Monday entry (for 11/23/09): Artist of interest: David LaChapelle

David LaChapelle is an American fine art and commercial photographer, as well as a music video, commercial and film director. LaChapelle was born on March 11, 1963 in Fairfield, Connecticut. He attended the North Carolina School of the Arts as well as the School of the Visual Arts in New York City. LaChapelle is most well known for his outrageous and humorous tableaux portraits of celebrities in unique and sometimes surreal settings. Because his subject matter is weighted heavily in pop culture featuring pop culture icons and showcasing the exploitation of wealth and fame, his work has often times been considered borderline kitsch. According to LaChapelle's biography on his official website, "LaChapelle's work continues to be inspired by everything from art history to street culture, creating both a record and mirror of all facets of popular culture today. He is quite simply the only photographic artist currently working in the world today whose work has transcended the fashion or celebrity magazine context it was made for, and has been enshrined by the notoriously discerning and fickle contemporary art intelligentsia."

LaChapelle's official website.

Interview with LaChapelle by DesignBoom.com

LaChapelle's work was recently exhibited at the Sebastian Guinness Gallery in Dublin, Ireland.

Miracle Tan, 2004

Houston, We Have a Problem, 1999

Amanda as Warhol's Marilyn, 2002

Jesus Is My Homeboy, 2009

Grad school application

VMFA application.

Artist lecture: Leigh Ann Craig, PhD, 11/19/09

I attended Dr. Craig's lecture titled "From Holy Matrons to the Sine Sensu: Nine Medieval Women, Pilgrimage, and the Negotiation of Boundaries in Later Medieval Europe." Dr. Craig's lecture dealt with material from her recent book titled "Wandering Women and Holy Matrons: Women as Pilgrims in the Later Middle Ages." She discussed nine women from Medieval European history that went on pilgrimages and the negotiations with their husbands that they had to endure in order to be granted permission in order to attend these pilgrimages. Dr. Craig explained that women were expected to stay home and care for their husbands and children and provide sex to their husband so as to help their husbands avoid sinning by engaging in sexual relations with a woman other than his wife.

One particular story she shared was of a woman named Margery Kempe (1373-1438) who is most famous for the fact that she wrote what is considered the first autobiography in the English language. Her autobiography titled "The Book of Margery Kempe" went into great detail about the pilgrimages she took throughout her life. For her first pilgrimage she had to negotiate with her husband in order to have his permission for her to travel without him. After what she considered a conversation with Jesus Christ, she asked that they have a celibate marriage, even though they had already engaged in sexual relations, asked that she be able to fast on Fridays and go on the pilgrimage. He of course told her in order for her to go on the pilgrimage, she must continue to engage in a sexual relationship with him, eat and drink with him on Fridays, pay his social debts and then he'd grant her permission. All she got out of the deal was the ability to go on the pilgrimage in exchange for paying his social debts and giving up a celibate marriage and fasting on Fridays.

The lecture revolved around eight similar women and their stories of how they attained permission to go on pilgrimages, including one woman named Christina Coppir who was forced to go on a pilgrimage by her husband because six days after they married, she became possessed by the devil.

Monday entry (for 11/16/09): Artist of interest: Candice Breitz

Candice Breitz is a Berlin based South African artist. She was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1972. She holds several prestigious degrees, starting with her B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, which she received in 1993. Later in 1995 she received a M.A. in Art History at the University of Chicago. In 1997 she received a M.Phil. in Art History at Columbia University in New York. From 1998 to 2002 Breitz was a Doctoral Candidate in Art History at Columbia University. Breitz is best known for her video works and installations, though she also has created several photographic bodies of work that have varied greatly from one another in both subject matter and style.

One common theme throughout Breitz's work is focusing on the world of fandom in relation to pop-culture icons. In 2006 for her video installation Working Class Hero, Breitz invited a diverse community of John Lennon fans to pay tribute to the late musician by performing his first solo album, 'Plastic Ono Band,' from beginning to end on camera. In addition to offering intimate portraits of each participant, the resulting 25-channel video installation forms a survey of fan culture and reflects on the complex threads of identification that often characterize the relationship between celebrities and their public.



A year earlier in 2005, Breitz created King (A Portrait of Michael Jackson), a similar video installation of fans singing along to Michael Jackson songs while attempting his trademark dance moves.



In her 2007 photographic body of work Monuments, she continued her anthropological survey of the devotee. They are melancholic and funny portraits of how someone that a fan has never met can overwhelm their personality and become "an ever present soundtrack to their life.”

Britney Spears Monument, Berlin, September 2007

Iron Maiden Monument, Berlin, July 2007

Breitz's official website.

Interview with Breitz by Kopenhagen.com

Breitz's work was exhibited earlier this year at the Yvon Lambert Gallery in New York, NY.

Thursday entry (for 11/12/09): Middlebrow

Quote on topic by an expert:

“It must be obvious to anyone that the volume and social weight of middlebrow culture, borne along as it has been by the great recent increase in the American middle class, have multiplied at least tenfold in the past three decades. This culture presents a more serious threat to the genuine article than the old-time pulp dime novel, Tin Pan Alley, Schund variety ever has or will. Unlike the latter, which has its social limits clearly marked out for it, middlebrow culture attacks distinctions as such and insinuates itself everywhere …. Insidiousness is of its essence, and in recent years its avenues of penetration have become infinitely more difficult to detect and block.” --Clement Greenberg

Annotated bibliography:

Holbo, John. "Highbrow, Lowbrow, Middlebrow". Out of the Crooked Timber of Humanity, No Straight Thing Was Ever Made. 11/12/09 .

This is an article discussing an essay titled Highbrow, Lowbrow, Middlebrow by Russell Lynes. The essay itself goes into great detail, describing the differences between each class of "brow" and references several different essays on the discussion of each class with an emphasis on middlebrow, which is thought to have been coined by Virginia Woolf.

"It is the doing of the middlebrows. They are the people, I confess, that I seldom regard with entire cordiality. They are the go–betweens; they are the busy–bodies who run from one to the other with their tittle tattle and make all the mischief — the middlebrows, I repeat. But what, you may ask, is a middlebrow? And that, to tell the truth, is no easy question to answer. They are neither one thing nor the other. They are not highbrows, whose brows are high; nor lowbrows, whose brows are low. Their brows are betwixt and between. They do not live in Bloomsbury which is on high ground; nor in Chelsea, which is on low ground. Since they must live somewhere presumably, they live perhaps in South Kensington, which is betwixt and between."

Artist lecture: Shimon Attie, 11/11/09

This was by far my favorite artist lecture this semester. I was intrigued by all of the bodies of work Attie presented in his lecture but especially by his video installations "The Attraction of Onlookers" and "Racing Clocks Run Slow." I found myself tearing up while watching "The Attraction of Onlookers" with the knowledge of what this Welsh village had gone through and the scrutiny they've had to deal with since the disaster forty-three years ago. I felt he absolutely did what he set out to do and that was to help the citizens of Aberfan move on from the disaster that has plagued their lives for over two decades and to help give them a new, more simple identity as being a Welsh village without the heartache.

I was also captivated by his video installation "Racing Clocks Run Slow," which surprised me since like Attie, I've never had an interest in racing. I loved the drama in the piece with the use of horizontal and circular movement and sound. It definitely had more of a plot compared to "The Attraction of Onlookers" and was just as powerful despite it's subject matter.

Monday entry (for 11/9/09): Artist of interest: Alex Prager

Alex Prager is an American contemporary self-taught photographer. She was born in Los Angeles, California in 1979 and raised by her grandmother. Prager experienced a nomadic upbringing, which found her living in California, Florida and Switzerland. Prager began to seriously pursue photography in her early twenties after becoming a fan of William Eggleston's work. She forewent art school due to having never stayed in one place long enough to pursue a college education and taught herself the technical aspects of photography and lighting through trial and error. While producing and exhibiting her own body of works, she contributed to such magazines as Details, i-D, Elle Japan, Tank, MOJO and Complex. She released her first book The Book of Disquiet in 2005, which led to her first solo show, Polyester, at the Robert Berman Gallery in Santa Monica, California in 2007. Her next exhibition, The Big Valley, was shown in 2008 at the Michael Hoppen Gallery in London, England and received critical acclaim. London Times magazine said, “That she has buckets more vision than credentials matters not, it helps to retain the rawness and individuality of her eye. She is uncertain and dizzy – and very capable.”

Women figure primarily in Prager's work, all donned in 60s inspired wigs and clothing in the staged tableauxs that Prager creates. Her work has a retro flair with a modern execution. Her series Polyester, The Big Valley and her most recent body of work Week-end all capture the vulnerable side of women who happen to be trapped in their own private hell and are on the verge of giving up or already have. Prager, who currently lives in LA, has explained, "I’m documenting a world that exists and doesn’t exist at the same time; the world in which these girls live in is made up, but the illusion they’ve created is so constant that it became more real to them than the world they actually live in. That’s L.A. for you!"

Prager's official website.

Interview with Prager by Juxtapoz magazine.

Prager's newest body of work, Week-end, will be exhibited at M+B Gallery in West Hollywood, California on January 30, 2010.

Undo, 2006

Susie and Friends, 2008

Julie, 2007

Desiree, 2008

Thursday entry (for 11/5/09): Elitism

Quote on topic by an expert:

"Elitism in the art world is the insistence that art is somehow out of the realm of common experience, that its pleasures are not available to everyone. It has become increasingly necessary to read texts (artists’ statements, wall labels or plaques, articles of art criticism, etc.) in order to understand certain works of art, but this is what great contemporary art does: It advances through ideas, by engaging our minds. Art galleries, because their offerings are commodities, are invariably commercial enterprises, but they are among the only places where the public can see art free of charge. Museums serve comparable roles as a community's storehouse of art, exhibiting works to their vistors, educating visitors to the works’ significance, garnering support in ways unlike the galleries'. Wherever encounters with art occur, they always demand the viewer's attention and receptivity. Failure to embrace those opportunities are at least, simply that: losses of opportunities,significant as those can be." --Michael Delahunt

Annotated bibliography:

Sen, Kunal. "Art and Elitism: A Form of Pattern Recognition." 2007.

In this article, Sen describes a form of pattern recognition that we all must employ in order to differentiate between lowbrow and highbrow art.

"As we come across paintings, sculptures, stories, poems, music, cinema, we are told where they stand in terms of quality. When we hear of a novel, we are told if it is a 'classic.' When we go to a museum, we are told that these are examples of some of the best of the breed. Even before we can decide whether we like Mozart or not, we are informed that he is one of the best we have ever produced. It is impossible for us not to use our pattern-recognition machine in these situations as well – we are programmed to do so – our survival depends on successful and efficient pattern recognition."

How this topic relates to my work:

The topic of elitism plays a role in the background of my concept. Highbrow art is linked to elitism and kitsch is viewed negatively in the eyes of the art world's elite.

Monday entry (for 11/2/09): Artist of interest: Yumiko Kayukawa

Yumiko Kayukawa, born and raised in Naie, a small town in Hokkaido, Japan, is a Japanese artist who "juxtaposes the in-your-face raunchiness of American culture with the delicate folklore and symbolism of the Japanese aesthetic." When Kayukawa was a teenager, she fell in love with American pop-culture via her exposure to American rock n' roll, films and fashion. She deems herself a media junkie. At 16 she entered the art world with her own Manga comic book. She spent a great deal of time drawing Manga, which portrayed westernized characters created in a Japanese style of drawing, though she admits that at the time she didn't think of the style of drawing to be Japanese. It wasn't until she saw a photograph of a unspecified American rock star wearing a traditional kimono that she was inspired to bring the two influences of western pop-culture and traditional Japanese culture together in her art work. Her most recent body of work titled "Wild, Wild East" hones in on the melding of these two cultures. Kayukawa moved to Seattle, Washington four years ago and has said that now living in America and viewing the country she grew up in from the outside has inspired her and helped her create a more striking juxtaposition in her art work. About her artwork, Kayukawa has said, "I'd rather my paintings hang next to rock star pin-ups than on museum walls. Ultimately I want to connect with people all over the world on that level."

Kayukawa's official website.

Interview with Kayukawa by Juxtapoz magazine.

Kayukawa's most recent body of work "Wild, Wild East" is currently being shown at the Shooting Gallery in San Francisco, California.

Wild, Wild East, acrylic and ink on canvas, 2009

Read It To Me, Read It To Me (Ocean), acrylic and ink on canvas, 2009

Have You Ever Been a Foreigner?, acrylic and ink on canvas, 2009

Cat Cookies, acrylic on canvas, 2006

Thursday entry (for 10/29/09): Populist artists

Quote on topic by an expert:

"Artist? Says who? Critics, art historians and fine-art galleries cringe at the thought that any of these "populist artists" should be taken seriously. In the highbrow art world, accessibility and affordability are often inversely proportional to merit. The populist industry's aggressive replication strategy, on the other hand, is designed to move the merchandise. "Limited editions" from populist artists are often released in quantities of 20,000 and up, using a variety of formats that range from canvas to three sizes of paper prints. Throw in the T shirts, mugs and pillows with the same images, and limited looks limitless. "These guys haven't invented anything, they've just discovered an image that's salable, and they pump the market until they can't sell any more," says Herbert Palmer, owner of a gallery on Los Angeles' Melrose Avenue that sells works by the respected contemporary abstractionists Gordon Onslow Ford and Choichi Ida at prices as high as $200,000." --Dan Cray

Annotated bibliography:

Cray, Dan. "Art: Art of Selling Kitsch". Time Magazine. 10/29/09 .

In this article, Cray explains the phenomenon that is populist artists who are making millions of dollars by marketing their art and their name and reproducing their original artwork on a large scale for mass consumption. The artists he includes as way of example are Thomas Kinkade, Terry Redlin, Bev Doolittle, amongst others. Cray points out that these artists are successful not only because of their aggressive marketing but because the kitsch imagery they create appeals to the masses, thereby making them populist artists: artists whose work was created for and bought by ordinary people.

"The art-vs.-commerce debate isn't a new one--Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is said to be the most reproduced painting in history--but the corporate approach of Media Arts brings the argument to a new level. 'I have an N.C. Wyeth hanging in my office that was a tire ad in 1916,' says Scott Usher, president of Greenwich Workshop, a publisher in Shelton, Conn., 'and very few art critics are going to say Wyeth was just an illustrator.' Norman Rockwell battled the same demon, and Andy Warhol took heat for suggesting it was O.K. to have assistants do some of the work--a tactic several populist artists now use. Collectors such as Bob and Cathy Adorni, a Castaic, Calif., couple who own 58 Kinkade prints, view such techniques as an acceptable means to an end. 'You can't blame someone for earning a living with their talent,' says Bob Adorni. Or can you? 'People say I've sold out,' says Kinkade. 'But not reproducing my art would be like telling a writer not to publish a manuscript because it's one of a kind.'"

How this topic relates to my work:

The core of my concept is poking fun at all sides of the argument for and against kitsch art, which is an art form that appeals mainly to ordinary people without art backgrounds. I find it interesting that kitsch artists are deemed populists artists, which was clearly meant to invoke a negative connotation because their artwork is kitschy not only in subject matter but also due to the fact that their work is bought on a large scale by the masses.

Monday entry (for 10/26/09): Artist of interest: Takashi Murakami

Takashi Murakami was born in Tokyo, Japan on February 1, 1963. He studied traditional Japanese art at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts. Afterwards he received his doctorate in Nihonga, the study of traditional techniques and methods of Japanese painting. Murakami is well known for straddling the borders between fine art, low brow and commercial art, though Murakami doesn't think of it as straddling borders but rather as "changing the line." His work combines themes from Western pop culture with an Eastern edge. Murakami is well known for his highly erotic sculptures titled Hipron and My Lonesome Cowboy. Hipron features a woman portrayed as an anime character, squeezing her nipples on her gigantic breasts to form a rope of breast milk behind her with one leg suspended in the air, as though she is about to use the breast milk as a jump rope. My Lonesome Cowboy features a man, also portrayed as an anime character, who is completely nude and squeezing his erect penis, from which a rope of semen has formed, surrounding the man as though it were a lasso. Murakami is also well known for his "Superflat" paintings, a style he created that is influenced by manga and anime. The style depicts "the shallow emptiness of Japanese consumer culture" by flattening forms and giving them no spatial depth. Murakami has also created art for commercial purposes when he collaborated with fashion house Louis Vuitton in the early 2000's, as well as creating the album cover for Kanye West's third studio effort, Graduation.

Takashi Murakami's artist profile on the official Kaikai KiKi Co., Ltd. website, a company of artist production and promotion that Murakami created in 2001.

Murakami's work was recently exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

Interview with Murakami by Index Magazine.

Hipron, 1997

My Lonesome Cowboy, 1997

For Louis Vuitton, early 2000's

For Kanye West, 2007

Thursday entry (for 10/22/09): Camp

Quote on topic by an expert:

"Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility -- unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but hardly identical with it -- that goes by the cult name of 'Camp.'" -- Susan Sontag

Annotated bibliography:

Sontag, Susan. Against interpretation: and other essays. New York: Dell Pup. Co., 1966.

Against interpretation is a book comprised of several essays written by Sontag in the 60s on art. One article included in the book is titled Notes On Camp, in which she explains what is camp and how these objects, ranging from art, films, household items, et cetera, are considered to be campy.

"A work can come close to Camp, but not make it, because it succeeds. Eisenstein's films are seldom Camp because, despite all exaggeration, they do succeed (dramatically) without surplus. If they were a little more "off," they could be great Camp - particularly Ivan the Terrible I & II. The same for Blake's drawings and paintings, weird and mannered as they are. They aren't Camp; though Art Nouveau, influenced by Blake, is. What is extravagant in an inconsistent or an unpassionate way is not Camp. Neither can anything be Camp that does not seem to spring from an irrepressible, a virtually uncontrolled sensibility. Without passion, one gets pseudo-Camp -- what is merely decorative, safe, in a word, chic. On the barren edge of Camp lie a number of attractive things: the sleek fantasies of Dali, the haute couture preciosity of Albicocco's The Girl with the Golden Eyes. But the two things - Camp and preciosity - must not be confused."

How this topic relates to my work:

Camp and kitsch are closely related in the fact that they are both not to be taken seriously. There is a difference between the two but it's subtle. The kitsch artwork I've chosen to use in my body of work often has campy undertones in it's outrageousness.

Monday entry (for 10/19/09): Artist of interest: Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons, born in York, Pennsylvania on January 21, 1955, is an artist whose work has earned him copious amounts of attention and controversy and has art critics divided on whether he should be taken seriously or not. Koons received his B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1976 where he majored in painting after spending a brief year studying painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Koons is most famous for creating giant brightly colored sculptures of banal objects out of stainless steel with mirror finishes. The piece he is most famous for is titled Puppy, a forty-three feet tall stainless steel sculpture of a West Highland White Terrier puppy made with an internal irrigation system, live plants and soil. The surface of the sculpture is covered in live plants, thus the need for the irrigation system. Koons has a studio in Chelsea, Manhattan where he has employed more than 120 assistants who, under his strict supervision, create his art pieces ranging from sculpture and glass work to photography, inflatables and painting.

The subject matter of Koons work has varied greatly with no real common theme to speak of except that it is almost always random and vapid. His work has featured naked provocative women, balloon animals, inflatable pool toys, the cartoon icon Popeye and himself in various sexual positions with his then wife Llona Staller, amongst other objects. Koons' work is art for art sake. He has made it clear that there is no meaning behind any of his pieces and that they are completely free of concept. Because of this, Koons has been accused of elevating unashamed kitsch into the high art arena. He has been dismissed by several art critics as creating work that is artificial, cheap and unabashedly cynical and catering to tacky rich people.

Jeff Koons official website.

Interview with Jeff Koons by The Art Newspaper.com

Jeff Koons work is now on display at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, California.

Inflatable Flower and Bunny, vinyl and mirrors, 1979

Hulk Jungle, oil on canvas, 2005

Dirty - Jeff On Top, plastic, 1991

Puppy, stainless steel, 1992

Thursday entry (for 10/15/09): Lowbrow

Quote on topic by an expert:

"To me, Lowbrow art is what the scene originally started as…work that stayed true to it’s more 'working class roots' more or less, and focused on the fetishization of counter-cultural icons (such as hot rods, surfing, rock n roll, monsters, drugs, ect). I find this work to be more transgressive, provocative and very non-polite…it has a purity underneath because it was never intended to be anything other than what the artist was responding to in his or her life. I can’t see this type of work ever truly being accepted by the 'high' world." --Kirsten Anderson

Annotated bibliography:

Anderson, Kirsten. Pop Surrealism: The Rise of Underground Art. San Francisco: Ignition Pub./Last Gasp, 2004.

Pop Surrealism: The Rise of Underground Art begins with an essay written by lowbrow artist and Juxtapoz magazine founder, Robert Williams. In his essay he recounts the event in which art history writer Nancy Dustin Wall Moure contacted him for his expertise on the California underground art movement for a book she was writing that covered the past 430 years of California art. In the essay he later goes into detail describing where lowbrow art, also known as pop surrealism, stemmed from and the genres it includes.

"I belong to a rather loose-knit group of artists that, because of a fifty-year dominance of abstract and conceptual art, have been left isolated from the more conventional academic mainstream. All of us, with few exceptions, function in the craftsmanship-based realm of representational art. To better understand this, you have to realize that we gain our source material and inspiration from some of the most illustrious, colorful and controversial influences and graphic traditions that one could possibly emerge from."

How this topic relates to my work:

The concept of lowbrow art plays an important role in my body of work, because while lowbrow art has it's own art genre, it is also closely related to kitsch art for they are nearly one in the same except for the fact that lowbrow often times will have deeper intellectual thought behind the art object whereas kitsch is art for art sake. But both are regarded negatively and both are considered below high brow art.

Artist lecture: Brian Ulrich, 10/14/09

I was intrigued by Ulrich's photographs and how clean and straightforward they were. His concept dealing with abandoned retail stores made me feel incredibly melancholy because I've worked in retail in the past and there is nothing worse than looking out of your store front and seeing a barren parking lot. For me it was great on one hand because it meant you didn't have much to do and the possibility of dealing with annoying and irate customers was slim to none but at the same time, it made you feel almost empty inside, as though you were wasting your time standing there, hoping for a customer to walk in, knowing that if sales didn't pick up for the week then hours would most likely be cut the following. I felt like Ulrich definitely captured this feeling in his photographs.

Monday entry (for 10/12/09): Artist of interest: Mark Ryden

Mark Ryden, born January 20, 1963 in Medford, Oregon, is an American painter. Ryden graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California in 1987, where he majored in illustration. His style is considered lowbrow surrealism and is best known not only for his striking imagery but also for the traditional painting technique that he utilizes. His success is owed to such lowbrow art publications such as Juxtapoz magazine, for publishing his work frequently. He's designed album covers for musicians such as Michael Jackson, Ringo Starr, Red Hot Chili Peppers, amongst others. Themes that are often depicted in Ryden's work are meat, children, Abraham Lincoln, bunnies and alchemy symbols.

Mark Ryden's official website.

Interview with Mark Ryden, conducted by Art Space Talk blog.

Mark Ryden just recently had his "The Snow Yak Show" held at the Tomio Koyama Gallery in Toyko, Japan this year.

Thursday entry (for 10/8/09): Kitsch

Quote on topic by an expert:

“Kitsch is certainly not ‘bad art,’ it forms its own closed system, which is lodged like a foreign body in the overall system of art, or which, if you prefer, appears alongside it.” --Hermann Broch, 20th century Austrian art theorist and writer

Annotated bibliography:

Adorno, Theodor. Aesthetic Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

Theodor Adorno, 1903--1969, was a German sociologist, philosopher, musicologist and composer who also wrote essays and books on several different topics, including social theory, aesthetics and mass media.

In Aesthetic Theory, Adorno defends both illusion and modernism and covers concepts of the sublime, ugly and beautiful within art and defines these concepts as reservoirs of human experience.

"One of the defining characteristics of kitsch may be that it simulates non-existing emotions. Kitsch neutralizes them along with the aesthetic phenomenon as a whole. Kitsch is art that cannot, or does not want to, be taken seriously, while at the same time, through its appearance, postulating aesthetic seriousness." --Theodor Adorno

How this topic relates to my work:

I've decided to drop my original concept and move on to another that deals with juxtaposing kitsch art in settings which you would normally not find them as a way to force these two parallel worlds to co-exist.

Artist lecture: Penelope Umbrico, 10/5/09

I found Umbrico's lecture and work to be refreshing and extremely playful. I experienced a great sense of déjà vu throughout her lecture because I found myself nodding my head and agreeing to the many sentiments she brought up, such as finding photos of babies and pets in catalogs to be sad because they are unaware of what is going on around them and for contemplating about fake families and people associated with monograms that are stitched on items for sale in catalogs. These were things I had never actively thought of before but that I agreed with immediately when she brought them up. That sense of understanding of something so trivial with a stranger and artist was uplifting. At first I struggled with the knowledge that she doesn't shoot any of her own images but once she used the example of anything you upload on the internet is the equivalent of leaving garbage on the street for anyone to pick up, I found myself no longer struggling with the method of her production and came to accept it.

Monday entry (for 10/5/09): Artist of interest: Olivo Barbieri

Olivo Barbieri, born in 1954, is an Italian photographer well known for his body of work titled Site Specific, which he started in 2006. Site Specific features aerial urban landscapes that were manipulated upon creation with a tilt swing lens in order to make the landscapes look like toy miniatures. Barbieri has stated, "I was a little bit tired of the idea of photography allowing you to see everything...after 9/11 the world had become a little bit blurred because things that seemed impossible happened. My desire was to look at the city again." Barbieri used this technique again a year later when he created his next series The Waterfall Project, in which his subject this time around was waterfalls.

Interview with Barbieri, conducted by TheMorningNews.org.

Barbieri's work has been exhibited at The Yancey Richardson Gallery.

Thursday entry (for 10/1/09): Fear

Quote on topic by an expert:

“To require perfection is to invite paralysis. The pattern is predictable: as you see error in what you have done, you steer your work toward what you imagine you can do perfectly. You cling ever more tightly to what you already know you can do - away from risk and exploration, and possibly further from the work of your heart. You find reasons to procrastinate, since to not work is to not make mistakes.” -- David Bayles and Ted Orland, Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking

Annotated bibliography:

Bayles, David and Ted Orland. Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking. Santa Barbara, CA : Capra, c1993.

Art and Fear is written by David Bayles and Ted Orland, both who proclaim themselves to be working artists. The book is written in a straight forward manner, illuminating issues that matter to and hinder the development of artists and explains why artists stop creating art. It isn't meant to be a self help book for artists but rather points out the problems that artists face when attempting to create art and offers strategies to get around these pitfalls.

“What you need to know about the next piece is contained in the last piece. The place to learn about your materials is in the last use of your materials. The place to learn about your execution is in your execution. Put simply, your work is your guide: a complete, comprehensive, limitless reference book on your work.”

How this topic relates to my work:

Fear is an overarching theme in my concept. Fear from the realization that we may have made the wrong decision to attend art school. Fear that we'll never be good enough and succeed in the art world. Fear that we'll never figure out what it is we want to do with our lives.

Artist lecture: Fredrika Jacobs, 9/30/09

Fredrika Jacobs is a professor of Art History at VCU and on Wednesday, September 30th she gave a lecture titled "Dusting the Madonna and Burning the Devil: Image Efficacy in Renaissance Italy."

The main focus of the lecture was on a superstitious ritual that occurred during the Renaissance in Italy where devotees of the Virgin Mary would rub cotton wading on plaster paintings of the Madonna, burn the cotton, mix the ashes into holy water and then consume the water. This was considered Marian Devotionalism. The Ecumeniccel Council of Trent in 1563 stated that no one should ask or place trust in an image and wanted to stop the superstitious practice of worshiping images of saints and holy people. The second half of the lecture covered exorcism and how in the 16th century, if a priest couldn't call out the demons by name that were possessing a person, they'd have to draw an effigy of the demon on paper and then burn the drawing. The purpose of this lecture and the parallel that Jacobs was trying to make was the notion of presence. The presence of an absence, which is what all portraits are, regardless of whether they depict the Madonna or the devil.

Monday entry (for 9/28/09): Artist of interest: Jill Greenberg

Jill Greenberg was born in Montreal, Canada in July, 1967 and grew up in Detroit, Michigan. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design and graduated with honors in 1989 with a BFA in Photography. Shortly thereafter she moved to New York to pursue a career in photography. She is both a commercial and fine art photographer with notable clients such as Microsoft, MTV, Sony, Paramount Pictures, Disney, ect. Greenberg is known for her photographs of celebrities and animals, both shot with her trademark lighting, heavy use of Photoshop manipulation and gradient color backgrounds. She is best known for her body of work created in 2006 titled End Times, a series of photographs of crying toddlers. Controversy surrounded End Times due to the fact that Greenberg made each child cry by promising them candy and taking it away. The parents of each child, however, were present at the time of the shoot. The series was meant to depict Greenberg's frustration with both the Bush Administration and Christian Fundamentalism in America.

Official website for Jill Greenberg.

Interview with Jill Greenberg.


End Times was showcased at the Kopeiking Gallery in West Hollywood, CA.

Artist lecture: Tom Wright, 9/28/09

Tom Wright is a professional commercial photographer who works in Richmond. He gave a lecture on Monday, September 28th for the studio lighting class. The balk of the lecture was spent explaining how he photographed each photo that is displayed in his portfolio on his website. He also gave two lighting demos. In the first demo he shot a student with a professional grade ring flash and gave us several tips on how to properly use one. In the second demo he took us into the studio and showed us a lighting set up that he has used for many of his photos. Throughout the lecture Wright fed us several helpful tidbits about commercial photography and what is expected of a commercial photographer depending on the level of the client.

Thursday entry (for 9/24/09): Stream of Consciousness

Quote on topic by an expert:

"Consciousness… does not appear to itself chopped up in bits…a “river” or “stream” are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described." --William James, Principles of Psychology.

Annotated bibliography:

James, William. Principles of Psychology. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1981.

William James (1842-1910) was an American psychologist and philosopher who was also a trained medical doctor. He wrote several books on what was at that time the young sciences of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism and philosophy of pragmatism.

In Principles of Psychology, James' wrote on his four methods of psychology: analysis, introspection, experiment and comparison. It was in this book that James created the term and theory stream of consciousness, which is "the continuous flow of sense‐perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and memories in the human mind."

How this topic relates to my work:

I have finally come to the conclusion that photographing students looking bored or frustrated while attempting to create art in a studio would be incredibly trite and not do justice in conveying my concept. Instead, I have decided to seek out students who feel disillusioned with art and interview them by asking them six questions in which they must respond by using the stream of consciousness writing method. My plan is to then string together their thoughts and create imagery from their answers. My expectation is that the resulting photographs will look highly surreal and abstract.

Monday entry (for 9/21/09): Artist of interest: Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe was born on November 4, 1946 in Queens, New York and died on March 9, 1989 at the tender age of 42 from complications from AIDS. Mapplethorpe attempted a degree in graphic arts at the Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn, New York before dropping out in 1969. Soon thereafter he picked up a Polaroid camera and began shooting his first batch of photographs using his friends and acquaintances as models. Later in the mid-70s he bought a Hasselblad and started including artists, composers and socialites in his photos. It was in the 80s that he refined his technique and began shooting what he is now most known for, which is his statuesque portraits of male and female nudes, formal portraits of artists and celebrities and flower still lives.

What Mapplethorpe is most remembered for is the controversy that arose in 1989 when the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washinton D.C. agreed to show a traveling solo exhibit of Mapplethorpe's work without expressing what type of subject matter they would or would not accept. The body of work that was sent to the Corcoran was created before Mapplethorpe's death and depicted explicit sexual acts. Once the photos arrived at the Corcoran, the hierarchy of the museum and several members of Congress were horrified by the images and decided not to go through with the show. Once pop artist Lowell Blair Nesbitt heard that the museum wasn't going to display the photos, he issued them an ultimatum to either display Mapplethorpe's work or he wouldn't bequeath the $1.5 million dollars he promised to leave them once he died. The Corcoran still refused and the show was later picked up by the Washington Project for the Arts and drew in large crowds due to the controversy. Newsbitt ended up bequeathing his money to the Phillips Collection instead.

The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation official website. A foundation which Mapplethorpe himself helped set up before he died.

An interview with Robert Mapplethorpe's biographer and lover, Jack Fritscher.