Saturday, September 10, 2011
Smooth Talk
Smooth Talk being self explanatory is about the sweet words of leaders. What makes them successful is how well they articulate, and all the promises they make, inculcating what seem to be words of wisdom that persuade which way we vote.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
“No Abstract Art Here” Summary
“No Abstract Art Here”: The Problem of the Visual in Contemporary Anglo-Caribbean Art. Krista A. Thompson
The biennial national exhibition at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas July 2006 sparked controversy after the jury did not accept some of the artists work.The artist thought that the jury had unfairly robbed them of the opportunity to exhibit and together they besieged the gallery’s staff with protests, threats of boycutt and appeals. Respectable citizens had complaints about the work, saying that installations were not ‘Art’. It was thought that the visual grammar of conceptual and abstract art could not translate the experience of the Caribbean; that representational art showed clearly using photo-realistic images and presented the islands as orderly and dreamlike tropical locales. Residents even view these pictures as more authentic that the islands themselves even if they have been modified to be picture perfect by removing anything unpleasing. Anyone who did not represent the island in this way were cast as visual heretics and were accused by a powerful segment of the cart community and was said to not be creating art.
Artist defiantly go against picturesque aesthetics by bringing to light ugly and bad aspects of the Bahamian society in their subject matter and use methods that disrupt earlier ways of visually imagining the islands. This picture perfect idea go as far back as colonial times when the British government hired photographers to create picturesque photographs of the islands when tourism trade first started. The photos were then hand painted to remove unwanted elements.
Sensitive invisible issues such as the Haitian population and their contribution to The Bahamas were highlighted by the artists via conceptual and abstract work. These new pieces cast new light on aspects of society that have been historically eluded by representational art in The Bahamas. They offered honest snapshots of life outside of the picturesque frame.
The biennial national exhibition at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas July 2006 sparked controversy after the jury did not accept some of the artists work.The artist thought that the jury had unfairly robbed them of the opportunity to exhibit and together they besieged the gallery’s staff with protests, threats of boycutt and appeals. Respectable citizens had complaints about the work, saying that installations were not ‘Art’. It was thought that the visual grammar of conceptual and abstract art could not translate the experience of the Caribbean; that representational art showed clearly using photo-realistic images and presented the islands as orderly and dreamlike tropical locales. Residents even view these pictures as more authentic that the islands themselves even if they have been modified to be picture perfect by removing anything unpleasing. Anyone who did not represent the island in this way were cast as visual heretics and were accused by a powerful segment of the cart community and was said to not be creating art.
Artist defiantly go against picturesque aesthetics by bringing to light ugly and bad aspects of the Bahamian society in their subject matter and use methods that disrupt earlier ways of visually imagining the islands. This picture perfect idea go as far back as colonial times when the British government hired photographers to create picturesque photographs of the islands when tourism trade first started. The photos were then hand painted to remove unwanted elements.
Sensitive invisible issues such as the Haitian population and their contribution to The Bahamas were highlighted by the artists via conceptual and abstract work. These new pieces cast new light on aspects of society that have been historically eluded by representational art in The Bahamas. They offered honest snapshots of life outside of the picturesque frame.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
WAYS OF SEEING
What we know or what we believe affects the way we see things. We only see what we actually choose to look at. We always look at the relations between things and ourselves and not just that specific thing that we are looking at. Our vision is continually active, moving and holding things in a circle around itself. As soon as we can see, we are aware that we can be seen also. An image is a sight that has been reproduced or recreated or an appearance or set of appearances detached from its original time and place. We are aware that a photographer chooses a sight from an infinity of other possible sights. The painter shows how he sees things by the marks he makes on the canvas or paper. When an image is presented as a work of art, people view of it is affected by a series of learnt assumptions about art. The power of an image comes mainly from its compositional unity.
Mystification is the process of explaining away what otherwise might be evident. Perspective structured all images of reality to address a single spectator who could only be in one place at a time. The camera destroyed the idea that images were timeless because it isolated momentarily appearances; it showed that the notion of time passing was inseparable from the experience of the visual. In paintings it was opposite because they were usually staged and
When the camera reproduces a painting it destroys its uniqueness and its meaning multiples and fragments. Paintings are also now traveling to the spectator rather than the spectator to the painting and in that the meaning is diversified. An original piece always has this uniqueness that gives it respect over reproductions. It is defined as an object whose value depends on its rarity. Authenticity makes a painting ‘beautiful’. It is noted that the majority of the population do not visit art museums. Studies show that the more educated a person is the more he or she is interested in art. The highest numbers of people come from the professional and upper management class.
The social presence of a woman is different from a man’s. A man’s presence depends on the promise of power and it may be fabricated that he pretends to be capable of what he is not; whereas a woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself and defines what can and cannot be done to her. She continually watches herself because she how she appears to others is crucial. Men look at woman and woman look at themselves being watched. Women were ever recurring subjects in European oil painting especially in the category of the nude. Nakedness was created in the mind of the beholder and the woman is blamed and punished by being made subservient to the man at the beginning. Initially, the images started by showing shame and then moved to some kind of display, and then the woman’s nakedness was depicted for pleasure. This nakedness was not an expression of the model’s feelings but a sign of submission to the owner’s demands and feelings. To be naked is to be without clothes; however, to be nude is a form of art.
Buying a painting means that you also buy the look of the thing it represents. Oil painting is known for its ability to render the tangibility, the luster, texture and solidity of what it depicts. It tends to make the viewer assume that he is close to or within touching distance of any object in the foreground of the image and it gives some kind of intimacy with the persons there. The highest category of oil painting was the history or mythological picture. Landscape paintings were not as popular but each time the tradition of oil painting was significantly modified, the first initiative came from landscape painting.
It is noted that every exceptional work was as a result of prolonged successful struggle, however not all prolonged struggles were successful. An artist had to recognize that his vision for what it was and then separate it from the usage for which it had been developed. He on his own had to contest the norms of the art that had formed him. This meant that he saw himself doing what no one else could foresee.
Mystification is the process of explaining away what otherwise might be evident. Perspective structured all images of reality to address a single spectator who could only be in one place at a time. The camera destroyed the idea that images were timeless because it isolated momentarily appearances; it showed that the notion of time passing was inseparable from the experience of the visual. In paintings it was opposite because they were usually staged and
When the camera reproduces a painting it destroys its uniqueness and its meaning multiples and fragments. Paintings are also now traveling to the spectator rather than the spectator to the painting and in that the meaning is diversified. An original piece always has this uniqueness that gives it respect over reproductions. It is defined as an object whose value depends on its rarity. Authenticity makes a painting ‘beautiful’. It is noted that the majority of the population do not visit art museums. Studies show that the more educated a person is the more he or she is interested in art. The highest numbers of people come from the professional and upper management class.
The social presence of a woman is different from a man’s. A man’s presence depends on the promise of power and it may be fabricated that he pretends to be capable of what he is not; whereas a woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself and defines what can and cannot be done to her. She continually watches herself because she how she appears to others is crucial. Men look at woman and woman look at themselves being watched. Women were ever recurring subjects in European oil painting especially in the category of the nude. Nakedness was created in the mind of the beholder and the woman is blamed and punished by being made subservient to the man at the beginning. Initially, the images started by showing shame and then moved to some kind of display, and then the woman’s nakedness was depicted for pleasure. This nakedness was not an expression of the model’s feelings but a sign of submission to the owner’s demands and feelings. To be naked is to be without clothes; however, to be nude is a form of art.
Buying a painting means that you also buy the look of the thing it represents. Oil painting is known for its ability to render the tangibility, the luster, texture and solidity of what it depicts. It tends to make the viewer assume that he is close to or within touching distance of any object in the foreground of the image and it gives some kind of intimacy with the persons there. The highest category of oil painting was the history or mythological picture. Landscape paintings were not as popular but each time the tradition of oil painting was significantly modified, the first initiative came from landscape painting.
It is noted that every exceptional work was as a result of prolonged successful struggle, however not all prolonged struggles were successful. An artist had to recognize that his vision for what it was and then separate it from the usage for which it had been developed. He on his own had to contest the norms of the art that had formed him. This meant that he saw himself doing what no one else could foresee.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Walter Benjamin (1935) Summary
A work of art has always been reproducible or imitated by men, however, newness came from mechanical reproduction. Historically the Greeks knew two procedures; founding and stamping whereby they were able to reproduce works of art. Graphic art became mechanically reproducible long before script became reproducible by print. Engraving and etching brought along lithography which was surpassed by photography. Photography therefore freed the hand of the most important artistic functions and henceforth used the eye. Pictorial reproduction was accelerated since the eye perceived more swiftly than the hand can draw. The most perfect reproduction of a work of art lacked the presence of time and space, the history to which it was subject to throughout the time of its existence. The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity. The process of reproducing the object is more independent of it than the manual reproduction. The process can bring out those aspects that are unattainable to the naked eye in the finished work, example the use of enlargements or slow motion can capture images that would escape natural vision.
The “aura” of the work of art is lost in mechanical reproduction. The unique existence and the intimacy that the artist has with the piece is lost with reproduction. It is said that the object is pried from its shell; its aura is destroyed. Earlier, artwork came about in the service of a ritual; first the magical then the religious kind. The aura was never entirely separated from its ritual functions; the authentic work had its basis in rituals. The work was not in existence for show but was only to be exposed to or meant for spirits. Mechanical reproduction therefore emancipated the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual or cult. Photography began to displace cult value but it also recorded it by becoming the standard evidence for historical occurrences. Photography also became a rival to painting as it forced artist to look to impressionism and abstraction instead of realism.
As film came along, an actor’s performance was presented by means of a camera and he lacked the opportunity of the stage actor to adjust to the audience during performance. The audience become critics without personal contact but via the camera. The aura of the actor vanishes and the aura the figure plays replaces it. The comparison of a cameraman and a painter is said to be that the painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality and the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web.
With the increasing extension of the press anyone is able to publish written material and at any moment a reader is ready to turn into a writer. The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art from the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. Painting is said to be in no position to present an object for simultaneous collective experience although they began to be publicly exhibited in galleries and salons.
In my opinion, there is always going to be mechanical reproduction or imitation of original art pieces, but the importance is the process by which one gets there and the personal spin that is placed on the finished piece. One of the most amazing pieces I have seen are those that are mixed up with the traditional techniques and the processes that came along with mechanical reproduction over the years.
The “aura” of the work of art is lost in mechanical reproduction. The unique existence and the intimacy that the artist has with the piece is lost with reproduction. It is said that the object is pried from its shell; its aura is destroyed. Earlier, artwork came about in the service of a ritual; first the magical then the religious kind. The aura was never entirely separated from its ritual functions; the authentic work had its basis in rituals. The work was not in existence for show but was only to be exposed to or meant for spirits. Mechanical reproduction therefore emancipated the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual or cult. Photography began to displace cult value but it also recorded it by becoming the standard evidence for historical occurrences. Photography also became a rival to painting as it forced artist to look to impressionism and abstraction instead of realism.
As film came along, an actor’s performance was presented by means of a camera and he lacked the opportunity of the stage actor to adjust to the audience during performance. The audience become critics without personal contact but via the camera. The aura of the actor vanishes and the aura the figure plays replaces it. The comparison of a cameraman and a painter is said to be that the painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality and the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web.
With the increasing extension of the press anyone is able to publish written material and at any moment a reader is ready to turn into a writer. The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art from the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. Painting is said to be in no position to present an object for simultaneous collective experience although they began to be publicly exhibited in galleries and salons.
In my opinion, there is always going to be mechanical reproduction or imitation of original art pieces, but the importance is the process by which one gets there and the personal spin that is placed on the finished piece. One of the most amazing pieces I have seen are those that are mixed up with the traditional techniques and the processes that came along with mechanical reproduction over the years.
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