Encore?

So, evidently, the assessment part of this blog has ended (I passed, hooray!) but I was left lacking a channel for the latest art that has, well, not 'inspired' since I'm not really artistically inclined, but at least 'impressed' me.

Rosemary Laing- a dozen useless actions for grieving blondes

(text and photos extracted from http://www.ccp.org.au/flash/2009/05/rosemary-laing/)

Playing with the tension of the depth/surface of the self/image, Laing has cast her subjects into a series showing twelve shades of grief reminiscent of the twelve shades of blonde any one of us can become with the aid of a bottle.
Linda Daley

a dozen useless actions for grieving blondes #2 2009
C Type photograph82 x 138 cm
courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Codes and types are two products of rationalist thinking explored by Rosemary Laing in her exhibition, a dozen useless actions for grieving blondes.
The series’ title echoes her earlier work, one dozen unnatural disasters in the Australian landscape 2003 and 2005, itself an echo of a prior series, Natural Disasters 1988, explicitly connecting both the stages of her development as a photo artist and the logic of verbal and visual language systems. Laing’s gesture of linking words and images across time can be seen as a counter-move to the separating and distinguishing that occurs within those systems of meaning, and their necessary stratagems of coding and typifying.
Laing’s photographic practice has long engaged with the history of ideas, its concepts, myths and ideologies, and the place of science and technological interventions – particularly photographic technologies – within that history. Her latest exhibition is squarely within that trajectory.

The series’ dominant colour is pink, both in the fluid, milky-pink of the uniform back-drop to the twelve ‘blondes,’ and also in the face, neck and shoulders of their skin. The horizontal streaks of the background, conveying high-speed movement – of time, of the world – pass indifferently through and beyond the blondes, who are transfixed in the perpetual present of their loss. Pink is universally coded as ‘feminine,’ ‘girly,’ ‘infantile’ and ‘soft’. More recently, with the presence of wrist-bands, lapel ribbons and domestic appliances, it is also code for ‘breast research’ and the ‘science dollar’ to which these pink objects translate. Pink has acquired a hard edge. ‘Blonde’, coded as ‘female’, is but a short jump to its misogynist coding, ‘dumb female,’ a coding that evokes its own ever-expanding genre of joke.

a dozen useless actions for grieving blondes #3 2009

C Type photograph82 x 138 cm

courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

What the source of the grief is for the blondes we do not know. The head-and-shoulder figures are marooned from an apparent cause of grief that is starkly at odds with the force of emotion displayed, thereby precluding empathy from the viewer. The physiology of the emotion is shown in the minutiae of nerves, muscles and veins that contort each face through the micro-muscular contractions between the brows and around the mouth and eyes, and through the blood’s surfacing in patches of darker concentration. The extremity of each facial expression ensures that it’s not readily apparent that two, if not three, of the blondes in the series are different subjects. In her exhibition notes Laing thanks three prominent Australian television, film and stage actors whose identities here merge into the anonymity of physical sameness because of the ‘blondeness’ of their ‘useless actions’ of grieving.

Denied the empathic mechanism, we might wonder – like the misogynist Laing is flirting with here – whether the source of loss is a bad hair day or a broken fingernail. In keeping us detached from the blondes’ grief, just as the misogynist is from his object’s singularity, what we observe rather than feel is the theatricality of the emotions’ display. We see grief’s performance staged for its study. In contrast to the five stages of grief and the psychical depth to which those stages refer, Laing inverts that interiority by bringing it to the surface of her subject through the display of a surfeit of the emotion’s exterior effects. Playing with the tension of the depth/surface of the self/image, Laing has cast her subjects into a series showing twelve shades of grief reminiscent of the twelve shades of blonde any one of us can become with the aid of a bottle.
The images construct our detachment that enables us to think like the misogynist; to think of these individual women as types, kinds, or genres, swept together into categories of classification on the basis of one clearly visible feature of commonality and in that movement overlook their singularity of multiple differences. From the perspective of the misogynist, ‘blondes’ can be viewed as types as if belonging to the natural world that science has traditionally dominated.

a dozen useless actions for grieving blondes #5 2009

C Type photograph82 x 138 cm

courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Philosopher Luce Irigaray describes the logic and stratagems of science and rationalist thinking and its reliance on detachment, solidity, and linearity, as precluding the recognition of sexual difference within systems of thought. Women are viewed as men’s opposite, complement or equivalent, but in each case, defined by the standard of Man and not as a Woman-subject in her own right. Swept into a category that denies her difference from Man in the name of rationalist thinking, and then categorised as Other to scientific inquiry, women and femininity lose their identity, lose the particularity that science would claim to isolate and know. For Irigaray, not only is femininity denied the autonomy of sexual difference from the standard of Man, but masculinity, too, is denied a bodily subjectivity, which is relinquished in order to maintain the neutral, objective and universal position of science and rationalism.

This year marks the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of naturalist, Charles Darwin. Laing’s exhibition would seem to be engaging with that legacy, particularly the role that photography and photographs played in his study, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals 1872, which was one of the first scientific treatises to include photographs. Darwin sourced the photographic illustrations from five photographers, one of whom, Oscar Rejlander, specifically produced his images for the treatise, and from correspondence between the photographer and the scientist, we learn that he had great fun in doing so by posing for the photographs himself. More than a mere adjunct to the treatise, the photographs were integral to Darwin’s thesis of the emotions’ universality across cultures.

Darwin claims grief is more common in women and children than in men, and that it is the most difficult emotion to activate voluntarily. If it can be activated at will, says Darwin, it demonstrates the rare facility of the professional actor. Laing’s wink to Darwin in her choice of subjects for the blonde series again shows that her mode of critique is not from a position outside or above, and thereby suggestive of a corrective to the tradition and logic of science, but through play, irony and mimicry, therein exposing its debts and limitations.

Rosemary Laing - a dozen useless actions for grieving blondes

23 April 2009 - 23 May 2009

Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

The last laugh

Well, I tried. For the life of me I tried to turn this YouTube clip into a video for this blog but it turns out that you can't because YouTube downloader only converts to mp4 which is a format unacceptable to Windows Movie Maker and so you end up with all video and no audio. It's something to do with codec files. I couldn't even embed the video because that function was disabled and I am too inept to hack into it (all these hideously techy and ultimately useless things I've learnt from the process of running this blog and trying to make things work electronically the way they do in my head). So, I present you with a less than polished consolation.

Please follow this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTvfG3HSDYA

Or click here.

And forward to 8 min 46 sec, the gag continues until 9 min 38 seconds.

In case your internet is broken, here's:

A picture of the show

And the dialogue

Manny: Ah! I see you're an afficionado of paintings

Freddy: Oh yes, yes. Manny[looking at a painting of a brown cow]: It's ...a cow

Freddy: Do you like art? Manny: Oh yes, yes. Especially... late... art.

[Both look at the painting]

Manny: Yes, the way he's captured the look. The cow's looking over there, we can't see what the cow's seeing. Maybe the artist is saying cows know something we don't.

Freddy: [nods] It's French, apparently, from the Dutch School.

Manny: Yes... brown.

Freddy: Oh I don't know what his name is.

I laughed to myself sometimes in lectures when I remembered this joke, and I think now, more than ever, with the soon to be avalanche of exams and essays, we need to have a bit of a laugh. While what I've learnt in PHIL250 has been highly enjoyable, and invaluable in understanding all aspects of Art, it can be easily manipulated, deceiving us into reading way too much into something, deluding us into thinking the cow knows something we don't.

So, goodbye. It's been fun!

Heidegger: Today and Tomorrow

What is nature, what is art?

Well, interestingly I hardly know the answer to either. However, Heidegger does, and his account is pretty reasonable, especially considering Peasant Shoes and the theorem of elements of nature combined with elements of culture.

So I have long been thinking about how that would translate to today's society trying to do the same. And then I remembered three poignant and yet altogether different artists.

Anselm Kiefer

I first encountered Kiefer's sculptures at the AGNSW, the one with the three dresses and no heads.

Women of Antiquity - 2002 Cement, plaster, metal sheets, glass.

My first impression was "very cool". My second, more sophisticated, impression noted his use of concrete, plaster and other industrial materials to produce something elegant, and yet hard and frightening (especially the tantalising, rusty nest of barbed wire, only to be discreetly touched by those who have already had their tetanus shot.) This, I was later to find, was some of his prettier work. Still at the AGNSW, and dominating the second level is a gigantic block of reinforced concrete hung on an equally ginormous canvas acting as a background of plaster, cement, rusty iron, concrete - all forbiding materials but, if anything, the most common aspects of today's constructed world. One need only to look at the buildings on campus to reassure that fact.

It's sort of sad, if not despairing, that the materials we most commonly encounter are formidable and downright harmful (try standing at the bottom of that GIGANTIC concrete slab and your faith in the skill of hanging artworks is very quickly diminished) to our selves. Kiefer's works are explicitly larger than life, parallelling the observation that the things we make, too, are larger than life (consider, for example, the contrete goodness of our uni library). It's almost Frankensteinian in that we make these sorts of equipment which would at best engulf and, at worst, kill their makers.

Nadin Ospina

Ospina is most famous for amalgamating ancient mesoamerican cultural objects with icons of 20th century pop culture, including Mickey Mouse, Bart Simpson and South Park's Eric Cartman. When I encountered his works exhibited in the MCA's 2007 The Hours: Visual Art of Contemporary Latin America (which I still find to be one of the most enjoyable, complex and comprehensible exhibition I have visited) I initially overlooked it (I have a problem with first impressions, I think - like the time I disregarded Bacon's Study of Pope Innocent X :( ... ), disregarding the works as ancient Latin American relics which, like all relics, don't exactly captivate my attention. He began his famous amalgamations after realising he had purchased a fake pre-Colombian relic. Highly interested by the authenticity it seemed to have, Ospina then learnt the craft of counterfeiting, working the materials such that they achieved a genuinely dated look.

Warrior- 2000 40x 24x 20 cm, ceramic

Archaic Piece (Bart) - 1996 Polyester resin

Chaman de Tierra Adentro - 2000. Silver and gold plating, 13x8.5x1 cm

Ospina's works squarely address the idea of a relic. Heidegger, too, comments that things that were once parts of every day lives now reside in, and are defined by, the museums and places of where they are found. He utilises the example of an African Spoon, wherein once it was a simple tool of everyday life, it was later bound by its status as a relic of past African cultures in anthropology museums and later reinvented, prized for its artistic decorations and re-presented in an art museum. Its status, then, in the object of the beholder constantly changes according to context. Ospina demonstrates this idea of the malleable concept of culture through his marriage between explicit pre-columbian art, and an icon as ubiquitous and recognisable as Bart Simpson to confuse us and make us reconsider the entire thing. Whether seen as a parody of characters who are already parodies of something else (e.g The Simpsons as an advanced parody of The Flintsones) or as 'cultural' objects to be seen as relics of a fictitious and television watching tribe (ourselves?) is the confusing and captivating puzzle Ospina's works address.

Richard Avedon

Mostly famous for redefining fashion photography - mainly through treating the model as an individual who is to be regarded in her beauty as well as her personality, Avedon's less famous works are perhaps the most true to Heidegger's theory as we can get to in modernity.

Carmen with coat

Avedon furthers Heidegger's theory, perhaps venturing into phenomenological grounds, through his uncanny ability to capture the essence of his subject. He was said to invite them into his study, make them comfortable and then place them in front of his signature sterile white background, capturing his pictures in black and white. Again, he is most famous for mingling with the starts, and at the same time they were more than keen to have their picture taken by him because he denied them the opportunity to "act" their characters, rather letting them "be" who they are. In some cases he did this without their knowledge, capturing their essence in, perhaps, a sardonic split-second smile or a faraway, reminiscing look to times only known to them.

Marilyn Monroe, actress

Samuel Beckett, playwright

On the one hand, and particularly with the Monroe picture, we are taken aback by how far removed their image here is from what we expected it to be. Again, with Monroe, she remains beautiful and sensual, but at the same time looks beyond trapped in that very image of a vixen, the low cut sequin dress, the perfect make up and hair. Ultimately she looks very, very sad. Beckett, on the other hand looks utterly FIERCE, like a lion who would rip your head off if you didn't give him a cigarette. Unfortunately for Avedon, his subjects once again clouded the skill in which is photographies were taken, a fault that would be overcome through the stunning art in his project Into the American West. This photographic series are, to me, almost the pinnicle in capturing the essence of a culture - that of the working people in the more derelict parts of America.

[from wiki] "Commissioned by the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, [In the American West] was a six-year project Avedon embarked on in 1979, that produced 125 portraits of people in the American west who caught Avedon's eye. Avedon was drawn to working people such as miners and oil field workers in their soiled work clothes, unemployed drifters, and teenagers growing up in the West circa 1979-84. When first published and exhibited, In the American West was criticized for showing what some considered to be a disparaging view of America. Avedon was also lauded for treating his subjects with the attention and dignity usually reserved for the politically powerful and celebrities. "

Avedon's subjects were then identified solely by their name (in some cases no name at all), their profession and their 'essence'. In some cases, the minimalism of the work was reduced to having their subjects stand in front of a large piece of wallpaper stuck to Avedon's tour bus, or the white background of a nearby truck.

Boyd Fortin, Thirteen year old. Streetwater, Texas, 1979

Sandra Bennett, twelve year old. Rocky Ford, Colorado 1980

Ultimately these artists encompass our best attempts at understanding our relationship with nature/culture, and these works (with particular regard to Avedon and Kiefer) are the most universal testaments to capturing the way we live today.

In Retrospect

So it's just about wrap-up time in the semester, as I'm trying (and failing) to keep on top of an avalanche of exams.

In any case, this is an administrative post just to say that over time I have been posting interesting and usually related articles and it's time I voiced what was going through my mind when I read them. Because this is done from memory, I'll make the additional comments in red font and with the date attached. The idea of this is just to show the journal progress in an electronic form.

The Culture Club

Pretty much the position of modern day artists in an amusing nutshell. By Craig Schuftan

PS: Oh God, please excuse my abysmal video skills. Thank you.

Apollo and Dionysius

I've been thinking about what Robert said (about Nietzsche's take on art):


Art can take the darkest parts of humanity

Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Dirty White Trash (With Gulls) 1998

and turn them into beautiful things.

Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Dark Stuff, 2008
Various Mummified Animals, metal stand, light projector. British Museum

Why it's dangerous to play with art

Spot the difference: council sets off smoke alarm

Now you see it, now you don't … Antonio Dattilo-Rubbo's The Artist and The Model. Manly council digitally removed two cigarettes from the painting.

Louise Schwartzkoff
April 23, 2009

LIKE many men of his generation, the late artist Antonio Dattilo-Rubbo loved tobacco. In the dozens of self-portraits he painted before his death in 1955, he is often pictured with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

But when Manly Council decided to honour the former Manly resident with an exhibition and website, Dattilo-Rubbo's vice collided with the council's strict anti-smoking policy.

In an online news release advertising a website about the painter's life and art, one of his self-portraits - The Artist And The Model - was painstakingly altered by a member of the council's communications team. One smoking cigarette was airbrushed from the artist's mouth, a second was banished from an ashtray on the table.

The incident comes a week after France was outraged by advertisements showing the iconic French comedian Jacques Tati without his signature pipe. In posters promoting an exhibition at the Cinematheque Francaise, Tati's pipe was replaced by a toy windmill, a concession to France's strict anti-smoking laws.

Manly Council is also renowned for its anti-smoking stance. In 2004, it was the first local government area in Australia to forbid smoking at its beaches. It has also banned smoking at al fresco dining areas, sporting grounds and within 10 metres of the entrances to council buildings.

The art consultant David Hulme, who was commissioned to create the Dattilo-Rubbo website by the council-operated Manly Art Gallery and Museum as part of its 80th anniversary celebrations, said he was shocked by the intervention.

"It's ridiculous that this could happen," he said. "[Smoking] is what the artist was known for … It was not appropriate to take that cigarette out of his mouth. It was part and parcel of the man."

Yesterday the council insisted the case of the disappearing cigarettes was all a simple mistake.

A member of its management team had instructed a staff member in its communications department to remove the artwork featuring the cigarette.

Unfortunately, the instruction was misinterpreted and the staff member removed the cigarettes from the artwork instead. "Manly Council is a proud supporter of the arts and we would be opposed to any censorship - perceived or otherwise," the spokeswoman said.

Oddly, the "misinterpretation" was not spotted by the council for several months - the news release first appeared in late January. But within hours of being contacted by the Herald yesterday, the missing cigarette had reappeared in the image on the council's website.

found at: http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/spot-the-difference-council-sets-off-smoke-alarm/2009/04/22/1240079731177.html

It's the same thing, it's just going laterally now, it doesn't seem to be going forward.

IR 29/5/09
The reason I included this article (apart from the jokes) was the line I used in the title. It reminded me of Hegel's end of art theory, and I imagined art as a river - for some reason- Hegel's claim as a giant brick wall in the middle of it and the multitude of artworks that really seem to say the same thing as overflowing laterally from the river and outside of it. Somehow this inspired me to write my essay, the connection between Dylan Moran and Hegel (and after research, Heidegger too) so far remote and yet influential.


I was reading a pretty unrelated yet funny article on Dylan Moran and his comedy. And I'll include it here for record's sake:

found at: http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/arts-reviews/dylan-moran/2009/04/16/1239474985449.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Dylan Moran

Lenny Ann Low
April 17, 2009

Ride 'em in … Dylan Moran played to 65,000 people on his last tour here.
Photo: Quentin Jones

IF THERE is anyone who is unimpressed with recent advances in communication devices it is Dylan Moran. The 37-year-old Irish comedian, long disconcerted by aspects of modern living, cannot understand the current technological obsession with enhanced speed and accessibility.

"I'm amazed because it's the same stuff but quicker," he says on the eve of touring What It Is, his fourth live show in Australia. "All that's going to be at the end of the line is another bozo and you can just reach them quicker. Or they can reach you quicker.

"And they can reach you through your ear, you can wear it on your head, you can have it on your back pocket and in your bath. Just lying down [means it] takes a picture of you.

"It's the same thing, it's just going laterally now, it doesn't seem to be going forward. It's just: 'Where can we put the computer chip? Put it in the cat.' And you feel like whatever it is, there would be a queue for it. You could get some kind of electrified cow-pat and people would get in a queue to buy it."

During Moran's successful career, as an award-winning stand-up comedian, as the well-loved character Bernard Black in the hit television series Black Books and in roles in films such as Notting Hill, Shaun Of The Dead, Run Fatboy Run and coming Irish black comedy A Film With Me In It, he has regularly been described as a disgruntled, shambling miserabilist but hilarious with plenty of charm and a lot of intelligence.

The intelligence may explain Moran's general dislike of explaining his comedy, of years of being asked, "How did you get to be so funny?" and "Where do you get your ideas?" (one extra on his stand-up DVD Monster features Moran in a mock backstage interview reacting to this question).

He reckons he has, however, stopped avoiding queries about his passion for performing live. "I do, I do love it," he says.

"It took me years to realise that if I don't do it regularly, every year or so I get very odd. I start wandering around the house with a lost expression on my face opening cupboards and staring into them."

What need is satisfied by performing?

"I have no idea. To a certain extent, you know, you don't mess with the mysteries. I don't think I even want to know. It probably says something really clinically terrible about my character that I need to get up on a stage and go 'Ra ra ra' in front of people.

"Years ago I would have tried to put some spin on it and said it was just for me to know. You know: 'I can't talk about it, it's very personal.' Or say it means nothing. One extreme or another.

"But the truth is, it is all about that laugh, that feeling of release. Because I get off on it just as much as anybody who's enjoying it."

This is a good thing, as, with each new tour, his season dates extend further due to popular demand. Moran's previous Australian tour, featuring nearly 40 shows, played to more than 65,000 people.

He has been "bingeing on Australiana", finding out all the news and talking points.

"This tall-poppy syndrome is a real thing isn't it, still? That's a really big part of the culture, that if anybody seems to be getting above themselves, you cut them down to size really quick. It's very similar in Ireland. The old saying there was that it was the only place in the world where somebody would spend 20 minutes crossing a crowded room to come over and tell you you were a c---."

After the tour, Moran is keen to further his writing projects and is interested in writing a film. His most recent big-screen experience, A Film With Me In It, written by and co-starring award-winning Irish playwright Mark Doherty, he describes as the film he is "most proud of ever".

"We had no money, we were shooting in Dublin in the dark for most of it and we were using Mark's actual flat as the set. That's how little money we had. It was like we were able to do a dinner for 12 with a stock cube and a bun."

But Moran is the last to herald his film career as a burgeoning wonder.

"My film career is based on this. I get a phone call once every 18 months from some mad person who wants me to do something for less than no money and they give me about a week's notice.

"That's my film career, most of the time."

DYLAN MORAN - WHAT IT IS

April 28, 8pm, Opera House, 9250 7777, $67.90 and May 2-5 and 14-15, 8pm, State Theatre, city, 136 100, $67.90.

Ballet and deconstructinist fashion

- This is an article poached from the Australian Ballet's blog www.behindballet.com -



When Zandra Rhodes stitched scissoring seams onto her dresses in 1967, she unknowingly kicked off the deconstructionist fashion movement that would dominate the 90s. Thirty years later Versace proved that Liz Hurley’s dress could be fastened by nothing but a handful of safety pins, and Jean-Paul Gaultier put a pair of cones on Madonna.
There were countless exposed zips, damaged edges and shamelessly sewn-on-the-outside patches. Industrial synthetics became everyday wear and PVC catsuits roamed nightclubs. Design houses Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto and John Galliano were among those flirting with anti-fashion, presenting self-consciously subversive collections for over a decade.



In 1994 Vanessa Leyonhjelm embodied the 90s deconstructionist movement by creating a convention-bending line of costumes for The Australian Ballet’s Divergence. Tutus were made out of the mesh from air-conditioning ducts and were sent to an automotive painter to stain them black. Her designs resonated, zeitgeist-like, with Gaultier’s cones for Madonna when she turned car upholstery into breastplates and fashioned a breathtaking female shape.
In 2009, 90s style isn’t just coming back via The Olsen Twins’ wardrobe of tattered fishnets and Doc Marten boots; the costumes from Divergence can be witnessed again in Paris Match this year, while the National Gallery of Victoria’s Remaking Fashion exhibit (showing until 19 April) looks at the practical side of the 90s fashion wave: the exposed seams, patches and dressmaking process that made deconstructionist fashion.
Robyn Hendricks in Divergence. Photograph Tim Richardson

CHRISTIAN DIOR, Paris couture houseest. 1946John GALLIANO designerborn Gilbraltar 1960, emigrated to England 1966,worked in France 1991–Dress model no. 39 2000, spring–summer designed,2003 made, The tramp collectionsilk, paint, lacquer, metal, viscose, nylon, paint, leatherNational Gallery of Victoria, MelbournePresented through the NGV Foundation by Norma and Stuart Leslie, Governors, 2002

Mirrored Years

I went to the MCA a couple of days ago to try and galvanise this blog. I was also drawn (shamefully enough) to one of the exhibitions after seeing an ad in Vogue on whom I thought was a crazy looking Japanese lady, and later turned out to be the influential Yayoi Kusama (who said empirical knowledge didn't affect an aesthetic judgment? nuts to you, Kant). Just looking her up on Wikipedia, I found an interesting quote. But first, here's some background:

From Wiki

Born in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Kusama has experienced hallucinations and severe obsessive thoughts since childhood, often of a suicidal nature. She claims that as a small child she suffered severe physical abuse by her mother.

Early in Kusama's career, she began covering surfaces (walls, floors, canvases, and later, household objects and naked assistants) with the polka dots that would become a trademark of her work. The vast fields of polka dots, or "infinity nets," as she called them, were taken directly from her hallucinations.

and later

Today she lives, by choice, in a mental hospital in Tokyo, where she has continued to produce work since the mid-1970s. Her studio is a short distance from the hospital.

In essence, Kusama leads her hyperaware lifestyle in a mannter best expressed by this mantra:
"If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago."

The art born from this unbelievable intense philosophy is astonishing. Admittedly, while her paintings are interesting, and the MCA's placement of her main infinity nets echo a bit of Rothko (in the sense that the physical space combined with the art seems to extend beyond the gallery itself, for Kusama, they suggests some sort of hypnotical, organic infinity with traces of eyes, muscle cells, faces, flowers) Kusama, in my opinion, best expresses her concept of the transcendental infinite - the sublime - through her installations.

Fireflies in the Water 2000 lightbulbs, water, mirror room 300 x 450 x450

Simple in structure but resulting in complex visual deceit, Kusama addresses the beautiful and sublime simultaneously in a manner that constantly reminds us of our own crappy mortality. Stepping inside Fireflies in the Water immediately seemed to transport us into an infinite, serene galaxy where only you and another three strangers existed. Kusama later becomes tongue in cheek below.

Infinity Mirror Room - Phalli's Field, 1965

The little soft cutesy tubes lose their appeal once you discover they have a strange phallic resemblance, and you're essentially trapped with an infinite number of poxy penis tentacles.
While Kusama's infinity rooms can make you feel alienated from whilst belonging to her strange atmosphere, her final installation in the MCA exhibition is kinder to the receptor.





The installation comprised of a typical suburban dining/living room, whose contents were decidedly generic and familiar. Ingeniously, the room was lighted by UV lamps and Kusama installed thousands of polka dots (her signature pattern) over every surface of the room, except of course, the vistors, who responded with many astonished gasps. The effect was another welcoming infinity net, linking everything at once together and, although the human was not linked, he, too felt a part of the comfortable setting. Her idea of a greater transcendental force existing absolutely everywhere I think points to the very little considered idea of sublimity in modernity.

Perhaps we don't like contemplating the forever (the mathematical sublime?), because being in the installation, I began to think about it and didn't exactly enjoy feeling so fragile and temporaneous. I did, however, really appreciate feeling a sense of belonging to that room, and didn't want to leave.

Hysterical and Aerodynamic Female Nude

What's in a name?

I've been wondering a little about how the name of an artwork can affect our perception of it.
Amidst doing some lazy research for my english essay, somehow I remembered Dali's "Hysterical and Aerodynamic Female Nude". It's a sculpture, but to be honest I don't recall much of the structure or anything other than the amazing name it got given by Dali.

A quick search on Google refreshes our memory:

Hysterical and Aerodynamic Feminine Nude - Woman on Rock (1934)

Does the title of an artwork count as part of the form or is it just an agreeable aspect? I suppose if all the artworks in the world were untitled they would lose their grandeur, or in some cases it could be enhanced?

I mentally experimented with Duchamp's famous work:

Marcel Duchamp - Fountain (1917)





Marcel Duchamp - Untitled (1917)






Marcel Duchamp - Nondescript urinal placed on a table and intended to piss off a bunch of uppity art critics. (1917)

After seeing my mental image materialise, it is pretty evident that the title of a work completely sets up the aesthetic experience of it, or does that experience, then, not count as aesthetic, since we've been corrupted by the title?

More often than not, where an artwork doesn't seem to make sense, I find myself scrambling to find the little descriptive card and the information I need to gather a judgment of it. Indeed, I now recall in the readings of an argument put forward that sometimes the viewer needs some empirical experience (e.g. knowledge regarding an art movement, or some specifics about the artist themselves). But Kant is quick to brush that off as 'agreeable'.

I disagree. Don't the specifics help heighten our judgment of the artwork?

Then again, they can lessen the judgment as well. I considered the work of Bacon, and when I saw his magnum opus, I didn't pay that much attention at first because I thought it was just a study. What a mean trick he did, naming his paintings 'Studies'!

Study after Velazquez' Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953)

The study was the real thing. But I had, ignorant of Bacon's background, already dismissed it as a predecessor to the 'real' thing. In the end that was his point - we are so affected by the names of the artwork that it clouds our judgment of the object.

Perhaps we'd be better off if all works were named Untitled, but what a pity that would be.

Art in Week 2

To be honest I was getting a little disgruntled by the lack of art-related things that came my way a couple of weeks ago. Apart from the increasingly clichéd Archie talk (which I have yet to see, and suss out the winning work, which I think isn't quite as deserving as the others, but a slight crush on Ben Quilty may be clouding my aesthetic experience of it - so Kant would say) I was left to reminisce about the artworks I'd seen back in Europe.

But an intrigueing concept soon came my way:

Leibovitz pawns life's work in a scramble for cash

It's all been hocked ... Annie Leibovitz has handed over the rights to all her photographs, including her famous image of a pregnant Demi Moore.
Photo: AFP

Ed Pilkington

February 26, 2009

She is the world's most famous celebrity photographer, whose portfolio contains some of the most iconic images of the past 30 years, not least the glamorous pictures of Michelle Obama on the latest cover of Vogue.

As such Annie Leibovitz is hardly the kind of person you would normally associate with going to a pawnbroker. But it seems that in these unusual times even the likes of Leibovitz need to find cash in unusual places.

The photographer has turned to a company called Art Capital that specialises in lending money with fine art as the collateral. The New York Times disclosed on Tuesday that Leibovitz has borrowed about $US15 million ($23 million) from the firm in two tranches. Records show she secured the loan partly against property she owns, but also by putting up as collateral the copyright, negatives and contract rights to every photograph she has ever taken or will take in future until the loans are paid off.

Such an exceptional step, involving in essence the pawning of her life's work, may in Leibovitz's case be explained by the tumultuous few years she has been through. Her long-time friend Susan Sontag died in 2004, and she has been in costly litigation over the renovation of some of her properties.

But Leibovitz is part of a wider trend that Art Capital and other specialist lending institutions like it say has intensified since the start of the global economic crisis.

Wealthy individuals and institutions have increasingly turned to the firm for help - numbers have risen by 30 per cent to 40 per cent since before the crash.

"What's amazing is that individuals and institutions who previously we thought were untouchable are being deeply affected. People who were enormous financially are now scrambling," says Ian Peck, the joint owner of Art Capital.

The numbers tell the story. Art Capital expects to make about $US120 million in loans against art this year, up from about $US80 million last year. Some of that has gone out to several hedge-fund managers, hit by the Wall Street collapse, who have put up striking contemporary and modern art works.

The company's offices, which are next door to the designer Vera Wang's wedding dress showroom in a Sotheby's building in Madison Avenue, resemble one of New York's more select art galleries.

Among the art works that have recently been taken in by the company, and put into secure and climate- controlled specialist art warehouses for safekeeping, are pieces by Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, Henry Moore and even Picasso. Cash-strapped clients have borrowed money against vintage film posters, antique teddy bears and valuable scientific instruments.

Peck dislikes his business being described as upmarket pawnbroking, saying that is an over-simplification. He points out he is an expert in art markets, having taken an MA with Christie's in London and run his own art gallery for almost a decade before he set up the company.

Firms such as Art Capital typically lend out 40 per cent of the value of the art works they take in, making most of their profit by charging interest of between 6 per cent and 18 per cent.

Peck says only about one in 10 of the deals ends in default. "Our aim is to avoid defaulting at all costs. Given the trouble involved in a default, it's better karma and business not to."

But even if the works are not sold, and remain in the client's ownership awaiting their return in better economic times, Peck admits that this is intensely emotive stuff.

"It's akin to giving up your home, particularly for people who have built up collections over many years. People don't feel emotionally about stocks and bonds, but they certainly do over art."

In the case of Leibovitz, Beck insists that few places could have coped with her request for money based on her images.

"We're pleased to have her as a client and it's a good fit. We are one of the few - if not the only - lender who could have valued her body of work; that's a fairly esoteric thing to value."

Guardian News & Media

IR 30/5: I remember being kind of shocked at the idea of Leibowitz essentially mortgaging her work, which is usually so lovely and polished (its artistic value, I think, is far overshadowed by the glitter of her subjects and if anything it has a chance more as a mirror to social commentary - i.e the famous Demi Moore Portrait and its influence on the ideal pregnant woman - than as an artwork itself). In any case, I guess this is a more extraordinary example of Adorno's theory of the arts as an industry (which is frightening, but after examples like this, probably more true than ever). What is hardly ever considered is the artist as a business person.

By all means, Leibowitz is prefectly allowed to sell of the rights to her work to for money, but isn't there some kind of inherent betrayal in that, to the art world itself? Maybe it even discredits her as an artist, which to be completely honest I think has already happened in my esteem of her. The respect has kind of blunted a bit. But it's not as if she's the first and only artist to do so. It's been conspired that Salvador Dali ran a legiance of endorsed fakes of his work, created by his apprentices so he could sell them off and continue his lavish lifestyle! Now, I really really really hope that's not real, but, after Adorno, I can't help but feel that it is.

With Adorno, art is dead, it was taken in a hostile takeover by Christie's, the Tate and MoMa, homogenised and sold off, piece by piece.

A belated beginning

Yep, it's already week 3 and I'm lagging behind. To be honest it was mainly due to the difficulty of naming this temporary blog and deciding whether I should go for the pretentious angle or a sassy one. So I ended up with a mixture of both. Being a massive Simpsons nerd, I couldn't help the mental image of Gummy Venus whilst I was reading up on Kant (haven't done Plato or the Intro, so the posts won't be chronological any time soon) and it was such a great satire of the whole concept of art.

The most beautiful marble statue gets turned into gummy craft, stolen and sticks to a babysitter's bum. Isn't that fantastic, doesn't it say it all?


So that's my angle for the next 12 weeks - casual but insightful with the vague hope of being sophisticated on occassion.

Enjoy.