(Meg) A summer of horror: torture and electric chairs at amusement parks and Hitler at Madame Tussauds

For Monday 29

A summer of horror: torture and electric chairs at amusement parks and Hitler at Madame Tussauds

(article from www.theartnewspaper.com)

I thought that this was a good article. It sort of goes with the article How far is too far. I feel like contemporary art walks a thin line of legal and illegal; Offensive and brilliant. Contemporary art is hard for me to get. But i guess that's the point. I guess sometimes you don't have to understand it.

"NEW YORK. The US government interrogation practice of waterboarding will be enacted by animated robots in an installation by artist Steve Powers opening on 21 September at the Park Avenue Armory. For $1 viewers can watch as a life-sized hooded figure pours water over the mouth and nose of a bound man, producing a grisly 15 seconds of convulsions. The installation was shown at New York’s seaside amusement park Coney Island in August, where it was situated among rides, games and freak show attractions."

This is really messed up! And of all places to have this torture technique...an amusement park. And then the article also gives examples of other art pieces throughout the world that got some pretty negative attention.
BERLIN: HITLER AT MADAME TUSSAUDS, MILAN: ELECTRIC CHAIR AT AMUSEMENT PARK, SYDNEY: BLEEDING CHRIST UP FOR RELIGIOUS AWARD....and more..

(sarah) This shit?

I think this is more like a slide show, but every picture has really informative text to go with it. Sigh. $125 million for dead animals? Come on. I call this "The Emperor has no Art". Kind of like "The emperor has no clothes." His work really sucks but hes such a big name nobody wants to stand up and say it. I can't be the only one thinking,"$125 million for this shit?"

(Meg) Article : Earth Works

For Monday 22

I thought this would be a good article since everyone is "going green".  It's pretty interesting. It is from the artnews.com website. It's about how artists are making art that influences us and our environment.  Like for example someone made pee fertilizer art. It's totally gross but interesting. eww.

Link = Earth Works June 2008

(Meg) Article: How Far Is Too Far?

I'm a little behind on my articles. This one is for Monday 8th.

ARTnews.com  Summer 2008 How Far is Too Far?

http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2522

I think that this is a good article to read if you have mix feelings about contemporary art like I do.  It's about the classic debate of what should be accepted and unacceptable. Different people's views on art. It's very interesting. Here's a little passage. 

"But when are the artists themselves guilty of the exploitation their art is meant to expose? And, taking into account not only First Amendment rights but an artist's traditional role of challenging the status quo, is there a point beyond which art can go too far? Are there guidelines that should be observed or enforced, or are ethics, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder?"

article

link

this article is really great, this guy is unstoppable definitely an "artist" as well as an 'architect' I saw an exhibit of his at the pompidou in paris.

Sarah--wiki art

This article is a little open. I just thought it was interesting what wikipedia had to say about "art".

Article.

Michelle- Weekly Article for September 8

No. 83, Berlin, July 1990 from Pictures on the Street

Celebrating Photographic Garbage

photo-based art by Joachim Schmid

From Lens Culture Online Magazine

Comments:

I like the technique because it relates to preserving memories and the past.... even though the artist is collecting photographs he finds on the street.  

(will add more later)

Art History and the View Camera

After researching the various artists that used the view camera ilearned some very ineresting facts and coincidences that coincide with my particular interests in the view camera as a means to better capture the landscape. As we know, Ansel Adams was among the first photographers to use the view camera to capture landscapes of nature as his art. He used this camera because as we have already learned the view camera is ideal for the greatest amount of detail and depth of field- obviously this is key when capturing a large landscape. Here is an example of His work:

Many Artists continued this legacy of traveling through more rural areas and photographing life and leaving out details such as industry, work, technology, etc. A more recent artist of that like is Claire Richardson. Her work is very intimate and beautiful. Often in book form, each searies tends to have the same color scheme, so that it feels like the photos were taken all in 5 minutes. She documents people as well as places and seems to get to know her subjects well.

Here are some examples of her work:

Looking later down the line through the history of photography it was the artists like Ansel Adams, who paid great attention to detail, particularly from a large-scale perspective were the ones often using a view camera. Another interesting example, is one of my person favorite photographers, Andreas Gursky. Gursky's photographs are both systematic and chaotic in the sence that they are a bit overwhelming because so much seemed to be going on at once yet there is a very clear order to the madness of his images. When his work is compared to the work of Jackson Pollock's, who is similiar in that same way, it becomes astonishingly clear; check it out

The Jackson Pollock Reference is perhaps a bit unrelated to the view camera but this has got to be one of the most peculiar discoveries i have stumbled upon in the history of art, its remarkable how alike the work is!

Lastly I would like to talk about Thomas Ruff, another phototgrapher who used a view camera to often execute his ideas. Alhtough he is most famous for his portraits which are obviously a great with the view camera , again because of the detail, he has some night-time photography which i find not only very interesting but also ties into my personal interests as an artist because the photos seem to share something with the night-time photos i have been taikng around the city, take a look:

final:book &conclusoins

I've decided to present my final project for Junior Seminar Class as a classic accordion style (to match the bellows of the view camera) book. with a special poloroid pack case. The book reads like a film strip of landscapes, progressing to and from an old Polaroid look to a digitized look, from city to country, day to night, etc. The specific images and the specific order are all very symbolic to my photographic process. I start and end with one image, a photo taken with the view camera that symbolizes my overall attraction to images that are old. The image repeats itself throughout the strip as a re-occurring theme; a constant model for inspiration. Beyond that it is also a photo of a playground, which to me symbolizes the idea of revisiting the past, (visiting the places that you once used to play at a s a child.) Furthermore, the re-visiting of an image, weather its because it seems successful or weather i haven't quite figured it out yet I realize that i am constantly going back to images that are old and often times unintentional. Unintentional; not in the way that i accidently take a photo but perhaps that i don't realize what exactly i was, and more importantly why. 

The rest of the photos vary from digital images to regular 35mm film, old and new. There are images that re-occur in my creative process from years ago that are still just as important to me now so i felt the need to include them. Other images are new from my summer backpacking through Europe when i was making more conscious decisions of what to photograph as well as how to continue my examination of the contemporary landscape. 

As for further usage of the view camera, i would like to give it more time although it seems silly, perhaps if i lived 20 years ago everything would be different, its just so expensive and for what im doing it seems that a smaller more accessible camera is best for me. However i am interested in taking shots with the view camera with regular lith film and making some gum prints because the nature of the polaroids really made me think of the way images come out as gum prints. Im really glad that i tried using the camera because if anything it made me re-investigate everything that goes into taking a worthy picture- spending time on the perfect composition especially.

results: instant polaroids

out of 10, these are the 4 poloroids that came out. Definitely a learning experience.