The Embellished Version of Events...

devidsketchbook: GENERIC ART SOLUTIONS (G.A.S.) -...

Sat, 05 May 2012 16:42:13 -0400

Liberty

The Capture of Christ (Judas Kiss)

he Head of St. John the Baptist

The Raft

GENERIC ART SOLUTIONS (G.A.S.) - Photography

“Liberty” 2011 Archival Inkjet Print on Photographic Paper 30 x 40 in.

“The Capture of Christ (Judas Kiss)” Archival photograph, 24 x 36 in.Caravaggio Series

“he Head of St. John the Baptist” Archival photograph, 24 x 36 in,Caravaggio Series

“The Raft” Archival Inkjet Print on Photographic Paper,30 x 45 in.

"Photography is in a way a mental process. We have to know what to, be clear, on what we want to say...."

Sat, 05 May 2012 16:39:06 -0400

“Photography is in a way a mental process. We have to know what to, be clear, on what we want to say. Our conceptions, our, what we think of a certain situation, a certain problem. Photography is a way of writing it, of drawing, making sketches of it.”

- INTERVIEW: “Henri Cartier-Bresson - Famous Photographers Tell How (1958)

moral-uncertainty: On the beach at Golfe-Juan in 1968, Mili...

Sat, 05 May 2012 16:38:17 -0400

moral-uncertainty:

On the beach at Golfe-Juan in 1968, Mili captures Picasso reveling in two of his artistic obsessions: the mask and the minotaur, a mythical half-bull, half-man that featured prominently in much of his work. An excerpt from a 1968 special issue of LIFE, devoted entirely to Picasso, describes a typical scene at home: “Putting on a mask is sometimes enough to set Picasso off into a kind of witch-doctor frenzy. He roars and writhes behind his gorilla mask, dances away to the mirror, returns in a rubber devil’s mask to swoop down on his daughter Paloma. Picasso was one of the first European artists to recognize the magic and beauty of African masks, and his own masks show the enduring power of that early influence.”

lucreciasline: … I am moved by fancies that are curledAround...

Sat, 05 May 2012 16:37:37 -0400

lucreciasline:

…

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

~ T.S. Eliot, Preludes IV

Painting: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Pablo Picasso. 1907. ᔥ moma

designcloud: The shadow by Rook Floro

Sat, 05 May 2012 16:37:19 -0400

designcloud:

The shadow by Rook Floro

sfmoma: Gerhard Richter Painting opens tonight at the Roxie and...

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:40:21 -0400

sfmoma:

Gerhard Richter Painting opens tonight at the Roxie and runs through May 10! Want to win a pair of tickets to see the film? Create a Tumblr post explaining why and tag it w/ #sfmoma (so we can find it) for a chance to win ‘em!

remediosthebeauty: Tamir Sher wanted to put an old record...

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:37:37 -0400

remediosthebeauty:

Tamir Sher wanted to put an old record player to one last use before tossing it; he placed reproduction paintings on the turntable and took photos at variable speeds. The effect is pretty neat.

Tamir Sher

Sarah « KENSINGTON BLUES

Fri, 04 May 2012 11:37:40 -0400

Sarah « KENSINGTON BLUES

curiositycounts: “Picture This”. Loving artist Sammy Slab’s...

Fri, 04 May 2012 09:56:39 -0400

curiositycounts:

“Picture This”. Loving artist Sammy Slab’s fine art prints.

"I was very aware of photographic history when working on this project. I really believe that..."

Fri, 04 May 2012 09:55:07 -0400

“I was very aware of photographic history when working on this project. I really believe that photography was the medium of the twentieth century, because of the ambiguity surrounding the question of whether it was or was not art, due to photography’s mechanical nature. I saw GSV in some way as the ultimate conclusion of the medium of photography: the world being constantly photographed from every perspective all the time. As if photography had become an indifferent, neutral god observing the world.”

- Interview: Jon Rafman, The lack of history in the post-Internet age | eyecurious (via photographsonthebrain)

cavetocanvas: Bernini, Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, 1645-52....

Tue, 01 May 2012 22:24:50 -0400

cavetocanvas:

Bernini, Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, 1645-52. Located in the Cornero Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome.

cavetocanvas: Caravaggio, Entombment, c. 1602-04 Things to...

Tue, 01 May 2012 18:34:25 -0400

cavetocanvas:

Caravaggio, Entombment, c. 1602-04

Things to think about when studying:

How does this work of art fit into the Baroque movement?

What new and inventive elements is Caravaggio using to depict Christ?

Where is the viewer in relation to the scene?

blaaargh: Makapansgat pebble, c. 3,000,000 BCThe Makapansgat...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:28:00 -0400

blaaargh:

Makapansgat pebble, c. 3,000,000 BC
The Makapansgat pebble or the pebble of many faces, is a 260-gram jasperite cobble with natural chipping and wear patterns that make it look like a crude rendition of a human face and is considered the first manuport. The pebble is interesting in that it was found some distance from any possible natural source, in the context of Australopithecus africanus remains in South Africa. Though it is definitely not a manufactured object, it has been suggested that some australopithecine, or possibly another hominid, recognized it as a symbolic face and brought it back to camp. If so, it may be a candidate for the earliest example of symbolic thinking or aesthetic sense in the human heritage.

Appearance of first manuport, Makapansgat pebble with distinctive “staring eyes” markings and facial features deposited by hominid in dolerite cave in Makapansgat South Africa, may date as early as 3,000,000 BC.

The teacher Wilfred I. Eizman found it in Makapansgat in the Makapansgat valley (or Makapan Valley) north of Mokopane, Limpopo, South Africa in 1925. Almost 50 years later, Raymond Dart was the first to describe it in 1974.

Bicycle wheel

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:26:05 -0400

Bicycle wheel

cupoftea1: Fountain by Marcel Duchamp, Alfred Stieglitz

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:24:36 -0400

cupoftea1:

Fountain by Marcel Duchamp, Alfred Stieglitz

What makes something "art"?

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:20:37 -0400

Though it is very broad… The most complete definition that I could give to the concept of “art” would be an object that has been assigned a meaning or value which is greater than it’s physical function.

Wikipedia defines art as:
a term that describes a diverse range of human activities and the products of those activities, but is most often understood to refer to painting, film, photography, sculpture, and other visual media. Music, theatre, dance, literature, and interactive media are included in a broader definition of art or the arts.[1] Until the 17th century, art referred to any skill or mastery and was not differentiated from crafts or sciences, but in modern usage the fine arts are distinguished from acquired skills in general.
Many definitions of art have been proposed by philosophers and others who have characterized art in terms of mimesis, expression, communication of emotion, or other values. During the Romantic period, art came to be seen as “a special faculty of the human mind to be classified with religion and science”.[2]
The nature of art, and related concepts such as creativity and interpretation, are explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics.[3]

Britannica Online defines art as “the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others.”

So the consensus seems to be that the concept of art is surrounded by the ideas/actions of *creation* *interpretation* and *sharing*

“…Both art and language rely on the human ability to abstract, that is the ability to assign meaning to a thing or image that refers to something else.

Humans are so good at abstracting that we do it innately and all the time without hardly ever even pondering how amazing and powerful a skill it is. Searching for the first evidence of this skill, some scholars identify the Australopithecus Africanus hominids of Africa as the first known creature to display this skill. The evidence of this theory resides in a tiny pebble with big implications called the Makapansgat Pebble. The pebble was found among other articles at an archeological dig approximately 3 million years old. What’s obvious to us is that the pebble looks like a human face, so much so that we can’t help but see it right away. It was determined that the pebble had to have been found at least twenty miles away from the Australopithecus settlement and had to have been carried to that site… Why would the Makapansgat people have picked the pebble up, brought it home, and kept it safe if it wasn’t because of their recognition of the face?” -http://people.ucls.uchicago.edu/~bwildem/art_hist_laba/prehistoris.html

As far as we know, humans began intentionally creating art about 32,000 years ago based on fantastic cave paintings and skillful carved rock figures from the period. But a lesser-known aspect of human psychology is when humans first begin to appreciate artistic vision.

It is entirely likely that our ancestors had a feeling for art and some concept of aesthetics and symbolism long before they had the ability and the tools to actually create art themselves. One could even imagine that it was the aesthetic sense in early humanity that drove us to discover the skills and materials of artistic expression so that we could fulfill the visions ourselves.

Such visions of art would have been found first in nature, in random circumstances when an object presented itself with the right aesthetic qualities. Archaeologists found such an object in 1974 in the Makapansgat Valley of South Africa, in a cave complex that had been in use by humans for millions of years.

The object, now known as the Makapansgat Pebble, is a small, roundish rock of Red Jasperite with peculiar markings on it. For us, in the 21st century, it’s no problem to look at a photo of the Makapansgat Pebble, note the two round depressions next to each other and the straight groove underneath and, without hesitation say “that looks like a face.” The pebble and markings are much more fascinating due to the context in which the pebble was found.

The Pebble was discovered in the remains of a site that was inhabited by an ancient human ancestor, Australopithecus Africanus, dated to between 2.5 and 3 million years ago. Australopithecus were not capable of creating complex tools themselves, but they did make extensive use of found objects to perform all sorts of tasks. The Pebble itself does not resemble any known tool that they used and its purpose, if it had one, is a complete mystery. Upon further examination, it is clear that the markings on the pebble are natural, probably the result of water erosion, but it is also interesting to note that the nearest deposits of Red Jasperite are several kilometers away from the cave system where the Pebble was found. So apparently, sometime around 3 million years ago, an Australopithecus found this rock in or near a stream, picked it up and carried it a fairly long distance to keep around the home — without any indication of any practical value.

Is this the reason why that Australopithecus noticed the Pebble and deemed it important enough to grab it and carry it all the way back home? Keep in mind that these folks didn’t have pockets or purses. The Australopithecus would have had to carry it in hand for the entire journey, so there was definitely an intention there. If our friend (and possibly relative) the Australopithecus did see the face, understand the resemblance and place an aesthetic value on that resemblance, purposefully making a decision to keep it, then that would mark the earliest moment of a human ancestor appreciating a work of art that we know of.

This would be indicative of a mental capacity beyond anything that other animals display. Even when animals like chimpanzees or elephants can be taught to create paintings or other artwork by humans, they never show any interest in the work after it has been created. In the case of the Makapansgat Pebble, we can imagine that the Australopithecus was so taken by the stone face that he wanted to keep it, cherish it and perhaps share it with others, displaying an attitude that shows that we have placed value on art for a very, very, very long time.-http://bindersart.blogspot.com/2010/05/subject-of-art-5-makapansgat-pebble-and.html

This can be compared to the much later and very influential work of Duchamp:

READY-MADE
- An everyday object selected and designated as art;

the name was coined by the French artist Marcel Duchamp.
Duchamp created the first ready-made, Bicycle Wheel (1913), which consisted of a wheel mounted on a stool, as a protest against the excessive importance attached to works of art. This work was technically a “ready-made assisted,” because the artist intervened by combining two objects. Duchamp subsequently made “pure ready-mades,” each of which consisted of a single item, such as Bottle Rack (1914), and the best-known ready-made, the porcelain urinal entitled Fountain (1917). By selecting mass-produced, commonplace objects, Duchamp attempted to destroy the notion of the uniqueness of the art object.***** The result was a new, controversial definition of art as an intellectual rather than a material process.*****
Duchamp and his ready-mades were embraced by the artists who formed the nihilistic Dada movement from 1916 to the 1920s; Duchamp became Dada’s main proponent in the United States. The ready-made continued to be an influential concept in Western art for much of the 20th century. It provided a major basis for the Pop art movement of the 1950s and ’60s, which took as its subject matter commonplace objects from popular culture. The intellectual emphasis of ready-mades also influenced the conceptual art movement that emerged in the 1960s, which considers the artist’s idea more important than the final product.-
http://m.eb.com/topic/492875

Ways of Seeing....

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:22:44 -0400

Most people think Art History is really boring.

I think they approach the subject wrong. If you look at it as a bunch of stale images, names, and dates to memorize and regurgitate then it is very boring.

I look at works of art as portals into a world that I am not a part of.

Every image is a representation of the point of view of another human being. An image/work of art does not necessarily represent actual reality or the accurate history of events, but rather a version of reality seen through the lens of the artist’s personal perspective, opinion, emotion etc.

Studying Art History is really about studying the relationship between Humanity, Society, Creation, and Perception. To remove an image from the context which is was created… or the context which it is now seen by people is to only get part of the story.

Who made this? When? What was the world/society like at that time? What is the subject? Why did he/she make this? Who paid for it? Who owns it now? Who gets to see it? Why is this image interesting or important?

John Berger’s Ways of Seeing is an interesting read.

”Berger starts by trying to explain the relationship between words and what we see.

He points out that seeing and recognition come before words. It is seeing that

establishes our place in the world, but we use words to explain this world. Despite

this he argues there is always a distinction between what we see and what we know.

Having established that we see first and then use words to explain the world,

i.e. what we know, he then goes on to say what we know or believe affects the way

we see things. This makes it a dynamic relationship; it may start with seeing and

recognition, but develops into a system in which our past experience or knowledge

changes the way we see things. For example, today we would see fire differently

from people in the Middle Ages who believed in the physical reality of hell.

The act of seeing is active; it is an act of choice. We see what we look at and so

relate to it. We also become aware that we can be seen, and so are aware we

are part of the visible world. This results in the understanding that others may

see things differently. This two-way (reciprocal) nature of vision comes before

dialogue.

For Berger, ‘An image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced . . . which

has been detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance . . .’

(p. 9). This detachment can be great or small, but all images, including photographs,

involve a way of seeing by the person who has created the image. Further, when

we look at someone else’s image, our understanding of it depends on our way of

seeing.

Berger argues that images were first made to represent something that was not

there, and later acquired an extra level of meaning by lasting longer than the original

subject. The image now showed how the subject had once looked to other people.

Later still, with the increasing consciousness of the individual, the image was

recognised as the particular vision of a particular artist. Nothing else documents

the past so well, and the more imaginative the work, the more we can understand the

artist’s experience of the world. Unfortunately, when images from the past are

presented as works of art, their meanings are obscured (mystified) by learnt

assumptions such as beauty, truth, form etc. Our understanding of history will always change as we change. However, this cultural mystification results both in

making the images seem more remote, and allows us to draw fewer conclusions

from history.

When we see art from the past, we have the opportunity to place ourselves in

history. The mystification is an attempt to prevent us from really seeing the image

and so deprives us of our history. For Berger, this has been done deliberately

‘… because a privileged minority is striving to invent a history which can

retrospectively justify the role of the ruling classes…’ (p. 11).

The impact of photography

From the Renaissance onwards, perspective in art converged on the single spectator,

who could only be in one place at a time. The implication was that images were

timeless. Photography, in particular the movie camera, changed this. What you saw

depended on your place in time and space. The camera changed the way artists

saw. Impressionists saw the visible in continuous change [as the light changed so did

the appearance of the object] and Cubists no longer recognised a single vantage

point [so, for example, they would paint a face with an eye seen from one vantage

point and the nose from another].

A second major impact was to destroy the uniqueness of images. Prior to

photography, images were an integral part of a building, and as a result this was

a part of the images’ meaning. Even if the image could be moved, there was

always only one image. By reproducing the image, the camera multiplies and

breaks up its meaning. It can be shown on your own lounge wall, on the television, or

on a T-shirt.

To argue that the reproductions will always lack something still leaves problems,

because the uniqueness no longer resides in the meaning of the image, but in its

unique physical existence. Its value lies now not so much in what it says but in its

rarity and the price it would fetch. There is a conflict here because art is thought

to be above commerce. Those who mystify art respond by claiming that the

commercial value reflects the spiritual value; yet in modern society, religion is not

the living force it once was. What determines an image’s value is not its meaning or

quality of painting, but its uniqueness, and Berger cites the example of two almost

identical paintings of the Virgin of the Rocks by Leonardo da Vinci. One is at the

National Gallery and other at the Louvre.

In both institutions, their art historians’

prime concern is not the meaning of the image but to prove that their image is the

original and the other, the copy. Likewise, certain images take on new importance

when their value increases. To hide this link between artistic value and market

value, a false sense of religiosity is given to these works, so alienating most people

from art.

Reproduction detaches the meaning from a painting, and its meaning is to a

greater or lesser degree changed. By selecting a part of an allegorical painting for

example, it can be transformed into a portrait. A filmmaker can construct an

argument by selecting parts of a painting and presenting them in a particular

order. Presented with the painting itself, the viewer takes in the whole image in

an instant, and, even when looking at a specific area, can always refer to the

whole.

The juxtaposition of words and images also changes the meaning. The meaning

of an image will change depending on its context. The image could be used in

advertising, often reconfirming the mystification of art, or someone could pin a

reproduction on his or her pin-board, seeing something very personal in the

image.

Berger still sees a value in the original image. The original is silent and has traces

of the painter’s actions, creating a closeness between the painter and the viewer, so

making the painting, in a sense, contemporary.

Berger feels a total approach to art is needed, one that relates art to everyone’s

experience, including the innocently spontaneous and that of the art specialists.

Art no longer exists as it did. It was once isolated, part of a hierarchy, but now

images of art are available and insubstantial. Yet it is still presented to people in a

mystified way and so alienates them, cutting them off from their history and

making art a political issue.”

(Find this summary of Berger’s Ways of Seeing here: http://v5.books.elsevier.com/bookscat/samples/9780240516523/9780240516523.PDF)

(Or read the original text here: http://sds.parsons.edu/lab/files/2010/06/berger.pdf )

Berger was heavily influenced by Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Find the full text here: http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm