James Elkins-Critiques-why art cannot be taught

I read this one a long time ago but I thought he made a good points about critiques being well- not that useful?

The funny thing is that I sort of think critiques are useful in a way but I am not sure how....to be honest I dont think I have ever walked away from a critique thinking oh great here is some critisism and now I can improve my work based on that criticism. It is nice to get feedback though sometimes. I mean I tend to feel that in a critique I too kind of say stuff that I know really won't matter to the artist and sometimes I wonder why I bother. Participation marks? I guess maybe the act of critisizing can be useful moreso than being critisized.....just because it gets you to think about art where being critiqued feels a little more like either defending a work or just showing it off or sometimes just listening to ways in which it is crappy even though you already know. I had one teacher who I thought actually gave insightful critiques to her students---I always really looked forward to them because I found that she would find themes in peoples work that I had not seen or noticed previously. To be honest though I can't really remember critiques being anything that special except for in her class. Also, maybe I made thi clear---but she wasn't really "critical" she more kind of pointed out stregths and common themes that different people were working with which weren't immediately apparent to themselves.

Richard Fung/Third Rock from the sun

transcribed from paper

I was confused by Fungs work at first and I dont like the medium of video (I find I have to fight a lot harder in video---I kind of see it brainwashing moving lights-which is why I dont like it btw)

BUT
I thought it was very good in the end. It's too bad that we didn't have more time to talk about it in class. I think people cling to their own cultural identities becuase it makes them feel that they belong in something. It was interesting when the Solomans were excited to learn that they still got to be a part of a minority---I think perhaps its is fairly common that white North Americans (particularly urbanites) feel a sort of jealousy towards minority groups because of that tighter knit kind of identity thing----My ancestors come from a diverse european backgrounds but the Morse family has been in North America since the 1600's-----I identify myself as canadian but I "Canadian" is so---could be anything. I am from PEI and I always feel very lucky that I am have a home and culture that I indentify with there. Not that Islanders are without their faults but I do love the Island. My parents are separated and I separated and i lived big chunks of my life in both Ottawa an PEI and I always felt a sort of pity for my Ottawa friends because I never felt a sense of belonging or home there and I think it would be crummy not to have that feeling. I think one of the reasons that there more subcultures of dress/interests etc in larger cities is partially due just to people wanting to make up smaller cultures and communities in which they belong and in which they feel they can have a sort of relevant role within. Rural areas I think have more interaction going on between people of different ages and interests just because there are less people and in a smaller community I don't think there is the same kind of youre just a face in the crowd thing going on which I think leads people to creating these smaller social circles which are more based around age group and interests.

One more thing I was going to say about cultural appropriation is just--strange how much people can think they understand a culture and not get it----People get the martimes wrong all the time- I know an Ontario comic who does a "Prince Edward Island" accent in the context of telling a joke and it always rings horribly wrong to me---he's clearly doing a Newfie accent and not an Island one---I have a friend who saw him too with a bunch of Islanders and they all noticed the same thing----so none of the Islanders enjoy the joke because it rings very false but most crowds wouldnt notice- they wouldnt really know the difference----just strange---the joke to is about maritimes perceptions of Ontario as having a superiority complex. Anyway,
interesting. The idea of "packaging" your culture and selling your culture is one I am well aquainted with too as tourism is such a huge industry on the Island. I could go on about this forever probably but I have more things to respond to.

Moving into the Mainstream

Interesting article. I think it is interesting that women were largely responsible for bring symbolic/representative imagery back into art.....and I am happy for it. I remember you saying in class that in school men more often paint abstractly than women which I found interesting. I still want to have a bigger discussion on why more women go to art school than men.

If I have time to get back to this I would like to talk more about the just the concept of mainstream but I kinda doubt I will.

The Rookie- Adam Gopnik

I didn't understand most of the baseball words and characters in this article any more than the kid....but I guess I didn't invent meaning for them.

I thought it was interesting to learn that he doesn't consider Paris life to be very anonymous. I wonder if many people would think the same thing.

I'm really hungry and I need to go home and eat. Sorry but normally if I blog I really free form write so I am kind of sticking to doing that.

Allain de Botton----the art of travel

I really thought this article was sort of more about writing and loneliness than it was about travel. I guess the idea of being in another place where you wouldn't feel lonely and disconnected from the world around you is exciting. Personally I tend to like being "in transit" as I sort of feel like I can never be that dissatisfied with where I am in a way. I feel like I am just rehashing things we said in class.

Shirin Neshat.

I thought her videos were very beautiful and I normally have no interest in video work. I found the scene where the women were shown running around the desert being liberated was interesting----I was glad to hear her talk about it or I would not have understood that thats what she was trying to show......I think because a combination of fear of Islam/western association of long black dress with witches that I found my reaction to the scene was one of fear. The woman looked like wild scary witches to me in it. That was sort of an interesting thing to juxtapose in my mind---I mean the idea of me reacting to liberated women and scary otherworld witches.

Simpsons

To tell the truth I am not sure what to say about this? It was fun to watch the Simpsons in class. Ummm, it was too bad that Moe didn't give Lisa credit. I guess the one with Homer and the sculpture one really emphasized that the art world is always looking for something new and hot....which I think I agree with.

Terry Eagleton/ George Orwell

Okay before I get started I just want to say that my computer today would be a wonderful day to stop working when I had an illustration project due and the journal due tomorrow. Amazing. Ugh.

Anyway I really enjoyed both these articles. The George Orwell article really sticks in my mind. It is very difficult to write simply and clearly. I requires so much presence when writing. I don't necessarily feel that I am all that present and clear headed today so I find it hard to write about the article because I feel like a sham.

Terry's article was also interesting. I had forgotten about it somewhat since I read it. Well I had forgotten his name and what the article was about in its entirety. The one thing that has stuck in my mind about it was about the current practice of doing cultural theory on little everyday things. I think its good that we can do it but I also think it would be nice to live in a society that broad thinking about humanity was more common. That is a bad sentence. sorry.

Whodunit?

Okay so this is sort of unrelated to any of the specific things that we have talked about in class, buuuut the class was referreed to as a sort of therapy session to talk about the art world and I did want to talk about this. I worked for the whodunnit gala preview thing last night and it left me feeling very negative about the art world. I was assigned to basically stand around one of the silent auction tabels and keep it neat and tidy, encourage people to bid, keep them from taking pictures etc. First thing that made me uncomfortable was a woman was taking a picture of a man but in a weird way right in front of the pictures and I politely said there are no pictures allowed of the artwork to which the man replied to me "She is one of the major artists at this event"---which really is just him saying "she is more important than you". It just made me feel belittled and like I was pissing off people that I didnt understand the importance of by doing what I was asked to do. Ugh. The second thing that happened is that at the end of the night or the end of the last silent auction there was sort of a fight between two people who were trying to outbid eachother on a piece that had been donated by Mary Pratt. Time ended and they both sort of ignored it when we said it was over although one was more sort of in the time limits than the other. So they are like who gets it??? and I was saying ugh I don't know and one guy was just getting mad at me and kind of yelling at me. okay i stopped writing this yesterday. My point was that all of it turned me off teh art world because it seems very hierarchacal? Hierarchy is the word I am trying to root that in and I am not getting it right. Okay bye

anne hamilton/dave hickey/susan stewart

I thought her work was kinda pretty but the truth is I am really not keen on performative stuff. I liked the description in teh article about her wandering through the halls of books. I know this is not a whole lot to say about her but the truth is that she didn't interest me that much. The thing I found most interesting about it all was actually your interest in her.

Judy Chicago

I think the end piece was quite beautiful. I am not really sure how I feel about feminism constantly being associated with vaginas though. I dunno it seems base in a certain way-if men were oppresed I probbably wouldnt advice them to constantly draw boners. Meh.

Anyway, I heard from a another teacher that she didnt credit all the women who helped work on the dinner party which is maybe questionable. I also didn't really like that she had 13 place settings on each side or I wish that was explained further----I mean tradionally thats thought of as unlucky and suggestive that one of the people at the table is a traitor. So the thirteen settings seems to imply that somehow women have been unsucessful because of decepton among them- mayeb that is what she was gong for but I kind of doubt it.

The other thing that I wanted to mention is that the I think one of the dumb things about women just accepting that art needs a concept behind it to be real art is something that keeps traditional womens arts firmly in the area known as crafts and out of the canon of art history. Many women only had the opportunity to create objects that had a second purpose other than solely as a work of art-bleh. I am having a hard time articulating this.

orlan/ lori millan and shawna dempsey/tom wolf

Alright, so as far as Orlan goes I'm really not sure what to think. I don't quite undertstand her intent and I think the surgery things are unwatchable. I don't like seeing violent* images, I guess that if I am going to force myself to look at them it would be because I think it is something necessary-news maybe.....something I feel I need to turn away from and I have no problem turning away from a woman inflicting that upon herself. I thought I was going to faint in the class I hate that stuff so much.

*I realise violent isn't exactly the proper word for surgery-but it seems very violent to me-perhaps gore is a more appropriate word but even that word feels off. I can't find a word that specifically describes the gore of surgery.

I do find some of her end images interesting and I admit to finding her "art face" attractive, perhaps I am supposed to muse on that....if certain things didn't turn me off of her art I would probably investigate it more but the violence and the humourlessness of it all.

When the part was playing beforehand and she was doing some sort of nutto ritual thing-reading that poem and prancing around in the crazy harlequin outfit I was thinking "ugh, God this is why people hate art."

I guess by not giving out some kind of wink to the audience that she realizes on some level that what she is doing is kind of ridiculous she alienates people from understanding her. I don't think that it is wrong to follow though with ideas that might seem ridiculous....I have all kinds of ridiculous ideas. I just think comedy is lacking hugely in the world of fine art.

This made me think of this clip from a Kate Bush Chrismas special. She is one of my favourite artists- I love her music and her interpretive dances and videos. The song is actually sad and she is talking about a serious subject matter. The dancing is interesting and maybe even beautiful but there is something very silly about the thing. I guess the feeling I get is that when the male dancer came out in his baby costume is that everyone around felt comfortable having a laugh at the silliness of it all whereas I get the feeling that everyone is expected to put on their serious faces for Orlans performances.



So I guess that brings me to Lori whatchamacall her and her friend who live in Winnipeg. I like their art and I like that they use comedy. I think about comedy a lot as I was performing stand up before I went to Art School and worked as a waitress in a comedy club for four years. Most of my friends are comics and I feel a lot more comfortable in the world of comedy than that of art. Anyway, I think what they are doing is interesting I guess my only complaint is that in a way I can't help but see comedic performance artists as failed comedians. This has nothing to do with those women personally but it irritates me that comedians are pretty much the only artists in Canada who have zero grant possibilities.

I guess is also a common thread onto Tom Wolf's article. I absolutely loved that article. I read it twice. It was interesting and hilarious and really helped me to undertstand that period of modern art. I guess one of the things that I was thinking about related to that article is that I don't really think we have moved beyond Andy Warhol or past his whole double tracking philosophies in a way which I think upsets me. This article got me thinking about the world of art and it sort of depressed me. I know I am in "fine art" but I don't think I want to do all that. In the group discussions in class everyone was saying how they all agreed that really everyone wants to be noticed by "le monde" and you can't help but seek that validation if you are an artist. I don't know if I agree. I kind of want to run home and be a folk artist because I hate living in big city.

Here is a good article about a folk artist named Andy Macdonald. The picture below was taken of Andy by my friend on his dummy farm.

Re: Life Lessons

Interesting film but I wish the audio was better- I was left to imagine about 50% of what the man in particular was saying. Anyway, I guess it was about sexual politics in the art world but the thing it kinda got me thinking about was maybe a little different. I was thinking about creative people in relationships and how toxic it can be to women I think especially to be dating someone who is creatively accomplished when they are just starting out. I think it hinders your own creativity and sucks out your confidence because you are comparing yourself to that person and their accomplishments. I pretty much stopped all my creative pursuits somehow after high school and always felt kind of restless and unhappy. I ended up also always being friends with creative professionals- we always got along and i think I ws attracted to that aspect of their personality. Anyway, when I was 24 I kind of had this realisation about how I had stopped doing so many things and that it was making me happy but I remember feeling very scared to start doing anything- I think that was made worse because I was dating a professional musician who was well known on the island(where im from). Anyway, I always felt self consious around him - like worried that I could not match up to him somehow even though that was a hardly a concern to him. Anyway, I ended up breaking up with him and moving away and have been working on creative things since then.... I dont think I could have really worked on all that stuff if i had stayed there and dated him. Anyway, thats what the movie kinda got me thinking about. I remember when i was dating him that people would learn that and since his name is well known they would say "good for you" to me which i always found really insulting- like what is good for me?? his accomplishments are not mine? I dunno. I just found it insulting.

Anyway, I am still friends with him and I no longer feel sort of creatively intimidated by him.