RAMBLINGS ON THE WORKS OF "OTHERS"

When reading into postmodern feminist art ( considered one of the "others" in the postmodern genre), I noticed a piece by Laurie Simmons called Red Library. what was interesting was that her expression of the rigidity of traditional female roles with the use of the Barbies with domesticated backdrops. What drew me to this particular one was the fact that in the movie The Omen the traditional couple ( and their demon son) move into their new house. There is a part in the movie where the wife opens the doors to a room for her husband and says, "this is for you, they call it a men's day room." I then laughed because it was a study with walls of books and a desk and I guess it wasn't though of then that that's where a woman might want to spend her day. In fact, I have always wanted a room like that. Anyway, the room in Red Library to me is a reminder of the "men's day room." Ive said before that I am no feminist but am highly aware of the struggles women went through and still go through. I usually don't place into my art but I do critique art different if there is a more feminist approach because I feel like I should since I am too are among women artists. Yet I also agree with Louis Bourgeois views one women artists and how she never really held them separate from men artist or felt stifled by men artists. Women and men are different and it shows in their art a lot of times and sometimes it doesn't yet I am not exactly sure if there is prejudice in the art world for women because I have never experienced it. As far as there being more female nudes than male that may because even though I am a woman I find it more comfortable to work with women nudes and I like draw them better because of the curves they offer. Being portrayed nude also has different meanings depending on when the work was done. In some periods it was a high honor and not everyone could be sculpted or painted nude.

ON PETER HALLEY

Peter Halley's work shows a post industrial future which is a highly abstracted kind of social space.I feel it shows his fear of progressing into the fast paced world of technology that lies ahead of him with his use of simulated materials and hyperreal spaces which seem to function mechanically. He states, " Yet behind the mask of humanism there exists not the truths of materialism but the nightmare scenarios of logic and determinism. There emerges a crystalline world responsive only to numerical imperative, formal manipulation, and financial control." It makes me think of our high tech electronics in which we depend on for relaxation or entertainment are not really there to uplift our spirits and for relaxing but they are there to hold us down . I myself get distracted by these objects everyday for fun and easy availability of supplying what I want when I want. I think Peter Halley is foreseeing a decay in our society rather than a progression. Ive noticed that his newer pieces reflect what seem to be technological prisons.

ON ADRIAN PIPER

When reading her essay on self-awareness and watching "Cornered" I felt I had to defend myself for some reason. A statement she made on how there are only a handful of purely "white people" and that everybody is black was true but not true. I t was kind of vague for me . Did she consider the other mixes that might run through us because the human race is not just black or white. There are things to consider before claiming a race like how much of that race is in you and which are you more entitled to claim. This reminds me a little of the " one drop rule" but in a way it makes sense that if you only have one black person in your history and the majority is Asian yet you look white, what do you claim? I think Native Americans run into a lot of trouble with this when receiving help because they have to be a certain amount of Native American to be considered one.
The other concern I had was that if you did find out you were part of the handful of pure whites, why couldn't you be proud about it. I think everyone should be proud of there culture/s no matter what it is. I know these statements are exactly the statements that make me sound racist or as the racist who didn't know they are being racist , but these statements are meant more for inquiry than to defend the white person. If I found out I was black I would embrace it and I would do the same if I found out I was all white or any other. I feel we are separated by our cultures and we like it that way because it does make us different from each other. Who wants to be all the same? With all the choices we make everyday we strive for individuality, and I feel our differences in culture( not the actual color of ones skin) allow us this mass individuality. Some people use their culture as a means of validation of being better than another race while most just feel special that they are part of something in history associated with that certain culture if that makes any sense.
So being black or white doesn't create your identity but it is used as representation of it and opens a self awareness of who exactly we really are. Our identity is multifaceted and it takes more than the color of our skin or our culture to provide who we are.

BILL VIOLA "VIDEO BLACK"- THE MORTALITY OF THE IMAGE AND JOHN CAGE "PERFORMANCE AND PROCESS"

The idea that there is a video camera somewhere that shuts off (the perpetual observer) is a concept that play with constantly. These are the events that go unnoticed. The act of seeing these unnoticables in it self make you feel special when you, as an artist, do notice them. I feel as if it is my duty as an artist to show the rest of the world these moments too. I feel that Bill Viola might think along the same guidelines as this. It is "life as art." It is also a process known as being mindful of your surroundings in order to produce a more happier and meditative state. When being mindful, all that really is is looking and focusing on just the now and not things that have happened in the past of that might happen in the future. Being aware of the moment.

I was reminded of Viola when visiting my boyfriends family out in Elizabeth, IN by the river. We all hang out by the bonfire and 4-wheel or go walking on the riverbank. Eventually the girls and guys end up splitting up and the girls migrate into the house while the guys tinker around outside and drink beer. while inside I was suddenly hyper aware of my surroundings as I sat on the couch staring at a barge drift by through the window and the smell of firewood was all around me. In the background at static chattering of 4 generations of women filled my ears, and in that moment I felt as if were a work of art in which could not be reproduced as a painting, drawing, or object. I knew that this moment would never play out like that again and if only that video camera that never shut off was there to capture it. Instead, I turned into the perpetual observer. The background chattering of all the women also reminded me of John Cage in that their gossip was a performance in it self and part of the process of the entirety of the composition.
"A performance of a composition which is undeterminable of its performance is necessarily unique. It cannot be repeated. When performed for a 2ND time, the outcome is other than it was. Nothing, therefore is accomplished by such a performance, since the performance cannot be grasped as an object in time." -John Cage (Performance and Process)

ART COMES FROM LIFE

I really like how Louis Bourgeois describes art and even further, modern art. She claims art is not just about making art and it takes more than just being in with the current movement to be an artist. Art to her is an expression with life and all its problems with no real solutions, just escapes through the means of self expression. She states "modern art will continue because this condition remains; it is the modern human condition."

EVE HESSE: IN RESPONSE TO BEING UNIQUE AS A WOMAN

A fantastic strength and courage is necessary to be a woman and we are unique in certain ways. Still to this day men make more money that women. We not only have to struggle and strive in the workplace, we also have to struggle with what I feel is a natural urge to carry out woman oriented roles and still compete in a world where we have to prove ourselves and requires us to work so that the homemaker is now scorned upon. However, I am no feminist, I do believe men are unique in ways that we are not and they also have to struggle to live up to this macho standard that has been created for them. If they choose not to be into sports or violence and leads a more refined or cultured life, men are at risk of being labeled gay. They have to be they money makers and protectors of the house and the family when they might need just as much help and comfort as a woman would. I am glad to see however women in search of a more meaningful pursuit of achievement, not saying being a housewife isn't if that is all you want to do, but almost every woman can raise a family, our freedom to education and career choice is something to be appreciated and can be done while carrying out traditional domestic roles as well. It shows that we are of equal existence as men and can achieve just as much too, with double the workload of a household existence as well.

HESSE'S UNTITLED STATEMENT (N D) NOTES

Parts of Untitled (n d):

"Another's world...
I cannot know your world-you write the systems, you set up the grids-...
I see them, I see their order...
....but I see the fragile sensitivity,
the you which is and should be there....."

When reading this letter/poem, it sounds as if she is speaking to a man on he he sees and does things then compares it with her vision as a woman , but I am not entirely sure. I like her use of text, again it reminds me of Dada.

HESSE'S UNTITLED STATEMENT 1969 NOTES

Hesses's untitled statement makes me want to sketch out what I think this object she is describing looks like! She says, "each in itself is a complete statement, yet together I am not certain how it will be." Maybe this uncertainty is what she is looking for in a work mentioned in 1968's untitled statement.

Her use of the term non-art reminds me of a new take on Dada even though I think her art is considered conceptual, Donald Judd mentioned of specific objects, "this was no movement or school of art."

One aspect of the 3-D object is that it allows you the freedom to do anything-she sees her concept/vision as a risk but she has the freedom and discipline to carry it out.

HESSE'S 1968 UNTITLED STATEMENT NOTES

Like Hesse I also feel that sometimes in my work "the formal principles are understood and understandable," yet I want my work to be about something more than just a pretty thing or just about line, color or form. I guess this is what she means by the "unknown quantity." I also think this how it feels to be searching for your own style when creating something. Like she said, "it is something, it is nothing."

I feel like I am still in a learning process and I have no style yet-"it is nothing"-yet I have distinguishable traits in my work and developing trends but its is unknown-since I labeled it "unknown" and an "it, "it is something."

ART AS UNMAKING

Notes on Robert Smithson's 1969 interview:

The notion that the object is a mental problem rather than a physical reality does not make much sense to me because it is a physical reality in our world because it was physically made. It could however be created from a concept of a mental problem though. He describes that product as a thought, which it is and can be compared to but that doesn't change that it did at one point physically exist. This could be related to the Descartes "dualism" thing where the thought is one entity and the physical act is another.

3-D objects in art have no frame-but the world can be its frame.

He breaks his materials down to its organic matter and that the components making it were natural, actual existence of things. His interest seems to lie in beginnings and ends of things and his power he has to control that. A "dematerialization in refined matter" or and interest in juxtaposition.

He claims "you can never escape your limits" but the idea is to "go outside the wall" or room that confines the work. When he displays his work or forms his work outside there seems to be no limit yet he describes the horizon as "diluting around him."

Smithson states,"anything that goes into a gallery is confined because of the room." I agree that once works that are put into a gallery it does confine the but the works are already finished or the gallery is included as part of the work just as his outside surroundings are a part of his. His works outside are their own gallery. To get the full affect of conceptual art it really needs to be displayed in parts, for example, just going to his non-sites or earth maps isn't going to clue you in as the photos would and making the trip. The photographs of these sites help reiterate what you need to be looking for.

He says everybody is convinced what reality is and bring their own concepts. I feel that maybe everyone does have their own reality in a way with maybe one shared version made by the standardized norms created. Reality to me is just perceptions and senses, and sometimes these can differ between people and the outcome is a different reality for them, an example is colorblind and crazy people have different realities because of differences in their perceptions and/or realities.

I love the concept of his non-existent sites from "earth maps" made of areas that are lost in time. I feel a good example of this is the Garden of Eden because there is a physical place where the Garden supposedly would be yet today that is not the name of that place, the Garden is gone.

His art is "disconnected parts of the earth" gathered together in arrangement to to make a whole object.

Smithson doesn't understand how some artists take beautiful materials and make them look ugly. I don't agree, I fell that "ugly" is yet another perception and differs also among people with based on social norms. "Ugly" is generalized and in "ugliness there is difference and interest in a way that is beautiful.

His term "de-differation" reminds me of when people play "7 degrees of separation," or something along the lines of tying everything together in ways that work but are not rational. The movie with Jim Carry and the number 13 is a good example of this where he broke everything in his life down to involving this number 13 because of a book about it.

Smithson believes that "if you name something, you destroy its reality." I believe that reality is a name itself, so you could say that reality is already destroyed itself based on his belief. He also speaks of artists being afraid of naming their work because it is then destroyed in reality. I have always felt that by naming something you are creating it or bringing something into existence-it was not known before-and now it is.

NOTES ON DONALD JUDD: SPECIFIC OBJECTS

Judd mentions that "work done before 1946, the edges of the rectangle are a boundary, the end of a picture. The composition must react to the edges and the rectangle must be unified, but the shape of the rectangle is not stress, the parts are more important, and the relationships of color and form occur among them." Examples of artist that use the rectangular limitations of the frame in paintings are Ab Ex artists Pollock, Rothko, Still, and Newman. I think it would be interesting to see these artists do these kind of works on non rectangular planes, or 3-d objects but then I think the focus wouldn't be on the painting or form anymore.

I like how he refers to 3-dimensional objects as spaces to move into. Instead of a framework its more of a whole unit in which the components that make up that unit are separate but actually make up that unit and make it whole.

Actual space is used as an infinite palette where the boundaries and canons of painting from classical European standards is now non-existent and power is relinquished through freedom of expression.

Some differences between 3-d objects and sculpture are that sculptures form is not so general and is more preconceived of what it will be and what it always will be/never changing.

These works have no real reference unless it is single and explicit, In his words "a work needs only to be interesting."

FINDING MEANING IN HAPPENINGS

When reading Susan Sontag's essay on "Happenings" I found myself questioning the meaning of them. Are they expressive art displays, theatrical productions, installations....a little bit of it all? She says " Happenings have no plot, though it is an action or a series of actions and events. It also shuns continuous rational discourse, though it may contain words like Help!, Voglio un bichiere di acqua, Love me, Car, One, two , three.... Speech is purified and condensed by dispareteness(there is only speech of need) and then expanded by ineffectuality, by the lack of relation between the persons enacting the Happening." By performing these Happenings I want to know what kind of reactions they wanted to achieve with each individual Happening since they were always rehearsed. By being rehearsed they had to have some sort of theme in mind when performing rather just just making random sounds and actions with objects. It seems like they wanted to portray " a something of some sort" to the audience in a challenging, thought producing way. I find it coincidental that a student of John Cage ( a composer known to incorporate the sounds of the concert hall before a show-like mumbling, coughing, clacking-as his opening piece) would be involved in this sort of thing because it has a lot of the same mode of thing as John Cage had with his work. The idea that the sounds of nothing could actually be something related to the idea of no plot as the plot. This also reminds me of the " This Is Not A Pipe" piece by Rene Magritte which works well because these Happenings were said to be very "dreamlike and surrealist." Sontag states, " the Surrealist sensibility aims to shock through the techniques of radical juxtaposition. Even one of the classical methods of psychoanalysis, free association, can be interpreted as another working-out of the Surrealist principle of radical juxtaposition."

WHAT CONTSTITUTES CAMP?

Susan Sontag describes Camp taste in note 34 from Against Interpretation and other Essays as"turning it's back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgement. Camp doesn't reverse things. It doesn't argue that the good is bad, or the bad is good. What it does is to offer art (and life) a different-a supplementary-set of standards."
My question is can something be "campy to some, but not others? What is the distinction between something bad or campy? Doesn't it lie in the opinion of the person and what meaning it holds for them? For example, the Evil Dead movies to me are campy because they were trying to produce a serious scary movie on a low budget and it turned out to be silly yet a cult classic of zombie movies. Although throughout the series they were obviously playing up the silliness on purpose. Sontag also mentions that "the canon of camp can change . Time has a great deal to do with it." "Camp is the glorification of character." Or, "Camp is failed seriousness." These movies offer a great deal of the Camp canon along with that "80's mood that horror movies in that time frame had, which to me makes it more campy. Furthermore, if this is not an example of Camp, is it a level of camp? When I mentioned it being a cult classic, is there even a difference between cult and camp, and if so what exactly is it? Sontag again states," Camp is the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It incarnates a victory of style over content, aesthetics over morality, of irony over tragedy." On this note I find myself re-evaluating art and other things in a different light; "is it camp or is it crap?"