Visual Arts
Visual Arts
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Editorial
Sarah Cunningham, Intellect
The visual arts are necessary to push boundaries, encourage new ways of thinking, to celebrate or lament the human condition.
We are often asked how does Intellect continue to publish so many new books and journals? My answer is that Intellect is lucky enough to publish in subject areas where the range of academic enquiry continues to enrich and grow, providing us with vibrant and exciting ideas and an energetic community. Many different forms and aspects of the visual arts are represented in our portfolio animation, fashion, photography, documentary, art education but the list is by no means exhaustive and there is still plenty of scope for growth. However, growth in the arts is threatened by the current climate of austerity: now more than ever there is a need to define and assert why art matters. as eloquently argued by the contributors to this magazine, the myriad reasons why art matters are vast and multifaceted. the visual arts are necessary to push boundaries, encourage new ways of thinking, to celebrate or lament the human condition. the impact of the visual arts is not just demonstrable in the industries that they feed and support, but also in the classrooms, communities and cultures within which they are inextricably meshed. at Intellect we are constantly inspired by our community of authors, editors, reviewers and readers and their commitment to demonstrate why art matters.
their tiny, crowded boats. Marx doesnt leave it there, though. after all, gypsies famously sing. people deprived of any economic power, or advantage, create achingly beautiful appeals for something better. they sing up another world: a place where every tear is wiped from their eyes and their holy of holies cries vengeance is mine at their oppressors. Marx sees these creations as the cry of the oppressed creature: a necessary reflection of and reaction to an out-of-joint world. He further argues that when freedom comes and oppression is lifted, religion and art, along with all other opiates, will be needed no more. So, does this bring us nearer to an understanding? I think friedrich nietzsche can help move us on. He too describes art as a kind of cry. Like Marx, nietzsche sees culture as schizophrenic, bifurcated, but not, this time, because of economics. He sees instead a world filled with blood and filth, red in tooth and claw. He takes the name of Dionysius, the asian/Greek god of wine, wildness and debauchery, and applies it here. this Dionysian world is too much for us humans to bear, he argues. We need an escape, somewhere to run to. He sees things like God, poetry, music or romantic love as pretty illusions, sandy holes in which to hide from the carnage. He names this world of confections after apollo, the Greek god of poetry. for nietzsche we are still creatures of oppression, but this time oppressed by the unbearable brutality of our world. art is our frantic attempt to bury our heads and forget.
Well I think we are getting somewhere, but these are dark imaginings, arent they? What about the lovely paintings on our walls at home, harmony in form and tint? Surely someone is arguing for art as simply something beautiful and life enhancing? Guillame apollinaire is my favourite. He was friend and mage to picasso and the paris school of painters. He believed that artists are people who can recognize the symbols without which humanitys divine view of the universe collapses with dizzying speed. along with Marx and nietzsche, he sees art as a kind of visionary weaving: as recognizing and representing moments that help us comprehend our mysteries. He lifts these visionary representations to the level of the divine. So much of the art of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, though, has signally nothing to do with the divine. We have broken beds filled with condoms, a self portrait made of blood, rotting meat eaten by flies, which then die, and a man hung by his feet bleeding over the stage from his own slit wrists. Is there divinity there? really? Before we become completely mired, I think the philosopher Georg Hegel can help us with this apparent contradiction. He argued that in many cultures, art and religion are effectively the same thing. So the cave paintings of Lascaux in france, the temples at Khajuraho in India or the Hebridean Book of Kells cannot be picked into separate parts that represent religion and art. once religion and art become separated, as in our society, with the former being the proper concern of theologians and philosophers, he thinks that art loses
galleries filled not just with brilliance and wonder, but with the mundane and pointless, curated by people overly concerned with image, position and fashion; in short, people deeply afraid of not getting it (even when there was nothing to get). ever more strident cries went up, everyone shouting art is over here. people outside of this nepotistic world could only look on, confused and bewildered. By sophisticating it to the point of incomprehension, these contesting voices wove an impenetrable wall around art, so that tabloids became, for many people, the arbiters and labellers. art, essentially, had eaten itself. Ironically, though not surprisingly, this melee has resulted in a retrenchment, as interest in art as a series of socially mediated practices has grown. an audience tired of headlines, of art as pr, of hollow pretentiousness and blood, seems more and more attracted to demonstrations of craft skill and dexterity, in areas traditionally recognized as characterizing the artist. Galleries in my own town are filled with drawing, painting, textiles and ceramics, mostly adorned with figuration. In a way, this is the final divorce, moving art from the centre of our world, as the carrier of dreams and aspirations, to more or less pretty demonstrations of the mastery of media, trading the recognition of the divine symbol for the role of decoration. So is that it? Well lets finish with one last voice. the painter piet Mondrian created some very famous highly-abstracted works. Mondrian significantly predicted that film, television and photography would replace painting in the popular imagination. If you need proof of this, compare the numbers of people passing through the doors of the galleries with the numbers passing through cinema box-offices, or subscribing to satellite broadcasting. He believed that as people turned away from one they would turn to the others. I wrote my book Robert Franks The Americans: The Art of Documentary Photography about a Swiss photographer working in america in the 1950s. franks work contains brilliant and seminal photographs that embody exactly what Mondrian was talking about. taken together, his images are perhaps the finest description and analysis Ive ever seen of america, the dominant culture of the world in to which I was born. franks book helped me understand myself, by coming to an understanding of the world that made me. His art is resolutely located in the discussion of belief and meaning, honestly recording and examining what he saw. now perhaps more than at any time since it was published, we need his book. It is a mirror, reflecting vision and wisdom back at us from our generations formative days. those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes, the old wisdom says. In these dangerous and difficult days, we have need of works that help us understand who we are, where we come from and where we are going. Some might argue that this has always been the point of art. rEad on Jonathan Day | Birmingham City University author: Robert Franks The Americans: The Art of Documentary Photography, ISBn 9781841503158
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CrEativE aCtivity
Elif Ayiter, editor, Metaverse Creativity
In HIS BooK Exodus to the Virtual World, economist edward Castranova predicts a migration, of considerable proportions, from the physical realm to three dimensional, online synthetic worlds within the next few decades. the anticipated outcome would be a demographic landslide of significant enough socioeconomic impact to constitute a need for compelling changes in political, social, cultural and economic strategies, not only in the virtual but also in the physical realm (Castranova 2007). as opposed to a discrete, one way migration, as would be the case in population shifts in the physical world, the anticipated migration would be of a continuous nature, with migrants switching back and forth between the physical and the synthetic world. If, during this ebb and flow of time allocation, more and more hours of activity become appropriated by the
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variations and iterations of a single artefact allows for a flexibility of output that is once again attracting virtual content creators to the very process of production itself (McCullough 1996). When McCulloughs observations are coupled with Castranovas description of the mechanisms of virtual economies then we end up facing a mode of creativity that harks back to the days before the Industrial revolution; the creator of the artefact is not only the craftsperson thereof but also the merchant of his or her own output. for McCullough improvisation plays an intrinsic part in this process, and where improvisation is concerned computational endeavour has a distinct advantage over its counterpart in the analogue realm. this advantage is embedded into the very material difference between the two: the digital environment handles bits as opposed to material atoms. While atoms can only be manipulated to a certain degree before material starts breaking down, bits can be
statement he continues on to list the scientific instruments by which he is constructing his model. Given the solidity of his assessment tools, as well as his academic expertise in economics and public policy, it would not be too imprudent to regard his predictions as informed deliberations. even if his cogitations only bear partial fruit, humankind may find itself living in a vastly altered world, or indeed in multiple worlds: the synthetic one and real one simultaneously. We may find ourselves in a social milieu where the bulk of recreational time, if not indeed work hours, are spent in fantastical, frivolous, playful and fun activity; we may find ourselves in a space in which economic demand and supply are shaped by parameters that are currently being forged in online synthetic virtual worlds. returning full circle to the days of the preIndustrial revolution, designers and artists may find themselves not only conceiving but also crafting and merchandizing their own creative output, and the
Both images: La Plissure du Texte 2, Second Life, 2010. artists: roy ascott, elif ayiter, Max Moswitzer, Selavy oh.
processed, reversed and manipulated infinitely with no loss. Computational creativity thus becomes an activity that can also be described as play with a perpetually evolving object that can endlessly be improvised upon. although writing at a time predating the advent of a fully operational metaverse such as Second Life, which centres on user-created content, McCullough is nonetheless aware through observing precursors of the genre such as SimCity of the implications that these builder worlds have upon all digital creativity. He notes that the popularity of these simulations without explicit winning conditions may reflect a constituency that also sustains a playful attitude in productive computing (McCullough 1996). at the beginning of Exodus to the Virtual World Castranova alerts his reader to the fact that the book is of a speculative nature. However, after this opening
intrinsic descriptors, function and usage of that output may be vastly different to those of the present day. rEfErEnCEs Castranova, e. (2007), Exodus to the Virtual World, new York: palgrave Macmillan. McCullough, M. (1996), Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand, Boston, Ma: MIt press. ExCErpt from: Metaplasticity in Virtual Worlds: Aesthetics and Semantics Concepts, edited by G. Mura (IGI-Global publishing, 2010). rEad on elif ayiter | Sabanci University editor: Metaverse Creativity, ISSn 20403550
Q&a
Left image: Kamil turowski, Fire and Ice: a youngster passes time on a rare sunny winter day in dz. right image: Kamil turowski, A Tailor Shop Showcase on piotrkowska Street in dz.
a pHotoGrapHIC StILL a microscopic click of time can move you and stay with you like a haunting. It invites you to contemplate the power of perception. It directs you outward, revealing a slice of the world, a face, a reflection in the mirror, a courtyard washed in shadows; and it directs you inward, compelling you to think about other faces you suddenly remember, or places you have left behind. playing with your imagination, it can produce a visceral response, a bodily stirring, by touching a nerve you did not even know you had and disclosing something new about your nature as a visual being. people use art in all kinds of ways: to hinder or help revolutions; to incite or resist social prejudice; to highlight or condone an injustice; to conceal or unmask social anxieties; or simply to get an aesthetic high. as a viewer, you decipher the way that art makes you feel: you trace those feelings and the evocations they offer. art can provoke, inspire, or disturb; it can open your eyes to worlds other than your own, or, as happened in the case of those who managed to draw while imprisoned at auschwitz, it can keep you alive even in the face of death. rEad on Katarzyna Marciniak | ohio University Co-author (with Kamil turowski): Streets of Crocodiles, ISBn 9781841503653
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Great artists since Baudelaire were in conspiracy with fashion. (theodor W. adorno in Doswald 2006) WHen We LooK back on the twentieth century, a time when the relationship between art and fashion flourished in a way that it had never done before, we begin to notice that to call fashion arts inferior and frivolous other is far too glib, never mind inaccurate and unfair. for, since the beginning of the twentieth century, fashion has played a central part in popularizing art. this is not necessarily meant solely in the sense of debasing art for popular appeal, but rather more with disseminating artistic motifs amongst social groups who have had little contact with high art or who feel uncomfortable about dealing with it. Yves Saint Laurents Mondrian dress is a case in point: it turned a relatively specialized artist into something of a household name. and it seems history has repeated itself: at the MtV awards, on 12 September 2010, the stripper-turned pop star Lady Gaga accepted the award for Video of the Year wearing a meat dress accessorized with a meat hat. the meat dress had already been done by the Canadian visual artist Jana Sterbak in 1987, but this was a slightly more campedup, risqu design. Known for her gaucherie, Lady Gaga had orchestrated a media storm. Curiously in the worldwide press that followed, no mention was made of Sterbak; that the pop star had come to this of her own accord is conceivable, but was the message the same? Somewhat: it was apparently a protest against the United States armed forces Dont ask, dont tell policy. four former-servicemen and women who had
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been expelled from the armed services for being gay and lesbian accompanied Gaga to the awards. a strong supporter of gay rights, Gaga suggested that her dress had been part of that statement. Was it therefore a work of art? Where is the original work of art positioned within all of this? these are questions to ponder, but what is certain is that the orientation of its appeal had gone from academic to mass. In the twentieth century fashion became a central concern of many artists, who understood the provocative power of clothing in creating an identity and establishing their work as a global brand. theo van Doesburg, leader of the De Stijl movement, wore a black suit and white socks and tie to represent the negative of everyday dress. Dadaist Jean arp created elaborate costumes as a form of oppositional dress, and andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys informed and set fashion trends: Warhol with his white wig and glasses and Beuys with his fishing jacket and hat. the look was as important as the art itself (Mller 2000). as much as artists were attracted to sartorial codes of fashionability, designers styled themselves as artistic savants in an attempt to be elevated into the realm of fine art: couturier Charles Worths self-stylization mimicked that of Dutch painter rembrandt, often appearing with a similar black skullcap, and John Galliano is often described as the Dali of fashion in his pose and choice of clothing. returning to Sterbak, her cured flank steak dress is also an example of art meeting fashion, inasmuch as fashion and dress are to be worn, and, more typically, art is not. In this piece Sterbak used fashion and dress as a vehicle to communicate issues of the body and
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the feminine. the audience and the critic are challenged to confront competing definitions by asking: is the dress art, or conceptual fashion? Similarly Sterbaks Magic Shoes (1992), a pair of high heels tethered to chains, summons a response about womens lives and the culture of victimhood. fashion then begins to share a similar language with art, for the creation of the dress and the shoes exist not only within the domain of artistic production, but within a sartorial discourse that renders art as an embodied and performative practice. fashion, writes Joanne entwistle, is about bodies: it is produced, promoted and worn by bodies. It is the body that fashion speaks to and it is the body that must be dressed in almost all social encounters (entwistle 2000). Whilst entwistles focus is on fashion, rather than art, dress in everyday life cannot be separated from the living breathing body that it adorns (entwistle 2000). art within this context signifies a breakdown of its traditional role in high culture and begins to circulate within a series of meanings about consumption, popular culture and the everyday. and like mass fashion, with its dependence on the renewal of styles, but unlike art, the Sterbaks meat dress is perishable, prone to the depredations of time. Ironically, Sterbaks work is now exhibited in a ghastly dried state poised on a headless fashion mannequin. If we had to tip it, we have to say that its status as art is preserved. But seeing it, we are nonetheless made aware of the prejudices between the two different practices and of how these differences are inseparable from the differences between social modalities as they refer to class, gender, and consumption, as well
sual, linguistic frameworks that allow one to be art and the other to be fashion. to say glibly that one is embodied and the other isnt is only half the argument, and to counter-argue that art can sometimes be worn doesnt settle much. for art and fashion are defined by, or inhabit if you will, undeniably different systems, and it is these systems that define them as respective discourses. In other words, fashion and art occupy different modalities of presentation and reception; they have different uses and they are subject to different responses within both monetary and desiring economies. thus the differences are less in the objects of fashion and art, since both are aesthetic creations for which judgment is always subjective, and more in the places of exchange social, economic, linguistic that they occupy. Since Marcel Duchamp, what the history of art has taught us is that art cannot exist without the elaborate protocols that register for the viewer that the experience of it is different, indeed something special. the so-called Duchampian revolution divests the art object of inherent meaning and turns it into a cultural artefact whose status is conferred according to a delicate web of signs and agreements; from there we must even agree on the relative specificity of art to culture, class and race, without whose consent, ratification, or veneration, the art experience is diminished if not annulled. What fashion studies have taught us is that fashion is a very specific phenomenon of the West and of modernity to keep things sane and even, modernity can be read here in the Hegelian sense of an aesthetic phenomenon in existence since the Middle ages, in
Does fashion really want to be art? And does art really need fashion?
as the much wider notion of temporality: the values that inhere in things deemed permanent and in those deemed ephemeral. When fashion is placed within the context of the space of the museum and the art gallery, its value as a commercially driven, mass-market product transitions from consumable merchandise to art installation. In one quick swoop, fashions fast-paced commercial role ceases and it realigns itself within a new value system: it becomes a rarefied commodity to be collected. Whether an armani priv evening gown, or a Damien Hirst installation, the boundaries between high and popular culture now begin to fray, as fashion seeks to attach itself to the value system of art, so art seeks to remove the stigma of such associations. a partnership is produced and fashion ceases to be arts other, instead it begins to vie for equal status. the question, is fashion art, leads to an argument, or complaint, whose weakness lies in not addressing the systems of art and fashion themselves. for over a century the debates have focused on the art object and the fashion item without looking at the consen12
which, again in a Hegelian sense, humans began to have a stronger sense of individual consciousness and agency. fashion, as a discourse, a system and an area of study, even when it contains notions of dress, costume and clothes, is therefore a discrete historical entity. this is much the same as the idea of art as an activity by individuals or specialized groups who produce aesthetic objects or experiences of critical difference to everyday life and the status quo. Both emanate from a social configuration of class, capital and communication that begins in the late Middle ages and the renaissance, a period that saw a shift away from rigid strictures of religion and governance to that of self-ownership, mobility and the ability to exert change. Like money itself, fashion and art are symbolic agents, but their levels of transaction are different and this is true no matter how many garments are displayed in a museum context. for we must ask above and beyond the different (albeit uneven and overlapping) areas of exchange and consensus in which fashion and art operate does fashion really want to be art? and does art really need fashion?
How would it benefit the systems? fashion uses art in its rhetoric, it derives a countless array of its idioms and expressions from art (for example concept and installation), and vies for the esteem and social prominence that is afforded to the arts and high culture architecture, music, theatre and art but this, we would aver, is part of fashions nature, namely to maintain a perverse and agonistic relationship to art. Like the very nature of desire itself, once that desire is assuaged it is quelled. fashion, then, might desire to become art, but knows that to do so might lead to its ruin, like garments on display that are too valuable to be worn. Important work has emerged within the field of fashion studies establishing the importance of approaching the dressed body as a fleshy, situated bodily practice (entwistle 2001). Such work has advanced theoretical engagement in this area and provided secure ground from which to extend exploration of the embodiment and disembodiment of dress within a museum context. the separation some use the word sublation, the clumsy translation of the Hegelian aufhebung of art from everyday discourse is essential (here is no place to begin to discuss arts art-life agonism nor the way that this separation calls for the (Hegelian) end of art thesis), but fashion needs to be embroiled in everyday discourse. and herein lies the cardinal difference between fashion and art: their relationship to time, or time. Quentin Bell eloquently sums up this distinction,
while also highlighting what Gilles Lipovetsky called the highly problematic institution of fashion: and yet fashion, because it implies change and mutability, suggests something frivolous and inconsiderable. a judgment based upon fashion is felt to be less reputable than one based upon those eternal values, those enduring truths which, as we like to suppose, we can all recognize and in the light of which we can relegate fashionable opinions to their proper and inferior place. It is fashionable to maintain such a beginning allows us to anticipate that the speaker will soon refer to something more permanent than fashion. a fashionable artist is certainly one who will abide our judgment. Such assumptions may be, in fact certainly are, true; nothing is so mortal as fashion, no flower carries within it more plainly the seeds of its own destruction; the only trouble is that when we seek eternal verities against which we can measure the shortcomings of fashion they may be rather hard to find. But if in condemning fashion we imply that it is the produce of a lightweight emotion and one that can easily be disregarded then we may fall into a very grave error. (Lipovetsky 1987: 4, emphasis added) the evanescence of fashion versus the lastingness of art is the real sticking point. even fashion classics
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are mendacious, as they are merely armatures that are edition-ed and updated, so long as they have an identifiable core, such as Levis 501 denim jeans. But this is an extreme. Bell offers a sobering corrective. Veblen and others speak of a higher spiritual need as the source of fashion, which is also the source of art. It may be so that art may intellectually and spiritually reflect that need, but fashion can temporarily satisfy it, and with fashion it can be more easily identified; people literally wear it on their sleeve. Before we go any further, it is necessary to gloss art and fashion according to the philosophical framework of the concept of style. no other word or concept is as critical to the overlap. It is also what defines both as systems within the western ethos. for the birth of fashion as a discrete idea beyond the expedients of mere clothing or dress is coterminous with a philosophical self-consciousness of appearance. to have style is to possess a differentiating and assumedly enviable abstract, that is, impalpable quality. Yet for something to be stylized is to be rigid and fake to the point of repellent because of its lack of naturalness. and somewhere between these two coordinates lies the complex and wonderful paradox of the truth of appearance within art and fashion: style is a superadded, rare, desired quantity that is not natural, but which assists in somethings coming-to-appearance. We wear clothes, cover ourselves with an outer skin of codes and creations in order for us to be seen how we truly are. equally, art is impossible without a style. there is no such thing as a styleless work of art. It is the carapace of representation: the distortion, the modulation that makes something noticeable, makes it truer, more identifiable, and richer and more compelling than prosaic things in the everyday world. Both art and fashion as we know them are brought together with the development of the idea of history. the history of art begins with the history of style. this history is also brought to bear upon the history of styles within fashion. Since the 1980s art history has undergone numerous crises and revisions: postmodernity, visual culture, new media and now the dubious catch all contemporary. Such shifts and crises were motivated by an evident change in the way art was being produced and theorized. the canon of art history attributed to Gombrich that borrowed its trajectory and reasoning heavily from Hegels Aesthetics and popularized by the new York critic Greenberg, sees art as a procession of styles, each belonging to a set of beliefs, motivations and cultural concerns. postmodernity recognizes that art, as a dialectical progression, is either false or no longer relevant. the pattern of art (echoing toynbees theories of the rise and fall of civilizations), of progenitors, apogee and decline, is no longer tenable because there is no longer a concept of regnant style. Beliefs and interests have never been so disparate. Hence the contemporary as we know it in art is a phenomenon of complex multifariousness. the same, indeed, can be said of contemporary fashion. Meanwhile there is always something left hanging out there, the tantalizing ineffability of having style. this retains the exceptional, if mythic, quality of existing outside of time. Great art is expected to transcend the lineaments of its historically-circumscribed style, to speak to other generations in various ways; while
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for someone to have style is to have a Je ne sais quoi that is irreducible to the material elements worn on the body. neither then, can be bought, programmed, predicted or, alas, exactly defined. at this point we might say that art and fashion chose yet another mask to penetrate its truth. Hence the chamber of mirrors of difference and repetition that is contemporary art and contemporary fashion. fashion itself continues to be tarred by the brush of commercialism, and when the word fashionable is used in art circles it has a pointedly pejorative edge. But it is also true that the diffusion of dominance that art is experiencing in the wake of globalization under the rather equivocal rubric of the Contemporary (as it is used in art circles) has meant that the waves of preference, exposure and interest have come, increasingly, to resemble the modalities of the way the fashion-of-one-day seeks to differentiate itself from what came before it, while also having enough space for continuity. In this climate, what fashion has over art is what adorno, with dismissive irony, called the jargon of authenticity. With fashion, authenticity comes in two forms: a creditable link to its maker, and a set of links in the history of progression, or waves of a particular tendency, look, or style. With art, authenticity carries much more gravitas and has overtones of humanitys search for truth. this quest is not to be decried, but we would not decry it in a different way with regard to fashion either. and in the absence of the standard units of measure, in the face of the legitimation crises that marked postmodernism, we are faced with a relativism where the measure of quality is an uneven mixture of consensus and conviction. to us, these circumstances are compelling: the idea of the fashion system has as much to say about art, especially contemporary art, as it does of itself. rEfErEnCEs Doswald, Christoph (ed.) (2006), Double-Face. The Story about Fashion and Art from Mohammed to Warhol, exhibition Catalogue, St. Gallen: Museum of the arts, Museum of textiles, Museum of History and Museum for Contemporary arts, p. 20. entwistle, Joanne (2000), The Fashioned Body, London: Sage, p. 1. entwistle, Joanne and Wilson, elizabeth (eds) (2001), Body Dressing, oxford and new York: Berg. Lipovetsky, Gilles (1987), The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy (trans. Catherine porter), princeton new Jersey: princeton University press, p. 4. Mller, florence (2000), Art and Fashion, London: thames and Hudson, p. 12. ExCErpt from: Fashion and Art (Berg, 2012). rEad on Vicki Karaminas | University of technology, Sydney editor: Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, ISSn: 20455852 author: Street Style: Shanghai, ISBn 9781841505381 adam Geczy | Sydney College of the arts, Sydney University
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I WoULD SUGGeSt that everyone, that is all human beings, have an innate capacity and desire for making art. However, because of arts conceptual slipperiness and the fact that it is so dependant upon culture, such a suggestion needs qualifying by taking a very broad definition of what is meant by making art. amongst the people I have talked with about their creative endeavours are many who do not consider themselves to be artists, but exhibit all of the tendencies that artists often display: a passionate desire to create something that looks good and feels right something that has particular significance, whether it be a birthday cake, a garden, or a hairstyle. In such activities, intuition, expression, skill and a consideration of aesthetic form all attributes of artistic activity are considered important. What everyone needs is the opportunity to create and, when the occasion calls for it, to create something of aesthetic significance: that is, something that has meaning for the person who created it. the term that I prefer then is creating aesthetic significance. Creating because of that words association
with creativity and inventiveness, concepts that have a particular resonance when talking about human development. aesthetic because we are concerned here with the senses. Significance because this is associated with meaning and signs that are highly expressive and invite attention. I am not aware of any culture in the history of humankind that does not create aesthetic significance. If an individual person has not demonstrated the ability or desire to create something of aesthetic significance that is because of lack of opportunity. the urge to create aesthetic significance is facilitated through art, and where there are no opportunities to engage in art-making activities that urge is manifested in other not always positive ways. rEad on richard Hickman | University of Cambridge author: Why We Make Art & Why it is Taught, ISBn 9781841503783 and Critical Studies in Art & Design Education, ISBn 9781841502052
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CoMICS oCCUpY LeSS and less space in newspapers in the United States these days, and even when they have a page or two of their own, each strip is so reduced in size that old timers have to squint to read them. Why dont we give them more respect? these features occupy a few seconds of our time, but when done well they can put a smile on our faces for the day, and may be something to stick on the refrigerator door for others to enjoy. We should treasure comics. for as long as we have been recording our history, people have been telling stories and jokes through the combination of words and pictures, and most nations have had a tradition of sequential or narrative art and caricature. It was not until little more than a hundred years ago that american cartoonists began to
compressed time; as in motion pictures, visual devices such as cutting, framing, close-ups, and montage are used by the comic artist, and settings can range from the realistic to the fantastic. Whatever they share with the other arts, however, they differ in distinct ways that are ultimately unique. for one thing, comics depend on a balanced combination of words and pictures: the one depending on the other for maximum effect. What the proper balance may be, or how much text is too much, and whether or not you can have comics with no words whatsoever are questions still open for debate. Was Prince Valiant, with the narrative and dialogue beneath each frame, simply an illustrated medieval romance? Was the wordless Henry a legitimate comic strip? What about
single panels like The Far Side and Family Circus? Several essential features distinguish comics from other art forms. for example, they appear in daily newspapers delivered to homes and therefore are available to any household member of any age. newspaper editors therefore take careful note to be sure no constituency is offended, sometimes editing or banning a questionable strip, which usually elicits a letter or two of complaint to the editor asking why the funnies arent funny anymore. this kind of editing frequently happened to the politically oriented Pogo and continues to happen to Doonesbury. Comics have to be politically sensitive, but the best have pushed boundaries by treating provocative subjects with sufficient skill and humour. Despite a popularly held notion, comics were never just for children. another distinguishing feature is that comics give us a set of recurring characters with whom we become acquainted over time. readers gain cumulative familiarity with the characters personalities, which essentially remain the same throughout the lifetime of the strip. as in much humour, stock or stereotype characters are common, and formulaic repetition is
one of those techniques that most often make us laugh (as in Charlie Browns annual unsuccessful attempt to kick the football held by Lucy, a paradigm of existential frustration). Words are usually spoken in irregular ovals called balloons: a technique that descends from early illustrated broadsheets and political cartoons. Because of limited space, dialogue is kept to an absolute minimum and the joke or story is related with the fewest words possible a considerable challenge to the writer. Since sounds are not possible, comic artists resort to the poetic device of onomatopoeia, and while many traditional words such as slam, bang, sock, or bump will serve, new word coinages have also proven necessary. thus comics have enriched american english with such contributions as wow, whap, and zowie. While we can discuss comics in such general terms, it is also necessary to observe that they are richly diverse in style and content. Styles range from the pure fantasy and surrealism of Calvin and Hobbes and Krazy Kat, to the fashion-plate art of Rex Morgan and Mary Worth, to the gritty details of realism in the
mean city streets of Dick Tracy and Spider-Man. the content embraces all genres found in fiction, drama, and film domestic conflict, situation comedy, war, the western, adventure, espionage, crime and detection, the worlds of the child and teenager, the professions, animal fables, satire, politics, science fiction, fantasy, and the absurd. Just when we think there can be nothing new, something like Pearls Before Swine comes along and magically challenges the existing definitions. the twenty-first century is a time in which most of the information we need is conveyed to us visually, by way of television, film, ipod, or computer screen. Comics then, and the later development the graphic novel, are admirably suited to provide people with a cultural experience that is both emotionally and intellectually satisfying. With comics in hand, we will remain verbally and visually literate, and hopefully a little more cheerful and humane. rEad on M. thomas Inge | randolph-Macon College associate editor: Studies in Comics, ISSn 20403232
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Q&a
The visual arts matter because they are about resistance, celebration and transformation.
Teresa Torres de Ea, Co-editor, International Dialogues about Visual Culture, Education and Art
rEad on teresa torres de ea | International Society of education through art (InSea) Co-editor: International Dialogues about Visual Culture, Education and Art, ISBn 9781841501673
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Intellect is an independent academic publisher in the fields of creative practice and popular culture, publishing scholarly books and journals that exemplify our mission as publishers of original thinking. We aim to provide a vital space for widening critical debate in new and emerging subjects, and in this way we differ from other publishers by campaigning for the author rather than producing a book or journal to fill a gap in the market. Intellect seeks to offer an unbiased platform for quality critical debate; we are committed to representing the authors voice authentically, without imposition of our personal ideas or opinions. for more information visit us online: www.intellectbooks.com
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from the viewers perspective it calls upon a scan or search across a visual image. In terms of information theory, it amounts to a search for information. Such a search may be guided by previous experiences or expectations. How this search is carried out relies on one fundamental factor: the awareness of difference. It is here that visual acuity takes centre stage, that is to say awareness of the difference that makes a difference, of the boundaries that allow for naming. It is here that we can see the unfolding of aesthetic appreciation, and, as such, the necessity of the kind of learning that encourages such awareness. this leads to the proposition that difference can be seen as a generator of information; put bluntly, without difference there is total unity. Difference requires at least two elements, and it is in the space between these elements that information arises. It is in this space, in this void, that the mind fills the gap, putting together that which is separate. this process can be described as in-forming.
sonal matter. When difference or similarity is neither perceived nor intuited, there is no gain of information of an aesthetic kind. again we come back to the eye of the beholder a clich but here we have given it greater significance. the comments above focus on perception: the perception of difference and similarity arising from an awareness of elements given to vision, and their place as sources of information. But we cannot afford to neglect the place of conception in our assessment of information. a particularly good example can be found in the use of imagery in art, which, as icon, is intended to provoke a particular response from the viewer. Here its role is that of metaphor, in which case there is an absent partner. While the image is there before the eye, the viewer is called upon to produce, from memory, an idea or image that bears some association, a particular meaning. there is a difference between the observable image and the mental image: a conceptual relationship is found and this relation-
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Q&a
Art matters more through being everything that is not anything else.
Jac Saorsa, author, Narrating the Catastrophe
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Vince Dziekan, author, Virtuality and the Art of Exhibition
Upon a roUnD wooden tray, a proportioned arrangement of two small cups of coffee, complemented by a tea service made up of cup, pot and small vessels containing warmed milk and a chiselled mound of raw sugar partnered by a neatly-balanced spoon. We manage to negotiate the expansive, glass-lined space of the caf without incident, arriving at a small table with an aspect facing onto the rooftop sculpture garden. espressos for e. and I: Darjeeling for my wife, K. our meeting, today, had been coordinated over a tightening spiral of communiqus. Initial entreaties, like I will be in San francisco in mid-June so it would be great if we could get together becoming progressively more fine-grained and specific: Ill e-mail you when we are in town; So, if you are free tomorrow afternoon; oK. SfMoMa. tXt on arrival; arrived. Waiting in foyer by the members desk. We settle, easing into the view that opens cinematically before us. Its a languid early summer afternoon and as the sculpture garden is fortuitously empty at the moment. We are afforded an otherwise uninterrupted composition of the city skyline above the gardens treelined boundary: punctuations of green emerging from a backdrop of predominantly grey surfaces, borders and ground. In the near foreground, pressing up against the imaginary picture plane, an angular figure alexander Calders Big Crinkly (1969) furtively eavesdrops on us
as we begin to sip hot beverages between exchanges of word and gesture. e. begins recounting a story about another occasion here when he had arranged to meet with a visiting German art critic. His storytelling gently animates the emptiness outside being shared between the afternoon and garden: from the vantage of one of the wooden benches, e. and his guest distractedly look on as a group of school children reluctantly congregate around Calders stabile. a docent attempts to lead a discussion above the hush of only-partially stifled conversations and the urban pitch that seeps up from street level into the otherwise pristine sanctuary of the rooftop enclosure. a volley of questions, appeals and encouragements ensue. Certain students take the initiative of responding, reticently at first, to the solicitations of the guide, who perseveres in challenging them to interrogate the qualities of the abstract artwork. Slowly, answers emanate with growing volume and confidence from the group encircling the sculpture. I visualize this audible stream of descriptors as a tag cloud of keywords rising from the huddle. the three planar surfaces that hang off the balancing rod, poised at the apex of the sculpture, form improvised speech bubbles of black, blue and grey in which words like metal, black and hard-edged are framed. I imagine the artist and critic conversing at a close remove, commenting between themselves on the
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dynamics at play in the scene transpiring before them; the spoken english they exchange coloured by their respective franco and Germanic accents. the lessons pedagogy unfolds. the sculpture continues to stand resolute in the face of such scrutiny as interjections turn their focus to describing the shapes of its various voids, negative spaces and the shadows that trail from the twin supports of its firmly planted legs and unfurling harlequin tail. Conversations turn, as they do. We finish our drinks and decide to explore the museum. We immediately gravitate to the turret, drawn to the natural light that infuses the interior spaces of the museum. We walk back and forth across the fifth-floor truss bridge to register our presence there on Bill fontanas Sonic Shadows. I relate to e. how the architect Daniel Libeskind employed similar materials for the viewing platform in his design for the Imperial War Museum north in Manchester. (I make a mental note: I wonder if while designing his addition to the Contemporary Jewish Museum, located just a few blocks away on the other side of the Yerba Buena gardens, Libeskind was influenced by this particular architectural feature found in Mario Bottas building?) the surfaces of oscillating panels rigged by fontana to the braces of the walkway catch the late-afternoon light entering through the oculus skylight, and, in so doing, set themselves apart from the pervasive white anonymity of their surrounds. next, we move on to the galleries showing works by Belgian video artist, David Claerbout. there, e. and I discuss techniques used to achieve the expansive temporality of a piece such as White House (2005) and those of contemporaries such as John Gerrard and Victor Burgin; K. expresses her preference for the beauty and gentleness of The American Room (20092010). e. has to catch his ferry back across the bay. We mutually exchange resolutions to remain in touch at the entrance to The Steins Collect exhibition. K. and I continue on, diligently following the path leading us through successive galleries showing assorted works by the likes of Cezanne, renoir, picasso and Matisse. But even so, my curiosity is drawn inexorably towards the archival materials that are carefully arranged in assorted shallow vitrines. Intimate snapshots revealing miniature salon interiors; their frames filled to overflowing with the bohemian accumulation of early-twentieth century parisian sitting rooms and ateliers, walls piled high with an array of paintings. In certain cases, paintings and objects that can be distinguished within these pictures escape their black and white confines and rematerialize in the gallery with a self-assurance that asserts their enduring legacy amongst a wide world of things. Later on, after returning to our hotel, I open an e-mail in which the following question is embedded: Does art matter? Yes, I imagine it does.
Image: Jastrow, 2006.
ExCErpt from: the World Is everything that Is the Case (ISea 2011, Istanbul) rEad on Vince Dziekan | Monash University author: Virtuality and the Art of Exhibition, ISBn 9781841504766
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Q&a
Art is a building block of civilization, and a building block of art is the image.
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the relevance of art. the final art product is symbolic of the many decisions and experiences that went into its creation. Street art and its placement is a reaction to the modern utopia that developed around the world during the past century. the city walls and urban environments constructed in the twentieth century represent much of the progress promised by proponents of modernism. the International Style of architecture, mainly influenced by the Bauhaus teachers and students, dramatically altered the way we as a public interact with public space (Daichendt 2010). new materials and advancements in construction allowed living spaces to be built much more cheaply and in a more pragmatic fashion;
the use of glass and the box-like design favoured by architects sought to take advantage of space and create a living utopia. this influence is heavily present in the urban environments of the United States, where decorative exteriors were removed and society was left with cold and plain rectangles: skyscrapers of metal and glass resembling shoeboxes. a critique by tom Wolfe in his witty text From Bauhaus to Our House bellows that the folks who work in these buildings can barely appreciate them: every child goes to school in a building that looks like a duplicating-machine replacementparts wholesale distribution warehouse. not even the school commissioners, who commissioned it and approved the plans, can figure out how it happened. the main thing is to try to avoid having to explain it to the parents. (Wolfe 1981: 1) Instead of explaining, street artists have reacted against these developments. this is why Lewisohn (2008) sees street art and graffiti as a form of antimodernism. the modern infrastructure and living spaces in which these artists have grown up is not working and their art is a form of social critique. Ultimately the great experiment that was modernism did not succeed and street artists creative use of the environment awakens the public from their slumber. Gablik (1985) argues that modernism has indeed failed and that as a result of this thinking there is no way to measure success, determine standards, or formulate what a work of art is. recent developments in
street art have addressed these concepts, in addition to the changing role of education, professionalism, and politics in the art world and beyond. In determining why art matters, be sure to look carefully around you. the creative and critical voice of the artist is well kept in the ethos of street art. a far from perfect genre of art, its practitioners should be praised for utilizing a keen eye and reflective processes to help us all take notice of our surroundings. rEfErEnCEs Daichendt, G. J. (2010), the Bauhaus artist-teacher: Walter Gropiuss philosophy of education, Teaching Artist Journal, 8:3, pp. 15764. Dewey, J. (1938), Experience and education, new York: Collier Books. Gablik, S. (1985), Has Modernism Failed? new York: thames and Hudson. Lewisohn, C. (2008), Street art: The graffiti revolution, new York: Harry n. abrams. McLuhan. M. (1967), The medium is the massage, new York: random House. Wolfe, t. (1981), From Bauhaus to our house, new York: Bantam Books. rEad on G. James Daichendt | azusa pacific University author: Artist-Teacher: A Philosophy for Creating and Teaching, ISBn 9781841504087 and Artist Scholar: Reflections on Writing and Research, ISBn 9781841504872
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the time the image requires, and often this is relative to the era the image was created. We expect to spend time looking hard if the painting we gaze at is in a gallery: time with the crowd drawers, the blockbuster exhibitions. In fact it is extremely hard to see the images because of the crowds, and they are usually of work made in the past, often at least 100 years old. recent work, particularly digital and interactive artwork, has a smaller gallery audience pull (although online numbers are much higher); it is usually much easier to view because of the lack of pressing crowds, and thus much easier to spend time looking without being jostled. the space in a digital gallery offers the irony that nowadays, on the whole, audiences spend less time looking, absorbing and understanding. Knowing how to read an image properly also relies on the medium. If the work is in immersive theatre, publicized by word of mouth, via social networks,
theatre by punchdrunk so much. It offers the same clues and random discovery options. Whereas Mirror, Mirror told its tale via technology (cutting edge for its time) and was designed for a single user, the appeal of the large-scale discovery, the crowd pleaser, and the flash mob excitement conspire to reflect todays technologies, more hidden, more known, and perhaps only as vaguely understood. My stories are based on documentary themes the evidence often researched from day-to-day news items and the idiosyncrasies of human behaviour. In 1995 Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller were creating The Dark Pool (1996), where a room full of books and artefacts told stories through sound triggered by devices in the space. Shown for the first time in the UK in oxford in 2008 I was unaware of the work in 1995, but the creation of a mysterious environment, and a story to be guessed, has similarities to Mirror, Mirror.
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tHe MoMentUM of instantaneous and mass communication is forever intensifying. Upon the advent of any violent occurrence or political conflict, there is almost an immediate reaction: camera phones are pulled out and events are streamed, uninhibited, live on the Internet. on 28 January 2011, the egyptian artist ahmed Basiony was shot and killed by a sniper in tahrir Square, making him one of over 800 people killed in the revolutionary uprising. on the day before his death he wrote on his facebook page, before making his way to tahrir Square to participate in the fight for revolution, Bring a camera with you and dont be afraid or weak (el noshokaty 2011). art can be a powerful productive force and instrumental in sparking change or critical thinking, with the advent of recent uprisings and events in the Middle east and asia we are reminded of this capability. However, art as a tool for mobilizing thought and action is not new; in fact, history has seen this happen time and time again. Kazimir Malevich, one of the leaders of the russian avant-garde movement (post the october revolution in 1917) and the father of supremitism, believed that pure form and positive change were transcended through abstraction. art for Malevich was
tradition and in the status of art in bourgeoisie society. the futurists were motivated by the belief that formal innovative thinking could provoke much-needed changes in the social and aesthetic order of society (Bowler 1991); indeed art and social and political life cannot be separated when looking at the Italian futurists motivations. History clearly has a habit of repeating itself; Kazimir Malevich was not the first artist to push for social and political change through art, and ahmed Basiony will not be the last artist to challenge the normal and fight for freedom inside the studio and out. Basionys work is now being exhibited at the egyptian pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale. In 30 Days of Running in the Place (2010), Basiony does exactly what the title describes: he films himself running every day for 30 days, whilst wearing a body suit that visually shows the changes in his body temperature and vitals. the work demonstrates the frustration of running and getting nowhere, perhaps reflecting his feelings about the general progress of political change in egypt. although he did not survive to see the change he had been yearning for during his life, his piece echoes the fight.
Q&a
Critical analyses of comics can sometimes pay surprisingly little attention to the visual elements of the text.
Julia Round, editor, Studies in Comics
rEad on Julia round | Bournemouth University editor: Studies in Comics, ISSn 20403232
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CoMICS are often analysed in terms of their storyline or narrative: a situation that has been further encouraged today by their redefinition as graphic novels. a focus on artists in the earlier days of the industry gave way, in the 1980s, to an increasing focus on the star writer, exemplified by alan Moore, neil Gaiman, frank Miller and others. today, critical analyses of comics can sometimes pay surprisingly little attention to the visual elements of the text. this seems an odd situation when considering the importance of art. In comics, style and colour provide emotion; realism (or lack thereof) affects our interpretation and identification with characters or scenes; the visual perspective of panels can indicate falsity or otherwise affect the telling of the tale; and the page layout means that certain scenes are emphasized over others (for example via splash pages). from a semiotic perspective it may even be appropriate to define the comic-book panel as a kind of hybrid signifier (whose signified is a fictional moment or scene within a tale); in each panel, word and image are inextricably bonded in a relationship that can be subversive, complementary or reflective. at Studies in Comics we encourage contributors to approach comics from a variety of disciplines in order to explore both the visual and verbal elements of each text.
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Atomic Postcards: Radioactive Messages from the Cold War By John OBrian and Jeremy Borsos
ISBN 9781841504315 29.95, $45 | PB | 2011 | 1
Culture and Contestation in the New Century Edited by Marc James Lger
ISBN 9781841504261 19.95, $40 | PB | 2011 | 1
Design Integrations: Research and Collaboration Edited by Sharon Poggenpohl and Keiichi Sato
ISBN 9781841502403 19.95, $40 | PB | 2009 | 1
Franklin Furnace & the Spirit of the Avant-Garde: A History of the Future By Toni Sant
ISBN 9781841503714 19.95, $25 | PB | 2010 | 1
The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness (2nd ed) By Mel Alexenberg
ISBN 9781841503776 29.95, $60 | HB | 2011 | 1
Girls! Girls! Girls! in Contemporary Art Edited by Lori Waxman and Catherine Grant
ISBN 9781841503486 19.95, $40 | PB | 2011 | 1
Inspiring Writing in Art and Design: Taking a Line for a Write By Pat Francis
ISBN 9781841502564 14.95, $30 | PB | 2009 | 1
International Dialogues about Visual Culture, Education and Art Edited by Rachel Mason and Teresa Ea
ISBN 9781841501673 19.95, $40 | PB | 2008 | 1
Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance Edited by Judith Rugg and Michle Sedgwick
ISBN 9781841501628 29.95, $60 | HB | 2007 | 1
Moving the Eye Through 2-D Design: A Visual Primer By Buy Shaver
ISBN 9781841503639 19.95, $40 | PB | 2010 | 1
Narrating the Catastrophe: An Artists Dialogue with Deleuze and Ricoeur By Jac Saorsa
ISBN 9781841504605 45, $60 | HB | 2011 | 1
Picturing Immigration: Photojournalistic Representation of Immigrants in Greek and Spanish Press By Athanasia Batziou
ISBN 9781841503608 40, $80 | HB | 2011 | 1
The Place of Artists Cinema: Space, Site and Screen By Maeve Connolly
ISBN 9781841502465 19.95, $40 | PB | 2009 | 1
Reaching Audiences: Distribution and Promotion of Alternative Moving Image By Julia Knight and Peter Thomas
ISBN 9781841501574 19.95, $40 | PB | 2011 | 1
Readings in Primary Art Education Edited by Steve Herne, Sue Cox and Robert Watts
ISBN 9781841502427 19.95, $40 | PB | 2009 | 1 Readings in Art and Design Education
Robert Franks The Americans: The Art of Documentary Photography By Jonathan Day
ISBN 9781841503158 19.95, $40 | PB | 2010 | 1
Spatialities: The Geographies of Art and Architecture Edited by Judith Rugg and Craig Martin
ISBN 9781841504681 29.95, $50 | PB | 2011 | 1
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E-book available
rEad on...www.intellectbooks.com | publishers of original thinking | to view a complete list of Intellects publications visit us online
Streets of Crocodiles: Photography, Media, and Postsocialist Landscapes in Poland By Katarzyna Marciniak and Kamil Turowski
ISBN 9781841503653 24.95, $50 | PB | 2010 | 1 Critical Photography
Truth or Dare: Art and Documentary Edited by Gail Pearce and Cahal McLaughlin
ISBN 9781841501758 19.95, $40 | PB | 2007 | 1
Virtuality and the Art of Exhibition: Curatorial Design for the Multimedial Museum By Vince Dziekan
ISBN 9781841504766 24.95, $40 | PB | 2011 | 1
Why We Make Art: And Why it is Taught (2nd ed) By Richard Hickman
ISBN 9781841503783 14.95, $25 | PB | 2010 | 1
JournAls
Animation Practice, Process & Production Editor: Paul Wells ISSN 20427875
Craft Research Editors: Kristina Niedderer & Katherine Townsend ISSN 20404689
Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty Editors: Efrat Tselon, Ana Marta Gonzlez & Susan Kaiser ISSN 20404417
Journal of Writing in Creative Practice Editors: John Wood & Julia Lockheart ISSN 17535190
Philosophy of Photography Editors: Daniel Rubinstein, Andrew Fisher & Tim Stephens ISSN 20403682
Studies in Comics Editors: Julia Round & Chris Murray ISSN 20403232
International Journal of Islamic Architecture Director and Founding Editor: Mohammad Gharipour
ISSN 20455895 Online ISSN 20455909 First published in 2012 2 issues per volume
The Moving Image Review & Art Journal (MIRAJ) Founding Editor: Catherine Elwes
ISSN 20456298 Online ISSN 20456301 First published in 2012 2 issues per volume
Visual Inquiry: Learning & Teaching Art Principal Editor: G. James Daichendt
ISSN 20455879 Online ISSN 20455887 First published in 2012 3 issues per volume
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