Friday, November 13, 2009
MFA SHOW............
I just checked out the MFA show in the gallery and in general I thought it was an overall good exhibition. When viewing the show, I focused on the setup and placement of the work more than the works themselves. I felt that the groupings and the arrangements of the show weakened the presentation. There just wasn't a good agreement and fluidity between the pieces. For an example, the room in the back right off of the main room, the hanging sculptures, the sculpture and the paintings were all individually very strong and well executed. However, the grouping of them seem to not complement or create a dialog. I felt that the hanging sculptures needed more space and room to breathe. In contrast, the first room off to the left from the main room, was well put together and seem to be a very strong selection of pieces. Now this could be because they were all be the same artist and the fit the space well. Another thing that I had bittersweet feelings about were the temporary walls set up in the main room. The walls were awesome. They created more wall space for work to be shown and filled up some of the emptiness I always experienced in the past shows I have seen. But.... the fact that one artist was on all on one side and another person on the other side just seem awkward. I felt the walls weren't being used to their fullest use. It was hard to take in the artist full body of work because you saw a few but then had to turn the corner to see the rest. There was no possible way of seeing the whole series of work at once. This exhibition was good to see because there were some amazing pieces, but the physical setup and the groupings of works made it harsh to view. But for that point alone, it was an important show to see in relation to the thesis class. It made some valid points that should be considered when we start to plan our own exhibitions in the spring.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Frank Stella...
The Spirit-Spout, 1988
Oil and enamel on aluminum, fiberglass, corrugated aluminum, wood, and metal fixtures, 125 x 110 x 43 in. (317.5 x 279.4 x 109.22 cm)
"Hacilar aceramica", 2001
epoxy and spray paint on cast aluminum
“Severinda” (1995)
mixed media on Fiberglas
is part of “Frank Stella: Painting Into Architecture,” at the Met.
"The Pequod meets the Bachelor", 1988
Mixed media on etched magnesium and aluminum
126.7 x 125 x 33.7 inches
--I choose to include more images of Frank Stella's work because they also relate to my work for multiple reasons. First, the sculptural elements are interesting and similar to my work. I don't work with the same materials (i mostly work with foam because I am still feeling out working in reliefs), but I am concentrating on the relief elements of these pieces. Seeing that most of these are mounted to the wall, I looking at how their compositions maybe somehow relate to being shown on a wall. Plus, its educational of how so someone established approaches the stacking and layering of panels and objects. Second, his color palette in these intrigued me. I like how its bold and vibrant in some pieces and others are more muted but still exudes vibrancy. Third, these pieces also give me examples of patterns and shapes in an organized/clean way and also in a loose/painterly way. As i mentioned before, I am interested in perhaps moving away from the flat solid shapes and moving to a more fluid/loose/painterly depiction of shapes.
Santi Moix
Santi Moix
Untitled, 2008
crayon and oil on paper
55 1/4 x 68 inches
140.3 x 172.7 cm
Santi Moix
Untitled, 2008
crayon and oil on paper
55 x 66 inches; 139.7 x 167.6 cm
framed: 60 1/2 x 71 1/4 x 2 1/4 inches; 153.7 x 181 x 5.7 cm
Santi Moix
Untitled, 2008
crayon and oil on paper
53 3/4 x 68 inches; 136.5 x 172.7 cm
framed: 60 1/2 x 73 1/4 x 2 1/4 inches; 153.7 x 186.1 x 5.7 cm
-Santi Moix shows at the Paul Kasmin gallery. The medium is different than what I usually use in my work, but I found the composition and shapes used in these works to be very interesting and relevant to my work. The shapes are very organic and there's a sense of space. What I found interested about the composition is that the placement of the "image" adds a certain weight to the piece. Also, I like how everything springs out from the center, which creates some massive sense of depth there. The concept of placement and composition in these pieces is something I might want to apply when construction my work because my work is flat shapes and flat colors and sometimes I feel like it needs some depth to it. Also, I was debating last week about maybe moving away from the flat, solid colors and moving to something a bit more painterly. So this seems like a good example of what my work could look like if I started working wet into wet paint when creating the shapes in my paintings.
---I tried to read up on this artist and couldn't find much besides that he has a fellowship to the Guggenheim museum. Any suggestions of where I can find more info on this artist?
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Hitting a Brick Wall....
As our thesis proposal due date approaches, I have seem to hit a nice solid wall of uncertainty, panic and confusion. I know where I want my art to go and a few artists I really get influenced by... BUT.... i really don't know what I should be researching for my thesis proposal. How do I find more artists that have relevancy to my work? Do I have to talk about nothing but artists and specific genres of art in my proposal? What if I draw inspiration from random things? like how my shoes laces fall and composed themselves on the floor after I took my shoes off? Or what if I create the composition of a painting from a the feeling I get from a James Brown song? Those are just some of the werid things that factor into my art. Should I be talking about this in my proposal as well? Can anyone suggest artist I should look at? Is there certain types of articles I should be looking at more than others like interviews more than reviews or biographies or show catalogs? I just need a little guidance and help here... I understand we are seniors and no one is going to hold my hand through thesis. I'm not expecting anyone to do so. What I need though is for someone to give me some pointers, suggestions and guidelines to help direct me into the right path.
Research for thesis: Elizabeth Murray
Artchive: Greg Masters' interview with and article about Elizabeth Murray...
"Her major accomplishment has been to find a way to express her emotional responses to an object, letting her passions go in abstract painting and, at the same time, fusing that rawness within a finely tuned precision, the shaped canvas. Though the boundaries of her canvas are often a bit eccentric, they restrain and give a form to the explosion of impulses. She's made a happy marriage between the exhilarating freedom to express of the action painters and the clean basics of the minimalists."-G. Masters about Murray's work
"She repeatedly opens herself up for examination, maintaining the vulnerability necessary for probing the self. The playful decorativeness, aggressive colors, large biomorphic shapes, are infused with an intense honesty and integrity in the process of relating the personal reaction to the geographic environment."-G. Masters
"That's a specific formal idea to have those shapes up there. In the beginning it feels like time breaks through the formal stuff and you get paint on it so that you begin to have ideas and it begins to get very emotional. That color feels like what you are at that particular day, particular moment, like what color feels like the right container for all those feelings."- E.Murray talking about how she starts a painting.
- It's interesting to me that she starts with an idea, but, once the paint gets flowing, she feels it all out and begins to depict emotions.
GM: When you started making shaped canvases?
EM: Yeh, it started with some very small paintings. I was reading books about Gestalt therapy and I was reading a lot about Zen at the time. Very briefly, I got very involved in Japanese Buddhism and Za-Zen. That was the spiritual thing in a way that was an influence to it but it was also very much from just looking at the Minimalists. What I needed was something, an underpinning for all my emotions, I really needed something to settle me down and some kind of a plate to put this stuff on. Then I began to understand what that was. It gave it some boundaries. I have a real desire for structure and for order. But also the chaos of the feelings feels like the thing that has to be in there. I think it's totally emotional. For the emotions to be seen you have to have a format.
GM: When you started making shaped canvases?
EM: Yeh, it started with some very small paintings. I was reading books about Gestalt therapy and I was reading a lot about Zen at the time. Very briefly, I got very involved in Japanese Buddhism and Za-Zen. That was the spiritual thing in a way that was an influence to it but it was also very much from just looking at the Minimalists. What I needed was something, an underpinning for all my emotions, I really needed something to settle me down and some kind of a plate to put this stuff on. Then I began to understand what that was. It gave it some boundaries. I have a real desire for structure and for order. But also the chaos of the feelings feels like the thing that has to be in there. I think it's totally emotional. For the emotions to be seen you have to have a format.
"I think it probably develops and evolves. I'm sure it does. I could be wrong about this. Who knows artistically what is right or wrong. You just do it. I change and things change and one thing seems to lead to another. For me that seems to be what happens in my work." - E. Murray talking about her work developing, changing and evolving over the years. I found her opinion to be rather comforting to me because this is how I feel most of the time about my work. I see all my peers having a set style and the work just progressing, but my mind frame changes and it's illustrated in my next pieces.
GM: Does the artist have a political responsibility?
EM: Yeah. I think so. More than ever. People say well, your work isn't specifically political. But I think that art is political. Being an artist is taking a kind of stand in relationship to the world. What I want my art to do is really make people feel things differently. Slow down and take a look and be provoked in almost any kind of a way. To see a kind of foreign object that maybe has some meaning that is jolting in some sense. It's not that I think I necessarily succeed or don't succeed. That's not what you're asking really. That's what I would want. I think that art does it in very different ways. I think that is political. The ultimate value in this society has always been money and art has always been the thing that's gone against that. I think the irony for me right now, that I have not come to terms with, is that I'm in this position where these are objects and as objects they're expensive. But to make them I have to make a certain amount of money. So I'm in this kind of bind where they have to sell. I want Paula to sell them. I don't mind that, I mean, I don't want them [laughs]. After I've done them I've gotten what I want out of it so it's fine with me that they sell. I think that the disturbing part is that the people who can afford to buy them are fewer and fewer. Most of the people who buy them are people that, politically, are totally on the other side of the fence than I am. Completely. I don't kid myself that their lives will necessarily be changed by having them.
~ I found this interview to be very helpful in understanding an artist I have idealized for so long. I already understood and knew that alot of "feminine" icons/symbols can be found from her work which could be because she draws influence from her everyday life. What I found interesting were her answers and how plainly spoken they were. I felt that in some ways my our process, inspiration and composition is very similar to Murray's. For example, how she emphasized painting being more about the emotions or emotional state. Most my work isn't commenting on global warming or our political/economic state, instead is focusing on the my emotions or thoughts that are occurring and influencing the decision in the piece I am working on the current moment. I guess it was just comforting to find out that I'm not working the 'wrong" way and that established and revolutionary artists like Elizabeth Murray shared some of the view points as me.
"Her major accomplishment has been to find a way to express her emotional responses to an object, letting her passions go in abstract painting and, at the same time, fusing that rawness within a finely tuned precision, the shaped canvas. Though the boundaries of her canvas are often a bit eccentric, they restrain and give a form to the explosion of impulses. She's made a happy marriage between the exhilarating freedom to express of the action painters and the clean basics of the minimalists."-G. Masters about Murray's work
"She repeatedly opens herself up for examination, maintaining the vulnerability necessary for probing the self. The playful decorativeness, aggressive colors, large biomorphic shapes, are infused with an intense honesty and integrity in the process of relating the personal reaction to the geographic environment."-G. Masters
"That's a specific formal idea to have those shapes up there. In the beginning it feels like time breaks through the formal stuff and you get paint on it so that you begin to have ideas and it begins to get very emotional. That color feels like what you are at that particular day, particular moment, like what color feels like the right container for all those feelings."- E.Murray talking about how she starts a painting.
- It's interesting to me that she starts with an idea, but, once the paint gets flowing, she feels it all out and begins to depict emotions.
GM: When you started making shaped canvases?
EM: Yeh, it started with some very small paintings. I was reading books about Gestalt therapy and I was reading a lot about Zen at the time. Very briefly, I got very involved in Japanese Buddhism and Za-Zen. That was the spiritual thing in a way that was an influence to it but it was also very much from just looking at the Minimalists. What I needed was something, an underpinning for all my emotions, I really needed something to settle me down and some kind of a plate to put this stuff on. Then I began to understand what that was. It gave it some boundaries. I have a real desire for structure and for order. But also the chaos of the feelings feels like the thing that has to be in there. I think it's totally emotional. For the emotions to be seen you have to have a format.
GM: When you started making shaped canvases?
EM: Yeh, it started with some very small paintings. I was reading books about Gestalt therapy and I was reading a lot about Zen at the time. Very briefly, I got very involved in Japanese Buddhism and Za-Zen. That was the spiritual thing in a way that was an influence to it but it was also very much from just looking at the Minimalists. What I needed was something, an underpinning for all my emotions, I really needed something to settle me down and some kind of a plate to put this stuff on. Then I began to understand what that was. It gave it some boundaries. I have a real desire for structure and for order. But also the chaos of the feelings feels like the thing that has to be in there. I think it's totally emotional. For the emotions to be seen you have to have a format.
"I think it probably develops and evolves. I'm sure it does. I could be wrong about this. Who knows artistically what is right or wrong. You just do it. I change and things change and one thing seems to lead to another. For me that seems to be what happens in my work." - E. Murray talking about her work developing, changing and evolving over the years. I found her opinion to be rather comforting to me because this is how I feel most of the time about my work. I see all my peers having a set style and the work just progressing, but my mind frame changes and it's illustrated in my next pieces.
GM: Does the artist have a political responsibility?
EM: Yeah. I think so. More than ever. People say well, your work isn't specifically political. But I think that art is political. Being an artist is taking a kind of stand in relationship to the world. What I want my art to do is really make people feel things differently. Slow down and take a look and be provoked in almost any kind of a way. To see a kind of foreign object that maybe has some meaning that is jolting in some sense. It's not that I think I necessarily succeed or don't succeed. That's not what you're asking really. That's what I would want. I think that art does it in very different ways. I think that is political. The ultimate value in this society has always been money and art has always been the thing that's gone against that. I think the irony for me right now, that I have not come to terms with, is that I'm in this position where these are objects and as objects they're expensive. But to make them I have to make a certain amount of money. So I'm in this kind of bind where they have to sell. I want Paula to sell them. I don't mind that, I mean, I don't want them [laughs]. After I've done them I've gotten what I want out of it so it's fine with me that they sell. I think that the disturbing part is that the people who can afford to buy them are fewer and fewer. Most of the people who buy them are people that, politically, are totally on the other side of the fence than I am. Completely. I don't kid myself that their lives will necessarily be changed by having them.
~ I found this interview to be very helpful in understanding an artist I have idealized for so long. I already understood and knew that alot of "feminine" icons/symbols can be found from her work which could be because she draws influence from her everyday life. What I found interesting were her answers and how plainly spoken they were. I felt that in some ways my our process, inspiration and composition is very similar to Murray's. For example, how she emphasized painting being more about the emotions or emotional state. Most my work isn't commenting on global warming or our political/economic state, instead is focusing on the my emotions or thoughts that are occurring and influencing the decision in the piece I am working on the current moment. I guess it was just comforting to find out that I'm not working the 'wrong" way and that established and revolutionary artists like Elizabeth Murray shared some of the view points as me.
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