A New Take On Mapping

The mapping project I am choosing to describe/interpret is the Walker lights one. The project is two black foam core boards with the layout of the first and second floors (galleries 1, 2, 3) of the Walker. The galleries inside the layouts are not labeled and the specific walls are not visible either. It is just the perimeter of the building where those floors are. Holes are punched through the foam core so red and blue LED lights can be placed through them. As shown in the key, the red lights represent female artists and the blue lights represent male artists.

The number of blue lights is much more than the red lights, so the information that was mapped seemed quite sexist upon first glance. However, when the information was really taken into consideration, it made sense. Women did not make as much art as men when contemporary art was first beginning/becoming popular. With that, there wouldn't be as many female artists in the Walker as there are men. The circular cluster of red lights found on the main floor is within the Dirt on Delight exhibition that is in the Target Gallery (?) right now. It's a temporary exhibition of ceramic works. Knowing that, it becomes even more clear that women were not involved in contemporary art as much as they are until a couple decades ago.

I think that the method that the group chose to display their information is very creative and that it works well. The piece is eye-catching and visually appealing to look at. Also, the information could be interpreted in a variety of ways.

Mental Mapping

** The images of the MIA and the Walker were found on Google. I did not take them myself.

** Blogger condensed the video, so it's shorter than the original. The transitions in the beginning are lost at this speed. Sorry if the video is blurry or moves too quickly to read.

For those of you who read this blog that are not in my section, this is my group's Mental Mapping project. We are mapping select contemporary artists at the Walker and MIA that are currently (for the most part) on view and how they relate to each of the museums.

Hope you enjoy.

c:

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

This is Yinka Shonibare's version of Goya's The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.

The original was an etching made by the painter and printmaker Francisco de Goya. The original was a portrait of the artist with his head on the table as owls and bats attacked him. It was meant to show what happens when reason is ignored. Another thought is that the piece shows Goya's creative process and the unleashing of the imagination, emotions, and nightmares.

Shonibare appropriated the iconic etching and gave it a contemporary art feel. The photo is of a white-haired man, not a self portrait of Shonibare like it should be if he were going to replicate the original, surrounded by realistic-looking owls and bat creatures moving in to attack him.

In Goya's version, the owls are symbols of folly and the bats are symbols of ignorance.

A quote from the original is "Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels."

Though a fairly realistic image, Shonibare's piece isn't realistic in concept. The idea of personified owls and bats so large that they can't possibly exist is definitely not real. However, the way the animals were created and those personified expressions they were almost makes the whole seen look real. Judging the piece on realism, it would fail in portraying the world exactly as it is, but it certainly succeeds in trying to make the viewer think that the image they are seeing actually happened.

In the Land of Not-Art . . .

New assignment! Last Thursday, we took a trip to the Walker. Our jobs were to find a piece we either strongly liked or strongly disliked and interpret it.

Here is what I found.

- - - - - -

Frank Gehry - Standing Glass Fish, 1986

Made of wood, glass, steel, silicone, plexiglass, and rubber

"In Toronto, when I was very young, my grandmother and I used to go to Kensington, a Jewish market, on Thursday morning. She would buy a carp for gefilte fish. She'd put it in the bathtub and this big black carp - two or three feet long - would swim around and I would play with it. I would watch it turn and twist . . . and then she'd kill it and make gefilte fish and that was always sad and awful and ugly."

Fish have been a recurring motif in Gehry's work. He was first inspired by them when his grandmother would bring them home Thursday morning and put them in the bathtub. One can often find resemblences of them in his furniture and architectural designs and drawings.

Gehry is more well known for his stunning and innovational architectural pieces like the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Guggenheim Bilbao than he is for his sculptural pieces like the Standing Glass Fish. Google Gehry's name and I personally guarantee you that you will find much, much more about his architectural work than his sculptural work or drawings. However, I find that this one sculptural work is more impressive than any of the buildings he has created. Perhaps this is because I haven't seen them in person, but even having never seen the fish in person, it would still rank higher than the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Why? Because the fish is real.

When I think Walker, I think of rooms and rooms of art that don't make sense. Paintings that are just color and shape. Sculptures that look as though a lump of clay or melted plastic or random objects from the kitchen junk drawer were just placed on a stand and labeled with a fancy title or the ever mysterious 'Untitled'. Things that don't make sense unless you know the context of them - when they were made, who made them, what the artist was thinking/feeling/doing when they made them. But this fish . . . The fish is a fish. There's no hidden key to unlocking its secrets. You don't have to do research to figure out its meaning. It tells you what it is the moment you see it and if you want to know more, it's right there for you on that handy little plaque in front of the sitting pool.

I feel like the fact that you can see the underlying structure of the sculpture relates to the ugliness of the story that he told about his grandmother killing the fish. In a lot of sculptures, you don't see the inside structure that gives it its form or keeps it all together. Yet, even while you see the 'ugliness' of the sculpture, the glass scales and fins of the fish reflect the beauty that Gehry was, and still is inspired by. The pool that this fish comes out of can also be a respresentation of the bathtub that the fish once swam in. However, since the water appears to be black, the pool doesn't reflect the happiness of seeing that fish swim, but rather the sadness and awfulness of seeing it killed and made into something like gefilte fish.

While, to me, the fish is just a fish, to Gehry, this is a memory of the moments he spent watching the carp swim around in his bathtub.

So. After not being able to walk past the french fries, trapped in a world of confusing art pieces after confusing art pieces, I found refuge in this fish. Thank you, Frank Gehry, thank you so very, very much.

c:

Other Images //

http://media.walkerart.org/1636600.jpg

http://collections.walkerart.org/item/enlarge_fs.html?type=object&id=570&image_num=2

http://www.walkerart.org/walker_images/e_images/01/wac_122e.jpg

Sources //

http://garden.walkerart.org/artwork.wac

http://collections.walkerart.org/item/enlarge_fs.html?type=object&id=570&image_num=1

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/gehry_f.html

Imaginary Sources //

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Gehry

Probably Not What He Was Going For . . .

Last Thursday, we made the wonderfully confusing journey into Minneapolis and the Midway Contemporary Art gallery. While at the gallery, our assignment was to find a piece that was on display that sparked our interest and to analyze it here, on our blogs.
As I'm sure you've noticed already, I am horrible at analyzing artwork. However, as this is being graded, I will keep trying!

So, the piece I chose was Jeff Elrod's Hopps. It is a 36x24 inch acrylic painting on canvas made in 2001.

According to the packet that was given out by Midway, it belonged to the Remes' private collection before being featured in the gallery. But that's not really important. What is important, however, is that this piece gave me very little insight to the life of Mr. Elrod. Looking at Hopps, I'm going to say that he is an abstract painter. The image looks computer generated, though it is very clearly done in acrylic paint. Judging by the fact that there is no obvious subject, Elrod could have made it so that the viewer would then be forced to find their own subject in the piece, as well as their own subject matter. What is this piece about? What is it saying?
. . . . .
To be perfectly honest, my first reaction to this, and many other abstract art pieces, was that my four-year-old cousin could have made this, what a waste of canvas. Even so, it was the piece that piqued my intrest the most. Upon coming home and doing some research, like any good art analyzer should do, I found that Elrod has done a lot of these abstract works that look like they're computer generated. When looking even farther into his work and at the process by which he creates it, I found that this was much, much more complicated than it originally appears to be. Elrod uses a time consuming process of outlinging the shapes he wants in his composition in tape of varying widths and sizes - definitely not something my four-year-old cousin could do.
So I had found some information about the artist, but I had nothing concerning the title. While Googling Elrod, a Walter Hopps popped up - he was a curator. Perhaps Elrod admired Hopps? I couldn't find anything to back that theory up.

Now, rewinding.

Back in the gallery, before I did any sort of research, I stood staring at this abstract, supposed waste-of-canvas piece of 'art'. I was trying to figure out what in the world this thing was about. And then I learned about the title, and honestly, I giggled a bit. Hopps, in my mind, did not bring forth the image of the curator who popped up on Google, but rather a tiny tidbit of information I had learned a couple of years ago.
Now, I am no beer drinker, but I do know that beer is made with hops, and, of course, that was what my mind immediately focused on. Then it just took off running with that idea. Perhaps this painting is really of some poor guy who drank too much at his buddy's party the night before? His whole night had been a blur. Just a bunch of squiggles like the ones at the top of the canvas. He passed out on the couch after a long night of partying and drinking and his mind and the thoughts in it were all just alcohol-induced squiggles and this was a portrait of him and his after-party, pre-hangover condition.
Poor guy.

Once my mind had gone that far, it was impossible to look at the piece in any other manner, even after research and finding Walter Hopps on Google.
My mind works in very strange ways.

EDIT :: Abstract art, in my mind, is art that has no strictly expressed form. For instance, a painting that features a woman sitting on a chair has a clearly defined form. The woman and the chair are both forms. Abstract art, however, is about line and color and how the two interact, much like Hopps, which is why I call it abstract art. The lines and the color don't make up a clearly expressed form, but rather leave it to the viewer to try to find one in the piece.

Mining the MIA

Following after Fred Wilson's Mining the Museum in chapter three of Describing Art, our assignment was to choose 3-5 items from separate areas of the MIA (Minneapolis Institute of Arts) and describe an installation we might create. The installation is meant to challenge the viewer's assumptions about those works of art.

Here goes.

The pieces I am choosing are the Allegory of the Four Elements by Cornelis Jacobsz. Delff, the Virgin and Child in a Landscape by the Master of the Embroidered Foliage, the The Resurrection of Christ by Giovanni di Marco, and the Lamentation with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Catherine of Alexandria by the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy

I would place all of the pieces inside a large, plain white room - four walls. The room would have no lighting, save for three spotlights shining on Virgin and Child in a Landscape, The Resurrection of Christ, and the Lamentation with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Catherine of Alexandria. These three pieces would all be hanging in the middle of the room so they are the first things you see when you walk in. Behind them, hanging on the wall in the dark, would be the Allegory of the Four Elements. It would only be slightly visible from behind the three hanging in the middle of the room, and the details of the painting would not be clear in the low light.

My idea was to show the way that religion, specifically Christianity, is always battling against science. I mean, think of the argument alone between the two when it comes to teaching evolution or creation in schools. Eesh. Anyways, I wanted this installation to show that overall idea of war between the two and how most people focus directly on the religious aspect of the argument and don't give much thought to the scientific side. That is why the Allegory of the Four Elements is hanging on the back wall in the dark. The scientific side of the argument does not get as much publicity.

This is probably really confusing and the idea itself is rather controversial. It's more clear and defined in my mind, but of course, it is nearly impossible to form into words. So, rather than trying to explain it further, I'm going to leave it up to you and your opinions of it. I'd love to hear them. [:

Postmodernism

I'm not entirely sure if I understand this, but I'll give it a go.

The assignment is to select a work of art and write at least one paragraph about it from a postmodern standpoint using ideas from chapter 2 in Terry Barrett's Criticizing Art.

Alright.

So the work I have chosen is this: Werewolf Nesting Dolls

This is a set of nesting dolls created by missmonster on deviantART. I would say that these art definitely postmodern. missmonster took something that can be seen in many different cultures (Russian and Egyptian) and applied it in a new context. This is something that postmodernists are known for doing. The nesting dolls were not made based on their utility, but rather reflect the artist's interests and thoughts. The werewolf nesting dolls allude the the form of the Russian nesting dolls, however, much unlike them, they do not emphasize the formality that they had. Postmodernists strive to work away from the formal elements that modernists valued so highly in their work.

The definition of postmodernism from dictionary.com is 'any of a number of trends or movements in the arts and literature developing in the 1970s in reaction to or rejection of the dogma, principles, or practices of established modernism, esp. a movement in architecture and the decorative arts running counter to the practice and influence of the International Style and encouraging the use of elements from historical vernacular styles and often playful illusion, decoration, and complexity.' I believe that missmonster definitely accomplished the latter of the two definitions in her piece. The Werewolf Nesting Dolls refer to the nesting dolls of Russia, and are playful and decorative in subject matter.

interior crocodile alligator . . .

So I didn't explain very well. This blog is for my Orientation to Art and Design class ( OAD ) at the College of Visual Arts ( CVA ). In this particular blog, you, my humble viewer, will find my thoughts and comments on readings were do for class, museums and galleries we visit, and other miscellaneous art things that I dub interesting.

Sound good?

Good.

HALLOOOO

FIRST POST! WOOT WOOT.

ER . . . YAH.

PS: Yay for caps lock.

So. My name is Ashley Masog. I have three cats. One is named Chowder. He is cute.

The blog is for class.

I've never had a blog before.

Yup.