Entries Tagged 'ARTISTS' ↓

…that makes today’s religion so different, so appealing? (seen in Narrandera, 20.8.10) (With apologies to Richard Hamilton) (it’s that curvy eyebrow that makes you wonder…)

Be warned: if you vote for The Bishop and her Pet Monk the folks at Iconophilia can arrange for some gnomely revenge… (For example, this is by Milan Knizak: Andel, 1989, acrylic on plastic. P.S. if this makes no sense to you, there’s a thread).

…in your dreams! See this and other imaginaries by Fritz Kahn at accidental mysteries.

“…because they’re aerial landscapes you can just swivel them around.” So says the gallery attendant. In a previous post I asked whether it matters that the viewers of Aboriginal art are comfortable installing it to suit their own taste – by making the final decision about its orientation on the wall – in a manner that is unique to this kind of intercultural transaction. Actually, I would want to argue something much stronger: to convert a topographical way of seeing to a pictorial way of looking adds a layer of meaning and value which is essentially alien to the originating culture. My question remains, why does this final aesthetic decision remain unproblematic? Take this example:

The snapshot above includes the painting (on the right) titled Jurnu Kup (Two Sisters), by May Chapman, from Punmu, one of the stars at the exhibition at Chapman Gallery in Manuka. This is a group exhibition Jakilpa Laju Kartyinpa: Bringing a Message showing work by some of the Martumili artists represented in the Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route exhibition currently at the National Museum of Australia.

These two ways of presenting the same painting demonstrates a commonplace lack of resolution of this ontological dilemma. It accentuates two different ways of being in the world, of two different symbolic systems. Clearly, the painting by May Chapman doesn’t yet have a settled orientation. It was advertised and illustrated in the Canberra Times rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise to the way it was hung in the gallery, apparently “to suit the shape of the advertisement”. In the Martumili Artists certificate for this painting it is illustrated rotated 180 degrees (upside down), but described as if it is horizontal. All of which exemplifies the orientation conundrum.

You could argue that it doesn’t matter, because a painting like this is equally valid in any of four orientations. Maybe the artist doesn’t care, or the issue is beyond their ken, or just not on their radar… You could argue these works will always be essentially ambiguous, and therefore the consumer will be wrong three quarters of the time.  If indeed there is a right and wrong. Nevertheless it is usually the outsider (art advisor, curator, dealer, collector) who takes charge, and who decides which way up it should go… The deed is done, whether or not it matters to the artist. So what does this tell us about the asymmetrical relations inherent in such intercultural transactions? See comments…

July 28, 1887.- Marcel Duchamp was a French/American artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Duchamp’s output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of Western art during this period. In this image: People at the exhibition of late French artist Marcel Duchamp (shown on screen) during the opening in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 22 November 2008, the first art Duchamp exhibition in Latin America. More than 120 pieces of art are shown at the exhibition, among them photographs and original reproductions of sculptures and daily objects. Marcel Duchamp died on 02 October 1968 in Paris, France. EPA/MAXI FAILLA. (ex ArtDaily)

Max Yavno, Muscle Beach, 1949, gelatin silver print, 15 7/8 x 19 7/8 in., collection of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, The Max Yavno Collection. Go to ArtDaily for the details… “Our” Max’s Form at Bondi (1939) can be found here, there and everywhere, thanks to Dr. Google.

and see her current exhibition of the Tiwi Sistagirls at Nellie Castan Gallery, and be surprised at the transgressive conjunctions. There’s a slide show here.

If this is “war art”, what position does it take? Is it sufficient to present upscaled readymades-altered to speak about the subject of war? I think not. One could hardly image a context more removed from the circumstances and experience of war than this. Fiona Banner presents Harrier and Jaguar as the Duveens Commission at the Tate Britain, seen here courtesy of ArtDaily. Each has been transformed (painted like a bird, polished like a mirror) and upended (recontextualised) in the Tate’s neoclassical museum space. The aestheticisation to which these particular functional objects have been subjected is therefore reduced to four actions: selection, surface treatment, re-orientation, and context.

Fiona Banner is quoted as saying: “It’s hard to believe that these planes are designed for function, because they are beautiful. But they are absolutely designed for function, as a bird or prey is, and that function is to kill. That we find them beautiful brings into question the very notion of beauty, but also our own intellectual and moral position. I am interested in that clash between what we feel and what we think.” How very English. Is that clash as in Margaret Thatcher, or Tony Blair? She’s not anti-war, just anti-these-wars, and their cost: “This work is not a direct response to the Iraq war. I marched against the war, we shouldn’t be there and the costs of Afghanistan are too high.”

It’s hard to find more than just the reworked press release to continue this discussion. Adrian Searle gushes excitedly at The Guardian… And Arifa Akbar is awe-struck at The Independent Blogs…

…clearly the eponymous Bill Indman now walks the streets of Freiburg. In the Black Forest you can’t see the art for the trees. With due deference to Mel Ramsden for this arcane art historical reference…

There are too many ground zeros in Afghanistan… This is how the dead are buried near Kandahar.

See how Michael Yon photographs the war in Afghanistan. Despite the constraints of being embedded, his work conveys a very real sense of the human experience of the conflict. Being embedded means photography is never at the front line, and therefore it is almost impossible to reproduce the actual experience of war. The still, quiet, clean precision of the camera can only allude to the full sensorium of the war environment. In such circumstances, limited by what he can’t show the viewer, Michael has to find other subjects in order to build a complex set of visual narratives which combine to provide the stimulus for the viewer to imagine what can’t be conveyed by imagery alone. See how he finds imagery to evoke such absences.  And see how he captures the sometimes bizarre effects of the technology of contemporary warfare.

This is from his tiger-vision photographs of a medical evacuation of an Afghan casualty. Only the containers are familiar. Nothing else makes sense. The helicopter’s rotor blades light up as they churn through the dust.

Michael Yon was recently chosen by Times Online as one of the “40 bloggers who count.” Go to his site when you have a quiet moment and you’ll see why. (Images copyright Michael Yon here reproduced with permission and thanks.) Read more? Go to D.B.Grady’s biographical story about Yon in The Atlantic.