San Francisco Street Art

All over San Francisco there are sculptures of hearts. "Hearts in San Francisco" started as a fundraiser for the General Hospital in San Francisco. Every year they are molded and painted by different artists. The hearts decorate the city in different areas until they are auctioned off at the event for the hospital charity.

Robert Rauschenberg

Rauschenberg helped transition art from abstract expressionism to pop art.

He picked up trash on the streets of New York City and found objects that interested him and brought them back to his studio where he could merge them into his work 

Albany International Airport Gallery

Scott McCarney: Last Lines, 2010

Scott describes his piece of art, "The books I use are library discards, thrift store finds, or throw aways. Their out-of date content and bulk are poor competitors with the vast, but invisible World Wide Web."

William Ransom: Hold Back Hold Forth, 2009

"The dynamics of distance and separation shape this piece made from the trunk and branches of a single tree. The two empty seats retain a connection that is rigid, yet fragile. And while each end can move, they cannot either come together or move apart; a metaphor for our ties to family and geography."

Improve Everywhere, Ice Cream Truck Orchestra and Princess Hijab

Improve everywhere, a group which causes scenes in various ways in public.  The people involved are randomly picked from the public.  Personally I love the videos that they make of their "missions" lead by specific agents (leaders that organize the missions).  They are extremely funny and creative.  I like how they get such drastic response from the people who are witnessing these missions of the group.  I went to their website and watched many of their videos and these were my favorite ones.

Who You Gonna Call?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKB7zfopiUA


Suicide Jumper
http://improveverywhere.com/2005/12/10/suicide-jumper/

The video we watched on the Ice Cream Truck Orchestra, I thought was fairly annoying and I didn't really consider it art.  It also didn't really involve the public as much as improve everywhere videos did.  Not my favorite videos we have watched in class thus far.

Princess Hijab is a what they call the unknown artist in France who mysteriously goes around painting black veils on metro fashion ads and other ads posters billboards in France.  This has been very controversial because of the governments push on banning all face covering veils in France.  I personally think her art is a huge statement in their society.  I don't think that there should be a ban on veils and feel that its a personal preference.  Her artwork for me expresses he feelings towards not banning veils because she paints them on the faces of famous people in ads.  Here are some of her works that I like.

MIA POWERS

Art and the Public

In class we discussed how contemporary artists are using bodies, figures and the public to create their pieces of work.  I believe that involving people to create artwork is ingenious and gives people a greater interest in the art world.  Using humans as a medium for artwork is different from all other forms of mediums used in art and what I personally would ever think of when I thought of art.  Personally, I feel that  using the public as a way to express humor, social/political ideas, and personal feelings of various topics, helps people to connect greater with the artwork.  Being able to observe artwork through performance, images, movement, sound and active objects are art forms that encompass and relate to the public experiences, thoughts and feelings.  I find that photographs and performance art which connects certain beliefs and experiences with the human body is a wonderful form of art.  We looked at various artists that developed art by using the public such as, Damien Hirst, Gillian Wearing, Spencer Tunick, and Anthony Gromler.  My favorite artist out of this group would have to be Spencer Tunick.  He is my favorite because he goes outside of the norm and brings together enormous groups of people.  He uses their naked natural body to make connections with body and contemporary society.  I like how he goes outside the lines and takes risks.  His photographs are amazing, embracing the natural world and the natural body figure.  The architecture and landscapes that he uses are beautiful and capture a variety of surroundings from across the globe.  I respect and love how his large scale photographs show beauty in both the earth and humans.


Gillian Wearing

Spencer Tunick's Website: http://www.spencertunick.com/

Photographs "installations" by Spencer Tunick:

MIA POWERS

The Mona Lisa Curse (Parts 1-12)

This Documentary encompassed many of the things we have learned in this course to date...

Robert Hughes Most Important Quotes Parts 1-12: Regarding Opinion of Contemporary Art World and The Changes Which Have Taken Place 

Part 1

 "The entanglement of big money with art has become a curse on how art is made, controlled, and above all - in the way that it's experienced."d."

“Apart from drugs, art is the biggest unregulated market in the world, with contemporary art sales estimated at around $18 billion a year. (….) Boosted by regiments of nouveau riche collectors, and serviced by a growing army of advisors, dealers and auctioneers. As Andy Warhol once observed, ‘Good business is the best art.’"

Part 2

Hughes noted about the display of the Mona Lisa; “People came not to look at it, but to say that they’d seen it. (….) The painting made the leap from artwork to icon of mass consumption.” The postmodernist period of art as commodity and mass spectacle had begun..."

Part 3

 “In just a few years this would change, art as commodity would begin to take over from art as art.”

Part 4

“On the 18th of October, 1973, the Sculls auctioned off 50 works from their collection through Sotheby Park-Bernet, Inc. This was the first time a collector from that small contemporary art world treated their collection as an investment.”

Part 5

“American contemporary art as a serious ‘commodity’ was about to be born.” 

Part 6

“The consequences of such prices, was that art became admired, not through any critical perspective, but for its price tag. Auction houses were the new arbiters of taste.”

Part 7

“The way that art is experienced in these spaces has changed beyond recognition. The museum has adopted the strategy of mass media; an emphasis on spectacle, the cult of the celebrity masterpiece, art clocked through the blink of an eye or through the lens of a camera. But what it’s gained through an increase in these numbers, it’s lost in terms of freedom of access and availability to the eye and the mind.”

Part 8

“The Tate is a brand, the Louvre is a brand - is the Guggenheim a brand, I guess it is.”

Part 9

“I admired some of his work in the 60s and early 70’s, but he turned into a dull celebrity business man branded to the hairline. It was as good as printing dollar bills. The dominance of the art market has produced multiple Andys - global brands like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst.”

Part 10

“appropriation” artist Richard Prince – a painting that sold for $7.4 million. Mugrabi professed; “We support these artists by promoting them, by buying them at auction, by buying them privately - you could say it’s a way of controlling it.”

Part 11

“Isn’t it a miracle what so much money and so little ability can produce? Just extraordinary. You know, when I look at a thing like this I realize that, so much of art - not all of it thank god, but a lot of it - has just become a kind of cruddy game for the self-aggrandizement of the rich and the ignorant, it is a kind of bad but useful business.”

Part 12

“If art can’t tell us about the world we live in, then I don’t believe there’s much point in having it. And that is something we are going to have to face more and more as the years go on; that nasty question which never used to be asked because the assumption was always that it was answered long ago - ‘What good is art?, What use is art, what does it do? Is what it does actually worth doing? - and an art which is completely monetized in the way that it’s getting these days, is going to have to answer these questions or it is going to die.”

Summaries and My Opinions on Part 1-12 

Robert Hughes the narrator of this documentary, has strong views on the contemporary art world and its over commercialization, most of them which I agree on.

In part 1, I agree that people focus less on the talent and beauty in the art that once was produced.  The love of art and appreciation of art that people used to uphold is no longer dominant and rarely present in the world of art. Money has taken over the art world and people are consumed in the profit and status their artwork they collect shows.  I personally would never purchase art based on the amount of money, the popularity of the artist, or for pure investment.

In part 2,  I also side with Hughes.  Mass media has completely distorted the importance of great artwork such as, the Mona Lisa.  I value how amazing that piece of artwork is and the talent it took to paint a portrait.  With contemporary artwork, many of the artist create a name and a brand with their names and lack the talent that used to be appreciated.  I don't find it interesting and beautiful to look at artwork that I feel like took no effort, time and talent and was just created to make money.

In part 3, "Hughes recalls his early days in the vibrant late 1960s art scene of New York, where he met and befriended the likes of Pop artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) and James Rosenquist (1933-)." Hughes discuses how after this period art changed for the worse.  The art world and the people within it only considered art a profit making investment.  I completely agree that this is a negative impact and in my opinion just like like many other aspects in society the art world has transformed into a market that appreciates money over beauty and meaning.

Part 4-8 "Hirst ’sculpture’ – a dead shark suspended in a tank of formaldehyde titled; The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living."  We had previously discussed Damien Hirst and I believe he is a negative impact in the art community.  He is I believe one of the artist that is in it only for the money.


In part 9-12 I agree with Hughes in that mass production of art has made it so the public lacks the appreciation of the original piece of art.  Mega-collectors and art dealers are making the art industry worse and worse.  They promote artists and increase how much money an art is worth.  They are negatively impacting the future of art.  




Mia Powers

Collecting

In the last class we discussed collecting and how it relates to art.  Collecting is done by various people and places. You can find collections of art work in museums,  galleries and on websites.  Collecting is also done on a personal basis.  Private dealers, wealthy individuals and everyday people all collect art as well.  We looked at Judith Greer, who was a wealthy art collector.  She collected artwork from various places such as the Frieze Art Fair.  She was an avid art collector, who appreciated and and loved the artwork she purchased. We then looked at Herb and Dorthy, who were different in that they were art collectors who did not have money.  They bought art that was reasonable in price and that they loved.  They didn't choose the artwork they bought based on how famous the artist was or the type of artwork that was popular at the time.  They started collecting in 1962 and unlike many art collectors in dealers were not in it for the money and investment.  They appreciated the artwork they bought, which was usually minimal, conceptual and abstract artwork, done by new and upcoming artists.  Their collection by the early 2000s was estimated to be worth around 9 million dollars.  Instead of selling their collection and profiting off of it, they gave it to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.  Many art collectors have a passion, appreciation and a love of art, there are those who are in it for the profit, which has over time been increasingly more of a common practice.

If I were to collect artwork I would look not at who the artist was, how much it was worth, or the investment.  For me, I would choose the art that I felt was the most beautiful, the art that I considered reflected the artists talent and creativity.  I would also consider how the piece of artwork made me feel and what it was expressing.  I believe it is important to not look at artwork based on the popularity of the type of work at the time, the artists status in the art world and the investment a piece of work might have.






Mia Powers