Monday entry (for 3/1/10): Artist of interest: Nick Georgiou

Nick Georgiou is an American sculpture who works with the medium of discarded books and newspapers and is inspired by "the death of the printed word/world." In an interview with Juxtapoz magazine, Georgiou explained when he began producing artwork out of paper and why:

During the beginning of this decade –like most people, I saw my entire music and film collection shrink into my computer. I started getting my news online and began interacting with paper in a very different way. Books and newspapers are becoming artifacts of the 21st century. Whatever we used to read off paper, we’re now reading off digital screens. Our way of interacting with text is changing. My work is not only about the decline of the printed word in today’s society but its rebirth as art. I just saw an ad for Amazon’s digital reader, the Kindle, which reminded me of the earlier ipod ads. Instead of "a 1000 songs in your pocket" its “books in 60 seconds.”

Georgiou typically acquires discarded books and newspaper by dumpster diving and is given donations from local bookstores who sponsor him in Tuscon, Arizona where he lives and works. Each sculpture can take anywhere between a few hours to several months to complete since he works on several different pieces at once.

When asked whether he prefers street or gallery exhibitions of his work, he explained,

I don't have a preference. Like with stories, setting - whether interior or exterior is important - and it plays a big factor in the conceptual design of the piece. There's a lot to consider: lighting, backdrop, form. It's all very cinematic. What I like most about street pieces is the element of surprise: you pretty much have no control, there are no clearly defined boundaries, and everyone has access. Gallery shows appeal to me as a sacred space. There's more order, and it's a different kind of cathartic experience because it's enclosed within the confines of space.

Georgiou just opened a new gallery/studio space in downtown Tuscon, Arizona, which has afforded him the opportunity to create artwork while also interacting with the public. He's in the midst of creating a documentary about the decline of the printed word and is working on a series of sculptures for a solo exhibition in Cyprus and Greece.

Georgiou doesn't have an official website but instead has a blog on Blogspot titled My Human Computer.

Interview with Georgiou conducted by Juxtapoz magazine.

Georgiou is represented by Andipa Gallery in London, England.

The following images were found on Artnet.com:

Platter, newspaper, 2008

Offering, newspaper, 2008

Kalkl, discarded books and newspapers, 2008

Atlas, newspaper, 2008

Thursday entry (for 2/25/10): Theory of artistic originality.

Passages from Defining Art, Creating the Canon

Crowther, Paul. Defining Art, Creating the Canon. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Page 110-112

“The issue can be focused initially in terms of the distinction often drawn (and also frequently denied) between the products of mass culture and those of ‘high art’.

For present purposes, one could put the problem like this. Kitsch paintings, pop songs, TV soap operas, and the like, are all kinds of image, but the term ‘art’ would seem travestied if applied to them.

The task, then, is to clarify the conditions under which art in the sense of image per se becomes art in the sense of the second normative axis. This means specifically that we must consider the way in which general historical relations mediate the production and reception of art qua aesthetic object. For it is only under such conditions of mediation that the reflective significance of art—its distinctive power of experimental illumination—fully emerges.

In what follows, I will pick up and significantly develop some key aspects of Kant’s theory of fine art (as broached in Chapter 3). I start with the decisive notion of originality.

First, production in all fields of art-making—indeed artifice in general—involves the following of rules. Similar consideration pertaining to methodology, rigour, the gathering of evidence, and verification procedures, also guide the pursuit of forms of knowledge in general.

Now in the case of artifice (in industrialized societies at least) the bulk of production is effected simply by following rules. The criteria of functional efficiency which determine work processes and end products, make the particular identity of the producer into something contingent. Who one is as a person and one’s particular interests, are abilities that may lead to one doing one job rather than another; special aptitudes, indeed, may mean that one does the job rather well; but these personality factors are only significant to the degree that they promote or are conducive to efficiency. They do not figure as a necessary element in either production or end product.

Similar considerations hold (albeit more controversially) in relation to theory or discovery in most forms of knowledge. Odd personality traits, good luck, or untoward conjunctions of circumstance, all play their role in the formulation of theory and the making of discoveries.

In the case of art, in contrast, matters are much more complex. Kitsch works, and most products of mass culture, are produced according to fairly distinct formulae of functional efficiency. Even here, however, the role of individual creativity can be more than simply a contingent one.

The hugely successful TV soap opera Coronation Street, for example, was devised by Tony Warren in 1960. The idea for a drama series based on northern English working-class life, of course, could easily have been devised by someone else; but the possibilities of plot and characterization presented by his original idea—the, as it were, flesh of Coronation Street—are very much a function of Warren’s idiosyncratic original formulation.

In the case of ‘high art’, the role of individual creativity—expressed through style—is utterly and absolutely central, and should be stated in the strongest possible terms. The key concept here is originality. It has two basic dimensions—refinement and innovation. A work which refines is one whose style takes up established motifs and idioms and articulates them to an unprecedented degree of excellence. The innovatory work, in contrast, is, in some respects, unprecedented in the way it departs from existing motifs and idioms, and introduces new ones"

Monday entry (for 2/22/10): Artist of interest: Rockin' Jellybean

Rockin' Jellybean is a Japanese visual artist. His real name is unknown, as well as the year of his birth and no one even knows what he looks like because when he ventures out for exhibitions or is photographed, he's always seen wearing a Mexican wrestling mask. He's commented that he wears a Mexican wrestling mask to make his public appearances funnier because he doesn't ever want to take creating art and being an artist too seriously. What is known about Jellybean is that he was born in Hawaii and lived there during his childhood until moving to Kyoto, Japan. He goes by the name Rockin' Jellybean, which is an alias derived from the nickname Jellybean that his grandmother gave him early on because of the jellybean shaped birth marks he has on his shoulders.

After discovering Playboy magazine while he was in junior high school, he began drawing his own version of gorgeous buxom and often half nude female characters, whose anatomical details were highly exaggerated. Jellybean is considered a low brow artist whose work consist of scandalous gorgeous women frolicking with monsters. He associates himself and his artistic style with the custom car culture of Southern California and with other low brow artists such as Coop, Frank Kozik and Von Franco. He's credited Robert Williams as being a major influence for his artistic style of merging realism with cartoonish undertones. Jellybean doesn't sell any of his original artworks but rather creates screen-prints because he doesn't want strangers to own his original artworks. He's gone on to create Erosty Pop, where he sells retail market items with his artwork printed on them, such as towels, boxers, panties, toys, et cetera. In an interview with Juxtapoz magazine, he explained that he'd "prefer to have my drawings printed on many girls panties, rather than have my prints hanging on someone's house wall."

Rockin' Jellybean's official website.

Interview with Juxtapoz magazine.

The following images were taken from Juztapoz.com. Titles and years were not provided.

Artist lecture: Hank Willis Thomas 2/16/10

I was appreciative that Thomas began his lecture by showing us where he started in his involvement with photography. It's always refreshing to see artists' humble beginnings. At first glance his early photos that incorporated subjects holding an actual frame within the frame came off as amateur but once he explained his concept of showing how much of a lie photography actually is, I warmed up to them.

I enjoyed his projects that dealt with his cousin's murder, especially the series of portraits of people who knew his cousin, but I was also relieved to hear Thomas say that he began collaborating with other artists since he realized he couldn't continue creating art that dealt with his loss since not everyone would be able to empathize. I thought that was very wise of him because he could have easily continued creating projects that dealt with his loss and therefore never grow artistically out of that common theme.

Monday entry (for 2/15/10): Artist of interest: Ben Frost

Ben Frost is an Australian visual artist who was born in Brisbane in 1975. He creates collages that depict the appropriated images of pop culture cartoon characters, such as Hello Kitty, Spongebob Squarepants, Mickey Mouse amongst others, as well as iconic images from advertisement, entertainment and politics. In an interview with Juxtapoz magazine, Frost explained the message behind his work:

It's like that feeling when you first find out that Santa Clause is really your dad dressed up in a costume, or when you see dove droppings drip out of the magician's sleeve as he performs at your 10th birthday party.

Cartoon characters are all happy and fun at first—promising you happy rainbows and pixie dust, but then when you switch off the television, life suddenly isn't like that anymore.

In fact the only way children can feed their rainbow and pixie dust addiction is to get their parents to purchase any number of items from the toy catalogue that the character represents.

New characters are specifically created based on their projected profit margins from merchandising sales, and Happy Meal tie-ins. Their cute happy faces are the public face of the corporations they represent. It is this often-misplaced motivation that casts a dark shadow across the entire idea of children's 'entertainment'.

So I try and imagine what these characters might be doing when they are not working, when they aren't performing for us on our screens. Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar get together and smoke crack, Hello Kitty has a porn addiction, Goofy and Pluto like rough sex with each other, but they always manage to clean up and get it together when they have to come back to perform for the kiddies.

When asked about his usage of appropriated pop culture images and logos, he explained:

A lot of people - and especially a lot of artists, are so incredibly afraid of appropriation as a means of creative representation. There is this scenario in their heads that the 'Coca-Cola' police are going to break down their studio door, dressed from head to toe in red and white leather, tie their hands behind their backs with dynamic ribbon devices and then knee-cap them in the parking lot—all because they painted a Coca-Cola logo on one of their canvases!

Ben Frost's official website.

Frost's work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.

Interview with Juxtapoz magazine.
The following images were taken from Ben Frost's official website.

Zombie Warhol, acrylic and enamel on board, 2007

Sniff Death/Hang Love, acrylic and enamel on board, 2006

I Drowned Your Fucking Cat, acrylic and enamel on board, year unknown

Gentle Laxettes for all the Family, acrylic and enamel on board, year unknown

Faster Pusycat, Kill! Kill!, acrylic and enamel on board, 2006

Every Man Has His Price, acrylic and enamel on board, 2008

Fantastic Life (as seen on tv), acrylic and enamel on board,

year unknown

Thursday entry (for 2/11/10): Jeff Koons thoughts on his own work and breaking down the meaning of kitsch.

Passages from Terry Barrett’s Why Is That Art?

Barrett, Terry. Why Is That Art? Aesthetics and Criticism of Contemporary Art. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Page 27 Koons On His Own Work:

“Koons openly acknowledges his desire for commercial success. He was a highly successful commodities trader on Wall Street, and his monetary gains allowed him to invest in the making of his own art. He promoted himself and his art in full-page ads in art magazines such as Artforum and Art in America, marketing himself in ways similar to executives in Hollywood and on Madison Avenue: ‘I want to be as big an art star as possible. I like the idea of my work selling for a lot of money.’ He compares himself to the Beatles: ‘I’ve made what the Beatles would have made if they had made sculpture. Nobody ever said that the Beatles’ music was not on a high level, but it appealed to a mass audience. That’s what I want to do.’

In response to accusations of cynicism leveled at his work by its critics, Koons adamantly denies any intentional irony in his work, and wishes that it be taken straightforwardly as celebrations of what it depicts. He thinks that Puppy, for instance, ‘is about love’ because for him it is a ‘totally generous piece; it doesn’t segregate.’ He believes that artists can create icons that can ‘reflect the needs of the people, not only in our time, but that they’re chameleon enough to reflect the needs of the people in the future, whatever their needs may be.’

Koons contrasts the liberatory images and sculptures in his ‘Made in Heaven’ series to Masaccio’s Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, an early Renaissance painting in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence, a painting Koons sees as paradigmatic of suffering and guilt about sex. Koons refutes notions that his works are pornographic: ‘Pornography is alienation. My work has absolutely no vocabulary in alienation. It’s about using sexuality as a tool to communicate.’ Koons intends for ‘Made in Heaven’ to relieve people of guilt and shame. He intends his works to be uplifting.’"

Page 27 Kitsch:

“Gordon Bearn, a contemporary aesthetician, provides examples of kitsch current today:
*Hummel figurines
*Paintings on black velvet of a tearful clown or a beatific Elvis Presley
*Muzak
*Eiffel tower pepper grinders
*Ice cubes shaped like breasts
*Peek-a-boo anything
*Paintings of mournful waifs with the outsized eyes made familiar by Margaret or Walter Keane
*Walt Disney Tudoroid or Bavarioid architecture
*Heart-shaped grave stones
*Plates adorned with cute fluffy kittens
*Some critics provocatively include among examples of kitsch the paintings of Adolphe-William Bouguereau, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Andrew Wyeth, Norman Rockwell, the poetry of Robinson Jeffers; some go so far as to proclaim Richard Wagner and Salvador Dali ‘masters’ of kitsch.”

Page 29 Kitsch continued:

“Bearn identifies the philosophical problem of kitsch this way: ‘What does the kitschiness of kitsch consist of?’ Kitschiness is thought to have ‘trashiness,’ but if it does, its trashiness is not due to lack of technical competence in the production of kitsch: Note, for example, the careful skills exemplified in the kitschiest of objects made by Koons. Critics of kitsch generally agree that kitsch and art are significantly difference in quality: Kitsch, in opposition to art, is argued to be nongenuine and inauthentic. Bearn thinks the concept of kitsch is important because by identifying what it is, we can come to a clearer understanding of what art is.”

“More recently, Milan Kundera, in his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, writes forcefully about the lies of kitsch: ‘Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.’ Kundera comes to this conclusion, in part, from a theological position. For him, ‘Shit is a more onerous theological problem than evil.’ He argues that since, in Christian anthropology, God invented man in His image, either God has intestines or man is not like Him. Kundera cites the Gnostics’ solution to the ‘damnable dilemma’ when in the second century Valentinus claimed that Jesus ‘ate and drank but did not defecate.’ Kundera continues:
‘Since God gave man freedom, He is not responsible for man’s crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the Creator of man…The daily defecation session is daily proof of the unacceptability of Creation. Either/or: either shit is acceptable (in which case don’t lock yourself in the bathroom!) or we are created in an unacceptable manner. It follows, then, that the aesthetic ideal of the categorical agreement with being is a world in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist. This aesthetic ideal is called kitsch.’”

“In Bearn’s conclusion about Kundera’s and others’ objections to kitsch, kitsch is harmful because by denying anything that is difficult, kitsch purveys pleasurably sanitized and deceitful representations of the world. Based on what we have of Plato’s writings, it is likely that he would agree with much of the criticism leveled at kitsch, especially its appeal to emotion, general neglect of intellect, and distorted representations."

Monday entry (for 2/8/10): Artist of interest: Niagara

Niagara is a female American artist and musician who was born on August 23, 1956 in Detroit, Michigan. She simply goes by the name Niagara. While studying painting at the University of Michigan in the mid 70s, Niagara formed a punk rock band Destroy All Monsters with Mike Kelly. Niagara was the lead singer but she also created promotional posters and album cover art with the use of pen, ink and gouache. Themes in her art work include sexy femme fatales donned with weapons of various sorts. According to Niagara, “I paint real strong women; a Niagara girls [is] revengeful, but she gets her own way...There’s a lot of crime in my paintings.” Niagara's promoter and body guard has explained that Niagara purposely paints off register "to make it look like a bad silk screen but she does it with such precision, people still think they're done by machine. Warhol would love it."

Niagara's most recent exhibit was held in Sydney and Melbourne in 2008 titled The Good, The Bad and The Beautiful. Outre' Gallery created a set of limited edition Niagara silkscreen prints to coincide with the two sold out shows. In 2007 she created a full clothing line with avant garde couturier Hysteric Glamour to coincide with a show she opened in Tokyo in 2007. And in 2008 she collaborated with Vans footwear, in which she designed seven urban-hip inspired shoes that debuted in Paris.

Here is a snippet of Niagara's biography on her official website:

Whereas her pictorial style and subjects are indebted in part to the pop masters Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, Niagara ascribes her most powerful influences to the Pre-Raphaelites and Art Nouveau artists Alfons Mucha and Aubrey Beardsley. Her linear technique and application of oriental graphic designs reveal the aesthetic impact of her nineteenth-century predecessors. On her fascination with their predilection for morbid eroticism, she comments “I like all that dark stuff.” Beardsley’s work was characterized by a journalist in 1894 as “the very essence of the decadent fin de siecle.” His images of desire, corruption and death made his conception of “pornotopia” famous among the cultural elite of his day. Now at the close of the millennium, Niagara emerges as the dark angel of decadence whose vision embodies the cynicism that marks the end of our own century.

Interview with Niagara conducted by Pussycat Magazine.

Outre' Gallery in Melbourne, Australia, which held her last exhibition. All of the following images were taken from Outre' Gallery's website.

It's Half-Past Get Out, silkscreen, year unknown

Shut Up or I'll Kill You, silkscreen, year unknown

Think Dirty, silkscreen, year unknown

Run, silkscreen, year unknown

Thursday entry (for 2/4/10): Why kitsch is a threat to high brow.

Passages from Andrew Brighton’s contribution to Contemporary Art and the Home.

Brighton, Andrew, and Colin Painter. Contemporary Art and the Home. New York: Berg, 2002.

Page 246:

“I had a summer job working in an art shop in central London. It sold art materials and a few reproductions. A man came in and asked for a picture with snow-capped mountains. Asking for a painting by subject matter struck me as almost immoral or at least inept, a cross between admitting to a shameful desire and a naïve solecism. I asked by whom did he want the painting. He said he did not know, nor care. He wanted snow-capped mountains. Eventually he explained that he had been on holiday to Switzerland with his wife. He wanted to buy her a memento. I was subsequently to learn that buying paintings to commemorate holidays sustained an economy of small art and craft galleries and local artists in holiday areas such as the Lake District and Cornwall and that images acquired on holidays are a major source of what hangs on people’s domestic walls (see Painter 1986).

I was curious about my surprise at the man’s request, curious about both what it said about my assumptions and what the man’s request revealed. How was one to understand how John Latham’s accumulation of objects placed in a case qualified for inclusion in MoMa, New York, but that a painting of snow-capped mountains was also valued? In other words, what were the assumptions of the art world the man had offended and what was the nature of his culture of pictures. Hand in hand with these questions went the aesthetic, ethical and political question: if they should, why should one of these be valued more than another?”

Page 247:

“Even if the differentiation between high and low culture has supposedly disappeared, in practice the moral and political import of these terms still remains in play. For instance, ‘commodified’, ‘institutionalized’ and ‘fetishized’ are the a priori concepts upon which much current art history builds it’s elaborations. This enemy, this spectre with many names, reappears in the rhetoric of conferring critical value upon an artist. Importance is attributed to artis’ oeuvres by demonstrating their refusal of ‘commodification’, ‘institutionalized’ and ‘fetishizing’."

Page 249:

“One thing I did discover was that artists who had become popular in reproduction were often rather ashamed of it. Further, they often graduated to limited-edition reproductions or abandoned them altogether. Edward Seago, for example, had been a painter popular in reproduction and who had abandoned it long before I did my survey. He was also popular with the English establishment. He was a friend of the Duke of Edinburgh and taught the Prince of Wales watercolour painting […] When I asked popular painters what was the most important attitude painters should bring to their work, the most frequently recurring words were: sincerity, truth, honesty, search and integrity. In their more elaborated statements, these terms spoke for an unsystematic popularism. Honesty resided in truth to one’s familiar culture, sense of self, et cetera. Some made these statements in the context of a rejection of the affected values and pretensions of modern art and fashion.”

Page 251:

“Essential to the way in which art history and the museums institutionalized serious modern art is what they passed over in silence. While art for the middle-class homes and inexpert purchasers is bigger business than art for serious collectors and museums, it has no history, no criticism, and no place in the museum. If it appears in the accounts of modern art, it is as an unexamined spectre of inauthenticity against which authentic art struggles. For example, Norman Rockwell is mentioned in Greenberg’s ‘Avant-garde and Kitsch’ as a token for all that avant-garde painting is not. Notoriously, the nearest to a reference to a particular ‘kitsch’ painting Greenberg got was to Repin battle paintings. Repin never painted a battle. An unmapped no person’s land appears to exist between serious art and what might be called consensus art. What this hides is how serious art has shaped itself in opposition to consensus art. In the histories of modern culture conflict, we have been told little of the army against which the avant-garde has been deployed.

If taken to be important, Wyeth is particularly dangerous because his work suggests the possibility of serious art outside the art historical map. For instance, in a museum or a history that treats art as a story of historical development, the question of where his work came from and to where it led would be an issue. His technical debt to a tradition of illustration, that of his father, N.C. Wyeth and Howard Pyle, could lead to the suggestion that they too should become part of the art historical narrative. With these illustrators through the door, would that other absentee from the Whitney, Norman Rockwell, be far behind?

However, the problem with Wyeth is not just with his audience, nor the traditions from which he comes. It is with the nature of his seriousness, it is the ideology of the work. His work is a contradiction, it is serious popular painting and it is populist.

The vast majority of modern painting we know to be most popular through the sale of reproductions realizes the intelligentsia’s nightmare of banality. It is artifacts made, called and treated as art but without any developed discourse or mode of attention that attends to them as art. In such paintings, well-worn conventions evoke familiar emotions and values: the beauties of nature, appealing children, soft erotica and sympathetic animals. This is the art of peripheral vision. The values it celebrates and the emotions it excites are for the most part propagated by other more influential media. Nearly all have overtly painted surfaces, some evoke the style of past high art. There is a more conceptual area of practice, hobbyist art. Here moments of sporting drama and vintage cars, ships, boats, trains, steam engines or birds are depicted for connoisseurs of detail. Precious sentiments and values captured in oils. However, the essential optic of most popular paintings is derived from photography. There mass-media use of photography and the other lens-based means of mechanical representation provide the core of pictorial common sense. We have learnt to dream like films."