Art and Globalisation - JR

Im not sure if anyone has already heard of this artist, he was the winner of the TED art prize. In regards of globalisation, JR is interested in the individual and each person's fate, and takes up themes of photographing groups of people and pasting their images on gigantic landscapes, such as the slums in Kenya, corresponding with trains and landscape features. The images are black and white, and relate to social issues such as Portrait of a generation, 2006, portraits of the suburban gangsters which were enlarged and covered buildings in the middle class areas of his home city Paris. Since this project, he has travelled throughout Europe and the world, creating similar works, projecting regional social and racial issues out into the mainstream world. the two most recent undertakings have been particularly ambitious - Face 2 Face, 2007, saw huge portraits of Palestinians and Israelis positioned on either side of the Separation Wall in eight cities of each country. In 2008, Women presented the issues confronting women in countries where they are subject to discrimination and hostility. These site specific installations create questions of freedom, identity and cultural differences to those who care to investigate. For others, they are simply a humungous funny face that brings laugher and connects people in the community. Other interesting points of his work are that he remains anonymous and is he calls himself a graffiti artist, as his work is displayed illegally on the streets and buildings of the locality. This also raises questions of who does this art belong to - JR? the global community? I think these are the questions he is trying to raise.

Watch this fantastic video for the details of his work:

http://www.mutualart.com/OpenArticle/Meet-the-TED-Prize-Winner-of--100-000--T/87F68DF44529C7F2?utm_source=newsletter_b&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_video

Art and Architecture - Hundertwasser

The Green Citadel of Magdeburg, Germany (2002 - 2005)

Waldspirale (Forest Spiral), Darmstadt, German (built 1990)

Hundertwasser is one of my favorite artists involved in architecture, for his strong philosophies and environment thoughts. For example, he believes it is better to walk on uneven floors and doesn't see why the windows on a building should be all aligned. A common feature of his work is that he despises the straight line, and so many of his building as asymmetrical. Some of his most famous buildings are Blumau, Kunsthaus Wien, Spittelau, 21st Century Clock and Mop Incinerator, Osaka. The most recent building have been built based on plans that Hundertwasser designed before his death in 2000. Grüne Zitadelle Von Madgeburg in German and The Ronald McDonald House in Essen, Germany are two examples of this. His philosophy embraces human existence in harmony with nature and aesthetics of life and art. He has written manifestoes in relation to architecture: Mouldiness Manifesto against rationalism in Architecture, Window Dictatorship and Window Rights, and There are No Evils of Nature - There are Only Evils of Man.

"Since his first artistic actions his thoughts circulate around the same topics: life, nature and all beauty, what happens between, next to function and profit. It attracts attention that the texts were cumulative subdivided, more targeted and gets more profoundness by and by. They obey not the trends, the rumour of the public and the exchange value, they owe their appearance the diligently and exact study of humans and their manifold interdependences and addictions, necessities and opportunities, but also their lapses… "

Walter Schurian, in: Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Schöne Wege, Gedanken über Kunst und Leben [Beautiful Paths, Thoughts on Art and Life] Writings 1943 - 1999, Munich 2004 (translation from German)

http://www.hundertwasser.de/english/texts/philosophie.php

Art & the Audience

Artist Vipoo Srivilasa is a ceramic sculptor who in the 2008 "Roop - Rote - Ruang" project directly engaged the audience. Roop - Rote - Ruang, or Taste - Touch - Tell, was an way to experience ceramics, wherein the guest actively participated by selecting their own plate, made a ceramic piece themselves and ate the that meal that the artist himself prepared. There were several interesting features of this performance/exhibition. It mirrored some buddhist methods, in that the food was passed clockwise, and incorporates the concept of 'ayatana' the term used to describe the six sense bases - sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and the mind. The first course plates were chosen by the guest, which had a message of fortune inscribed on the underside of the plate. Next was the Best Wishes Soup, with a symbol of fortune uncovered at the bottom of the bowl as the soup was eaten. In the sharing of a meal the interrelationship between the work of art, the artist and the participants has been 'interrupted' in a traditional sense. It is a 2 way relationship, in that the audience is helping make Srivilasa's work and he is helping them make theirs. "The artist is interesting in creating opertunities for sharing between complete strangers and creating different, social ways of exploring complex ideas of his cross cultural experience."*

*http://www.vipoo.com/Content/Images/news/2008/roob_rote_ruang.pdf

http://www.artaustralia.com/article.asp?issue_id=189&article_id=207

Kandinsky - Concerning Spirituality in Art

Introduction Overview

Kandinsky firstly establishes that each art has its own time and place, and its authenticity cannot be restored in any manner. Such efforts to reproduce a work, style or method of art practice would only be artificial and imitation. He describes the thoughts, feelings and lifestyles in any particular time can never be replicated and as such, the art that is produced from this time can never be true as to have the same intent. Kandinsky places an importance on the inner feelings driving the art period, and goes on to make an exception to the above.

A revival of the external situations which fostered the inner feelings of the former time can be achieved through a similarity of ‘inner tendency in the whole moral and spiritual atmosphere,’ of the ideals and response, and as such, the reproductions of a former period and thus current. While seeming to be a contradiction, it somehow draws a parallel.

Kandinsky quotes Schumann and Tolstoi’s opposing views on the underlying purpose of the artist - as enlightener and inspirer or merely practicer. There, forms a great tension between the materialistic nature of the world today and the indifference of the heart and soul of a man. He denounces ‘art for art’s sake as a ‘squandering of artistic power,’ as aimless and materialistic. Kandinsky believes that the artist should look toward the higher ideals and engage in the inner feeling, as the spiritual life to which art belongs, transcends the fluctuations of the ‘moment’ and proves to influence and create a ‘deep and powerful prophetic strength.’

Kandinsky implies that the materialistic side of the art world produces the more inhumane natures of man, and divides society and indeed the art world, into those who appreciate only the external beauty and those who strive further for the inner thought. Both forms of art are consequently derived from the present as all art takes into account the feelings of its own time and place. But the art which creates further movement of thought and aims for spiritual inner thought and purpose stands constant.

Art & Identity - Jemima Wyman

Jemima Wyman, Combat Drag, 2008 (production still), video, 8:06 mins.

JEMIMA WYMAN- COMBAT DRAG: LESSONS IN UNLIMITED EXPANSION

Combat Drag, 2008, DVD, (Production still)

Jemima Wyman is a current video and performance artist and also creates vibrant canvases. In the 17th Biennale of Sydney, her work Combat Drag (2008) was exhibited addressing the idea of camouflage and disguise - an interesting take on the theme of identity; of hiding behind a facade or a pretense. This topic closely relates to the body in all its physical stature, mental perception of the self and from others. The body is often used as the object, sometimes also the subject, a least in the sense connotations attached to a particular 'identity' or a visual recognition create. Wyman, in this work, looks particularly looks at identity in a consumeristic society, by using head coverings of brightly coloured flannelette material, with painted on features. She fuses the conflict present in the world today with the world of fashion, with the notion of collective identities and individuals through the use of the masks.

http://www.bos17.com/biennale/artist/122

http://www.milanigallery.com.au/artist/jemima-wyman

Art & the Body - Marina Abramović

Marina Abramović, The Artist is Present, Thursday June 3, 2010, MOMA - Marina Abramović with audience member

Gina Pane The Conditioning, first of three phrases in Self-Portrait(s) Galerie Stadler, Paris January 11, 1973 Original duration: approximately 30 minute

Marina Abramovic's Performance of Gina Pane's The Conditioning, first of three phases in Self-Portrait(s) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York November 12, 2005 Duration: 7 hours

Marina Abramovic, Breathing in/ Breathing out with Ulay, 1977, Photograph

Abramović’s art approaches the topic of art and the body as a personal investigation of physical limits and mental potentials. Her early influences include non-western cultures such a Tibetan Buddhism, Sufism, and traditional Australian Aboriginal customs searching for processes that push the body to the physical extremes in order to eliminate fear of death, pain and physical limitations. Also through these cultures she has learnt of a deeper form of energy present in the body, allowing herself to fast, endure pain or undertake intense hours of performance.

In using the medium of performance, she believes “the process has always been more important than the result, the performance more important than the object.” Since 1969 Abramović has created extensive performance artworks involving her body and the audience, encompassing the body and soul and the consciousness surrounding it. She finds direct connections of energy throughout the body, its surroundings, the earth and the cosmos. Abramović often starts a performance before the audience enters the space, and ends it after they are gone to control the presence and durability of the act. In some of her works, she engages the audience to complete the work, inviting them to participate, such as in the most recent collection of performances at MOMA entitled “The Artist is Present.” Here she sat in the gallery space at a table across from an empty chair, in which audience members were invited to sit for however long they desired. In one of her first performances, she called on the audience for manipulation of her body using 72 tools placed in front of her.

Abramović finds the process needed to create performances extremely important, as with the sense of live-ness that inherent during the performance. In contrast the documentation and medium used to capture the live performance produces an ‘expired’ copy, that can never imitate the live aspect and cannot be true to the art form. In her more recent works, Abramović focuses on the mental and physical conditioning of the artist and audience. Her work is a fascinating and enthralling example of an artist using the body as the subject, object and medium.

The three above works can be seen as a loose summary of style of artworks, the first being very focused on the simple sustainability of the body, the second as the endurance of the mind, and the third, the captivation of the audience. In Breathing in/ Breathing out with Ulay, the performers share the one breath until no longer possible - i.e they pass out. In this performance Ulay and Marina lasted 17 minutes. This piece really focuses on the physicality of the body and its limitations. In Abramovic's performance of Gina Pane's "The Conditioning" the core element is withstanding the pain mentally, much more so than a physical limitation. And finally, the most recent performance involved the artist engaging with the audience, sharing the energy and space between them.

This is also a great performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pno1gCrbeVk