"The Importance of Matthew Barney" Response- Reanne

<--Taken from http://theinitiatives.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/matthew-barney/

-->Taken from http://blogundine.blogspot.com/2010/07/matthew-barneys-cremaster-cycle-1-5.html

          Matthew Barney is a very popular sculptor, a photographer and a filmaker, best know for his Cremaster films. "A mixture of the odd, attractive, and downright obscene and brutal, the Cremaster, which takes its name from the muscle in the human body in charge of lowering and raising the male genital organ, is a feat in Avant-Garde film." He focuses on visual effects (colors, shapes, and forms).
          His work "can seem ingeniously complicated or nonsensical, depending on one's inclination. Suffice it to say that it is a mix of autobiography, history and private symbolism, and it has involved him doing various death-defying acts and wearing elaborate makeup and prostheses..."
          I like the sense of ambiguity in Barney's abstract art, which is evident in most of it (for example in the films where you can't tell if the character is male or female). I also like performance art, in this case video, because it tells a more elaborate story. The article describes him as a nice and intellegent guy, unconcerned with fame and money, which is further proven by the fact that his loyal crew continues to take death-defying risks to push limits with Barney.  

Mike Kelley (video segment response)- Reanne

Post 3
"Non-representational abstracts, layered acrylic paint, plexiglas and other media creating a rhythmic dimensionality."

Title: Hive #2                                                           Title: Tectonic 12
Acrylic on Linen                                                         Painted Plexiglas, Mixed Media on Maple Art PanelArtist: Mike Kelley                                                   Artist: Mike Kelley
Taken from www.mikekelleyart.com                                 Taken from www.mikekelleyart.com


Title: The Thirteen Seasons (Heavy on the Winter) #1: The Birth of the New Year (1994)
Acrylic on Wood
Artist: Mike Kelley
Taken from www.pbs.org/art21

"While music belongs to time, painting belongs to space. My art is about space and divisions of space."


Mike Kelley makes videos (356 tapes- 1 for every day of the year)

Coming from Catholicism has given him a real interest in ritual; he believes that ritual is beautiful. Therefore, his main interest in art is actually trying to develop a materialist ritual. His videos are based on high school yearbooks because they are one of the few places where one can find pictures of those sorts of rituals.

He also says that all motivation is based on suppressed feelings. His stuffed animals artwork was his way of responding to 80s commodity culture. But his viewers thought it was about child abuse, his own abuse. But he embraces all responses and runs with it- so he went with that idea. So this series was about his abuse, as well as everyone’s abuse… this shared culture. His original trauma was his student training, so he created “13 seasons”, a series of ovals with no ends (example above), eternally occurring abuse, with the missing time (the part you can't remember). Art is his way of working through things; things start simple and get more complex.

Kelley says that art must be available to both the laziest viewer, on a simple level, as well as to the most sophisticated viewer. Kelley says that his art is beautiful because it produces humor and something he calls a sublime effect. His art has narrative elements but is also visually interesting. The writing of his videos comes from his own experiences. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between real past experiences and experiences seen/felt from films, plays, etc… Therefore, Kelley makes no distinction between these experiences; his art is a type of fiction in that way.

Vernacular of Beauty

"The Beautiful is a thing. In images, beauty is the agency that cause visual pleasure in the beholder, and, since pleasure is the true occasion for looking at anything, any theory of images that is not grounded in the pleasure of the beholder begs the question of art's efficacy and dooms itself to inconsequence!" (pg 2)

After reading the the article, i have came to look at art in a total different perspective.  The quote above stuck out to me right away at the beginning when talking about beauty and out the the visual pleasure is in the beholder.  I never really looked at beauty in this way, but after a while I realized that when I do call something beautiful, it is the truth that is is in the eyes of the beholder.  Just like the picture that i have above, I typed in the view of the sky from underwater... When I saw the image, it was not something that someone had painted, but a picture that someone took and put it on the Internet.  Some people might not look at this as beautiful, but in the eye of the beholder I do believe that this image is very beautiful.  It takes a lot to make things beautiful, but the task is said that "beauty is to enfranchise the audience and acknowledge its power--- to designate a territory of shared value between the image and its beholder and then, in this territory, to advance an argument by valorizing the picture's problematic content." (pg 9)  I really like this quote also because this is lays out what it takes to make things considered to be beautiful.

"Enter the Dragon: On the Vernacular of Beauty" Response- Reanne

Post 2


Title: "Grevy's Zebra" (from the Endangered Species Portfolio) 1983
Artist: Andy Warhol
In 1983, Andy Warhol created a series of ten color screenprints that portrayed endangered animals from around the world. Using brilliant colors -- characteristic of his signature style -- and poignant expressions suggestive of the animal's fate, Warhol creates a dynamic tension between art and reality.
Taken from http://www.ackland.org/art/exhibitions/warhol/

          This article, "Enter the Dragon: On the Vernacular of Beauty", discusses the place of beauty in art, in the contexts of culture, politics, religion, the marketplace, etc.... I've included some specific quotes that I liked, also trying to summerize the main points of this article. The author describes beauty: "Beauty is not a thing. The Beautiful is a thing. In images, beauty is the agency that causes visual pleasure in the beholder, and, since pleasure is the true occasion for looking at anything, any theory of images that is not grounded in the pleasure of the beholder begs the question of art's efficacy and dooms itself to inconsequence!...The task of beauty is to enfranchise the audience and acknowledge its power--to designate a territory of shared values between the image and its beholder and then, in this territory, to advance an argument by valorizing the picture's problematic content. Without the urgent intention of reconstructing the beholder's view of things, the image has no reason to exist, much less to be beautiful." Baudelaire says, "'The beautiful is always strange'...It is always strangely familiar and vaguely surprising." Only with one's full appreciation and understanding of a piece of art can viewers "engage the argument of images that deal so intimately with trust, pain, love, and the giving up of the self" a true "visual experience".

          The author also discusses the new, liberal institution, which "is not as cavalier about appearances as the market is about meaning...The institution's curators hold a public trust. They must look attentively and genuinely care about what artists mean, and what this meaning means in a public context--and, therefore, almost of necessity, they must distrust appearances." Art created in this way "steals the institution's power". The beauty of this art is evident in the pure honesty of the art itself. And the author states that "the truth is never plain nor appearances sincere. To try to make them so is to neutralize the primary, gorgeous eccentricity of imagery in Western culture since the Reformation: the fact that it cannot be trusted, that images are always presumed to be proposing something contestable and controversial."

          "The vernacular of beauty, in its democratic appeal, remains a potent instrument for change. Mapplethorpe uses it, as does Warhol, as does Ruscha, to engage individuals within and without the cultural ghetto in arguments about what is good and what is beautiful."