Listening to Laure Prouvost and watching her videos it is obvious she is wanting to transport the viewer, me, to a world of storytelling. When I first viewed Prouvost’s videos i was totally engaged in the narrative of a fairy tale with an adulthood take. Re-watching again and again I can pick up the artist is taking me to a wonderland but its really clear a narrative is unfolding into another world. The world of Loure Prouvost where conceptual art making, vivid travel diaries and exotic hideaways, naked females in watering holes, streams, tropical fruit and island paradise plays as a juxtaposition. Is this to keep you watching, or just a style of video making ? Looking towards my final assesment for Critically speaking, my presentation will be focused part on the spoken live presentation and part video. Prouvost along with Aki Sasamoto are fuelling my ideas, it is apparent from these two artists that they are in their own world that fuels creativity. They both use a form of ambiguity, and the dare to take chances, experiment, be absurd is ok. Both these artist have however produced high quality filmic storytelling. What i can take away is the experimentation with a story, no matter how random the story may be is ok, and be in my own world, do not try and re-create someone else’s work, be as different as I like, if it works great if it does not, try again another day.
Robert Rauschenberg: Minutiae 1954. A freestanding combine, something that wasn't hung on the wall but could stand on the floor. Made for Merc Cunningham's dance play. /
Researching about Robert Rauschenberg’s combines, as they continue to inform the experimental way some artist have used everyday discarded objects to attach to their paintings and sculptures that then become a completed work, I have been reading an essay by Charles Stuckey in Robert Rauschenberg combines The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Steidl 2005. What aluminates my interest is how Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, Merc Cunningham and John Cage collaborated on works in the early 1950’s during there time at Black Mountain College and shortly after. Stuckey talks about examining the Minutiae 1954 looking at the collaged newspapers and how they were selected editorials, that at the day served meaning to what Rauschenberg was making. (p.199) “like Pablo Picasso, did Rauschenberg prefer newspaper items about issues connected to his art and life” I find interesting that the combines were a kind of highbred not a painting not a sculpture and in Minutiae a performance piece that has legs stands on the floor not to be hung on a wall. Possibilities I see here are endless, like my imagination all sorts of random thoughts just continue to pop in and out, the combine explores and illustrates anything can be art. Another well written about work ,that is discussed, in this essay, is the painting given to Rauschenberg by De kooning that Rauschenberg spent a month solid erasing. Again anything is possible. Is this a form of soft sculpture the eraser presumably would have been flexible and the image has been erased, what we can see or perceive, to me the illusion is in my head a form of the conscious becoming transported to an unconscious state to formulate whatever the image might have been. There is a picture taken by Rauschenberg in 1954 of Cy Twombly with his work in Rauschenberg’s studio holding a painting with a box on the floor and an ensemble of household items… funnels, round mirrors, cooking spoons, and hand fans. The emphasise here is on the power of humble objects, the everyday, these works in there explorative nature tell me to just go and try anything see what happens, be brave.
Joseph Beuys performing in Rome: The Drawings of the Myth-Making Action Artist /
I have been reading the book by Bernice Rose, Joseph Beuys and the Language of Drawing, she talks about Beuys thinking behind his drawings. The never ending practice he had of always, where ever he was in the world, instead of writing he would draw, articulate his immediate thoughts into scraps of paper, journals whatever was at hand to use at the time. Beuys has been quoted in the this book “Drawing is the first visible form in my work… the first visible thing of the form of the thought, the changing point from the invisible powers to the visible thing” As I read and look at Beuys images it is becoming clear to me that his intellect and cultural identity expanded far beyond what was evident in his travels and seminars. The vision of creating both the female form and the natural world are ever so prominent in these drawings. They are a form of inquiry like the stain on the page that then evolves in some half human half animal creature sporns my practice to take risks on the page let the pencil, ink flow and the mind will follow.
Annette Messager, French born 1943, this image was sourced from Moma exhibition Oct 12 1995- Jan 16 1996. Soft sculpture body parts, hanging in the gallery like a surrealist /
Looking at this exhibition, and reading about Messager I see a direct correlation with my own practice. Her surrealist manner in which she creates these sensual body parts, remind me of tenderness, temporality and a sense of the real. What I imagine as the real within the artist head, illustrating a justpostion between the body and the surreal world. The surreal in my drawings is one part of my work that i am working on and these images help to affirm what i am doing.
Taxidermy images Boarders 1971-1972 photographs of sparrows with knitted pullovers, again illustrate this sense of vulnerability, a life lost, yet through these mages a tenderness evokes.
Cy Twombly: Untitled Rome 1970. Painting from the blackboard series. The line is an undulating wave, flowing cascading , gathering momentum, the background oil paint made to look like a blackboard. /
Following on from my previous Blog I again look at the scrawling wave-like letters that mesmerize and make me want to look more deeply beyond the canvas, what is Twombly saying here? Again is the poetic gestures these words elicit, am I reading to much into the work, should we just enjoy the work for what it is, I think not. Describe in an essay by Christie’s auction house, where the painting reportedly sold in excess of $69,000,000.
“The nuance and strength of expression that Twombly manages to inflect in his line while still maintaining a continuous rhythm and flow are what makes these lasso-works truly exceptional. Twombly’s incisive and idiosyncratic line simultaneously manages to express both a continuity and fracturing of this flow, which generates a pervasive sense of dynamic independent movement caught up in a collective progression caused by an irresistible, insistent and perpetual force.”
Looking at Twombly’s graphic blackboard series the artist signature style is so evident, as I have said it is mesmerizing the abstraction of letters, words the delicacy of the brush on the canvas the gigantic loops the visual communication the physicality the embodiment, all project an inquiry, what is Twombly saying? There is plenty written about his connection with the poet Stephane Mallarme, my thoughts lead to this painting being a communication dialogue with himself that alludes to personal thoughts, hidden meaning, we as the viewer need to look beyond the surface. These hidden meanings are what i am delving into in my practice today.
Cy Twombly: Vagueness: The Poetics of Abstraction, the unmistakable marks of his hand flowing ever so freely yet impregnated on the canvas. /
Reading Poetry in paint 2016, Mary Jacobus, I am re-energized with the beautiful scrawling and what appears to be the ever so delicately mark of Twombly on his canvases. His writings and the interpretation of how they evoke into artwork. Quoted in this chapter (p.79) “paint, not the object, but the effect it produces….” discussed is Twombly’s intention to paint not the poetry, but the effect it produces. This way of working a drawing a painting a sculpture is how I endeavor to express my own feelings through art. Barthes says of Twombly “line was inimitable because the most fundamentally inimitable thing of all is the body” (p.80) Barthes is also cited as saying to him Twombly uses the paint like Jete ; of something having been thrown- as if he imagines not only the elegance of the long supple throw of a baseball player but of a dancer’s leap. I see a correlation with the dancer’s leap, yet struggle to see a throw of paint to the canvas. (p97) Barthes describes of Twombly’s letters and words on the canvas as “the irreducible residue of the body-in-writing, its distance from the speaking voice, its refusal of power and violence, and its resistance to psychoanalytic interpretation.” here he is talking of Twombly’s paintings Letter of Resignation,xxv11 1967. These words certainly give meaning to the work yet again I see this painting more like the free-flowing blurring of words through the erasure the attempted rubbing out, starting again, the words un-readable create a flowing motion on the canvas. Jacobus draws the connection with Twombly studies of Leonardo da Vinci, A Deluge, ca. 1517-18 drawing, here the picture is full of a storm, waves and wind seem to encompass the entire work, there is much unrest, and this parallels with Letter of Resignation,xxv11 1967.
host.com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/EbscoViewerService/print?an=1223452&db=nlebk&format=EB&lang=eng&ppIds=["pp_78","pp_79","pp_80","pp_81","pp_82","pp_83","pp_84","pp_85","pp_86","pp_87","pp_88","pp_89","pp_90","pp_91","pp_92","pp_93","pp_94","pp_95","pp_96","pp_97","pp_98","pp_99","pp_100","pp_101","pp_102"]&sid=e23229fc-4cdd-4b0b-b04c-d19b2f07fa86@sessionmgr101
Anna Maria Maiolino, an inspiration, at 78 years old a woman full of enthusiasm still exhibiting, making important work and having a voice that is empowering. /
Anna Maria Maiolino, draws on her personal history living in several countries, Italy, Brazil and America. Her femininity to create a tactile oeuvre spanning fifty years. /
Listening to Anna being interviewed for her exhibition “Between Senses” and at the SCAD Museum of Art (“By a Thread”) she comes across as a very sensitive articulate woman that enjoys the sensual feeling of working with clay “ it is a celebration of the hands” and creating sculptures that having a sense of the body in time and place. Her work spanning over fifty years has an un-complicated tactile resonance. I see minimalism and expressionism as being very evident with a distinct accord with life in how her clay sculptures attached to the wall and on the gallery floors have this sense of movement and freshness that looks like they were newly made. Her drawings have this similar tactility, simple form objects that again are un-complicated in the use of just one or two colors give this striking lively agility. It is quite amazing to look back at Anna’s work and see how little has changed yet they continue to possess this free-flowing sensuality. I can see a connection in her sculptures with Eva Hesse how Eva presented herself as a participant in her work she had the same feminity and tactility that lives on. My interest clearly is how both Anna and Eva articulate the bodily resonance of how they are able to demonstrate the lived organic and sensual personal presence. Anna discussed in Between The Senses interview what she defines her practice as having, motherhood, hunger, migration, fragility, resistance, lovemaking for something lost, and nomadic as a Brazilian woman. In the late ’60s and 1970s, a political emphasis was present in her work as was the same at the time with her contemporaries Helio Oiticica, Rubens Gerschman, Raymundo Colares, Antonio Dias.
Rachel Whiteread in Conversation with Ann Gallagher Tate 2017. A down to earth contemporary sculpture that has a no frills approach to using the everyday to cast a superb array of works. /
Sculpture, casting the every day life size and having the ability to look at an object from teaspoons, to the Holocaust museum in Vienna are trademarks that Rachel Whiteread poses in copious quantity. Originally making her name and winning the Turner prize in November 1993 for project Untitled ( House), Such an impressive interview with this down to earth lady, she talks in simple language and allows the viewer to capture the essence of her process in how she formulates her work. Whitereads practice she describes as a life long privilege to make a good living over the past thirty years doing what she loves. An ambitious hard worker not afraid to take on the challenges of being the first lady to overcome near impossible. Like the casting in resin of the rooftop Water tower in So Ho New York city 1998. During the day the sculpture has an aura of the cedar lining it was cast from and at night through its translucent material it is invisible. Her work challenges the everyday object a feat in itself to be talented to make objects take on a new life yet look like the real they were cast from. Many of these forms taking on the reverse thus like House giving an aura of the lived ephemeral quality and at the same time bringing new life to a derelict home, or like her cast mattress that has this bodily aura as it is kind of slumbering resting on a wall or the baby like talking water bottles, they are limbless headless yet it is like they are living talking back to you. Whiteread talks about her sculptures evolving firstly from drawings that she sees as works in themselves and like a lot of her smaller sculptures form a series of studies, that is then transformed to major works. My current mini-project mood bags is a series more than twenty brown paper bags that I have drawn and colored with pastel simple smiley faces some with text, to describe how i am feeling at a given moment of the day. Looking at these bags I can see this work evolving into cast bags of some sort, much like Whitereads casting in resin of the undersides of chairs Untitled (100 spaces) 1995
Shorter Than the Day” by Professor Sarah Sze. This massive public sculpture embodies the passing of time and transcends human interaction through its placement at Laguardia airport. /
The Poem (bellow) was derived from a letter Dickinson wrote to Abiah Root where she asked, “Does not Eternity appear dreadful to you…. I often get thinking of it and it seems so dark to me that I almost wish there was no Eternity. To think that we must forever live and never cease to be. It seems as if Death which all so dread because it launches us upon an unknown world would be a relief to so endless a state of existence.” cited 25 august 2020.
These words conjure up in my mind what I feel about life at the moment, the temporality and the un-know, a sense of not being able to reach a point of certainty, is what I am experiencing a path that will lead to a fulfilling life of achievement. What is an achievement as to me this changes frequently? The article by David RobsonWords as feelings, ideophones, and what words when to read or said out loud create their own secondary meaning, this meaning may hold a more expressive emotive content than the original word or sentence. So when I read this letter from Dickinson my mind harks back to the Japanese lady Naurun ? Reiko Takahasi 78 as she prepares seaweed. What relevance does this have with Sze’s installation none really, except words like the ideophones create secondary meanings, and to me this is what art is all about?
sAMPAIGN_2019_02_06_03_04&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-b109279b4a-68667629 Cited 27 July 2020
Sarah Sze’s massive installation at the newly opened extended Laguardia international airport is such an imposing and exciting sphere yet it blends seamlessly into space balancing above a two-level void, where passengers move in and out coming and going from the airport transcending into another city or country.
The sculpture evokes the passage of time through an intricate constellation of photographs. Hundreds of images form a mirage-like sphere that appears to float in midair. Each photograph captures a snapshot of the sky above New York City taken over the course of one day. Collectively, they chart a cyclical journey from the pale yellow of dawn to the bright Or rather – He passed us.” ceases to amaze her installation works are massive yet they seem to effortlessly fit into these enormous spaces. What informs my practice is how Sze articulates so beautifully sculptural 3d forms that to me hold a bodily context, in which people in there every day will, (once the business is back to normal, post COVID19) will go about the moving busily around this airport occupying the space as if they were apart of it. When you look up into this sculpture from the ground, I wonder what thoughts you may evoke, to me the sense of another planet immediately come to mind, the size yet the openness, the light seems to drift within the sphere, like you could dangle in the air and float, move around it much like a maze where you dart in and out, not knowing which direction will take you to its innermost planet or which way will lead you back to earth.
https://zh-cn.facebook.com/Gagosian/videos/186779182734207/Because I could not stop for Death (479)
Emily Dickinson - 1830-1886
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –
Or rather – He passed us –
The Dews drew quivering and chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –
Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –
Mona Hatoum: Changing Parts 1984, Video photo of Hatoum inside a transparent cube. She presses against a wall of the cube smearing it with liquid clay , which resembles blood. /
This is an early work of Hatoum’s, which resonates with my practice on several layers. The body here is used as aesthetics not abject, which it may first seem, but as a corporal physicality of an action. Hatoum being a British and Palestinian woman works between the Western and Palestinian cultures thus giving a juxtaposition between the two origins. Danto, (p.139) discusses aesthetics “I know those aesthetics became politicized in art criticism by the mid-eighties. Conservative art critics insisted on stressing aesthetics as what those they perceived as left-wing critics neglected or overlooked.” Hatoum in her performance is acting out the female gender of aesthetics, yet on the other hand, being a Palestinian person and English politicize the work.his image can be viewed as the body being protected insulated from the exterior world, or as imprisonment is self-imposed, yet self-expression through the murky water and the touch of the glass walls, this is my world and you can view but you can not enter or ask me any questions. I relate this to my own world, of the sensory inner thoughts I harbor. Viewing Hatoum one can take on any illusion of thoughts, I immediately am drawn to the performance of Ana Mendieta in her Silueta series where her body where just a few photos as an archive were made. Like Hatoum here, this is a very personal action.
Danto , AC 2013, What Art Is, Yale University Press, New Haven, viewed 21 August 2020.
Andy Warhol: Electric Chair 1964. Screenprinted with silver acrylic. An unoccupied electric chair, this image has all the hallmarks of death. /
It is interesting to me that as I continue to find my own voice this semester and define my practice that this week’s lecture and reading is about mimesis, in particular, the subject of Andy Warhol, his Death and Disaster series from 1964 and the context of affect and emotions more broadly within contemporary culture. The image Warhol created of the electric chair is taken from an original I photographed at the Broad Museum in LA in January 2020. So trauma and images of an unsettling nature as I see things has been playing with my subconscious for quite some time. Currently, I have been using this image to make my own images of an electric chair, with the content being the body the self departed. So the reading, Reflective mimesis in contemporary visual culture by Elizabeth Walden looks at Warhol’s pop culture and his use of screenprints as direct mechanical mimesis and motif for pop culture at the time the work was made. Walden discusses how through the repetition of the same image the viewer was desensitised by the image and pop culture took over as the status of Warhol she says as a genius of the art world was everywhere. p.36) “that they don’t create the same sense of distance from what they depict that they once did.” The extreme emotion I feel lives on however I agree that as you view the image, like the car accident scenes you become almost blazae. The mimesis here is well illustrated, however, Foster in this chapter (p.37) views Warhol’s Nine Jackies , singles out these as being of celebrity notoriety, iconic and at a time in the United States Historically she was so well known that publicity referred to her as Jackie. My critical analysis is that no matter how Andy Warhol artistically portrayed Jackie they were both celebrities and his art would carry its own notoriety, it made difference if there was a postage stamp size of Jackie ( this could be another mimesis, stamps being used throughout America back then or even now) his art would be written about and viewed as the pinnacle. Getting back to my own images of the electric chair, mine has bodily ribs somewhat ephemeral creating a body that has departed not traumatic, not a gruesome room just a narration a personal account that fosters a departed spirit that still lives on in my imagination. I refer to Kiki Smith’s Ribs 1987 which talks about the body finding its own identity, these Ribs have their own frailty, they depict a mere fragment of our body the spirit.
https://tranauskascuratorialproject.weebly.com/kiki-smith.html. cited 20 August 2020
Louise Bourgeois, Cell (Choisy), 1990-1993. Memories, fear, family and trauma are all prevalent in Bourgeois seventy years of artistic narration, her personal journey. /
This sculpture tells of Bourgeois's personal struggles with dealing with her demons, thrust upon her by the somewhat put-downs, and how Bourgeois was traumatised by her father’s infidelity. The sculpture is where her parents ran a restoration tapestry business outside of Paris. The work is a room within a room, the Cell, and this building a model within it. It could be said as a mnemonic token. The pink building not only was the place of business for her parents but they lived in an apartment here. The guillotine blade that precariously hovers over the entrance to the cell and the warmth bodily color of the pink marble gives an aura of both being hard and soft. This duality is evident in much of Bourgeois's ovure. What I connect with is the sense of a not belonging to this world yet having been apart of the family structure, the trauma of living in this environment and now as an adult being able to self express. Those internal feelings of living with, now being able to still not vocalise them but being able to demonstrate through sculptures and drawings those demons. Emily Wei Rales in Louise Bourgeois,(p.15) talks of Bourgeois, “the house as the site of infantile experience, the idea of the home as an uncanny extension of the body, already established in her visual lexicon” Today more than any other time here in Melbourne COVID 19 confines us all to the home, for many a place to re-connect with loved ones for others a place that is a house, maybe devoid of the loving environment, and perhaps like what went on behind close doors in Louise Bourgeois family apartment a place of torment, struggling with detachment. A time to shut down retreat into seclusion, conjure up those feelings and emotions of unwanted or just escaping to another internal world.
Kiki Smith in conversation with Dodiya and Gieve Patel about her work. What i find resonating with me is that Kiki, she is a straight talker that draws on her own inner r self. /
My appreciation of the vast amount of drawings kiki has made over her long career is a constant source for my inquiry. I begin this blog putting together key points Kiki talked about in this interview. One of her major artistic influences in relation to using the body and internal organs was Frida Kahlo, Kiki drew inspiration from Kahlo’s surrealist paintings and how Kahlo used her own personal internal bodily experiences on to canvas. It is very evident these two artists were not inhibited as to the somewhat gory bloody images they made. Kiki in her life size sculptures the Human Body, Tail and her beeswax, microstyle male and female bodies untitled, and there are lots of others to view. The more i look at these sculptures the less grotesque they become, Tail a life size female with entrails trailing metres long out of her bottom, conjures up loads of thoughts and my immediate response is to give it a code a symbolic title. Is this body a statement of feminism, Kiki says the exterment so much being purged is women expelling there baggage, so is this sculpture a re-birth of women hood ? Does it symbolise beauty is under the skin not what we see on the outside. As i listen to and read more about Kiki i am easily convinced this work is not to embars makes us feel dirty, it is about women’s internal feelings a personal struggle with the outside world.
Patricia Briggs gives an overview while what i consider she was attempting to be precise in her account of the exhibition A Gathering, 1980-2005. held at Walker Art Centre, 2005. As a source to be relied upon i find it superficial and it certainly does not big deep in Smith’s practice. I also feel that the vast use of the word feminism and the body sculptured as abject symbolism raised in this review repetitive. Briggs skims over Kiki’s drawings and just focuses on the bronze works from, a female’s perspective. Smith is a tremendously talented we all know this, she has exhibited extensively for more than twenty five years. Her drawings may not have the shock value that some of Kiki’s sculptures do, but they i feel show a deeper sense of the artist practice, they have probably taken a much longer time to make and therefore hold significantly more value in why Kiki made them. Surely this is what people want to know ! The exhibition travelled to the Whitney Museum, here it was reviewed by Rosa Berland, Rosa in her opening paragraph sats “The artist deftly prints and then rubs away at the surfaces, making paper worn, layered and archaically beautiful. She sculpts waxen and bronze skin as bruised, scarred or rough, and renders diverse objects in unexpected materials” Berland talks about Smith’s encyclopedic visual mythology in her works, this gives meaning and the viewer can then look at the works with greater understanding. Sure the female body in the exhibition is ever present but it does not need to be reviewed by Briggs as this abject sensationalist object. Berland i get the sense really does understand Kiki Smiths work, she goes into detail about the inventive use of Smiths materials and the curiosity factor of how they initially came to be made, and without putting an ugliness of the female bodies on exhibition she articulates a feminism mythos and surrealism.
reference :http://contemporaryart2010.blogspot.com/2010/01/march-17_10.html
Briggs, Patricia. Woman's Art Journal 29, no. 2 (2008): 66-68. Accessed August 15, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/20358172.
Berland, Rosa J. H. "Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980-2005." C : International Contemporary Art, Summer, 2007, 46-47, Accessed August 15,2020
Ana Mendieta: Performance "Rape Scene" 1973. This image graphic, may offend some people, is a re-enactment, carried out in Mendieta's apartment, to a select group of her friend. /
Codes and symbols play a significant role in the analysis of this performance. Mendieta invited a group of friends over to her apartment in Iowa City for a small party they had no idea, of this re-enactment of a rape scene, un-titled. The work (to shock, illustrate trauma and bring awareness to rape) was made in response to a brutal rape and murder of a nursing student at Iowa university by another student at the same university in 1973. Mendieta celebrates her feminism and her identity of womanhood and the symbolism in her works like her Silueta series 1973-1977, this rape scene re-enactment was sparsely documented via photos. What I find compelling is Mendieta was not publicizing her work it was only after her death that she became noticed, and today is held up as a major contributor to contemporary art. Today as back in 1973, brutal rape and murders in Melbourne to vulnerable unsuspecting women just going about there daily life brings trauma not just to the victim but to those loved ones, co-workers, fellow students, and friends. Recent cases that brought our city to a standstill, while we paid tribute to the innocent include, but do not limit, are Jill Maher (2012) Eurydice Dixon (2018). As a protest Melbournians staged silent protest via a mass march down Sydney rd Brunswick, and a twilight candle vidual at Princess Park. Both silent protest were documented extensively, in the daily newspapers, television, and the internet, creating a symbol of awareness. So the power of art lives on in Ana mendieta’s one women protest.
Finkelstein in her Thesis Ana Mendieta A Search For identity characterises Mendieta’s Silueta Series as a symbol of the artist connecting with the earth, sublimely talking about her cultural Cuban loss of identity being an American Cuban and her spiritual connection with Christ.
Added 13 August 2020: I come back to thinking about Joseph Beuys his Fat Chair. 1963 and Tallow. 1977 using fat as a symbol of the body, and with Tallow he poured fat down a pedestrian underpass in the city of Munster Germany, the logic was that people sleep in the underpass therefore the molding fat represents a fragment motif of the body. Beuys life was art, everything he said and did and drew was about being an advocate for art. As quoted in Refiguring the Spiritual, p. 20 “When Beuys finally broke with the movement, the reason he offered was that Fluxus had no program for effecting real change in the world” I see Beuys like Mendieta creating there own vision making political statements via there artistic endeavours, both have contributed major influences today on how we interpret contemporary art. Today 13 August 2020 on my walk I laid down huddled on the ground next to the Yarra river making my own Silueta, my own body of fat, recorded as a self portrait, not an artist statement, yet the intentions comes from my readings of these two artist.
Finkelstein, Stephanie Lynne. "Ana Mendieta: A Search for Identity." Order No. 1512709, University of Missouri - Kansas City, 2012.
Taylor Mark. “Refiguring the Spiritual.” University- Columbia Press 2012
“I am interested in transformation, change, revolution.” – Joseph Beuys: We are living in "shutdown" the world has changed forever, evolution ! Not what us humans expected. /
“Beuys’s figures do not appear in a stable manner in any kind of detailed, particular context. Characteristic of Beuys’ figures in his drawings is that man and animals are existentially free in the surrounding nothingness, out in the open, in the large incompleteness, as anonymous protagonists of universal mankind”. Artland by Sheila Wolfe. This article discusses Beuys's drawings and some of his thoughts in relation to these images. Engaging in Beuys practice it is difficult to pinpoint which comes first, as we are informed during his life he always was jotting down in sketchbooks and notepaper drawings on his thoughts. Researching Beuys leads me to believe he was an enigmatic character forever preaching his beliefs that in a social category “everybody is an artist” he randomly used the blackboard to write down ideas that latter become artworks. I find this an intriguing argument that Beuys could make marks scribbles that had some drawing like figures and numbers that became artwork to display in galleries and museums. What I do applaud him for is the thinking and performances of social sculpture. Today we are in lockdown, it is not possible to physically meet up with more than two people, no curatorial gallery or museum gatherings, we are left to the devices of modern technology, RMIT collaborate online, virtual gallery and live via the computer. So what does this say about Beuys's “social sculpture” the living archive? While the idea of art made from people participating in social interactions goes as far back as the Dadaist movement, performances live at the Cabaret Voltaire circa (1916) Beuys can be looked back and viewed as a man way ahead of his times. The social dynamics today here in Melbourne as students working live on line gels with this socialist participatory way of working. Conceptually I see a link to Beuys project at Documenta 6 in Kassel, 1977 (26 June-2 October) Honey pump We are not free, we have six weeks of not being able to go out of our own living accommodation spaces, the Government has banned us, break these laws and we will fine you heavily. We are being dictated to, I do agree with this lockdown, I am just feeling that like what Beuys was preaching in his socialist political manner, today more than ever the art community voice is being muted and subconsciously as we have our lessons online, those that do most of the talking, submit peer pressure to those that may not be as strong or feel intimated to vocally participate.
Tarla Madani interview ART 21 talking about her sketchbooks. "The Womb" 2019 i can see gestures of a newborn life, on the surface and beyond the canvas. /
Tarla I find so engaging in her straight forward talking about her sketchbooks, they are beautifully simple illustrations that to me hold so much value. “…you make a little thing and another little thing and another little thing, and eventually you see a possibility.” The ideas that are generated, the sequence of images lead from one thought to the next. They catch ideas to refer to for larger works and to hold on to a thought. This way of documenting is a trait my practice can identify with. What I find engaging is Tarla’s what appears to be a free-flowing narration in her sketchbooks, like the images are talking to her, they have this immediate record that kind of leaves you looking for more insights. Like where is the sketch going, what’s the story, I really find this so playful and at the same time, it is like the recording is going on in my head, where will this lead to. This week Dom said to me I need to get out of drawing in my journal and move on to large sheets of paper and mediums Tarla inspires me to go and do it. She discusses her exhibition At First Light LA 3 July 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfx46ojAbRE two works of animations, where 1700 paintings were created for approximately two minutes of animation. Tarla talks about the brain how for her she paints quite fast and making these paintings was a way of just focusing solely on the process, without pre-planning, why can’t I focus like this. This could be a good project for getting out of my jumbled way of working.
Quote David Frankel, Helaine Posner, and Kiki Smith, “In Her Words: Interview with David Frankel.”
“Vitruvian Man” (c. 1480-1490) cornerstone of Leonardo's attempts to relate man to nature. When i view this iconic image i feel the senses of man our human existence and its relationship to nature. /
Joseph Beuys explored a connection with Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks and he produced a series of drawings inspired by the discovery of two lost da Vinci sketchbooks in the 960’s. Paper is not the only support for drawing but it is by far the most widespread. Drawings are made with graphite, charcoal, chalk, or ink and with brush or pen. Drawing is flat and monochromatic and it does not predominantly address colour relationships. ( Ginsborg 2003) Joseph Beuys “..It is not only a description of the thought…. You have also incorporated the senses…. the sense of balance, the sense of vision, the sense of audition, the sense of touch. And everything now comes together : the thought becomes modified by other creative strata within the anthropological entity of the human being” … (Jospeh Beuys in Temkin & Rose 1993) These experiences Beuys talks about and when i view Da Vinci’s image here all these sense seem to unify with my thoughts as i seek to find my identity in relation to the narrative of a drawn image. What strikes a chord with me is that following Dominic and Martine’s comments last semester saying i should give more focus to drawing, Da Vinci, Beuys and Egon Schiele are having an influence on my practice. Dissanayake (2000) discusses mark making as a natural consequence of the innate predisposition of humans to use hands, she gives much dialogue to the prehistoric art making of the first form of communicating as humans. My drawings when i don’t’ think to much, let the senses over ride my desire to make something look realistic, seem to flow in an organic sense of the line moves first then the connection with the brain follows. Looking at Leonardo Da Vinci’s studies of the human body drawings that are documented as ideas on paper initial thoughts again studies, not to be read as finished works of art, i can begin to analyze where my drawings seek to unpack thoughts senses and vision, to this extent they are great starting to points to seek out expanded projects.
Untitled (Salamander 1), by Joseph Beuys, 1958 Hare's Blood, ferric chloride, fat, pencil (Kluse collection Munich) Beuys imagery prolific was his testing ground for new ideas. /
Beuys i am finding uses his art to preach to anyone that will pay attention, and he had plenty of followers. What interests me is the way he communicates to the world through the lexicon of drawing his medium in this regard being “any physical sign of mental activity that was preserved and presented in a two-dimensional format”. C. Haxthausen The Burlington magazine, Jan. 1994, vol. 136, No. 1090 pp.53-54. The use of these unconventional materials, felt, beeswax, grease, blood, pressed plants, stamping, staining, and other materials. Beuys used these mediums to create performances, like the iconic work, I Like America and America Likes Me 1974. I am looking to extract how I can utilize Beuys imagery drawings his delicate touch like the Untiled Salamander 1 with the juxtapose proposition of a one-man performance. His materialized forms the drawings of women and animals have a Palaeolithic sense to them at the same time being imagery of thought rather than pictorial. The threads I am sowing are of awareness to the earth and the bodily humanist spirit, this is an evolving enquiring process. However, the transporting of thought to hand to paper to sculpture is where my projects lead. Beuys’s use of what he termed Braukreuz, a reddish-brown pigment that he began using around 1960 signifies a ritual like color and substance at the same time it becomes a motif, I locate it with blood, femininity and a way of translating animal to earth. This leads me to join Beuys with my research Ana Mendieta and her untitled Self Portrait 1973 where blood drips down from her forehead over and into her nostrils lips and on to her white blouse, a performance, solo captured as a photograph.
What is Art For ? Inspiration, creativity, a sense of community and belonging, in these challenging times pictures/images instill freedom of the mind. /
What is Art For ? written by Ellen Dissanayake, published University of Washington Press, accessed 29 June 2020. I have started my inquiry for semester two over the first-semester break to get a heads up for a COVID lockdown at home. Towards the end, the last four weeks of semester one were challenging for me to stay enthused and in particular, I had a hard time dealing with no physical contact of the RMIT Master cohort, the corridor chats lost to COVID and the bleak outlook for uni to stay online for semester two. So the investigation began to look for inspiration get me fired up and for the creative juices to kick in. So What is art For seemed like a safe place to start, having read and skimmed through some chapters, and also read her article The Birth of the Arts 1,12,2008 Dissanayake makes a valid effort that art began before humans could talk it was the start of creation, the biological evolution and how humans communicated? Dissanayake concludes that way back in prehistoric ages chimpanzees were somewhat like a man except they could not think as we do, they could not communicate as man does, and they could imitate but that was it. Motherhood is referenced as a bond between the newborn and the maternal nurturing that as humans are an attachment. p3. The “infant comes into the world ready to engage with others, they are exquisitely sensitive to human voices and faces-and particularly to certain kinds of sounds, facial expressions and head and body movements” Art as a source to communicate leads in both the natural world and the non-human world. My interest is in both these areas as I seek to find a connection through my practice the context being how do I make sense of reality in everyday life with my feelings of a spirt lifting my thoughts to the non-human nurturing from above the earth. like a baby kicking inside the womb and the mother responding with a gentle rubbing of the stomach or sigh that only a mother can know these feelings going back to Dissanayake's What Is Art For, she talks extensively about the emotions and beauty art posses and how we evaluate art as the receiver. My voice is looking to find an attachment like the baby kicking its mother for a sign of safety yet the baby is growing in a protected environment the nurturing before entering the world, maybe it’s a motif I am seeking to unearth. Right now the inquiry falls back on my ongoing interest with Ana Mendieta her Silueta series in particular, although I am now starting to review her Fireworks as they also have a strong embellishment with the body as the art form on a spiritual nature. Kiki Smith’s feminism sculpture depicting the body and her spiritual drawings and Joseph Beuys who I am just starting to explore his drawing ovure.