Images, Ideas and Culture

Art Moves Us

Candee Basford — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 14:57:25 +0000

I invite you, no I encourage you to engage in Heather’s inquiry into how art moves us. Heather is chronically her intense learning journey with words and images (many of them hand drawn and painted) on her blog.

Here are some of the questions she is unpacking:

What causes Art to Touch us?

How does it move us…or seem to move right through us?

Why do we have physical reactions to art?

Boroque Inspired Collages

Candee Basford — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 16:33:18 +0000

Click to view slideshow.

Speaking of Cubism…

caseylee08 — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:15:17 +0000

As I was working on my art journal I came upon something that caught my attention and peeked my interest. The Sleeping Gypsy by Henri Rousseau stood out to me because it was stated that it is post-impressionistic. Now, granted my idea of post-impressionism was/is not perfectly on target, I did not see how it could be considered to be post-impressionistic when it looked so cubist. It’s lines were smooth and it’s brush strokes were nearly invisible. It had that not quite 3D yet not quite 2D quality to it that makes cubist paintings so unique. I remember when this painting came up in class and I thought, “I like this painting but there is something off about it that I definitely don’t like. It looks too cubist.” Well at the time I didn’t take any measures to find anything else about the painting but when I ran across it again I decided that I needed to get to the bottom of this painting and it’s “miss-named style.” Well the answer was not hard to discover, fortunately. After some Googling I discovered that cubism was the next large artistic movement to follow post-impressionism. And as Henri Rousseau painted more toward the end of the post-impressionistic movement and close to the beginning of the cubist movement it makes sense that he would straddle the line between them in his work.

It was interesting for me to make this discovery because it made me feel better about my ability to recognize different styles of art. I know that we didn’t focus on the technical memorization part of History of Art or the “what makes this, this” part either, but the way that we did study, the way that we were able to research as we ourselves saw fit helped me to hone my art recognizing abilities and my want to discover the who, when, and why of various pieces of art. Thanks!!

C. L. Baker

Why Don’t I Like Cubism?

caseylee08 — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 12:32:15 +0000

At the beginning of this course our instructor told us to come up with a question having to do with art, something we have always wondered or something that pops into our head inspired by something in class. Well, to be quite honest, I just didn’t have any questions. Nothing I felt would make a good blog post or even just a good discussion in class. It’s not that I don’t question things, we obviously know that, it’s just that with so many million other things going through my mind I never really took the time to look more deeply into the art and styles that we were being presented. Yes, I can admit it that I didn’t put nearly as much effort into Art History III as I did in my other classes, and I was pretty shoddy at doing and turning in the homework on time. I would leave the class, completely exhausted by the end of the school day, dreading the fact that I had to go to work directly after that class, and the fact that we even had homework would just fly out of my mind like the bug that gets caught behind the window glass in your car and darts out as soon as the window is rolled down. I had a truly great time in this class and the tense discussions we would have were quite fun for all their (at times) senselessness: ie. objective vs. subjective. I can’t say that I wasn’t disappointed. Not in the class; in myself. I made the same mistake that I made my freshman year by letting one or a few simple things get in my way of making a full effort and for that I will suffer greatly. I wanted to excel in this class and only ended up failing miserably. Save for the people at Prezi(rawr), I am entirely the one to blame, as always. It’s a difficult and almost (for me) impossible truth for me to recognize, but I will stand up and face it and whatever consequences may come from it.

So with that comes my question for the class, inspired by my own epic fail: Why don’t I like cubism? At the conclusion of this class I was met with this question as I researched Pablo Picasso, a cubist of whom I am a fan. I looked closely at his Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and felt that as I was drawn to the painting for it’s raw quality, I was also inadvertently repelled from it by the simple fact that it was cubism. I asked myself why. It’s colors were striking, it’s figures were beautifully grotesque, and the symbolism was perfectly laid before the viewer to see and interpret as they would. I knew that I loved the painting. And hated it. The longer I stared the more real the answer became. I was not happy as I gazed on that masterpiece because I didn’t want to be looking at it at the time. It made me realize and see the hole I had dug for myself and just how deeply I had fallen down into it. I realized that I didn’t like cubism because it worked liked my mind. It worked like the part of my mind that I always, always try in vain to ignore. A cubist takes his/her subject and tears it into pieces, revealing it’s outside and inside, it’s front and back, its top and bottom, all at the same time. Nothing is left unexposed. And yet, everything is still obscure, smothered in ambiguity. I do this. When this part of my mind takes over I reveal myself in every way that I never wanted to. It’s the moment when my mouth pops open and a thought bursts forth that I was not even conscious of thinking. I let myself go in that moment and always regret it afterward. Countless memories flood my mind now of all the times this happened and something was ruined because of it: a relationship, a friendship. You can never really take back what you said. I don’t like cubism because it is that moment that I hate to experience laid before me in mocking triumph. An artist can use that moment to his/her advantage while that moment is always to my disadvantage. This may seem like a petty reason not to like something but it is my petty reason and against all reason I cling to it. I can appreciate cubism for all of its qualities but I will never love it.

Long story short, I just don’t like cubism.

C. L. Baker

Introducing…..Trannin Ryder Blaine

pinkpaisley03 — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:14:47 +0000

He’s here! My beautiful baby boy! Weighing in at 7lbs. and 1oz. and 22in. long! He was three weeks early and still a healthy size and he is absolutely perfect! We decided on Trannin about five minutes after he arrived. It was either going to be Ryder Trannin or Trannin Ryder. Trannin is after my three brothers, TRavis, shANNon, and kevIN! He looks a lot like my brother Shannon so we knew when we seen him. He was born Friday, the 4th of June on my mom and dad’s 39th wedding anniversary! Mason and Lydia could not be happier about their baby brother! We already cannot remember life without him! Have a wonderful Summer everyone…we know we will!

-Emily

One More Author!

Paul Davis — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:22:05 +0000

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, essayist, and technology activist.

What does any of that have to do with Art History, though? Well, kind of a lot. In his book Content, is an essay titled Warhol is Turning in His Grave (page 171). In the essay, he talks about going to a Pop Art exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Works by many prominent Pop Artists such as Andy Warhol were exhibited, but there was a ridiculous amount of irony caused by the “No Photography” signs posted at the exhibition.

“These signs are not intended to protect the works from the depredations of camera flashes (otherwise they would read “No Flash Photography”). No, the ban on pictures is meant to safeguard the copyright of the works hung on the walls — a fact that every member of staff I asked instantly confirmed.”

These portraits were made by violating copyright, and now they are being protected by it? Something seems a bit funny here. As I understand it, when you violate copyright, you get sued into oblivion by the publishing companies.

Copyright wasn’t like that when Warhol & Co. were making their work, though. Copyright was used mostly to keep big companies from profiting off of other big companies’ ideas. Instead now, ordinary people are getting sued by people like Universal Studios for making a copy of a DVD they bought so their kids don’t ruin the only copy of Toy Story 2 the family owns. What does this have to do with Art, though? Aren’t artists the ones being ripped off by pirates? That’s not quite true. In theory, artists have their income protected so they can go on to make more art, but in practice all that really happens is that media companies have more control over how we can use our property.

Paul

Comics

rous4352 — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 18:34:13 +0000

I just wanted to talk a little bit about how much I enjoyed Raye’s presentation on comics! She did such an amazing job, I felt it was noteworthy to blog about !

But first, one thing I really loved about our art history class was the ability Candee gave us to open up and show who we are on the inside. She has such a great talent to make people feel good about themselves. I caught her complimenting people everyday, saying “Oh what a cute top,” or “I like your new hair color,” like she told me. Having such a positive teacher really helped our class open up and show who we really are and what we enjoy.

Raye’s presentation was fantastic! To put so much thought and time into a comic like she has, shows she truly is striving to be the very best she can be … which I think she deserves a lot of credit for, but okay enough of the bragging.

I really enjoyed the comics and learning a little about the Japanese culture. The comics were so different from what we read here, and from someone who reads daily it was so interesting to see that they read backwards compared to Americans!

All in all .. she helped make the art class the most enjoyable one yet! Thanks Raye

And a special thanks to all of the classmates who made art history great this quarter! and most importantly for Candee for allowing us to be ourselves and be proud of it. You really are an inspiring teacher and I feel I have learned a lot about myself from your class.

Best of luck to all the classmates!

Good Taste

Paul Davis — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 00:58:06 +0000

Of all the authors I’ve read, one has shaped how I view Art more than most others: Paul Graham. Paul Graham is a programmer, painter, venture-capitalist, and essayist. He primarily writes about technology and venture-capitalism, but he also writes about a wide range of other topics. He doesn’t talk about Art very much, though, at least not directly. One essay he wrote, Hackers and Painters, was mostly about hackers, but it brought out a point that has stuck in my mind since the first I read it.

“When I finished grad school in computer science I went to art school to study painting. A lot of people seemed surprised that someone interested in computers would also be interested in painting. They seemed to think that hacking and painting were very different kinds of work– that hacking was cold, precise, and methodical, and that painting was the frenzied expression of some primal urge.

Both of these images are wrong. Hacking and painting have a lot in common. In fact, of all the different types of people I’ve known, hackers and painters are among the most alike.”

-Paul Graham, Hackers and Painters

This opened up a lot of new possibilities for me. Painters and Hackers are what Graham calls “makers,” which are essentially people who make things. Painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, writers, carpenters, and others were all connected by their occupation of making things. Why can they be lumped together into one group, though? Everyone in that group has a different personality and way of working; other than the activity of making, what ties them together?

Graham answers this in another essay, How Art Can Be Good. This is his only essay that I can remember being about Art. The essay details how the idea of taste being subjective is simultaneously true and false. What ties the vast majority of makers is that they want to make things well. Taste being subjective functions perfectly well until you try making something. However, when you try making something, that begins to break down.

“I grew up believing that taste is just a matter of personal preference. Each person has things they like, but no one’s preferences are any better than anyone else’s. There is no such thing as good taste.

Like a lot of things I grew up believing, this turns out to be false, and I’m going to try to explain why.

One problem with saying there’s no such thing as good taste is that it also means there’s no such thing as good art. If there were good art, then people who liked it would have better taste than people who didn’t. So if you discard taste, you also have to discard the idea of art being good, and artists being good at making it.”

-Paul Graham, How Art Can Be Good

How can Art be good, though? If we are all different how can we be expected to have the same standards? We don’t. However, Graham points out that we all have something in common: we are all human.

I’m not going to summarize the entire essay for you though, you should just read it yourself. I had run into the problem stated at the beginning of the essay when I ran across Graham’s essay, and being told that it was possible to do art well was like lifting a boulder off of my chest. The only unfortunate side-effect of the whole thing is that now that I believe in good taste, I have to believe in bad taste.

How is that? Why can’t I believe in one and deny the other? It’s because one can’t exist without the other. For the sake of argument, let’s say people with good taste love the color yellow, and only the color yellow. Bad taste would be anything that isn’t yellow, then. The scale from good to bad would look like a color wheel going from yellow to violet.

If you take out the bad colors, what do you have left? Everyone is right and we’re right back where we started; nobody’s right because everybody’s right. The idea of rightness isn’t necessarily being correct, but being more correct than the people who are wrong, so if you remove the wrong answers you really just create more wrong answers.

-Paul

Delacroix

Candee Basford — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 18:33:38 +0000

josh

Let’s Get Comical

Candee Basford — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 02:45:32 +0000

During the last few minutes of my art history class my eyes were opened to a new field of art. A field where your imaginations can run wild, a place where your dreams become a reality, but most of all I realized aren’t we living in a comic book ourselves?

Everyday we imagine, dream, and create things to match what we think our future should look like. We are constantly messing around with the future. In comics we see the characters and their lives and how they are making decisions whether we like them or not. We can’t just jump into the comic book and tell them how to run their own lives; in essence we are alone in a comic book with no one to tell us how to run our lives. Everyday people talk about change and what needs to be done, but does it rarely ever get done? In comics we read often about these fantasy worlds full of bizarre and extreme creatures, or deformed people talking about everyday life issues. But what if we were the ones in the comics? What if we were being wrote about in the comics? A lot of people read these comics never giving a thought to them if they are real or not? The artist could actually be describing things that are going on in their lives!

This didn’t really hit me until I listened to Raye’s amazing presentation on comics. She talked about how she used her experiences to create characters and sequences that matched her reality with her fantasies. Why don’t we start looking at the fantasy as if it was a reality? We are constantly living in a state of disbelief. Say a reknowned environmentalist had discovered a purple unicorn in Maysville, Kentucky! At first we would laugh our eyeballs out, and throw it aside as a falsehood. But the minute we saw the documentary or footage on TV. We would immediately be shocked! Why, because we live in disbelief! We are not use to being comical. In some artists background being comical is the only way they can be productive. By creating a comic they are releasing their feelings and views to the world. They are literally describing the world around them and how they see it. To them this is their yoga. This is how they release their creativity. Not in words, but in pictures. So the next time your reading a comic and you start thinking how in the world and why? Let’s get comical!

Ryan