Today was quite interesting. We started off the school day with a lecture about Assemblage and Environment art, two forms of art which I am not too familiar with. I learned a lot, and I'm very interested in the conceptual side of both kinds of art, but I can't say that I love either form as much as other forms of art that I like. I definitely now have more respect for artists like Arman and Allan Kaprow, but it's more of a "would I recommend you check out their work" type of situation. I think that they are both worth reading about, and if one is studying contemporary art.... that is when it is necessary. Unfortunately these guys didn't make the kinds of works that stayed intact forever, so all we have left are photographs of what was going on at that time. I'll just share a photo of Allan Kaprow's "Yard" from 1961.
We discussed an article that Allan Kaprow wrote about the art of Jackson Pollock, and it made me realize that their works are not so dissimilar. A quote (and I'm not sure if my teacher read this verbatim or if he paraphrased) "Pollock's choice of enormous canvases served many purposes, chief of which is that his mural-scale paintings ceased to become paintings and instead became environments." The point here is that if you are standing close to a Jackson Pollock painting, you cannot see either end straight on, and so it engulfs your visual field, becoming a thing that surrounds you in a way, hence an environment.
Here is my personal favorite piece by Jackson Pollock (THEY ARE NOT ALL THE SAME I PROMISE YOU). Blue Poles Number 11, 1952
After this lecture we had a lecture by a visiting lecturer (one who will be giving many lectures to us). Her lecture(s) were on Conceptual art, and the Return to Painting in art in the late 1970's/early 1980's. I personally struggled with her lecturing style. She showed some incredible and interesting works, but her "slide list" only gave us the names of artists, and no names of the actual works she was showing us. A hard way to learn art history if you have no point of reference. Some of these artists have made thousands of works (like Cindy Sherman, although I am quite familiar with her bodies of work) so pinpointing just one can be difficult.
One of the artists she mentioned that I had never heard of before was Mary Kelly, a woman who decided to thoroughly document her son's life, including putting his diapers on display. Some of the photographs, however are quite beautiful, and I really enjoyed looking at her work (and I wil do some further research. Here is a photo of her with her son. You may think it is not art at first glance, but in a way isn't everything?
"Recording Session" from Post-Partum Document, 1973-1979
She also talked about artist/photographer Victor Burgin, who I found to be very provocative. In some of his works he took photos of, say..., factory workers, and then superimposed a quote from vogue magazine about the 'new style'. You should look up some of his works, see what you find interesting. Another photographer whose work I quite enjoyed was Guy Bourdin. I don't know the title of this work, but I think it is very funny. It's nice to see an artist with a well-developed sense of humor.
In the return to painting section, our lecturer spoke about painters like Basquiat, Polke and Baselitz (all of whom are well-represented by Google images). This brings me to the second half of my course day, where after lunch, we went to four different galleries in 2 hours.
All of these Galleries are in the West End of London, between Piccadilly Circus and Green Park tube stations. The first gallery we went to was "White Cube" which had new-er works by Georg Baselitz. I was captivated and mortified by his work, I mentioned him in the previous section, so you've probably already seen his work. I will probably write more about Baselitz at another time. The second gallery we went to was Thomas Dane, where there was a 7-channel video installation called "Beggars" by Kutlug Ataman, the work was very interesting. It featured video loops of seven different "beggars" in the streets of Istanbul. Some of them confronting you with their hands or speaking to you (no sound, however) and others just lying on the street with one hand out from their body, cupped. The reason why I say the work is interesting because if we had encountered any of these people on the street, we may do one of three things, walk by without even looking at them, or glance at them and walk away, or glance at them and give them 5p. The videos make one confront a situation they usually would find themselves in. The other thing the audience doesn't know is whether the people are actors or real people being filmed in Istanbul, one student mentioned that if they are not actors, what is really happening is an act of voyeurism. I certainly felt voyeuristic.
The third gallery was called Haunch of Venison. There they had several installations by Giuseppe Penone and Richard Long. Two artists who do pseudo "Land art" meaning they are fully inspired by nature, and usually work with only natural materials, or things inspired in part by natural materials. Some of the works were beautiful, others were hauntingly beautiful. Although I felt a bit sad in the whole of the exhibition because it's not always a beautiful thing to see nature outside of nature. The fourth and finally gallery (I hope you're exhausted reading this because I was exhausted doing it) was the Frith Gallery which featured work of Callum Innes. I was extremely intrigued by his process, but the outcome was only interesting to me after learning about the process.
Tomorrow we are going to the Tate Modern and Tate Britain, and on the Tate Boat!!
