Just wanted to add here the list of artists we viewed on the PPt for this session:
i.e.
Mike Bidlo
Fatimah Tuggar
Lawrence Weiner
Alan Kaprow
Gunilla Klingberg
Jacob Kolding
Jeff Koons
Santiago Sierra
Haim Steinbach
Andy Warhol
Daniel Pflumm
And finally to recap and recall the importance of that recent news of multiple suicides in Chinese factories producing the new iPads for UK markets.
This story, appearing just last week, maps well on to the story of art's making matched with the story of industrial productions, consumerism and service economies, all mapped by William Morris, Fordism, The Tiller Girls, Tamla Motown, Duchamp, Bauhaus, Koons, Steinbach, and dematerialised Conceptual art.
Santiago Sierra's recent, provocative works, in which the artist's 'making' involves direct uses and abuses of labour that mirror the exploitative systems of late Capitalism, are perhaps the closest we get to a current and critical artist touching on the contemporary manifestation of this issue, this story of art, making, production and consumption.
Sunday, 6 June 2010
Believe In Your Hands - Making and Postproduction -3rd Post
Hi, thanks for a reasonably good turnout considering this time of the year and the excellent weather.
Glad we seemed to be reasonably engaged with this important issue, which is, to problematise and become vigilant about, the special responsibility we might feel, as sculptors, to the many modes of making, the Readymade, craft, industrialisation, and what Bourriaud calls 'POSTPRODUCTION'.
Given the enormous freedom we have as sculptors, making might be taken for granted but clearly becomes a CRITICAL concern i.e. something about which we feel we contribute an investigation, as specialists.
We made the point, during the session, that a sculpture student and a sculpture department may be unique in the world, in having this odd responsibility to investigate 'MAKING per se' -what IS making? How should we make? What does it mean to make THIS way & not that way? What values does the way we choose to make (or 'ready-make') add or detract from our work?
We covered that area relating to Craft as a crucial aspect of William Morris's concerns regarding encroaching industrialisation in the late 19th Century. We also noted the way the Bauhaus marked a changed role for artists in that here they subsumed some of their expression to adapt their creativity to design and mass-production.
Duchamp, the 1920s, Germany, Jazz, The Tiller Girls (as human echoes of production lines ) and Henry ford (Fordism) all helped illustrate the changing context of industrial consumerism within which art and particularly Sculpture operated in early modernity.
Interestingly, this led us into a discussion of music, which I'll briefly expand upon here. If The Tiller Girls represent the production line in an eroticised human form, then we might be able to discuss the phenomenon of Detroit (raised by one student) and the famous music that came from that city, as a sign that art is inevitably influenced by this kind of context. Detroit 'The Motor City' is the base of both Tamla Motown and some classic 80s and 90s Techno. A recent Radio show tried (quite convincingly) to make affinities with the steel mills of Sheffield and the original hardcore electronic sound of Sheffield bands like Human League and Heaven 17.
Tracing the last pages of Bourriaud's book 'POSTPRODUCTION' we finally mapped onto all this the demise of industrialisation, the rise of consumerism and Service Industries and a technological environment in which we are increasingly distanced from industry of any kind.
This is precisely the situation to which I believe the three new publications referred to in the first post below are responding i.e. making a plea for a society in which making reasserts itself as a crucial human activity.
You can follow up this Speculecture by looking again at Duchamp, the artists mentioned by Bourriaud (some contemporary, some from recent art history), by looking more closely at Germany in the 1920s, a place and time in which so much of modernity is forged, by doing the same with William Morris and The arts & Crafts Movement, or The Bauhaus.
As we also mentioned issues of making and Authorship you can pursue this theoretically via the classic Roland Barthes essay 'The Death of the Author', and numerous related texts that confirm or differ with Barthes' thesis.
Have a good summer, if I think of anything else I will add another post.
Glad we seemed to be reasonably engaged with this important issue, which is, to problematise and become vigilant about, the special responsibility we might feel, as sculptors, to the many modes of making, the Readymade, craft, industrialisation, and what Bourriaud calls 'POSTPRODUCTION'.
Given the enormous freedom we have as sculptors, making might be taken for granted but clearly becomes a CRITICAL concern i.e. something about which we feel we contribute an investigation, as specialists.
We made the point, during the session, that a sculpture student and a sculpture department may be unique in the world, in having this odd responsibility to investigate 'MAKING per se' -what IS making? How should we make? What does it mean to make THIS way & not that way? What values does the way we choose to make (or 'ready-make') add or detract from our work?
We covered that area relating to Craft as a crucial aspect of William Morris's concerns regarding encroaching industrialisation in the late 19th Century. We also noted the way the Bauhaus marked a changed role for artists in that here they subsumed some of their expression to adapt their creativity to design and mass-production.
Duchamp, the 1920s, Germany, Jazz, The Tiller Girls (as human echoes of production lines ) and Henry ford (Fordism) all helped illustrate the changing context of industrial consumerism within which art and particularly Sculpture operated in early modernity.
Interestingly, this led us into a discussion of music, which I'll briefly expand upon here. If The Tiller Girls represent the production line in an eroticised human form, then we might be able to discuss the phenomenon of Detroit (raised by one student) and the famous music that came from that city, as a sign that art is inevitably influenced by this kind of context. Detroit 'The Motor City' is the base of both Tamla Motown and some classic 80s and 90s Techno. A recent Radio show tried (quite convincingly) to make affinities with the steel mills of Sheffield and the original hardcore electronic sound of Sheffield bands like Human League and Heaven 17.
Tracing the last pages of Bourriaud's book 'POSTPRODUCTION' we finally mapped onto all this the demise of industrialisation, the rise of consumerism and Service Industries and a technological environment in which we are increasingly distanced from industry of any kind.
This is precisely the situation to which I believe the three new publications referred to in the first post below are responding i.e. making a plea for a society in which making reasserts itself as a crucial human activity.
You can follow up this Speculecture by looking again at Duchamp, the artists mentioned by Bourriaud (some contemporary, some from recent art history), by looking more closely at Germany in the 1920s, a place and time in which so much of modernity is forged, by doing the same with William Morris and The arts & Crafts Movement, or The Bauhaus.
As we also mentioned issues of making and Authorship you can pursue this theoretically via the classic Roland Barthes essay 'The Death of the Author', and numerous related texts that confirm or differ with Barthes' thesis.
Have a good summer, if I think of anything else I will add another post.
Friday, 4 June 2010
Believe In Your Hands: The Act Of Making POSTPRODUCTION - Friday June 4th
Hi, just to say that, in addition to the agenda below, this afternoon I want to discuss and illustrate the last pages of Bourriaud's 'POSTPRODUCTION' -in terms of our current relationship to making. I will supply photocopies for those who don't own the book.
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
Believe In Your Hands: The Act Of Making - Friday June 4th Wilsons 1pm - 3pm
Three recent publications (details below) point to a current time in which making by hand is becoming an increasing concern for us, not just as artists but for society at a cultural and even philosophical level.
The question seems current but is a classic question of modern art and life, dating at least as far back as debates about the invention of photography and the social visions of William Morris, who wanted to evolve a more crafts-based society to counter the threat of the industrialised age with its mass production and what Marx called ‘alienated labour'.
Fast forward a little and we of course encounter Marcel Duchamp again, his 'Readymades' wre offered up as an answer, from art, to the growing American century of Capitalist production lines. The period between the first and second world wars –when Duchamp’s key works were made – also saw new engagements between artists and technology, noticeably at the Bauhaus, who’s director, Moholy-Nagy could have a painting made by means of telephoned orders to a remote manufacturer.
Another of the greatest artists of the 20th Century, jazz trumpeter Miles Davis once said: “there are no mistakes”. This statement is relevant to what we aim to discuss in this session because Davis was talking about the way that a masterful artist might come to believe in their hands, allowing and trusting their body to lead the way with their art, and to thereby relegate thought to an unwelcome interruption of a more complete dialogue between artist and tool, process and medium.
A visit to the Picasso Museum in Paris would quickly confirm that intuition, a kind of visual courage and dexterous audacity, were indeed highly valued in art of the 20th Century in a way that has – for recent generations – perhaps been sidelined by considerations of conceptual value, social relevance, irony etc.
Nevertheless, as the new books referred to above (and detailed below) seemed to demonstrate, something about the rapid developments of virtual technology (which take manufacturing even further out of our hands and reduce us to generic mouse-manipulating monkeys gazing into the computer vending machine) is causing reactionary ripples which ask us to reassert the values of manufacture for the 21st Century.
What special contribution can Sculpture and Sculptors as fine artists make to this debate?
In this session - our last together as Level Two - I want to open up this question as broadly as possible, and hand it over to you to apply to your summer projects.
We will discuss theses issues and look at some contemporary artists who address them.
I will also provide a reading list:
The new publications referred to above are:
The Case For Working With Your Hands by Matthew Crawford
The Craftsman by Richard Sennett
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton
See you there!
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
The Changing Image of the Artist -seminar reflections
With an unfortunately diminished class we nevertheless managed to at least open up what I have come to believe the third most important aspect of an artist's training and awareness 'the Image Of The Artist'.
The other two would be (1.) the manufacture or practice that we nurture and refine, and (2.) the contextualisation and broadcast of our works and positions as artists.
The reason the Image of the artist is of such importance -and perhaps of increasing importance) is that it encompasses all of our other preconceptions about art and ourselves as artists.
We could say that every decision made in the studio or in the proliferation of our works and reputations as artists depends upon an underlying understanding of the current and historical image of the artist as well as the image we have of our selves as artists.
Crucially, the question of the image of the artist kicks in to that crucial zone -preconceptions, as it is the vigilant awareness of our habits and preconceptions (lazy and complacent thinking) that distinguishes us from other professions and walks of life e.g. mere quirky craftsmen and producers of novel garden centre ornaments.
During the presentation I used extraordinary figures like Warhol, Caravaggio, Beuys, Koons, Ana Mendieta, Tracy Emin, Damien Hirst, Jackson Pollock, Ryan Trecartin, Gustave Courbet, and Matthew Barney to posit the idea that the really significant and important artist not only renews and innovates the artwork, and not only troubles and challenges contextualisation, but, above and beyond all this, also transforms the image of the artist.
Perhaps we should not have such lofty ambitions as to aspire to such greatness and historical significance as the artists I have named, nevertheless, if what I assert is the case then consideration of the Image of the artist must be a crucial aspect of any undergraduate curriculum and something we can be aware of, research and maintain vigilance about in every aspect of our lives and works as artists.
When I say that certain artists transform the image of the artist I mean that they change what we mean by 'artist' and this changes the trajectory of every subsequent aspirant artist.
The diminished audience -always de-spiriting for a tutor- made the dialogue a little stilted and one -sided but there were some good challenges and contributions from the students. One of the questions raised was whether a Televisual popularisation of the image of the artist -as in the recent Saatchi TV competition - maintains a conservative, safely commodifiable and acceptable image of the artist -with the resulting conservative effects on the society that artists could be energising and revitalising.
Another important point we glossed over, raised but were not able to really deal with in depth, was the question of whether we get the artists we need or deserve in that the image of the artist is possibly transformed by artists (Koons and Duchamp are good examples) as a response to changing socio-economic conditions. If so, given the enormous transformations we are currently undergoing, both economically and socially, it would appear to be disastrous to train artists according to any complacent image of what we think the artist IS or SHOULD BE (according e.g. to a 90s style market-led model) and far more appropriate to instate an atmosphere of courageous speculation, sewing a seedbed of wild possibilities from which the artists of the next generation can arise without being hampered by the prejudices, self-interest and limited ambitions of a past (and exceptionally conservative) generation.
In summary, the Image of the artist is of paramount -not marginal -importance in the considerations of artists, art students and tutors if we truly believe in the value of art as an exceptional profession. to ignore or diminish it is ultimately to limit both our imaginations and the possibilities of our practices -i.e. limiting what we are able and allowed to invent and make, show and discuss.
Friday, 23 April 2010
26/04 1pm-3pm The Changing Image of the Artist. LEVEL 2
Hi to LEVEL 2, hope you are all back in UK after battling volcanoes etc.
This Monday, 26/04, 1pm-3pm, we will meet for the PM Speculecture at Wilsons.
The theme will be: The Changing Image of the Artist.
A book by Kris and Kurz, titled: 'Legend, Myth and Magic In The Image of The Artist' concludes with the suggestion that artists pursue what the authors call 'enacted biography', which I interpret to mean, the sense of living out a famous destiny or a life and lifestyle worthy of note i.e. not living a life, but living out a biography.
Another book by Wittkower -'Born Under Saturn' -assembles a range of citations to illustrate the idea that artists might be 'saturnalian' i.e. moody, dark, blown about m by the will of the muses etc.
When we think of the image of the artist Jeff Koons' earlier self-portraits might come to mind, or, alternatively that of Rodchenko in his overalls, Ana Mendieta's body-shape burned into the ground or Ryan Trecartin's You Tube farces etc.
There are an enormous variety of examples and this allows us to presume that the image will continue to change and that we have a part to play in changing the current image of the artist.
To do that we might need to think, to picture and shape the current image and consider whether we aspire to that, or challenge it perhaps, whether we could possibly fit it, or must necessarily forge a new image of the artist as a vehicle for our own practice and identity.
On Monday I will make a brief presentation of a paper designed to provoke a further discussion on this important theme. I will again use a historical approach to loosen current and contemporary preconceptions about our responsibilities in this regard.
To prepare you could look at the sources above, or simply re-think about sources and resources you already use (such as 'Art In Theory', 'Art Since 1900', Bourriaud's writings, 'Unmonumental' etc. all through the 'filter' of the image of the artist.
In Freud's important writings 'On Art and Literature' -collected by Penguin- you can find one his account of Leonardo. Meanwhile, the classic Vasari text 'Lives of the Artists' continues to be an important text with which to be familiar, particularly as the Renaissance saw so many significant changes to the image of the artist with which we still contend today.
This Monday, 26/04, 1pm-3pm, we will meet for the PM Speculecture at Wilsons.
The theme will be: The Changing Image of the Artist.
A book by Kris and Kurz, titled: 'Legend, Myth and Magic In The Image of The Artist' concludes with the suggestion that artists pursue what the authors call 'enacted biography', which I interpret to mean, the sense of living out a famous destiny or a life and lifestyle worthy of note i.e. not living a life, but living out a biography.
Another book by Wittkower -'Born Under Saturn' -assembles a range of citations to illustrate the idea that artists might be 'saturnalian' i.e. moody, dark, blown about m by the will of the muses etc.
When we think of the image of the artist Jeff Koons' earlier self-portraits might come to mind, or, alternatively that of Rodchenko in his overalls, Ana Mendieta's body-shape burned into the ground or Ryan Trecartin's You Tube farces etc.
There are an enormous variety of examples and this allows us to presume that the image will continue to change and that we have a part to play in changing the current image of the artist.
To do that we might need to think, to picture and shape the current image and consider whether we aspire to that, or challenge it perhaps, whether we could possibly fit it, or must necessarily forge a new image of the artist as a vehicle for our own practice and identity.
On Monday I will make a brief presentation of a paper designed to provoke a further discussion on this important theme. I will again use a historical approach to loosen current and contemporary preconceptions about our responsibilities in this regard.
To prepare you could look at the sources above, or simply re-think about sources and resources you already use (such as 'Art In Theory', 'Art Since 1900', Bourriaud's writings, 'Unmonumental' etc. all through the 'filter' of the image of the artist.
In Freud's important writings 'On Art and Literature' -collected by Penguin- you can find one his account of Leonardo. Meanwhile, the classic Vasari text 'Lives of the Artists' continues to be an important text with which to be familiar, particularly as the Renaissance saw so many significant changes to the image of the artist with which we still contend today.
Sunday, 28 February 2010
Art & Immorality 2nd Post
If you've been anxiously searching the Speculectures blog for a further post before tomorrow's PM session, I'm afraid the prep time was hi-jacked by the preparation of an Essay Briefing document that we also have to do in that session.
Nevertheless, I WILL collect some notes and possibly quotes in the morning and discuss IMMORALITY in the session as well as the essay.
Please look at the previous post and come with your own ideas on the theme and we'll have something to talk about and LEARN!
Nevertheless, I WILL collect some notes and possibly quotes in the morning and discuss IMMORALITY in the session as well as the essay.
Please look at the previous post and come with your own ideas on the theme and we'll have something to talk about and LEARN!
Monday, 22 February 2010
Art and Immorality
01/03 1pm-3pm Art and Immorality.
LEVEL 2
If we were to read Georges Bataille's transgressive Surrealist novel 'The Story of the Eye' we would quickly be reminded that, along with all the other, formal, aesthetic and social transgressions with which and by modern art carved its place in the world, morality was also, always, one of its targets.
From the outset, with the upset caused by Manet's painting of a naked (not 'nude') woman sharing a picnic with some clothed students in his Dejeuner Sur L'herbe of 1863, or even earlier, in Baudelaire's 1846 request that artists concern themselves with the seedier contents of Parisian life, reflected by the sensationalist newspapers of the time, current moral values were challenged and transformed by modern art.
But why should there be an intrinsic relationship between art and morality?
The modern world is typified by its rejection of superstitious and un-scientific beliefs, including a repression of old powers of the aristocracy, monarchy and the Church. We call this the emergence of 'secular' modernity.
However, morality itself is apparently not diminished even where and when we diminish the powers of religion. Modernity's competing ideologies, manifestos and avant-gardes are driven by a new modern morality, a search to give form to new liberties and possibilities made available by the modern world.
In this 'Speculecture' we can look at ways in which modern, postmodern and current artists (including ourselves) attend to moral concerns, even when we are not conscious of doing so. We can also consider the question of immorality and amorality as the artist might variously use their privileged position to raise issues of morality, critique current morality, transgress morality purely for the sake of transgressing, or, maintain art as a place separated from moral issues and concerned only with issues of art itself.
You can prepare for the lecture by finding out a bit abut Georges Bataille and by looking at artists you are familiar with (and your own work) and meditating on the extent to which and ways in which it might respond to these moral concerns.
I will add more detailed posts prior to the lecture, with some quotes if possible, that we might useful to use in essays etc.
LEVEL 2
If we were to read Georges Bataille's transgressive Surrealist novel 'The Story of the Eye' we would quickly be reminded that, along with all the other, formal, aesthetic and social transgressions with which and by modern art carved its place in the world, morality was also, always, one of its targets.
From the outset, with the upset caused by Manet's painting of a naked (not 'nude') woman sharing a picnic with some clothed students in his Dejeuner Sur L'herbe of 1863, or even earlier, in Baudelaire's 1846 request that artists concern themselves with the seedier contents of Parisian life, reflected by the sensationalist newspapers of the time, current moral values were challenged and transformed by modern art.
But why should there be an intrinsic relationship between art and morality?
The modern world is typified by its rejection of superstitious and un-scientific beliefs, including a repression of old powers of the aristocracy, monarchy and the Church. We call this the emergence of 'secular' modernity.
However, morality itself is apparently not diminished even where and when we diminish the powers of religion. Modernity's competing ideologies, manifestos and avant-gardes are driven by a new modern morality, a search to give form to new liberties and possibilities made available by the modern world.
In this 'Speculecture' we can look at ways in which modern, postmodern and current artists (including ourselves) attend to moral concerns, even when we are not conscious of doing so. We can also consider the question of immorality and amorality as the artist might variously use their privileged position to raise issues of morality, critique current morality, transgress morality purely for the sake of transgressing, or, maintain art as a place separated from moral issues and concerned only with issues of art itself.
You can prepare for the lecture by finding out a bit abut Georges Bataille and by looking at artists you are familiar with (and your own work) and meditating on the extent to which and ways in which it might respond to these moral concerns.
I will add more detailed posts prior to the lecture, with some quotes if possible, that we might useful to use in essays etc.
Monday, 15 February 2010
The Thing -Final Post
We can look at Carpenter's film, Judd' s essay, O'Donaghue's poem or Foucault's 'Preface', but ultimately we need to draw from these resources 'fuel' for our own practices.
In Carpenter's film we see 'The Thing' as a locus of distrust, paranoia caused by the unknown (as appropriate to a 'War On Terror as to a 'Cold War' perhaps).
In Foucault's Preface, 'Things' are less important than the 'Table' or Order on which and by which we organise them as a system of Knowledge.
In Judd we can see a repeated dumbing-down of European art language, the introduction of casual and equivocal speech (e.g. 'fairly'). The word 'Things' appears in this context, a way of avoided addressing art and sculpture with grandeur, a way of making art's problems more malleable and manageable.
We can use these texts to ask our own questions about how to deploy this term, to what extent our sculpture embodies the idea of 'The Thing along with any other meaning it might have. Does our sculpture contest the historical notion of The Thing? Is it singular or dissipated? Is it resilient or ephemeral? Is it recognisable or muysterious? Which of Judd's many examples does it compare with?
Could our sculpture evoke that uncertainty celebrated in Carpenter's film? Or does it question the organisation of objects that we come to know as a reassuring culture or knowledge?
Could our sculpture evoke the human attachment to Things, or their apparent, ultimate disinterest in our own existence and duration?
In Carpenter's film we see 'The Thing' as a locus of distrust, paranoia caused by the unknown (as appropriate to a 'War On Terror as to a 'Cold War' perhaps).
In Foucault's Preface, 'Things' are less important than the 'Table' or Order on which and by which we organise them as a system of Knowledge.
In Judd we can see a repeated dumbing-down of European art language, the introduction of casual and equivocal speech (e.g. 'fairly'). The word 'Things' appears in this context, a way of avoided addressing art and sculpture with grandeur, a way of making art's problems more malleable and manageable.
We can use these texts to ask our own questions about how to deploy this term, to what extent our sculpture embodies the idea of 'The Thing along with any other meaning it might have. Does our sculpture contest the historical notion of The Thing? Is it singular or dissipated? Is it resilient or ephemeral? Is it recognisable or muysterious? Which of Judd's many examples does it compare with?
Could our sculpture evoke that uncertainty celebrated in Carpenter's film? Or does it question the organisation of objects that we come to know as a reassuring culture or knowledge?
Could our sculpture evoke the human attachment to Things, or their apparent, ultimate disinterest in our own existence and duration?
Friday, 12 February 2010
The Thing -Third Post -Poppy-Shlockk-y Thing
15/02 1pm-3pm The Thing.
+ Essay Briefing
LEVEL2
Another 'Thing' that we should perhaps consider is the more Schlockk-y, pop cultural implications of 'The Thing', influenced partly by John Carpenter's film of that name (1982).
So you COULD also prepare for this session by ordering a messy pizza and watching a DVD of 'The Thing', or we could check-out a bit of it on You Tube in the seminar.
The point is however, that 'The Thing does also have sinister implications, it refers to some Thing while remaining unspecific, and it is this unspecified aspect which might make 'The Thing' disturbing.
John carpenter clearly drew upon this when choosing the title for his film. But how does Sculpture respond to this? Do we too make 'unspecified' 'things' which bring to the audience a slight sense of unease. And does sculpture do so according to a means which is unavailable to other arts e.g. Painting, Photography, Film etc.?
+ Essay Briefing
LEVEL2
Another 'Thing' that we should perhaps consider is the more Schlockk-y, pop cultural implications of 'The Thing', influenced partly by John Carpenter's film of that name (1982).
So you COULD also prepare for this session by ordering a messy pizza and watching a DVD of 'The Thing', or we could check-out a bit of it on You Tube in the seminar.
The point is however, that 'The Thing does also have sinister implications, it refers to some Thing while remaining unspecific, and it is this unspecified aspect which might make 'The Thing' disturbing.
John carpenter clearly drew upon this when choosing the title for his film. But how does Sculpture respond to this? Do we too make 'unspecified' 'things' which bring to the audience a slight sense of unease. And does sculpture do so according to a means which is unavailable to other arts e.g. Painting, Photography, Film etc.?
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
The Thing -Second Post
15/02 1pm-3pm The Thing.
+ Essay Briefing
LEVEL2
We can approach The Thing philosophically, asking the question Martin Heidegger asked 'What Is a Thing? e.g a photograph may be a thing, but is a film a Thing? A mountain may be a Thing but is a river a thing?
We can ask the question formally for Sculpture perhaps by going back to classic essays like Rosalind Krauss' 'Expanded Field', or Michael Fried's 'Art & Objecthood' or Donald Judd's 'Specific Objects'
We can ask the question taxonomically by looking at Foucault's short and entertaining preface to 'The Order of Things' (which I will mail you to read in preparation for Monday's session) or according to books like Baudrillard's 'The System Of Objects' or Neil Cummings's 'the Value of Things'.
However, we can also look at 'Things' with a kind of pathos, the way that 'Things' may belong to and define a self or humanity. Perhaps the Arte Povera movement come closest to this approach in Sculpture history. To illustrate this approach to Things I here paste a poem that I hope you will read and that we can discuss in the session.
Please make notes of any ideas or connections that occur to you while reading this and the Foucault 'Preface' -two very different approaches to 'The Thing'.
+ Essay Briefing
LEVEL2
We can approach The Thing philosophically, asking the question Martin Heidegger asked 'What Is a Thing? e.g a photograph may be a thing, but is a film a Thing? A mountain may be a Thing but is a river a thing?
We can ask the question formally for Sculpture perhaps by going back to classic essays like Rosalind Krauss' 'Expanded Field', or Michael Fried's 'Art & Objecthood' or Donald Judd's 'Specific Objects'
We can ask the question taxonomically by looking at Foucault's short and entertaining preface to 'The Order of Things' (which I will mail you to read in preparation for Monday's session) or according to books like Baudrillard's 'The System Of Objects' or Neil Cummings's 'the Value of Things'.
However, we can also look at 'Things' with a kind of pathos, the way that 'Things' may belong to and define a self or humanity. Perhaps the Arte Povera movement come closest to this approach in Sculpture history. To illustrate this approach to Things I here paste a poem that I hope you will read and that we can discuss in the session.
Please make notes of any ideas or connections that occur to you while reading this and the Foucault 'Preface' -two very different approaches to 'The Thing'.
NEL MEZZO DEL CAMMIN by Bernard O’Donaghue
No more overcoats; maybe another suit,
A comb or two, and that’s my lot.
So the odd poem (two in a good year)
Won’t do to make the kind of edifice
I’d hoped to leave. Flush out the fantasy:
The mid-point being passed, the pattern’s clear.
This road I had taken for a good byway
Is the main thoroughfare; and even that
Now seems too costly to maintain.
Too many holes to fill; not enough time
To start again. “I wasn’t ready. The sun
Was in my eyes. I thought we weren’t counting”.
Soon we’ll be counting razorblades and pencils.
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
The Thing -first post
15/02 1pm-3pm The Thing.
+ Essay Briefing
LEVEL2
Hi, just a preliminary note to say, next Monday PM we will be discussing the issue of 'The Thing' in Sculpture. Please feel free to bring your own images, interpretations of what this might mean and we can make the session more of a Workshop.
(Apparently I am not, after all, expected to give Level Two tutorials in the morning, but I am waiting for clarification on this)
Meanwhile, stay tuned to this Blog and I will upload a text or some Thing-y quotes in good time before the session.
For me 'The Thing' is always a peculiar concern of Sculpture. In painting or Photography or film it can taken or left but in sculpture it seems we have some omnipresent responsibility to Things and thing-hood.
We can look at taxonomy, mass, virtuality and Objecthood, and, as ever, consider how The Thing in sculpture reveals itself in contemporary practices by comparing them with ideas from a History of art and thought
+ Essay Briefing
LEVEL2
Hi, just a preliminary note to say, next Monday PM we will be discussing the issue of 'The Thing' in Sculpture. Please feel free to bring your own images, interpretations of what this might mean and we can make the session more of a Workshop.
(Apparently I am not, after all, expected to give Level Two tutorials in the morning, but I am waiting for clarification on this)
Meanwhile, stay tuned to this Blog and I will upload a text or some Thing-y quotes in good time before the session.
For me 'The Thing' is always a peculiar concern of Sculpture. In painting or Photography or film it can taken or left but in sculpture it seems we have some omnipresent responsibility to Things and thing-hood.
We can look at taxonomy, mass, virtuality and Objecthood, and, as ever, consider how The Thing in sculpture reveals itself in contemporary practices by comparing them with ideas from a History of art and thought
Monday, 1 February 2010
List of Level Two Sessions
01/02 1pm-3pm 'Need To Know Basis' - Knowledge. Empiricism & Speculation
LEVEL 2
15/02 1pm-3pm The Thing.
+ Essay Briefing
LEVEL2
01/03 1pm-3pm Art and Immorality.
+ Essay Tutorials
LEVEL 2
26/04 1pm-3pm The Changing Image of the Artist.
LEVEL 2
10/05 1pm-3pm 'Believe In Your Hands' - The act of making
LEVEL 2
LEVEL 2
15/02 1pm-3pm The Thing.
+ Essay Briefing
LEVEL2
01/03 1pm-3pm Art and Immorality.
+ Essay Tutorials
LEVEL 2
26/04 1pm-3pm The Changing Image of the Artist.
LEVEL 2
10/05 1pm-3pm 'Believe In Your Hands' - The act of making
LEVEL 2
Need To Know Basis' - Knowledge, Empiricism & Speculation. Level Two. Monday 1st February 2010
In Robert Smithson’s classic example of artist’s writing, ‘A Tour Of The Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey' (1967), we gain a sense of an artist inhabiting a world which is both blandly familiar and beguiling in its strangeness. (Uncanny?)
It seems to be new world, a world not even built yet in fact (Haussman-isation). Like the Sci-Fi paperback Smithson carries with him, the information this world imparts canot be called knowledge.
But is it the world, or the man moving through it that seems to make knowledge unattainable, unwanted? What is the artist’s relationship to the environment in this post-war, Amercanised landscape of spreading suburbia?
Smithson seems to pastiche or mock earlier arts, artists and artist’s writings. He tours this non-place, a short bus-ride from the city (and we can assume by now it has been consumed by the metropolis), as if he were an 18th Century aesthete completing his education among the ruins of Rome or Pompeii. But his response is not awe or wonder at the greatness of a lost civilisation, what he sees are ‘ruins in reverse’, the emergence of a certain kind of future which he senses is not necessarily the only one or the right one.
Media play a large part in expanding and replacing ‘natural’ human senses. They are prostheses, extending or supplanting natural experience. He sees the sky through the poorly reproduced painting in a newspaper that makes it ‘newsprint grey’, his vision seems influenced by the Sci-Fi paperback he is reading, the speed of the bus and passing traffic give him a different view of the world, along with shiny paint on rows of parked cars. Most of all he is influenced by photographies, by the little ‘Instamatic’ he carries with him and which seems to make everything either valuable or not valuable depending on whether it should or should not be photographed.
When his film runs out he also becomes hungry, suggesting a link between his camera and his own energy. He talks about a bridge as a ‘photograph made of wood and steel’ and also repeatedly invokes cinema, which seems to have made life into a kind of movie.
By referring to certain constructions as ‘monuments’ Smithson connects his own practices to a long Sculptural tradition and questions the image of time, history, and the valuation of events, according to 60s America. A kind of equality, flatness, of victorious democracy perhaps (Baudelaire), or perhaps the effect of portable photography, seems to have rendered everything of equal merit. So who or what should be ;’great’ or remembered in this land without values? Rather, Smithson meditates on the banal signs, information given by the state highways or on the back of his film pack, while considering the biggest picture of the world, made of materials, and governed, not by god, man, or history, but by the inexorable force of entropy –a gift from recent science.
All this adds up to a journey of speculations, empiricism celebrating the limits of what we can know, prioritising the senses over the more presumptuous workings of the mind, holding the world at the level of a sensual encounter –all of which might seem appropriate to an artist, but which has also been the concern of certain philosophers –such as David Hume, Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty.
‘Knowledge’ becomes something fleeting, personal, never established or objective (Dion, Beuys, and the workings of the museum). The particular tools we use to gather information transform the kind of information we gather, selecting and omitting, like different filters or sieves, allowing certain things to be caught while others pass through. Carrying a camera makes Smithson see the world as a series of what he calls ‘stills’.
Smithson’s text, therefore gives us a glimpse of the artist’s relationship and responsibilities to knowledge. We could look at artists of the 1970s, like Susan Hiller or Mary Kelly, to see a perhaps more close and conscious engagement with scientific procedures and approaches to knowledge. Yet still here, we will notice that the artist holds these apparatuses at bay, keeping them ‘at arm’s length’, intent on bringing something to them that art and the artist has to contribute.
Today, artists like Charles Avery, Lindsay Seers, and Grayson Perry, all seem to claim that the artist necessarily inhabits and maintains a ‘world-of-their-own, a kind of ‘bubble’ or ‘island’ (Deleuze), even more removed and subjective than the moody journey performed by Smithson.
How do we inhabit and explore our world? What kind of locations would provide an example of the way we feel about our environment? What kind of ‘prostheses or technologies affect the way we perceive? Is our environment increasingly virtual? And what does that mean for the artist? How do we respond to our current environment? Are these still important questions for artists today? Do you have some answers?
Need To Know Basis
How do we inhabit and explore our world?
What kind of locations would provide an example of the way we feel about our environment?
What kind of ‘prostheses or technologies affect the way we perceive?
Is our environment increasingly virtual?
And what does that mean for the artist?
How do we respond to our current environment?
Are these still important questions for artists today?
Do you have some answers?
What kind of locations would provide an example of the way we feel about our environment?
What kind of ‘prostheses or technologies affect the way we perceive?
Is our environment increasingly virtual?
And what does that mean for the artist?
How do we respond to our current environment?
Are these still important questions for artists today?
Do you have some answers?
Thursday, 28 January 2010
Need To Know Basis' - Knowledge, Empiricism & Speculation. Level Two. Monday 1st February 2010
Hi to you all,
long time no see.
I am looking forward to seeing you in the studios on Monday morning 1st February 2010.
In the afternoon (1pm -3pm Wilsons) I will be extending the series of 'Speculectures' just completed with Level One (see earlier posts below) as the Level Two Contextual studies sessions.
The title for this session is:
'Need To Know Basis' - Knowledge. Empiricism & Speculation.
To prepare for the session, please go to: http://www.bwk.tue.nl/stedeb/studentinformatie/offthemap/smithson.pdf download and read there the classic text of Robert Smithson (even if you have read it before).
Meanwhile, form your own understanding of the terms 'Empiricism' and 'Speculation' and consider them as you read the text. Where might they apply?
Underline or make notes about anything there that seems useful to our session and bring your ideas, as well as any other references that this text brings to mind, on Monday.
I will write a short 'Speculecture' and read my own thoughts on this title, then invite your questions and discussion.
best wishes, and I look forward to working with you all again.
Paul O'Kane
Sunday, 17 January 2010
AMBITIONS & VALUES -session draft
Thanks to all Sculpture Level One students for your great attendance, attention and contribution to the 'Speculectures'. I have greatly enjoyed being allowed to speculate with my own writing and thinking in dialogue with you while avoiding the traditional model of repeating and consolidating established 'knowledge'. I hope you feel that this process has enabled you to gain confidence in your own relationship to History, Writing and Ideas related to practice.
Please use the blog to revisit and re-think anything we have covered in these sessions.
For the Blog record, today the handout was taken from the current TATE Etc. magazine spring 2010 pp. 30-37. It was an essay on failure (from a forthcoming book on the subject) by Lisa le Feuvre and titled: If At first You Don't Succeed ... Celebrate.
The following are the NOTES FOR TODAYS Speculecture on Ambitions and Values -an essay in draft form.
Today, we maintain the value of the artist against all odds. Banal and conservative forces, on all sides, from within and without, seem intent on diminishing the artist’s role and status to that of a light- entertainer, conforming to and controlled by the model of commodity, as yet another feature and function of the consumerist paradise.
We could argue that, according to such a scenario, the artist today is not truly encouraged to be ambitious. It’s true that success and visibility are greatly encouraged and even fetishised (as they have always been in show business) but we might argue that the artist’s possibilities are thereby tamed, prescribed and limited.
Undergraduates are invariably taught today –according, I suspect to a 90s Goldsmiths model (though alternative models are now emerging)- not to speculate or explore too widely or wildly, nor to question too deeply what art and the artist might possibly be. Rather, they are taught to follow, rather safely, in the footsteps of a small group of well-known artists who appeared in a spectacular blaze of success in London 20 years ago.
Those artists, sometimes referred to as ‘Young, British artists’, seem therefore to have installed a model and a benchmark for a generation, of a certain kind of ambition, which, throughout the 1990s became academic in that it became a model for the training and educating of artists, as well as a popular current image of the artist perpetrated by media and related institutions, such as Tate, Saatchi etc.
However, it doesn’t take long to think through to the fact that those artists attracted interest precisely because they went beyond, contradicted or contested what was academic in their own day. And one of the ways they did this was to be surprisingly ambitious –in terms of career visibility, sales and patronage- than their tutors would have expected for themselves.
This particular model, benchmark, and image of the artist -which today’s transformed context may have rendered tired and irrelevant – runs something like this: As an undergraduate, develop as much media and market savvy as possible. Cultivate the image of an effective professional with a digestible and recognisably cool and current practice. Compete sportingly (and if necessary un-sportingly) with your peers for supremacy (in imitation of King Hirst). Gain maximum career visibility as quickly as possible (before graduating if possible). Keep your fingers and everything else crossed in the hope that your career, thus-launched, will sustain you for more than a year or two.
It’s true that, when the YBAs –and particularly Hirst- appeared, they made other British artists at the time seem a little out-dated, under-ambitious, polite or timid or hippy-ish in their adhesion to an idea of art as an alternative world of values, bracketed off from the harsh realities of thrusting, Darwinian, post-Thatcherite economics. It’s also true that other big players in this phenomenon, such as Jay Joplin, Charles Saatchi and Carl Freedman- were attuned to the business and media world.
Nevertheless, what I want to argue here is that, just as art may, at one point in its long history have served the church, the State, art itself, revolution, the museum, the white cube etc. this model and benchmark of the 90s artist appeared as a response to and in service of the particular powers and values dominant at that time, and perhaps no longer
dominant today.
‘Ambition’ is closely linked with risk and speculation, and this means working as an artist without a prescribed view of what art and the artist is and how to achieve it. It’s true that it is wise and pragmatic to train and learn the ways of a business-like, heavily mediated art world, so as to avoid becoming a mere inconsequential dreamer, unequipped for the challenges and opportunities that present themselves to the artist of today. However, it might be the ruin of art’s real ambition, and a serious compromise to the whole adventure of becoming an artist, if it is reduced to a kind of ‘colour-by-numbers’ careerism wherein all risk and adventure are replaced with a sure-footed guide to a short-lived success.
Hirst is celebrated as a brave speculator for installing a sensational shark in Saatchi’s celebrated space, but in fact the project seems to have been thoroughly underpinned and guaranteed its success before any risks were taken.
It is therefore, perhaps in these terms that the best interpretation of the piece can be constructed i.e. the popular sign of a roving, speculative predator, proud of its power and freedom (the avant-garde modern artist) is mastered by powers that it is forced to admit are far greater than itself, and henceforth contained as a mere sideshow or novelty for the entertainment of those powers.
Postmodernism, is therefore defined for us here, as a condition of dis-empowered, ironicised, containment. The artist represents us –the audience- not by confronting the ‘impossibility of death’ as Hirst often claims (this was actually the preoccupation of a distant generation of existentialists) but the impossibility of achieving anything more than, or alternative to this rather predictable novelty and entertainment value, now that the ambitions of art have been put firmly in their place by the unchallenged advance of consumerist capitalism and its very own set of values, a world in which art is only required to achieve certain things, certain degrees, and perform certain functions and services.
It would be worthwhile to research –and perhaps this has already been done- the many other artists, art worlds, ambitions and values thriving at the moment when the so-called YBAs emerged, and, supported almost immediately by all the most powerful forces, journals and institutions in the London art world, eclipsed, obscured and relegated just about everything else that was then also emerging, in a breathtaking act of monopolisation. It may be that, by comparison, every other artist at that time can now be seen to have been out-of-touch, over-Romantic or relatively hippy-ish in their approach to the possibilities of art, but it could also be argued that there were simply other, different kinds of ambition and values, albeit not so focused upon power, wealth and visibility. There must certainly have been many who had little interest in the relevance of applying values of ‘Youth’ and ‘Britishn-ess’ to the role of the artist.
If we turn now to the question of values I should first say that to dwell on this term might prove to be profound and disruptive. That’s because it is such a fundamental term in establishing any culture. We might even say that a particular culture is mapped and governed by the organisation of a certain set of values. Conflicts arise when different cultures with different values interact. It’s also a term with which artists constantly interact even if they are unaware of the fact.
To bring a shark into a white cube, to propose a urinal for an exhibition or take a bus ticket from the street and place it in a collage are all acts that bring value into question. If we use the tools of history, Geography, anthropology perhaps, we can see that, at different times in the world, and in different places, different cultures are organised around certain values. When the values are contested a tradition is challenged and disputes occur. The question for the historian might be ‘What is valuable for us today’? how did it become so? Could it have been otherwise? And in what direction are our present values evolving? For the Geographer or Anthropologist similar questions apply but transferred to the sphere of otherness –other cultures, other places.
The artist however, plays an important role in any culture, helping to forge and finesse the values that lie at its heart. Seen in these terms the act of submitting a urinal for an exhibition, or placing a bus-ticket within a collage are far more than merely petty or mischievous acts and begins to explain the enormous cultural impact these apparently inconsequential acts have subsequently achieved.
The idea of values is in fact a key to unlock the mysterious question of the artist’s role in any society. After all, what are artists for? are they nothing more than providers of light entertainment for a consumerist audience? Are they merely models of effective professionalism? Are they comparable with other middle-class professional such as ‘teacher, Lawyer, Doctor, Dentist, Banker etc? Or does an artist provide some other, perhaps more elusive and less easily quantifiable service to the community? These are questions that the past 20 years, during which a particular kind of art and artist has dominated a particular, rather local and temporary art world, have not erased. They are also questions which artists themselves, and no-one else, are ultimately called upon to answer.
As we have said, at a time in the world when the church was dominant in society the artist may well have served the church. When the bourgeois class of new aspiring merchants overthrew the aristocracy and became the new dynamic modern power, the artist likewise served that force. When further revolutions attempted to place the workers of the world in the driving seat of history artists lent a hand. And for a period in which art and artists tested the limits of art’s autonomy amid the ‘art-for-art’s sake of high modernism, art itself seems to have been their primary patron and muse.
At each point and place in this story, different values are at stake. For the artist, the values of a society, a time or a culture are not just manifest in its laws, taboos and ideas, but in images, forms and materials, all of which are within the artist’s grasp to transform (please look back at earlier ‘Speculectures’ on these themes to underpin this point).
Now, if we conclude by returning to the present, and to the tussle of a new generation with discarding the tired legacy of 90s art, we might have to consider just what the particular ambitions and values of that generation were and how they continue to be taught –now as an academic discipline – in today’s art schools. What were the values and ambitions that generation contested and what did they set in their place? Who and what were the forces and the context they served and articulated. And what might our own practices, values, aims and ambitions contribute today.
I leave these questions for you to answer in the time set aside for responses and discussion.
Please use the blog to revisit and re-think anything we have covered in these sessions.
For the Blog record, today the handout was taken from the current TATE Etc. magazine spring 2010 pp. 30-37. It was an essay on failure (from a forthcoming book on the subject) by Lisa le Feuvre and titled: If At first You Don't Succeed ... Celebrate.
The following are the NOTES FOR TODAYS Speculecture on Ambitions and Values -an essay in draft form.
Today, we maintain the value of the artist against all odds. Banal and conservative forces, on all sides, from within and without, seem intent on diminishing the artist’s role and status to that of a light- entertainer, conforming to and controlled by the model of commodity, as yet another feature and function of the consumerist paradise.
We could argue that, according to such a scenario, the artist today is not truly encouraged to be ambitious. It’s true that success and visibility are greatly encouraged and even fetishised (as they have always been in show business) but we might argue that the artist’s possibilities are thereby tamed, prescribed and limited.
Undergraduates are invariably taught today –according, I suspect to a 90s Goldsmiths model (though alternative models are now emerging)- not to speculate or explore too widely or wildly, nor to question too deeply what art and the artist might possibly be. Rather, they are taught to follow, rather safely, in the footsteps of a small group of well-known artists who appeared in a spectacular blaze of success in London 20 years ago.
Those artists, sometimes referred to as ‘Young, British artists’, seem therefore to have installed a model and a benchmark for a generation, of a certain kind of ambition, which, throughout the 1990s became academic in that it became a model for the training and educating of artists, as well as a popular current image of the artist perpetrated by media and related institutions, such as Tate, Saatchi etc.
However, it doesn’t take long to think through to the fact that those artists attracted interest precisely because they went beyond, contradicted or contested what was academic in their own day. And one of the ways they did this was to be surprisingly ambitious –in terms of career visibility, sales and patronage- than their tutors would have expected for themselves.
This particular model, benchmark, and image of the artist -which today’s transformed context may have rendered tired and irrelevant – runs something like this: As an undergraduate, develop as much media and market savvy as possible. Cultivate the image of an effective professional with a digestible and recognisably cool and current practice. Compete sportingly (and if necessary un-sportingly) with your peers for supremacy (in imitation of King Hirst). Gain maximum career visibility as quickly as possible (before graduating if possible). Keep your fingers and everything else crossed in the hope that your career, thus-launched, will sustain you for more than a year or two.
It’s true that, when the YBAs –and particularly Hirst- appeared, they made other British artists at the time seem a little out-dated, under-ambitious, polite or timid or hippy-ish in their adhesion to an idea of art as an alternative world of values, bracketed off from the harsh realities of thrusting, Darwinian, post-Thatcherite economics. It’s also true that other big players in this phenomenon, such as Jay Joplin, Charles Saatchi and Carl Freedman- were attuned to the business and media world.
Nevertheless, what I want to argue here is that, just as art may, at one point in its long history have served the church, the State, art itself, revolution, the museum, the white cube etc. this model and benchmark of the 90s artist appeared as a response to and in service of the particular powers and values dominant at that time, and perhaps no longer
dominant today.
‘Ambition’ is closely linked with risk and speculation, and this means working as an artist without a prescribed view of what art and the artist is and how to achieve it. It’s true that it is wise and pragmatic to train and learn the ways of a business-like, heavily mediated art world, so as to avoid becoming a mere inconsequential dreamer, unequipped for the challenges and opportunities that present themselves to the artist of today. However, it might be the ruin of art’s real ambition, and a serious compromise to the whole adventure of becoming an artist, if it is reduced to a kind of ‘colour-by-numbers’ careerism wherein all risk and adventure are replaced with a sure-footed guide to a short-lived success.
Hirst is celebrated as a brave speculator for installing a sensational shark in Saatchi’s celebrated space, but in fact the project seems to have been thoroughly underpinned and guaranteed its success before any risks were taken.
It is therefore, perhaps in these terms that the best interpretation of the piece can be constructed i.e. the popular sign of a roving, speculative predator, proud of its power and freedom (the avant-garde modern artist) is mastered by powers that it is forced to admit are far greater than itself, and henceforth contained as a mere sideshow or novelty for the entertainment of those powers.
Postmodernism, is therefore defined for us here, as a condition of dis-empowered, ironicised, containment. The artist represents us –the audience- not by confronting the ‘impossibility of death’ as Hirst often claims (this was actually the preoccupation of a distant generation of existentialists) but the impossibility of achieving anything more than, or alternative to this rather predictable novelty and entertainment value, now that the ambitions of art have been put firmly in their place by the unchallenged advance of consumerist capitalism and its very own set of values, a world in which art is only required to achieve certain things, certain degrees, and perform certain functions and services.
It would be worthwhile to research –and perhaps this has already been done- the many other artists, art worlds, ambitions and values thriving at the moment when the so-called YBAs emerged, and, supported almost immediately by all the most powerful forces, journals and institutions in the London art world, eclipsed, obscured and relegated just about everything else that was then also emerging, in a breathtaking act of monopolisation. It may be that, by comparison, every other artist at that time can now be seen to have been out-of-touch, over-Romantic or relatively hippy-ish in their approach to the possibilities of art, but it could also be argued that there were simply other, different kinds of ambition and values, albeit not so focused upon power, wealth and visibility. There must certainly have been many who had little interest in the relevance of applying values of ‘Youth’ and ‘Britishn-ess’ to the role of the artist.
If we turn now to the question of values I should first say that to dwell on this term might prove to be profound and disruptive. That’s because it is such a fundamental term in establishing any culture. We might even say that a particular culture is mapped and governed by the organisation of a certain set of values. Conflicts arise when different cultures with different values interact. It’s also a term with which artists constantly interact even if they are unaware of the fact.
To bring a shark into a white cube, to propose a urinal for an exhibition or take a bus ticket from the street and place it in a collage are all acts that bring value into question. If we use the tools of history, Geography, anthropology perhaps, we can see that, at different times in the world, and in different places, different cultures are organised around certain values. When the values are contested a tradition is challenged and disputes occur. The question for the historian might be ‘What is valuable for us today’? how did it become so? Could it have been otherwise? And in what direction are our present values evolving? For the Geographer or Anthropologist similar questions apply but transferred to the sphere of otherness –other cultures, other places.
The artist however, plays an important role in any culture, helping to forge and finesse the values that lie at its heart. Seen in these terms the act of submitting a urinal for an exhibition, or placing a bus-ticket within a collage are far more than merely petty or mischievous acts and begins to explain the enormous cultural impact these apparently inconsequential acts have subsequently achieved.
The idea of values is in fact a key to unlock the mysterious question of the artist’s role in any society. After all, what are artists for? are they nothing more than providers of light entertainment for a consumerist audience? Are they merely models of effective professionalism? Are they comparable with other middle-class professional such as ‘teacher, Lawyer, Doctor, Dentist, Banker etc? Or does an artist provide some other, perhaps more elusive and less easily quantifiable service to the community? These are questions that the past 20 years, during which a particular kind of art and artist has dominated a particular, rather local and temporary art world, have not erased. They are also questions which artists themselves, and no-one else, are ultimately called upon to answer.
As we have said, at a time in the world when the church was dominant in society the artist may well have served the church. When the bourgeois class of new aspiring merchants overthrew the aristocracy and became the new dynamic modern power, the artist likewise served that force. When further revolutions attempted to place the workers of the world in the driving seat of history artists lent a hand. And for a period in which art and artists tested the limits of art’s autonomy amid the ‘art-for-art’s sake of high modernism, art itself seems to have been their primary patron and muse.
At each point and place in this story, different values are at stake. For the artist, the values of a society, a time or a culture are not just manifest in its laws, taboos and ideas, but in images, forms and materials, all of which are within the artist’s grasp to transform (please look back at earlier ‘Speculectures’ on these themes to underpin this point).
Now, if we conclude by returning to the present, and to the tussle of a new generation with discarding the tired legacy of 90s art, we might have to consider just what the particular ambitions and values of that generation were and how they continue to be taught –now as an academic discipline – in today’s art schools. What were the values and ambitions that generation contested and what did they set in their place? Who and what were the forces and the context they served and articulated. And what might our own practices, values, aims and ambitions contribute today.
I leave these questions for you to answer in the time set aside for responses and discussion.
Saturday, 16 January 2010
Friday, 15 January 2010
Monday 18/01 2010 1pm-3pm Ambitions and Values LEVEL 1
AMBITION
For the artist 'ambition' may be of a special nature.
Clearly, since the Renaissance artists have been diverted by the fame their skills can attract, and we can still observe that cliche within the 90s generation of Saatchi-chasers, Turner Prize hopefuls, and mass applicants to 'New Contemporaries' etc.
Nevertheless, this recent tendency doesn't overshadow many other significant ideas regarding the history of artist's ambitions. e.g. to use art in serving a religion, a political cause, to serve huumanity or the furtherment of art itself.
The artist, may, after all, have a special sense of what 'ambition' means, above, beyond or parallel to the banal, professional and pragmatic ambitions, of the kind with which we recently became familiar, according to the ironic, deferential and severely limited vision of postmodernists.
Interestingly, though grand scale and spectacle are associated with ambition, it can equally be the case that the artist demonstrates ambition by the most of modest of means, and this is something we can discuss further.
VALUES
'Values' is one of the most important words for any serious and searching thought about art, about people and the world. When philsophers (like Nietzsche) try to boil down what makes us 'tick', this notion of 'values' often peers out from the depths of their considerations.
Underneath our opinions, cultures, class and status, fashions and judgements, you can find 'values', operating, as a kind of engine room.
It is therefore significant that artists have played a strong part in shaping, challenging, representing and renewing values, through their acts, attitudes, choices of materials, transgressions etc. How might we continue to do this? What are the current values with which our own might be in dialogue?
In Monday's session I will -as usual- present a short paper that expands the two themes above and try to bring them into a meaningful relation, then hand the opinions over to you to challenge and develop what I have proposed.
Meanwhile, please check this site for some further quotes and notes that I will try to load up later today (Friday) and tomorrow.
For the artist 'ambition' may be of a special nature.
Clearly, since the Renaissance artists have been diverted by the fame their skills can attract, and we can still observe that cliche within the 90s generation of Saatchi-chasers, Turner Prize hopefuls, and mass applicants to 'New Contemporaries' etc.
Nevertheless, this recent tendency doesn't overshadow many other significant ideas regarding the history of artist's ambitions. e.g. to use art in serving a religion, a political cause, to serve huumanity or the furtherment of art itself.
The artist, may, after all, have a special sense of what 'ambition' means, above, beyond or parallel to the banal, professional and pragmatic ambitions, of the kind with which we recently became familiar, according to the ironic, deferential and severely limited vision of postmodernists.
Interestingly, though grand scale and spectacle are associated with ambition, it can equally be the case that the artist demonstrates ambition by the most of modest of means, and this is something we can discuss further.
VALUES
'Values' is one of the most important words for any serious and searching thought about art, about people and the world. When philsophers (like Nietzsche) try to boil down what makes us 'tick', this notion of 'values' often peers out from the depths of their considerations.
Underneath our opinions, cultures, class and status, fashions and judgements, you can find 'values', operating, as a kind of engine room.
It is therefore significant that artists have played a strong part in shaping, challenging, representing and renewing values, through their acts, attitudes, choices of materials, transgressions etc. How might we continue to do this? What are the current values with which our own might be in dialogue?
In Monday's session I will -as usual- present a short paper that expands the two themes above and try to bring them into a meaningful relation, then hand the opinions over to you to challenge and develop what I have proposed.
Meanwhile, please check this site for some further quotes and notes that I will try to load up later today (Friday) and tomorrow.
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