Thursday 27 May 2010
Deadline here
I decided to include the Balloons a little too late, and the ones I previously had custom made didnt fit the colour theme, so I decided to create a stencil and spray paint them. I hope they turn out well... fingers crossed! I have to do some tidying up then all should be done (I hope).
Tuesday 25 May 2010
Displaying the collection
I had to go back to my project proposal, although I have strayed quite a bit from my original intentions, I could make my project fit my proposal but creating a party scene. Because this would be creating art and beauty from some thing that is broken (a marriage) which is ultimately the breakdown of something being just and aesthetically significant as the composing of it. Because I have decided to create a party scene I have to consider the Handbooks significance in this and I will have to re make the CD cover if time allows. I will also make Balloons to compliment this display. Here are some Table displays that have inspired me....
I filmed candles that spelt out just married burning out and the end result was quite dramatic, it also represented how love (just like candles) eventually burns out. The candles were red and white so they would look great in the final table display.
I filmed candles that spelt out just married burning out and the end result was quite dramatic, it also represented how love (just like candles) eventually burns out. The candles were red and white so they would look great in the final table display.
The pinata
I thought back to the idea of a party scene and thoguht that a pinata would suit this divorce party setting perfectly, divorced women would love to hit a male head that resembled their husband it would be a great form of anger relief. I made my pinata out of paper mache and paint and completed the look with a wig. The pinata is filled with sweets!
The cake
After lots of research on divorce cakes I decided to create a divorce biscuit, I cut the heart shaped biscuit with a jagged line through the centre and customised with broken heart icing and a just divorced logo. The end result wasn't what I pictured. So I re-thought this idea, I was afraid of making a cake because I had no skills in cake making. So I decided to buy the bottom layer and make the top layer. I struggled to make the top layer so I ended up using pre-made sponge and icing the sponge. I bought cake decorations and organised them so that the bride was holding the head of the groom that she had beheaded with a saw (candle) and a gravestone (candle) at the bottom saying RIP marriage. I decorated this scene with red icing to look like blood. I enjoyed customising the cake and the results were great. The only difficulty I had was beheading the resin groom I ended up using a very sharp knife as scissors weren't working. It was also difficult to keep the grooms head attached to the bride so I is currently being held by tape until the PVA glue dries.
creating the hand book
I wasn't sure where I was going with these items so I wondered if a hand book would be relevant to a party scene. With this in mind I know i hadnt put as much thought into the making of it as I had with the other items. I wrote a paragraph on each of the most essential issues in divorce, solicitors, emotional support, financial advice, children, single parenting, friends, moving home, health and wellbeing, new relationships... I returned to the cut and paste method that I had used with the CD and did some illustrations to completment each passage I also made cards for 6 divorce Lawyers in London to put inside. This felt rushed and It was too similar to my previous zine however it lacked the visual diversity that the other zine had. With the deadline looming I decided to move onto the next thing... the cake.
More making
I thought about making a CD for this collection of Divorce necessities and choosing the songs was the easiest part as there are so many break up song divorce and relationship breakdown are so prevalent in todays society. So I thought about a song for each phase in divorce. So i took into account; the power song, the children, the exes feelings, the emotional song, the cheerful song... When it came to creating a CD cover I struggled, I had a creative block. So I started brain storming again. The CD would have to convey the concept well. Although a medical label would suit the whole notion of music therapy I decided to return to the vintage design. I enjoy creating things that have a hand rendered quality about them. So I used a cut and paste method using a dirvorce decree, and image of women celebrating and poignant statement for humour. The actual CD design was a 'just divorced' decorated car. I enjoyed making the CD and its cover alone however I wasn't happy with it as part of the collection. It didnt seem to fit in, in any way. I decided that there were other things to make so if time allows I would recreate something that was more compatible as a set.
Making things
I started on the new wine packaging by researching wine packaging... There were tonnes of designs that were intriguing and aesthetically pleasing. However I came across some simplistic designs whereby the label had lines for the user to write on the bottle and interact with the packaging, I decided to take this into account when designing my own label. I thought back to the chocolate bar wrapper and its prescription label, I decided to adapt this to the wine and reuse this (for consistency). In relation to the prescription label I also created a first aid box from red and white card for additional packaging. I was pleased with the outcome.
I decided that If I was to continue with this party scene idea as opposed to a kit, some cups would accompany the bottle of wine well. I thought back to the pharmaceutical notion and continued this by creating white paper medicine cups with divorce stamped on them. It was difficult papering these to make them look authentic but I finally got there.
When making the tissue box I instantly thought about those wipes you can use in hospitals and the packaging that they come in. Although this design would have suited the medical packaging that has dominated the other packaging designs, I had to assess the use for tissues during divorce. From this I concluded that a medical labelling would only accentuate a divorced woman's anguish (they would perceive them self as lesser than a married woman). So I decided to create something that was a little light hearted. I researched tissue boxes and there were frequent designs with crying faces on the packaging, I like the idea of packaging demonstrating its use however this was still quite pessimistic. I looked into 50's animations, for the humorous side of things and came across Ernie Pintoff. I like his simplistic style and started using paper illustration to create a crying face that was slightly humorous after many 2d attempts I created a 3d face. The nose was the place where the tissues were pulled from, which accentuated the humour. I also custom stamped each tissue with facetious messages such as marriage is grand but divorce is 100 grand. I enjoyed making this and was pleased with the outcome.
I booked a day in screen printing to customise the blank voodoo doll, this was a tricky process as I was working with a 3d surface which is something i haven't done in screen printing before. I printed of a list of things a divorced wife usually thinks or says about their ex husband, they were very American phrases, however this saved me time in making a list myself. I printed each quote in a random place onto the doll. The doll looked great, all I needed were pins and a box...
I researched voodoo doll packaging, as I wasn't sure how people would buy them? (Boxes,bags or alone) I decided that a box would be most appropriate, because I enjoyed making the tissue box so much I wanted to create a similar packaging for the Voodoo doll. Vodou has come to be associated in popular culture with the lore of Satanism, zombies and "voodoo dolls". While there is evidence of zombie creation, it is a minor phenomenon within rural Haitian culture and not a part of the Vodou religion proper. Such manifestations fall under the auspices of the bokor or sorcerer rather than the priest of the Loa. It has its origins in African (Haitian) tribes. So I wanted a box that conveys this. I started making African voodoo doll heads from paper. These were ruined during the leak that happened in my home 1 week ago, so I tried to replicate this in a box form using the red and white colour theme for consistency. The end product was fun and doubled as a storage box for the doll rather than one that is disposed of. The doll is removed from the mouth which is open, so the box isn't destroyed when the doll is taken out.
I decided that If I was to continue with this party scene idea as opposed to a kit, some cups would accompany the bottle of wine well. I thought back to the pharmaceutical notion and continued this by creating white paper medicine cups with divorce stamped on them. It was difficult papering these to make them look authentic but I finally got there.
When making the tissue box I instantly thought about those wipes you can use in hospitals and the packaging that they come in. Although this design would have suited the medical packaging that has dominated the other packaging designs, I had to assess the use for tissues during divorce. From this I concluded that a medical labelling would only accentuate a divorced woman's anguish (they would perceive them self as lesser than a married woman). So I decided to create something that was a little light hearted. I researched tissue boxes and there were frequent designs with crying faces on the packaging, I like the idea of packaging demonstrating its use however this was still quite pessimistic. I looked into 50's animations, for the humorous side of things and came across Ernie Pintoff. I like his simplistic style and started using paper illustration to create a crying face that was slightly humorous after many 2d attempts I created a 3d face. The nose was the place where the tissues were pulled from, which accentuated the humour. I also custom stamped each tissue with facetious messages such as marriage is grand but divorce is 100 grand. I enjoyed making this and was pleased with the outcome.
I booked a day in screen printing to customise the blank voodoo doll, this was a tricky process as I was working with a 3d surface which is something i haven't done in screen printing before. I printed of a list of things a divorced wife usually thinks or says about their ex husband, they were very American phrases, however this saved me time in making a list myself. I printed each quote in a random place onto the doll. The doll looked great, all I needed were pins and a box...
I researched voodoo doll packaging, as I wasn't sure how people would buy them? (Boxes,bags or alone) I decided that a box would be most appropriate, because I enjoyed making the tissue box so much I wanted to create a similar packaging for the Voodoo doll. Vodou has come to be associated in popular culture with the lore of Satanism, zombies and "voodoo dolls". While there is evidence of zombie creation, it is a minor phenomenon within rural Haitian culture and not a part of the Vodou religion proper. Such manifestations fall under the auspices of the bokor or sorcerer rather than the priest of the Loa. It has its origins in African (Haitian) tribes. So I wanted a box that conveys this. I started making African voodoo doll heads from paper. These were ruined during the leak that happened in my home 1 week ago, so I tried to replicate this in a box form using the red and white colour theme for consistency. The end product was fun and doubled as a storage box for the doll rather than one that is disposed of. The doll is removed from the mouth which is open, so the box isn't destroyed when the doll is taken out.
Thinking of a consistent theme
I started off with the chocolate bar wrappers, I decided I wanted to use 40's/ 50's pin up girls combined with anti men or feminist statements. After experimenting with google images and cutting and pasting I came up with three chocolate bar Wrappers that I really liked. I liked this theme and continued using it when making the tissue box and wine packaging, making each packaging design suited to its content. However the results weren't great, I showed them to several people who all insisted that they looked too busy and that the concept wasn't pulling through. On the other hand people really like the chocolate bar wrappers so I wondered where I was going wrong with the tissue boxes and wine packaging. I asked people to chose their favourite wrapper and a majority chose the red and white Emergency Ration wrapper; this was because it wasn't too busy, the concept was there and the composition worked well. From here I decided that the packaging of this stuff should look quite pharmaceutical/ first aid box like, so I researched first aid boxes and pharmaceutical packaging. The red and white theme would be most prevalent rather than the medical theme, because some of the merchandise wouldn't fit the pharmaceutical packaging; cd, voodoo doll, pinata... I also wanted the collection to still have a 1950s look about it. Therefore the items I made would have some consistency in their packaging; red & white, medical and vintage.
A little less conversations a little more action please...
Noel also suggested that I start making this kit or party scene (the end product is still undecided) rather than talking about making it. However I had one last bit of research to do before I started trying things out, i asked divorced women to list things that they commonly utilized or did after a divorce.
-Drank more Alcohol
-Partied with their single friends more
-Worked longer to keep them occupied
-Cried a lot
-Read a lot of self help books
-Ate junk food; Chocolate, biscuits, take aways...
-Became angry and full of resentment
-Tried dating agencies
-Wrote or listened to music
From this list I composed a quick brainstorm on what I would include in this kit/ scene...
- male head pinata (combines anger and partying)
- Voodoo doll (relieves anger and stress)
- Divorce CD (music)
- Divorce helpbook in Zine format (reading)
- Wine, and cups (drinking which isn't advised but it will be done any how)
- Chocolate bars (junk food binges)
- Divorce Cake (junk food and partying)
- Tissues (to wipe away those inevitable tears)
- Balloons (party environment)
- Rings (A gift for the divorced woman so she can replace her wedding ring with a new one)
The end product will fit my Project Proposal in the sense that I am creating art from something that is broken and I think that it is great that we can create beauty from a pessimistic situation. I also came across this Divorce Gift list service provided by Debenhams, this has similar intentions and incentives to my own project.
The new service, launched January 10th, follows the rising popularity of 'congratulations on your divorce' greeting cards and divorce celebration parties, made popular by celebrities including Jordan and Heather Mills.
A divorce may not be universally seen as an occasion for celebration, but the divorce gift list could become the 21st-century equivalent of the traditional wedding list.
The tendency for modern couples to live together before getting married means the wedding list – designed to stock the newly-weds' first home with basic goods – has become somewhat obsolete.
Divorce, on the other hand, results in one partner leaving the marital home, meaning they may have to fit out an entire new house with cookware, linen and electric goods.
Divorcees are expected to list large plasma screen TVs, computer games and non-iron shirts high on their lists to help them get over their break-ups and readjust to the single lifestyle.
With the first day back after the Christmas holidays thought to be the most common date for couples in the UK to decide to separate, this week is expected to see an increase in the number of divorce petitions filed.
Peter Moore, Head of Retail Services at Debenhams, said: “Divorcing can be an expensive time and registering for a Divorce Gift List means that family and friends can help the newly separated begin their new life.”
With this in mind I started researching and designing rings (divorce rings)Which I thought would be a great gift. A ring to replace the wedding ring with a motive. After looking at some amazing ring designs by Gisele Ganne I was inspired to start making straight away.
I thought about cost effective processes and instantly thought of laser cutting, the results cant be quite beautiful...
I created several designs and chose 3 to make
- a bride running from a groom
- a black bird (representing freedom)
- and divorce in writing in a knuckle duster form
They looked great until I dropped the Divorce ring, Due to the huge waiting list for laser cutting i had to make do with the broken ring which I fixed myself using a 3d paste, I hope that it wont look too bad.
I wanted to create ring coffins for each divorce ring so that the divorced lady can use it to bury her wedding ring. However the boxes i had created were too small and the making process was costly and time consuming. Due to the rings odd shapes I decided to create 3 broken heart boxes that were black stuffed with black chiffon for a sinister effect.
-Drank more Alcohol
-Partied with their single friends more
-Worked longer to keep them occupied
-Cried a lot
-Read a lot of self help books
-Ate junk food; Chocolate, biscuits, take aways...
-Became angry and full of resentment
-Tried dating agencies
-Wrote or listened to music
From this list I composed a quick brainstorm on what I would include in this kit/ scene...
- male head pinata (combines anger and partying)
- Voodoo doll (relieves anger and stress)
- Divorce CD (music)
- Divorce helpbook in Zine format (reading)
- Wine, and cups (drinking which isn't advised but it will be done any how)
- Chocolate bars (junk food binges)
- Divorce Cake (junk food and partying)
- Tissues (to wipe away those inevitable tears)
- Balloons (party environment)
- Rings (A gift for the divorced woman so she can replace her wedding ring with a new one)
The end product will fit my Project Proposal in the sense that I am creating art from something that is broken and I think that it is great that we can create beauty from a pessimistic situation. I also came across this Divorce Gift list service provided by Debenhams, this has similar intentions and incentives to my own project.
The new service, launched January 10th, follows the rising popularity of 'congratulations on your divorce' greeting cards and divorce celebration parties, made popular by celebrities including Jordan and Heather Mills.
A divorce may not be universally seen as an occasion for celebration, but the divorce gift list could become the 21st-century equivalent of the traditional wedding list.
The tendency for modern couples to live together before getting married means the wedding list – designed to stock the newly-weds' first home with basic goods – has become somewhat obsolete.
Divorce, on the other hand, results in one partner leaving the marital home, meaning they may have to fit out an entire new house with cookware, linen and electric goods.
Divorcees are expected to list large plasma screen TVs, computer games and non-iron shirts high on their lists to help them get over their break-ups and readjust to the single lifestyle.
With the first day back after the Christmas holidays thought to be the most common date for couples in the UK to decide to separate, this week is expected to see an increase in the number of divorce petitions filed.
Peter Moore, Head of Retail Services at Debenhams, said: “Divorcing can be an expensive time and registering for a Divorce Gift List means that family and friends can help the newly separated begin their new life.”
With this in mind I started researching and designing rings (divorce rings)Which I thought would be a great gift. A ring to replace the wedding ring with a motive. After looking at some amazing ring designs by Gisele Ganne I was inspired to start making straight away.
I thought about cost effective processes and instantly thought of laser cutting, the results cant be quite beautiful...
I created several designs and chose 3 to make
- a bride running from a groom
- a black bird (representing freedom)
- and divorce in writing in a knuckle duster form
They looked great until I dropped the Divorce ring, Due to the huge waiting list for laser cutting i had to make do with the broken ring which I fixed myself using a 3d paste, I hope that it wont look too bad.
I wanted to create ring coffins for each divorce ring so that the divorced lady can use it to bury her wedding ring. However the boxes i had created were too small and the making process was costly and time consuming. Due to the rings odd shapes I decided to create 3 broken heart boxes that were black stuffed with black chiffon for a sinister effect.
Sunday 16 May 2010
Tutorial
After my tutorial with Noel we discussed my idea and I had only looked at divorce as a celebration which was slightly impractical. So I thought about devicing a divorce kit which would be comprised of everything a divorced woman would need. I began to research artists that had also created kits the most intriguing was Geoffery Farmer who created the Hunchback Kit (2000 – 7) which is a collection of objects and documents that comprise a do-it-yourself kit for staging an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831). Several of the items in the kit can be seen as props and costumes for an actor wishing to assume the persona of Hugo’s hunchback bell-ringer, Quasimodo. Other items relate more broadly to the events and characters in the book, and its numerous adaptations on stage and screen. Alongside the kit hangs the rope of a church bell and on the floor beside it the bell itself, which, we are told, has rung in a distant forest. Many of artist Geoffery Farmer’s works consist of accumulations of material related to a given subject, typically drawing upon images and narratives from popular culture and literature. With this in mind I have decided to create essentials for a woman to get through divorce however I still want to take an optimistic stance when creating this project, something that could cheer a divorced woman up no matter what phase they are going through.
Interim crit
After putting my project ideas forward in the crit I got some great feed back, Some people suggested that I should take my love for fashion and photography further and create a photoshoot, whereby the models tell the story of divorce. I liked the sound of this idea however I felt as though it was a cop out and I would be cheating by letting other people tell the story I wanted to make it my interpretation of divorce. Others suggested working with cakes so perhaps create a Divorce cake? This would be an exciting project, it would also delineate the celebratory side of divorce, which I would much rather display. Rob suggested that I could create a divorce shop as opposed to a wedding shop therefore a complete subversion of the wedding industry. I loved this idea, it is original, satirical and humorous. I began to research this further. First of all I thought about all of the things associated with weddings; cakes, rings, dresses, music etc. So I started designing and creating samples of Divorce versions of these. I started to research divorce celebrations, and suprisingly divorce parties are a big thing in America (they turn any matter into a commodity). Some of the products I came across were inspirationsl whilst others.. not so much.
Phillip Toledano
To me this image suggests letting something precious go and to me it could represent the process of divorce reluctantly letting something beautiful go... I like the idea of working with Balloons and I may come back to this idea.
Trash the dress
Trash the dress, also known as fearless bridal or rock the frock, is a style of wedding photography that contrasts elegant clothing with an environment in which it is out of place. It is generally shot in the style of fashion and glamour photography.
Usually brides decide to have pictures taken on a beach, but other locations include city streets, rooftops, garbage dumps, fields, and abandoned buildings.
Some sources claim that the trend was originally started in 2001 by Las Vegas wedding photographer John Michael Cooper. However, the idea of destroying a wedding dress has been used in Hollywood symbolically since at least October 1998 when Meg Cummings of the show Sunset Beach ran into the ocean in her wedding dress after her wedding was badly interrupted. Since then the style has spread around the world and most notably in the UK, with photographers like Steve Gerrard and Mark Theisinger, amongst others, shoot their unique ideas of Trash the Dress.
A model often wears a ball gown, prom dress or wedding dress, and may effectively ruin the dress in the process by getting it wet, dirty or in extreme circumstances tearing or destroying the garment.
It may be done as an additional shoot after the wedding, almost as a declaration that the wedding is done and the dress will not be used again. It is seen as an alternative to storing the dress away, never to be seen again. I thought about destroying wedding attire in order to convey the gradual break down of marriage, however after speaking with tutors they suggested that using wedding attire wouldnt be the best way to portray this and that I should think of something original, something that hasn't been done. So I will research the concept of divorce further and perhaps find another medium to work with, I also need to think about the purpose of this notion and what I want to communicate.
Thursday 13 May 2010
Mcqueen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_HHa8T6xQo
After Seeing this inspirational video I decided to make some of my own videos documenting the break down of marriage using candles in one and bottles dressed as a bride and a groom in another...
Research
I am interested in fashion and photography so I started exploring ways in which I can translate the process of divorce through apparel film. I came across some inspirational websites and art works...
1. Alexander Mcqueen - Stripped Bare
2. www.trashthedress.com
3. Phillip Toledano - Balloons in Dresses
4. Hussein Chayalan - The dress that leaves the wearer naked
5. Helen Story - Green Fashion (the dress that disappears in water)
6. Hussein Chayalan - spring/summer 98
1. Alexander Mcqueen - Stripped Bare
2. www.trashthedress.com
3. Phillip Toledano - Balloons in Dresses
4. Hussein Chayalan - The dress that leaves the wearer naked
5. Helen Story - Green Fashion (the dress that disappears in water)
6. Hussein Chayalan - spring/summer 98
Tuesday 11 May 2010
Ch ch ch changes...
Focusing on the deconstruction of art and things was appealing however after exploring the definitions of undo, I found Annul was the only one I found my self perplexed with. Whenever I hear annul I assume people are talking about marriage, so I saw this as a challenge and began to research Annulment, undoing the I do and Divorce. Divorce isnt a topic that is alien to me so I knew quite a bit already, however it occured to me that there isnt much art that refers to divorce or covers it in any way people tend to avoid the topic. I saw this as an opportunity to embrace the matter, celebrate it, even commemorate it. I wish to convey this process of divorce through art in an optimistic light.
Tuesday 4 May 2010
Changing Direction
I have been exploring an array of concepts and forms where undo applies, from this I was inspired and thought about the forms I would like my FMP to take, and what form would be most appropriate in communicating what I want to say. I have decided to explore the word Annul in relation to my trigger word, however I have decided to explore it in terms of Marriage. I would like to explore the breakdown of marriage and divorce. Although this project has taken a different direction the idea was inspired by researching and exploring 'undo.' Here are my favourite discoveries from researching undo...
Since Hurricane Katrina, refuse and squalor have inspired a popular aesthetic in the art world. There’s a laissez-faire decadence in a work like Peter Garfied’s “One: Number 31, 1950” (2008) sculpture at Pierogi Brooklyn (below).
The Destroyed Room 1978
'My first pictures like The Destroyed Room emerged from a re-encounter with nineteenth-century art', Wall has said. Here, the work in question is The Death of Sardanapalus (1827) by Eugène Delacroix, which depicts the Assyrian monarch on his deathbed, commanding the destruction of his possessions and slaughter of his concubines in a last act of defiance against invading armies
Artist Michael Landy, who once destroyed his possessions in the name of art, has turned a gallery into a giant bin for the disposal of artworks. Over the next six weeks, hundreds of works by artists both famous and unknown will be dumped in the "Art Bin" at the South London Gallery.
So far, pieces by Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst, have been thrown away.
Landy said he hoped the bin would gradually fill up to create "a monument to creative failure".
Hierarchy
Members of the public have been invited to submit their own work for consideration, and they could end up in the giant container next to work by better-known artists.
"Some of this stuff is worth a lot in the outside world, but in the bin then it has no value, it has no worth," Landy told the BBC.
"In the outside world there is a certain hierarchy. In the bin there is no hierarchy, so everything is treated the same."
The Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS) was a gathering of a diverse group of international artists, poets, and scientists to London, from 9-11 September, 1966. Included in this number were representatives of the counter-cultural underground who were there to speak on the theme of destruction in art.
The Honorary Committee, led by Gustav Metzger, attracted the attention of both the international media and international art community to the symposium.[1]
Since Hurricane Katrina, refuse and squalor have inspired a popular aesthetic in the art world. There’s a laissez-faire decadence in a work like Peter Garfied’s “One: Number 31, 1950” (2008) sculpture at Pierogi Brooklyn (below).
The Destroyed Room 1978
'My first pictures like The Destroyed Room emerged from a re-encounter with nineteenth-century art', Wall has said. Here, the work in question is The Death of Sardanapalus (1827) by Eugène Delacroix, which depicts the Assyrian monarch on his deathbed, commanding the destruction of his possessions and slaughter of his concubines in a last act of defiance against invading armies
Artist Michael Landy, who once destroyed his possessions in the name of art, has turned a gallery into a giant bin for the disposal of artworks. Over the next six weeks, hundreds of works by artists both famous and unknown will be dumped in the "Art Bin" at the South London Gallery.
So far, pieces by Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst, have been thrown away.
Landy said he hoped the bin would gradually fill up to create "a monument to creative failure".
Hierarchy
Members of the public have been invited to submit their own work for consideration, and they could end up in the giant container next to work by better-known artists.
"Some of this stuff is worth a lot in the outside world, but in the bin then it has no value, it has no worth," Landy told the BBC.
"In the outside world there is a certain hierarchy. In the bin there is no hierarchy, so everything is treated the same."
The Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS) was a gathering of a diverse group of international artists, poets, and scientists to London, from 9-11 September, 1966. Included in this number were representatives of the counter-cultural underground who were there to speak on the theme of destruction in art.
The Honorary Committee, led by Gustav Metzger, attracted the attention of both the international media and international art community to the symposium.[1]
Undoing Aesthetics
undoing aesthetics
It seems that for every generation of artists and thinkers about art there is a favoured philosopher, an avatar for their preoccupations and critical frameworks. A concept and a name begin to circulate around artistic networks. Filtered through articles and citations, a body of thought becomes, often to the surprise of its author, the theoretical touchstone for a discipline he or she may be only remotely connected with. For example, at one end of the 20th Century the French philosopher Henri Bergson found prominence through the attentions of European sculptors; and towards its end psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva found herself coopted into a discourse around feminism, desire and the image.
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It is exciting when we are offered direct access, live and in person, to those intellectuals who have become iconic in this way but who are known largely through their published works. Yet it can also be a confounding experience. For while the contemporary art world picks out--with magpie-like unconcern for academic propriety--the sparkly bits from the oeuvres of political philosophers, psychoanalysts, anthropologists, cultural theorists and even art historians, things can go wrong when those who have been temporarily lured into the ambit of contemporary art try to return the compliment.
In association with the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University, Tate Britain presented a one-day conference featuring Eric Alliez, professor of contemporary French philosophy at Middlesex University and co-author of La Pensee-Matisse, 2005, and L'oeil-cerveau: nouvelles histoires de la peinture moderne, 2007; Georges Didi-Huberman, professor of art history at EHESS, Paris, whose recent books include Confronting Images, 1990, and La ressemblance par contact, 2008; Elisabeth Lebovici, art historian, critic and co-author of femmes/artistes, artistes/femmes, 2007; and the man who is currently dominating anthologies and essay footnotes, professor of philosophy at the University of Paris, Jacques Ranciere, whose book, The Politics of Aesthetics, 2000, has provided an echo chamber to recent conceptions of the social dimension of art.
The film featured the director Mohsen Makhmalbaf calling for one thousand people to audition for a part in a film about themselves. He is filmed filming their desperate attempts to grab hold of an audition form; things turn ugly and a near riot breaks out with people being trampled underfoot. Later, during an audition, a young man affects blindness to impress the director, who dismisses his charade. Apparently for Didi-Huberman this cinema verite exemplified 'The Extra' becoming the subject of the film. But in fact the director abuses his power and manipulates the crowd with the false promise of 'being on camera'. Unlike Warhol's screen testers, individuals are homogenised into a desperate and dangerous mob. It struck me how this also differed from Jeremy Deller's Battle of Orgreave, 2001, where the miners' reenactment offers a genuine history of those who had been 'without name or speech'.
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Dick Bengtsson: Moderna Museet
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Lebovici's paper, titled 'This is Not My Body', took as its starting point the cover of a well-thumbed paperback book of Roland Barthes, illustrated with a painting by Sophie Tauber Arp. From Sophie and Hans Arp, Lebovici's presentation ranged through Dada and Surrealism, Louise Bourgeois, Carolee Schneeman, Claude Cahun, the Judson Dance Theatre and Zoe Leonard, via the writings of feminist theorists such as Monique Wittig and Judith Butler. She cited Wittig: 'only the feminine is a gender--the masculine is still regarded as the universal'. Battling against technical glitches, Lebovici could not always show the works she referred to. Paradoxically, her thesis turned on the notion of invisibility as a strategy. She argued that, forced to emblematise 'difference', women artists recognised their invisibility as both a condition and a potential strategy. She proposed that women artists adopted the tactic of invisibility, of masking, acting out and appearing in disguise in order to challenge the aesthetic image, and the image as gender. Lebovici briefly discussed Sophie Tauber Arp's acceptance of the pre-eminence of Hans Arp, introducing the concept of voisinage or 'neighbourliness'. Here two distinct yet complimentary orders work side by side, as with the Arps who represented two sensibilities working in concert. Rather than pursuing a central argument, however, Lebovici offered a montage of practitioners and quotations that was frustratingly wide-ranging, offering a reiteration of familiar themes in feminist art history rather than new perspectives.
Also referring to photographs by Walker Evans, Lewis Hine and the contemporary artist Rineke Dijkstra, he designated a zone 'between thinking and unthinking--between art and non art, passivity and activity'. Their subject matter is the social: the poverty of a sharecropper's kitchen, a factory worker who is only a child, an awkward eastern European teenager on the beach. But the composition of each image is aesthetic and those portrayed are abstracted, 'disappropriated'. Each subject offers their face but conceals their thoughts. For Ranciere, beauty lies in this expression of indifference.
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Dick Bengtsson: Moderna Museet
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With regard to Hines' child worker, Ranciere cited Hegel's observation that what makes the Olympians divine is that they do nothing. He pointed to the popularity of a European genre of painting featuring beggar boys playing or eating. They are squalid, yet in their unashamed idleness they ascend to the realm of the divine. For Ranciere this is where the political lies: 'Pensiveness suspends the representational logic of action, suspends conclusion.' He cited Flaubert as offering a literary equivalent where a servant, an insect and an aristocrat can all occupy the space of the novel through a random series of 'sensory micro-events'.
Ranciere showed two film clips: one by Abbas Kiarostami of a boy on a mission to collect a notebook who is deflected from a direct route by a zig-zag hillside path, making his journey abstract; and a video titled The Art of Memory by Woody Vasulka, 1987. This computer-generated flow of montaged images offered some strikingly problematic juxtapositions. The mushroom clouds of an atomic bomb or atrocities from Vietnam flowed arbitrarily along with a stream of images and colours, undifferentiated from one another. As an artist in the audience later remarked, this work was reminiscent of sophomoric editing exercises in downloading images from the internet, sadly characteristic of the adolescent male.
It seems that for every generation of artists and thinkers about art there is a favoured philosopher, an avatar for their preoccupations and critical frameworks. A concept and a name begin to circulate around artistic networks. Filtered through articles and citations, a body of thought becomes, often to the surprise of its author, the theoretical touchstone for a discipline he or she may be only remotely connected with. For example, at one end of the 20th Century the French philosopher Henri Bergson found prominence through the attentions of European sculptors; and towards its end psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva found herself coopted into a discourse around feminism, desire and the image.
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Dick Bengtsson: Moderna Museet
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It is exciting when we are offered direct access, live and in person, to those intellectuals who have become iconic in this way but who are known largely through their published works. Yet it can also be a confounding experience. For while the contemporary art world picks out--with magpie-like unconcern for academic propriety--the sparkly bits from the oeuvres of political philosophers, psychoanalysts, anthropologists, cultural theorists and even art historians, things can go wrong when those who have been temporarily lured into the ambit of contemporary art try to return the compliment.
In association with the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University, Tate Britain presented a one-day conference featuring Eric Alliez, professor of contemporary French philosophy at Middlesex University and co-author of La Pensee-Matisse, 2005, and L'oeil-cerveau: nouvelles histoires de la peinture moderne, 2007; Georges Didi-Huberman, professor of art history at EHESS, Paris, whose recent books include Confronting Images, 1990, and La ressemblance par contact, 2008; Elisabeth Lebovici, art historian, critic and co-author of femmes/artistes, artistes/femmes, 2007; and the man who is currently dominating anthologies and essay footnotes, professor of philosophy at the University of Paris, Jacques Ranciere, whose book, The Politics of Aesthetics, 2000, has provided an echo chamber to recent conceptions of the social dimension of art.
The film featured the director Mohsen Makhmalbaf calling for one thousand people to audition for a part in a film about themselves. He is filmed filming their desperate attempts to grab hold of an audition form; things turn ugly and a near riot breaks out with people being trampled underfoot. Later, during an audition, a young man affects blindness to impress the director, who dismisses his charade. Apparently for Didi-Huberman this cinema verite exemplified 'The Extra' becoming the subject of the film. But in fact the director abuses his power and manipulates the crowd with the false promise of 'being on camera'. Unlike Warhol's screen testers, individuals are homogenised into a desperate and dangerous mob. It struck me how this also differed from Jeremy Deller's Battle of Orgreave, 2001, where the miners' reenactment offers a genuine history of those who had been 'without name or speech'.
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Dick Bengtsson: Moderna Museet
Carmel's quiet season: explore the original art town by the sea on a poster...
Lebovici's paper, titled 'This is Not My Body', took as its starting point the cover of a well-thumbed paperback book of Roland Barthes, illustrated with a painting by Sophie Tauber Arp. From Sophie and Hans Arp, Lebovici's presentation ranged through Dada and Surrealism, Louise Bourgeois, Carolee Schneeman, Claude Cahun, the Judson Dance Theatre and Zoe Leonard, via the writings of feminist theorists such as Monique Wittig and Judith Butler. She cited Wittig: 'only the feminine is a gender--the masculine is still regarded as the universal'. Battling against technical glitches, Lebovici could not always show the works she referred to. Paradoxically, her thesis turned on the notion of invisibility as a strategy. She argued that, forced to emblematise 'difference', women artists recognised their invisibility as both a condition and a potential strategy. She proposed that women artists adopted the tactic of invisibility, of masking, acting out and appearing in disguise in order to challenge the aesthetic image, and the image as gender. Lebovici briefly discussed Sophie Tauber Arp's acceptance of the pre-eminence of Hans Arp, introducing the concept of voisinage or 'neighbourliness'. Here two distinct yet complimentary orders work side by side, as with the Arps who represented two sensibilities working in concert. Rather than pursuing a central argument, however, Lebovici offered a montage of practitioners and quotations that was frustratingly wide-ranging, offering a reiteration of familiar themes in feminist art history rather than new perspectives.
Also referring to photographs by Walker Evans, Lewis Hine and the contemporary artist Rineke Dijkstra, he designated a zone 'between thinking and unthinking--between art and non art, passivity and activity'. Their subject matter is the social: the poverty of a sharecropper's kitchen, a factory worker who is only a child, an awkward eastern European teenager on the beach. But the composition of each image is aesthetic and those portrayed are abstracted, 'disappropriated'. Each subject offers their face but conceals their thoughts. For Ranciere, beauty lies in this expression of indifference.
Related Results
New films, special screenings, large format and continuing films
Hearty sides made smarter: our experts weigh in on eight common side...
Dick Bengtsson: Moderna Museet
Carmel's quiet season: explore the original art town by the sea on a poster...
With regard to Hines' child worker, Ranciere cited Hegel's observation that what makes the Olympians divine is that they do nothing. He pointed to the popularity of a European genre of painting featuring beggar boys playing or eating. They are squalid, yet in their unashamed idleness they ascend to the realm of the divine. For Ranciere this is where the political lies: 'Pensiveness suspends the representational logic of action, suspends conclusion.' He cited Flaubert as offering a literary equivalent where a servant, an insect and an aristocrat can all occupy the space of the novel through a random series of 'sensory micro-events'.
Ranciere showed two film clips: one by Abbas Kiarostami of a boy on a mission to collect a notebook who is deflected from a direct route by a zig-zag hillside path, making his journey abstract; and a video titled The Art of Memory by Woody Vasulka, 1987. This computer-generated flow of montaged images offered some strikingly problematic juxtapositions. The mushroom clouds of an atomic bomb or atrocities from Vietnam flowed arbitrarily along with a stream of images and colours, undifferentiated from one another. As an artist in the audience later remarked, this work was reminiscent of sophomoric editing exercises in downloading images from the internet, sadly characteristic of the adolescent male.
Defining Undo
Definitions of undo on the web:
-cancel, annul or reverse an action or its effect, 'I wish i could undo my actions.'
-unmake: deprive of certain characteristics
-cause the ruin or down fall of; ' A single mistake undid the president and he had to resign.'
-untie: cause to become loose; 'undo a shoelace' 'untie a knot'
-unwrap: to remove the outer cover of; 'lets unwrap the gifts'
-cancel, annul or reverse an action or its effect, 'I wish i could undo my actions.'
-unmake: deprive of certain characteristics
-cause the ruin or down fall of; ' A single mistake undid the president and he had to resign.'
-untie: cause to become loose; 'undo a shoelace' 'untie a knot'
-unwrap: to remove the outer cover of; 'lets unwrap the gifts'
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