out the system.

But what happens when there are actually no opportunities for a go-getter? I’m reminded of the economic depression every morning on the radio. The broadcaser reads off the statitsics of people in debt, of people losing their mortgages, of people losing their jobs. Someone said its the worst since the depression in the 1920s.  I mean we’re not like Dorothea Lange Dust Bowl depressed. Like we have stuff, like mobiles, cheap, disposable clothing, music, tea, wine and affordable food.  But, we don’t have lasting, real things that we will have in the future; like a decent credit score or things to hand down to our children, like money or peace of mind.

What will an entire generation do? What will a generation of highly educated, highly un-wealthy people do to prepare for the future. When someone’s down that’s the worst and easiest time to kick them in the side. If you have a generation of people who are kicked in the ribs how will they build up a new way to look at things, to create a better and more interesting world?

All of the stupid, unrealistic and utterly gross conservative people will quote the boot strap theory, or the trickle-down theory, but frankly, screw you. Go live with single mothers who have to decide between medicine for their kid or having to walk to work for a week. Go talk to people who have to eat pasta for a month to afford to pay their student loans back. Nobody in that place is going to find time to grab their own bootstraps, let alone find an opportunity to make more money. They’re too busy working full-time waiting on tables or doing 12-hour shifts to find other opportunities.

Getting back to the point, how will a generation that felt it was necessary to go to universityand take out massive student loans, get by without employment in an economic depression? How will they start families, buy houses, buy cars, start businesses?

I don’t know the answer to this. I hope someone figures it out. But I know people in their fifties who are still paying student loans back, so it doesn’t look hopeful. Where will a society be without education. If people can’t afford an education? Where does that put their employment prospects? Where does that put an entire demographic of people? It makes me genuinely angry.

We need a new Dorothea Lange to take pictures of the new economically depressed. The shiny, blinging false wealth that results in how people get by. Lange took portraits of people dealing with poverty with grace. The desperation was genuine, beautiful and sad.  There is a defiance in how people deal with poverty now. There is an explosion of display, like an insistence on visual wealth. Shiny mobile phones, big sparkly fake jewellery. There is a charm and something sweet and real about showing what you have on your person. It is truly a culture of display, like a literal showing of who you are.  Some of the best fashion comes out of literalism. Some of the best art does too.

Dorothea Lange was one of many artists employed by the government to make art as a means to create more jobs. We need to do this again. We will have an interesting and amazing new way of looking at our disposition, employ artists who need work and perhaps leave a legacy worth seeing.

But seriously,  there needs to be a new way of looking at how education works in America, in the UK and globally. If we’re putting more and more people into desperate situations to start their lives and careers, how can we expect to have a means to get out of this depression?

Thanks for reading my rant. Bono is still not cool.

© Allison Everett 2011

 

Going to a Gallery

A short blurb on looking at Art.

When I go to a gallery, I enter the first room, assess the hang, and then move to the closest wall. Then, I look at the pictures and if any catch my eye, I ponder them, perhaps read the placard and move on. Museums are curated with a lot of different factors in mind. One of the main things that plays a large role in how a museum curates its collection, is the quality of the collection.  A collection can’t all be jems.

Lots of great or successful pieces will be hung with other mediocre ones.  So when you go to a gallery with someone who HAS TO SEE EVERYTHING, they’re giving time to art that perhaps deserves a little less than they are paying.

One of my favourite things ever (because I am a super art geek,) is sitting in galleries and listening to what people have to say about what they’re seeing. There’s always the self-proclaimed expert who lectures endlessly on a subject they watched in a documentary. There’s the sweetly innocent viewer who remarks on how beautiful the figures are. One of my favourites is the bored viewer who got dragged there. Every time I go to the Met in New York I see that guy.

The things people say or do in front of paintings is endlessly entertaining. James Elkins wrote an entire book about people crying in front of paintings.  There are accounts of people dying from ‘too much beauty’ and other people going mad after seeing a picture.  Going to a gallery is a powerful experience.

But yeah, quit looking at EVERY SINGLE PAINTING in the gallery. Its wonderful that you’re there and looking; But enjoy yourself. Spend time on the pieces you like, that you want to know more about. You’ll have a richer experience. You won’t go home exhausted from an art-a-thon.

© Allison Everett 2011