What happens to us when art connects to the unconscious

The second part of that two-part series by Steve Winn in SF Chronicle.

NY Times article The Alchemist’s Moment: The Reclusive Mr. Polke

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/arts/design/27voge.html

From Laughter and Tears -- a Cleansing of the Heart (Osho)

Osho,
What do you say about modern art?


I don't know much about modern art, and I don't want to know much about it either. It is not much of an art. In the past art had a totally different quality: it was beautiful. Modern art is ugly. It is very rare to find something beautiful in modern art, and I can see the reason. The modern mind is boiling with repressed sexuality, anger, hatred, violence. Centuries of repressions have become accumulated; it has come to a crescendo and it is erupting. The volcano is erupting!

Modern art is more like a catharsis, more like vomiting. It is not art. One just wants to get rid of all kinds of poisons that have become accumulated. The same is true about all dimensions of art; music, poetry, painting, sculpture -- they all have become ugly.

Modern man is suffering, is in immense misery and hell and that shows in modern art. Modern art is a reflection. Art is always a reflection, it is a mirror, because the artist is the most sensitive person in the society, hence he is first to become aware of what is happening; others take a longer time to become aware.

The poet is the most prophetic because he becomes aware of things which are going to happen, he becomes aware a little ahead of time, hence he is never understood.

Modern art is psychotic -- it reflects humanity. It shows that something has gone wrong, very wrong: man is falling apart. And modern art is representative art. In a way it is very realistic; it is not creating a dream world, a fantasy. But it has lost the artistic touch.

Amrita, just as modern man needs a new birth, modern art also needs a new birth. But that is a secondary phenomenon. Unless a new man arrives on the earth a new art cannot arrive, a new poetry cannot be born.

Painting a Picture of the Creative Mind

The first in a 2-part series on art and creativity, in the SF Chronicle.

"That's one way of getting at the fascinating paradox of any artistic endeavor. Only by mastering certain rigorous skills and navigating a highly conscious sequence of decisions can an artist hope to unlock the deep chambers of human experience that make the end results matter. It's in this delicate negotiation of craft and inspiration, conscious choices and the summons of the unconscious, that art finds its form and communicative power."

-- Tuesday: What happens to us when art connects to the unconscious.

Nature Cuter than Sanrio?

At our painting class's final crit yesterday, instructor Glen mentioned these deep sea critters from a Science story in this week's NY Times.

Info Binge: Participation

So many books, so little time: some of what I'm reading and excited about, artwise.

Participation / Claire Bishop (2006) Just picked up at library today, looks like best reader I've seen so far on art that engages the viewer as producer.

The following are also on the same or related subject:

What we want is free : generosity and exchange in recent art / edited by Ted Purves (2005)

Conversation pieces : community and communication in modern art / Grant H. Kester (2004)

New practices, new pedagogies : a reader / [edited by] Malcolm Miles (2005)

They all seem to reference this one:

Relational Aesthetics / Nicolas Bourriaud (1998) which I haven't been able to find yet, but is excerpted in Bishop's Participation above.

Eventually I want to check this one out:

Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, & Art / Lewis Hyde (1998)

Art, Culture, Environment: Jason Taylor's Underwater Sculpture Gallery

"The aim of the Sculpture Park is to create a unique space which highlights environmental processes and celebrates local culture. By creating an artificial reef of sculptures which depict Grenadian peoples and their history, the project fulfils its dual purpose of protecting the marine environment and illustrating the richness of Grenada"

You can learn more about the project here.

Active Engagement of Audience

Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal has locked himself into a studio with live webcams for the month of May.

The public can watch him 24/7 over a live webcam; and if they choose, visitors to his website can shoot him with a remote controlled paintball gun. Log on, shoot at an Iraqi. Bilal’s installation – titled Domestic Tension - disturbingly raises awareness about the life of the Iraqi people and the home confinement they face due to the both the violent and the virtual war they face on a daily basis.

Bilal has become known for provocative interactive video installations. He is interested in transforming the normally passive experience of viewing art into an active participation. His goal is to engage people who may not be willing to engage in political dialogue through conventional means.

More info here.

"I wish that people liked me."

"People have a hard time swalling a person like me. I evoke, I irritate in general. I wish that people liked me. I'm just not willing to become anything different to get that [approval]."

Vincent Gallo, "Renaissance Man" interview in SF Bay Guardian, May 2-8, 2007, p, 27.

Celebrity Tabloid - Art about Obsession with Celebs

http://galleryoftheabsurd.typepad.com/14/tom_cruise/index.html



Interesting site. Work by a very observant artist. Celebrity news are already making fun and showing a different side to celebs. Very creative and witty in pointing out characteristics. Also conscious of art history when painting celebs as other artists would have painted them.

ARTIST WALK to overcome fear of judgement and rejection

Did the title peak your interest? Isn't fear of judgement and rejection a big issue for artists and most humans in general? Shouldn't we do something to dissolve that?
A friend of mine just told me she only copies art and does very safe artwork because she thinks the stuff in her head is just too weird and she feels that showing what's in her mind is like walking naked on Times Square.
That made me think what if we called for an ARTIST WALK against fear of judgement and rejection. What if 100's of artists agreed to walk naked on Times Square. We just discussed public art and if it should be self explanatory. Most people can relate to that fear of rejection and fear of doing something out of the ordinary and acceptable. It would also be a protest against the business of museums and galleries who expect artists to be a certain way and do certain art. We need to break out of that people pleasing mode.
Even if we got arrested, we would have some impact and get publicity. What do you think shapeshifter? Is this too naive and crazy?

Cherry Blossoms: Art, Empathy, Civilization

Here's yet another example of socially engaged art that, in contrast to the previous two examples which playfully challenge corporate hegemony, engenders empathy and a sense of tragedy with bravery to call attention to the killing that we as Americans are all complicit in. Click on images for story.

The Yes Men - artists or jack asses?

http://www.theyesmen.org/video/heritagetoast.mp4

http://www.dowethics.com/risk/video/acceptable_risk_launch.mov

http://www.theyesmen.org/politicsprime-small.mp4

their web site is

www.theyesmen.org

These guys impersonate World Trade Organization spokesmen and speak total non-sense at world conferneces and business meetings. They fake their way to those conferences, TV, publish phony press releases, come up with provocative campaigns.

watch the video. listen closely, lol!!

The corporate people are watching these what I consider art performances in their corporate environments and don't have a clue. These guys are some major tricksters. Art can be fun.

They pretend, have fun and come up with silly products but present them simulating typical business behavior and talk. They even create powerpoint presentations and animations to communicate their insane ideas. By assuming business manners they perfectly camouflage and this might show how the business world and politics might be like the Emperor's new clothes. Nobody has a clue or even cares, and everybody just follows the leaders. They managed to infiltrate into corporate environments through creativity and might make you question these environments and instuitutions that are part of our society and allow certain people to have certain identities and roles in society :)

Aren't we all just choosing and assuming a character and a stage to act it out? When we recognize that all titles, institutions, personas, jobs, roles in society we identify with are all just a construct that we might use to avoid looking at the unfiltered truth of who we really are.

Operation Best Buy

Found this on www.guerrilla-intervention.com. It's hilarious.

Improv Everywhere is a group of agents (pranksters) based in NYC who organize missions (happenings) in public space. Their intent is to bring excitement to otherwise unexciting locales and give strangers a story they can tell for the rest of their lives.

One of the group's latest missions took place in a Best Buy store and was carried out by more than 80 agents.

The group met at Best Buy, all wearing blue polo shirts almost identical to the store's uniform where after they entered the store and began circulating.

They did not claim to work at the store, however when a customer mistook them for an employee, they did their best to help out...

Extensive documentation is available here.

extreme boob art - japan

Just what is it about this that makes it art, and not just bigguns attached to a doll? (click on image to see more)

What separates it from the banality of porn? How does it operate on the level of aesthetic experience? Is there subtlety, multiplicity, simultaneity? Complexity in resistance? Potential for transformation? What role does cultural specificity or context play in the reading or experiencing of the work, and does it translate across borders?

Is it desirable, or even possible, to define "quality" in aesthetic experience?

Art Blogs

Covering the range of art blogs: ArtKrush

Also: an entry on How to get a gallery show, since after all, we have to get the work out there, noticed, and circulating, and this is but one way to do that . . .

Hack Work: Demands of the Market

The average work was a work produced more or less cynically: that is to say the values it was nominally expressing were less meaningful to the painter than the finishing of the commission or the selling of his product. Hack work is not the result of either clumsiness or provincialism; it is the result of the market making more insistent demands than the art. The period of the oil painting corresponds to the rise of the open art market. And it is in this contradiction between art and market that the explanations must be sought for what amounts to the contrast, the antagonism existing between the exceptional work and the average.

John Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972, p.88