The Art of Garbage

Artsts such as Joseph Cornell have used items found in the garbage to create artwork. This includes broken dolls, paper cutouts, wine glasses, medicine bottles, etc. Garbage proves to be quite telling. In an article by Ella Shohat and Robert Stam in the book “Visual Culture Reader”, the aesthetics of garbage are described as “a strategic redemption of the marginal.” Consider the following example.

At age 20, Rio citizen Gabriel Joaquim dos Saints began creating his entire dream house out of the “city's leftovers” demonstrating how the “power of wealth” can become one man's “power of poverty.” As Shohat and Stam note, “The trash of the haves becomes the treasure of the have-nots.” Gabriel, illiterate until he was 36 years old, writes in his journal, “There comes somebody with a Dutch tile and I find a place for it. There comes somebody with a broken dish or a broken jar and I make a tiny branch or a rose out of it, I turn it into an ornament.” Considering the implications of such art is useful in our present day society in which so much is consumed, and yet so much is left behind. The average American discards 5 pounds of garbage per day! In such debris exists a hybrid of fragments from all classes of society. Use of these fragments can represent a search for healing. In western and central Africa broken vessels displayed on Kongo graves “serve as reminders that broken objects become whole again in the other world.” I think Gabriel’s story in particular is one of hope. It takes a creative and humble mind to pick up the pieces of what once was forgotten or discarded.

(See more of Gabriel’s story at http://www.casadaflor.org)

It Caught My Eye

I recently saw an exhibition of British artist Mark Fairnington's work at a gallery here in London. HIs exhibition, entitled "The Raft" featured life-like paintings of taxidermy, specifically birds and giraffes. I loved the BIRDS, of course. They brought attention to the beautiful colors and various species that we find in bird life. I think he is also saying something about the desire to collect things in our present day culture. In one of his pieces, giraffe heads crowd a shelf in an unknown room of a zoo, (perhaps?) I also liked the round pieces he painted of animals' eyes. The technique he used makes it look very realistic, while the two dimensional surface (and the fact that it is just a close-up of one eye) reminds you that it is a painting. I loved looking closely at these "eyes" for you can even see the reflection in them. I would never get that close to say, a living tigers' eye. It made me feel I was experiencing something beyond what I could experience in this life. I liked that.

If you would like to see a further description of his work, the gallery has a post on Mark Fairnington:

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/2006/09/mark_fairnington_at_fred_londo_1.php

That's a lot of Flies!

I saw this piece entitled "Flies on Canvas" by Damien Hirst in the White Cube Gallery here in London. It really is flies stuck on a canvas! The theme of the gallery show was black, so there were many dark pieces. I have to say, this was the most textural piece of the show. What I liked best about it was that the closer I came to the piece I could see all the delicate little fly wings sticking out and reflecting light. I guess it wasn't completely black after all! Who knew flies could be so interesting? I must say I like them a lot better when they are stuck to a canvas. Could this piece say something about a need for control? Relief? Nature? Death? Who knows?....

The Frame Exists Solely for the Content

Have you ever noticed the frame on a photograph or painting? I have been studying the "founding fathers" of art history, and I have come across G.F.W. Hegel from the late Nineteenth Century. While his predecessor Vasari judged artwork by its physical appearance and level of quality, Hegel believed that the truth of an artwork existed within the idea behind it. Hegel wrote of both the concept/spirit of an artwork and it's physical form. He found that the truest artforms were a product of an idea and its physical form conformed into one. He emphasized the spirit and the inner life. According to Hegel, "Works of art are all the more excellent in expressing true beauty, the deeper is the inner truth of their content and thought." He sees that art, "this sensuous concrete thing, which bears the stamp of an essentially spiritual content, is also essentially for our inner apprehension; the external shape, whereby the content is made visible and imaginable, has the purpose of existing solely for our mind and spirit." I completely agree with Hegel. I have also studied Giorgio Vasari his predecessor. Vasari was from Florence and developed his ideas under a Florentine influence of regarding art as a supreme form. Vasari saw Michelangelo's art as reaching the perfection of art. His passion for art was in the superficial. But Hegel's passion was in the idea behind the artwork. The painting is the mere structure that holds it all together (like a picture frame). The Idea/the Spirit is the heart of it. I think this also applies to people. We are all bodies, skeletal frames that hold so much more. I like Vasari and I like Hegel, mainly because they both thought it important to document and study art and its movement. I hope to do the same.

Life without creative effort is unthinkable...

"...and the whole coarse of human culture is one continuous effort of the creative will of man."

This was stated by Naum Gabo, an artist associated with the constructivist movement around the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917. His art embraced new scientific theories and industrialization. He also said that "art derives from the necessity to communicate and to announce." I agree. I have often thought that artists carry a specific burden to communicate something they have experienced or felt. The following is a steel sculpture by Gabo made in 1916. An enlarged version is now on display at the Tate.

Life is Short, Art is Long lasting, Eternity is Forever

Today I visited the National Gallery and saw this famous painting by Hans Holbein the Younger. Painted in 1533, The Ambassadors is a painting about the brevity of life and the vanity of human accomplishments. What amazed me is the skull at the bottom of the painting. It is purposefully distorted and appears as a giant orb when looking straight at the painting. But as the viewer moves toward the right of the painting, the skull appears in clear view. It is a masterful handling of distortion. I highly recommend seeing this painting in person if you ever get the chance. You can see more information at the following link. www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/h/holbein/hans_y/index.html

I also went to the Tate Modern today. The Tate Modern is extremely resourceful. There are three floors of open galleries and one floor for galleries with a fee. Currently there is a special exhibition on Kandinsky which I hope to visit after school starts. I found out today that the Tate Modern is the most visited modern art museum in the world, and they are currently building on to it in order to increase the space by 60%.


Today at the Tate I saw some very old graphic design pieces from a magazine entitled USSR in Construction. The magazine was printed in 5 different langauges and promoted Stalinism. The various artists Lissitzky, Rochenko, Hartfield, and Troshin used avant-garde techniques to illustrate the magainze. This included photo montage. The magazine was successful for a few years until Stalin signed a pact with Hitler in 1939. It was amazing to see such old graphic design techniq

Buckingham Palace

I might have tried to spare you all the silly tourist shots, but that is all I have so far!! This is me and Erica in front of Buckingham Palace. We had so much fun touring the city while she was here. It costs over $40 to get a card for unlimited rides on the tube for a week. We invested and took well advantage of the transportation. We also walked A LOT. There is so much to see. We only got a little lost one day trying to find an old cemetary. We walked more that day than we expected and saw parts of London that I might never have seen. Two different days we spent travelling to Oxford and then to Brighton Beach. Both were great visits! I definitely recommend going to see Oxford. It is a very neat place.

Is a work of art devalued by being overly reproduced?

Apparently the artist Jeremy Deller thinks so. Using normal everyday objects such as shopping bags, this artist comments on the present day ease of reproducing images. His untitled work of 2003 is a pink shopping bag with the statement, "Speak to the Earth, And it will Show You." (It is similar to the image above, a different work by Jeremy Deller).

I think he has a point. It is far too easy to reproduce an image in our contemporary culture. For instance, almost everyone I've encountered who has seen the Mona Lisa in person has been disappointed. Might this have something to do with the fact that Mona Lisa shows her face on t-shirts, greeting cards, playing cards and the like all over the world? There is something about such reproduction that devalues her appearance and the work of art itself. "Speak to the Earth (through your means of art) and it will show you." In fact, it will show you so much that your art will become a spectacle.

I still remember the red striped bar-be-que apron I saw with an image of the David on it for sale at a market outside the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence. Tourists laughed at the sight of the naked sculpture on an apron. I guess I think it's kind of sad now. How can the world change our view of something simply by showing it's image over and over again. The media plays a specifically influential role in engraining images in our heads and skewing our perceptions.

It's been a long day...

Today was orientation for all the MA art history students at Richmond, and although it's been five years since I was a freshman, I experienced a few flashbacks orientations into high school and then into college. For instance, all the paper work one has to fill out, the tours of campus, the greetings and introductions, the badly taken photo i.d.'s. Oh, the joys of being a student again. However, this is the first time I've enjoyed drinks on the night of orientation in one of the most expensive flats in London belonging to the president of the university.

Today I have most enjoyed getting to know my fellow students, as well as the provost of our university. There are 15 students all together, all of which are from the U.S. Very few have an undergraduate degree in art history. Other have minored in the subject. I like the provost because she is especially interested in the intercultural aspect of art history. She is currently helping curate an exhibition for the national portrait gallery centered around paintings of the many cultures represented in England in the 1700's. London is certainly a very diverse city, but I did not realize it's diversity dated back so far. We will get a sneak peak at her work before it goes on display next summer, I believe.

I have been expecially interested in the work of curators since I have been visiting the many museums in London. Yesterday I went to the Victory & Albert Museum, which has some great exhibits on Italian Renaissance art, Asian art, European art, Photography (both old and new), and Design (including printmaking and textiles). The museums are so rich in things to study that it is hard for me to start narrowing to a thesis. Thankfully one of the classes I am taking this semester revolves around methods for writing a thesis. I surely hope to narrow my subject soon.

Other than art, London is filled with things to do. Tomorrow I hope to go to Portabello Road to do some shopping at the markets. Anyone see Bedknobs and Broomsticks?

Cheers from London.