A summary of my thoughts on the above topic with an introduction to the artistic practice of Joyce Kozloff.
Art and Globalisation involves many layers of ideas including identity, their authenticity and place. Globalisation could be said to be a normative utopian ideal that can be manipulated for specific ends. This can become a source of inspiration for Art. It’s possible to think your thinking globally but it’s more difficult (impossible) to be every where at once, so you can not check your thinking. Or another way of looking at it – Who has the authority to speak for a groups identity or authenticity? What are the essential elements of and boundaries of culture?
Lest we get too tangled up with words its worth taking a look at something visual and tactile.
Targets: aerial views of 24 counties that have been bombed by US war planes since 1945.
Joyce Kozloff, Targets, 2000. Acyrlic on canvas with wood frame,
Diameter: 108 in. (approx 330 cm), p 35
The political messages are often quite clear – Kozloff calls attention atrocities like slave trade, wars, and bombings – but she also uncovers the subtle prejudices and misinformed worldviews that have shaped cartography. She invites us to navigate these issues through wry humor, rich references to literature and pop culture, and a great deal of visual appeal. Exploration of human drives and desires, along with a deliberate erasure of the division between high and low culture.
Ideas starting with more local concerns, her own children. With some feminine critique?
Joyce Kozloff, Boys’ Art #9: Iwo Jima, 2001-2. Mixed media on paper,
16.75 x 11.5 in. (approx. 50 x 34.5 cm), p36
Joyce Kozloff. is a painter commonly associated with the Pattern & Decoration movement of the 1970s. The movement was an effort to challenge the stigma that modern art had put on ornamentation. The artists of this movement drew inspiration form arts and cultures outside the mainstream of modern art: Islamic, Celtic, and Arts and Crafts . In an interview in 2000, Kozloff says of this cultural melding: "I would not enjoy a world in which cultures became homogeneous and lost their singularity. All my work is appropriated from outside sources; I create a hybrid, a fusion of diverse materials, but I don't disguise their uniqueness or stylize them beyond recognition. We are flooded with imagery from everywhere: in our museums, our libraries, our media. For years, I've been trying to put it together for myself."
The American History series are a visual extension of the ironic and whimsical layering of Boys’ Art. Kozloff seems to be aware of a human compulsion to locate and orientate ourselves in our environment and is giving us new frames from which to do this.
Joyce Kozloff, American History: Age of Discovery, 2004.Etching, collage, watercolour, pigment print, acrylic, and coloured pencil, 32.75 x 48 in. (approx. 68 x 150 cm), p 39
Pictures: The map as art: contemporary artists explore cartography,
Princeton University Press, Kathrine Harmon, 2009
AS PART OF THIS BLOG I WOULD LIKE TO SHARE WITH THE WORLD HOW MUCH I HAVE NOT ENJOYED THE PUTTING INFO. FROM A WORD DOC. ONTO A BLOG. IT SEEMS UNBELIEVABLY DIFFICULT FOR NO APPARENT REASON. THANKS GOOGLE!
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