Ron Mueck (Aura)

Not long ago, the NGV acquired this work by Ron Mueck titled "Two Women". I had read a lot about Ron Mueck as well as having seen images of his work. To finally be able to see his work in real-life was an amazing experience. Mueck is a hyper-realist and the detail in his work is incredible.

Aura- Whiteley's 'Alchemy'

I saw Brett Whiteley 'Alchemy' at the Art Gallery of NSW a few years ago. Prior to seeing it i had been studying the painting throughout year 11 and 12 and had spent countless hours deciphering the painting, its many meanings and Whiteley's life for assignments and exams. So when i did finally see it in person it was a very surreal experience. I think 'Alchemy' it the type of artwork that whether you're seeing it for the first time or the hundredth, this aura it has is just as powerful.

http://www.brettwhiteley.org/alchemy_and_more/alchemy

Tim Hawkinson

"Drip," 2002, polythene, mechanical component, and water.

I saw this work at Tim Hawkinson's exhibition at the MCA last year. Tim Hawkinson is a fascinating artist his works have multiple depths to them. The work 'drip' influenced me merely due to his use of materials and use of sound. The work was an in capturing piece by his use of sound to make non repetitive patterning through water drips .This work was much about appealing to peoples senses which influenced me to involve the audience more in my own works. Just the feeling of this large creature hovering over the audience was almost an surreal feeling.

AURA

I thought it might be helpful to elaborate on the concept  - following are two critical discussions relating to Benjamin's AURA:

"Walter Benjamin’s notion of the “aura” has emerged as one of his most recognizable and widely used theoretical concepts. Defined in historical, aesthetic, and psychological opposition to the techniques of mechanical reproduction, aura has become a common theoretical currency across the arts and humanities... In literary, visual, and cultural studies, aura has become synonymous with the traditional work of art, whose contemplative experience is progressively eroded with the advent of modern media technology. Even in Benjamin’s time, then, aura described a state which had already become obsolete. Aura is thus a concept coined with hindsight, describing an elusive phenomenon from the perspective of its disappearance. It alludes to a groundbreaking cultural shift from authenticity to replication, from uniqueness to seriality, and from the original artwork to its “soulless” mechanical copy."

Imaginary Encounters: Walter Benjamin and the Aura of Photography - Carolin Duttlinger [Poetics Today 29:1 (Spring 2008)]

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"Walter Benjamin's essay, "The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction" initiates the critical discussion of the idea that artworks have "aura," and proposes that this "aura" is destroyed by the process of mechanical reproduction. His notion of "aura" quickly expands to include more than just art -- anything that is reproducible is folded into this conception. While this description of Benjamin's article is highly reductive, it captures his essential thesis that inherently suggest a historical loss brought about by technological change. Following Benjamin's argument it is logical to suppose that art would be without "aura" once mechanical reproduction gives way to digital reproduction. As economist Hans Abbing has noted:

Walter Benjamin predicted that the technical reproduction of art would lead to a breaking of art's spell ('Entzauberung'). Art became less obscure, more accessible and thus less magical because of technical reproduction. ... Benjamin's prediction is not difficult to grasp. Technical (re)production enables a massive production of artworks at low prices. It would be very strange indeed if this didn't reduce the exclusive and glamorous allure of art products. ... But thus far, this hasn't happened; [the composer] Bach and his oeuvre maintain their aura. In general, if one observes the high, if not augmented status and worship of art since Benjamin's essay first appeared, his prediction was either wrong or it is going to take longer before his predictions are borne out. [1]

Abbing's observations about Benjamin's thesis that technological reproduction and mass availability result in diminished "aura" suggest that instead of diminishing the "aura" of art, reproduction helps to extend the aura of the works reproduced instead of destroying that aura."

SEE: The Aura of the Digital - Michael Betancourthttp @ www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=519

At this point - I am simply asking you to describe a work you have seen that has in-turn influenced you.

Aura - Tender are the Stairs to Heaven

Tender are the Stairs to Heaven is an installation by Yayoi Kusama. I saw this work in January at the NGV in Melbourne. Unfortunately this photograph doesn't express at all the experience of viewing the work. It's a ladder of neon fibre-optic cable that extends from the floor to the ceiling with mirrors at the top and bottom. The room is black and the ladder changes colour.

It goes on forever.

It was during the heat wave and I hadn't slept for a week. I wanted to cry.

Aura - Falling Garden

Falling Garden
Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger

San Staë church on the Grande Canale
Installation; mixed media

50th Venice Biennale, 2003

I wasn’t sure if we were meant to blog about paintings specifically, but on the topic of "aura art" I couldn’t go past mentioning Falling Garden. An enchanting and dream like installation at the 50th Venice Biennale 2003, turned Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger into instant international celebrities. The Swiss Art Commission had invited the young Swiss artist couple to create a work in the church of San Stae. Steiner and Lenzlinger turned the ornately decorated interior of the church into an earthly paradise. Countless delicate seedpods, blossoms, and leaves, mixed with fabled creatures from nature and mythology were suspended from the ceiling on thin wires until they almost touched viewers’ heads (such intricate detail reminds me of Sarah Sze, and therefore the quotidian object). In the center of the nave lay a soft white rug, which visitors could walk on only with bare or stocking feet. On that rug, a bed upholstered with hay invited the overwhelmed to relax and observe the installation while lying down. The scent of sweet lavender drifted from the pillows and the recorded noises of birds, insects and wind from alpine meadows, played back very quietly from dispersed, hidden speakers. Viewers were somewhat transported into a different dimension. Apparently Falling Garden was one of the highlights of the 50th Venice Biennale (no wonder).

Visit their website to see more… it’s extremely beautiful
http://www.steinerlenzlinger.ch/index.html

Aura : Flag 1954-55 Jasper Johns

Encaustic, oil, and collage on fabric mounted on plywood (three panels)
42 1/4 x 60 5/8" (107.3 x 154 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

This famous representation glows with a number energies, what helps its spirit is the simplicity of what is indeed a technical achievement. Encaustic* is a technique that uses heated wax and pigment, which provides some softness and glow. The paintings tonal balances allow the basic and the dry colours to chime.

Colour,and to a lesser degree, shape, is Johns tool in the work to take away the absolute and semiotic in the flag and unfortunately also, leaves it open for the given blood and glory, hand- me- down, jingoistic. This image may have been reckoned as Blasphemy.

Perhaps, as rivers of blood, symbolically flailing around among the long edges, splashed against the white like the blood behind an operating theatre curtain.The sight of blood will burn also most certainly, a retina- would that also be not specifically perceived as a glowingness? :}Is it also possible to collect a negative Aura? Not something dark but more like a Black Hole? The viewer could be a kind of distaste in the shrinking away from an image that may also be, least of all, politically challenging, spreading its unlikely and charismatic martyrdom. Musicians have performed under this banner. Pornographers....

The Korean War* had ended in '53 in a treaty still tenuously held between America and Russia from that following period to present.

The glow and presence found in FLAG 54-55, may have been reason behind Johns later Flag Paintings, in one example, the image of that flag is reproduced three times, emerging from the central image.

www.moma.com
*Source- Http://en.wikipedia.org

‘Aura’ about Wyeth

Christina's World, Andrew Wyeth, 1948. 

Tempera on gessoed panel, 32 1/4 x 47 3/4" (81.9 x 121.3 cm). MoMA collection.

An artwork that has an ‘aura’ about it for me was Christina’s World, by Andrew Wyeth. Before I read anything about the artwork, I was stuck breathless by the female figure, of who seemed to be searching for something. Even though she is looking in the direction of the house, I had a feeling of longing and innocence.

On researching the piece, I found out that the painting is actually depicting a crippled, middle-aged, woman, who was – despite her polio – quite optimistic and high spirited.

Big Blue Bear

This is unrelated to this weeks’ blog, however I thought that you all might find it fascinating…

There is a great documentary about the Big Blue Bear, which I saw a few months ago. If you can get your hands on it you will find it very interesting. The doco is about what went into creating this exciting piece, from start to finish. I found the amount of work that goes into producing a large-scale sculpture to be quite daunting.

http://www.thebigbluebeardenver.com/

MARTIN PURYEAR

Art And Popular Culture

Reuben Shipp

In the USA, the victory by Barrack Obama in the 2008 Election, is seen as the beginning of an era of the affirmation of the equality toward peoples unjustly served. It is culturally obvious, the complaint made by any common populous, it is the lyric of songs, and in the making of images.

The African American Sculptor, Martin Puryear was born in Washington DC, a prodigious woodworker and constantly sketching, he then emerged in the early 70's in complaint of the Minimalist (Rothko, Stella, Reinhardt) movement, that he was originally curated with, unsurprisingly in relation to his crafted and formal style drawing comparison to painterly techniques of abstract expressionism, the bane of the minimalists. The artist had been trained formally at the National Academy of Sweden, where he studied printmaking, he had previously joined the U.S Peace Core, where Humanitarian duties had kept him from the Vietnam War in Sierra Leone, acquiring, al biet from an arms- length distance, a quite intimate understanding of African techniques.

His stature as an Artist afforded the commissioning to produce many designs for environmental works and other public sculptures in the USA with an emphasis given toward granted works within the black communities.

Puryear is thoroughly uncomfortable with assumptive projections toward his imagery, especially racially sensitive, making abrupt correction and criticism to his own work in places when confronted by perceived insinuation, including his own, though would acknowledge diversities including Inca civilization and modern Japan for their cultural contribution. This is evident in a description of a woodworkers tools, with every culture being as the sea lapping upon and into the rock, adding their nuance to make the way things fit into the hand. This is also true in the objectification, and demystification, of such a transference, in the a way communication, or thought develops that then has a life or culture, of its own.

Puryear is identified with celebrity and among bodies voluntarily associated with the democratic change recently seen in America. He prefers to work alone on non- milled materials and often without machines despite work that is both monolithic and monumental. I recall first encountering Martin Puryear in a guitarists magazine that journalised his youthful mastery of fine Musical instrument making.

Bibliography:

Benezra, Neal. MARTIN PURYEAR

London: Thames and Hudson LTD and The Art Institute of Chicago 1991

Elderfield,John. Martin Puryear: Ideas of Otherness(2007) New York: The Museum Of Modern Art 2007

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2007/martinpuryear/flash.html (accessed March 15 2009)

Images:

Ladder for Booker T Washington 1996 Ash and Maple 10.97m x 57.8cm(narrowing to 3.2cm) x 7.6 cm Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth. Reproduced from http://www.pbase.com (accessed March 15 2009)

Bower 1980 Sikta Spruce & Pine 162.6 x 240.7 x 67.6 cm Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC. Reproduced from http://www.moma.org (accessed March 15 2009)

C.F.O.A 2006- 2007 Pine and Barrow 255.9 x 196.9 x 154.9 cm Donald Young Gallery Chicago. Reproduced from http://www.moma.org (accessed March 15 2009)

ART & The Quotidian - ARTISTS

Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro - Sydney based Installation artists - explore personal histories / hidden narratives and the art of collecting in their site specific works. It could also be said their work questions the effect of globalisation and Diasporic cultural development on the individual...

SEE: http://www.claireandsean.com/

ART & between Popular Culture & The Quotidian Object

"I am for an art that is political-erotic-mystical, that does something else than sit on its ass in a museum." Claes Oldenburg:

-- 1961

In the early 1960s, when pop art detonated in New York City, it blasted the dreary earnestness right out of the art world (at least for a few seconds). When it first hit, pop was the rock-and-roll of art (and rock was still an angry toddler). Like rock, it reset the culture clock, rewrote the rules, recast the performers -- awop-bop-a-loo-bop-awop-bam-boom! And after the fluorescent dust settled and the glimmering, giggling debris stopped bouncing around, out of the ground-zero crater crawled pop art's own Fab Four: Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist and, last but most, Claes Oldenburg.

SEE:

http://www.salon.com/bc/1998/12/22bc.html

Cornelia Parker- Art and the Quotidian

Last year I was lucky enough to see Cornelia Parker's 'Thirty Pieces of Silver' (mentioned in 'Art and Today') at the Tate modern. It was a very beautiful overwhelming installation, and after reading 'Art and the Quotidian Object' got me thinking about how we place meaning and value on artworks. Had these pieces of silver been sitting perfectly unbroken in a shop, one wouldn't pause to notice them. However now that they have been purposely bent and crushed beyond repair, and hung in a prestigious gallery, suddenly they have a meaning, a history and a value beyond their original price tags. I guess I'm wondering when it is these objects change. Is it once the artist has purchased them with the intention to change them, is it the instant they are physically altered or is it when they are hung in a gallery and given a title?

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=26446&searchid=23539&tabview=text

travels, disorientation and back

Last year while waiting in one of the numerous waiting lounges at zurich airport to board my flight that signified the end of my adventures and the beginnings of my integration back into customary life, i noticed and curious journal titled 'The journal of Disorientation' -  by Christian Vetter. 

Finding the cover worthy of closer inspection i flicked through the predominantly visual compilation of common scenes juxta posed with their tacit opposites (suggestive i pressume of the stated 'disorientation'). Although the journal itself was not capable of such urgency standing alone, when arriving back in Australia and to my computer i discovered i was merely a week or so late of seeing the Shifting Identities – Zurich Airport Exhibition. Showcasing a collection of contemporary artist artworks incorporated into the entire airport, such as Aleksandra Mir, Brian Eno - musician, San Keller, Nedko Solakov...

These are some photos of the work Aleksandra Mir's exhitbited, title 'plane landing'.

The link to the Shifting Identities – [Swiss] Art Now is;

 http://www.shifting-identities.ch/category/airport/exhibition-airport/ 

Art and popular culture

Barbara Kruger is a really interesting artist she explores both art and popular culture and art and the quotidian object she deals with the western world's obsession with material objects her work resembles advertising slogans, mass production and consumerism, many of her works also deal with feminist issues.

http://www.barbarakruger.com/art.shtml

I also came across this website www.artwhatson.com.au its a website that lets you see different artists working across Australia and local exhibitions that are happening

Art & The Quotidian - Tom Friedman

Tom Friedman is an artist who embraces the quotidian object. In the past he has used materials such as toothpicks, masking tape and plastic drinking straws to create his sculptures. Here are some examples of his earlier works. 

1. Untitled, 1994, masking tape.

2. Untitled, 1997, plastic straws, bucket. 

3. Untitled 1995, toothpicks.

    

www.gagosian.com/artists/tom-friedman/

Tracey Emin (Art and the Quotidian Object)

Tracey Emin is a British artist who was part of the YBA movement. She uses many "readymade" or "found" objects in her work.

An example of this is her work "My Bed" which was nominated for the Turner prize in 1999.

Tracey has used her bed and it's surroundings to create an installation which became quite famous (or infamous) because of it's controversial nature. It is assumed that Tracey simply took the contents of her room and placed them in the gallery almost exactly as they were in real life.

The work contains dirty underwear, cigarette butts, empty vodka bottles, stained sheets etc. 

Tracey creates work which is so personal that, although often confronting, causes us to empathise with her as well as realise that nobody's perfect.

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/tracey_emin_my_bed.htm

Quotidian babies

This is a photo that I speedily shot (with the good old camera-phone) on the moving sculpture night. It is a cluster of my purple-haired, babies who were invaded, and knocked into extinction. At this point, they were very much alive and posing for the camera…

I feel it is related to this weeks subject matter, because it exhibits several key characteristics of  the "Quotidian Object". These characteristics include: mass production – there are several babies, who are all identical; plastic babies are everyday objects (well…mostly for little girls); all were readymade, with little modifications, and; it is cheeky!

Tara Donovan -Styrofoam cups

thephoenix.com/Boston/Arts

SARAH LUCAS AND THE QUOTIDIAN OBJECT

Imogen Perry
THAP1211 Studio Theory A: Extended topic area Presentation
Amanda Williams
24th March 2009

SARAH LUCAS AND THE QUOTIDIAN OBJECT

Sarah Lucas is a contemporary British artist. Lucas is known for assembling ordinary objects into art. She is recognized for her visual puns, sexually suggestive themes and forms that resemble male and female bodies.

Sarah Lucas, The Old In Out, Installation view.
Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York 1998.

Over the years toilets have appeared continuously in Lucas’ work. Here Sarah Lucas has made a sculpture of toilets. There are eleven toilets simply spread out in the room. Nine of the toilets have been cast in resin. They are translucent and vary in colour. One is just a toilet and the other is covered in cigarettes stuck down to form a pattern.

Sarah Lucas, The Old In Out.
Cast polyurethane resin, 42 x 50.8 x 36.8.
Tate Modern London 1998.

Is this Art?

Sarah Lucas comments, “I like the idea of something uncouth being elegant. Toilets are unsung heroes of our hygienic lives. Why don’t we celebrate them?" (Lucas: 21).

Lucas has transformed a mass-market utilitarian object into a challenging work of art. The first toilet to be acknowledged as art was by Marcel Duchamp in 1917. Duchamp used a commonplace urinal and argued that anything can be art especially the normal everyday objects known to everyone. Lucas has used the same concept but as Eleanor Heartney says, “No artist can avoid borrowing the ideas of others.” (Heartney: 43). Lucas’ toilet is included in the exhibition The Old In Out where the collection of sculpture symbolized humanity. The toilet is a metaphor for the body being a waste disposal, as illustrated in the pointed and explanatory title. The toilet’s form and colour has changed. It’s organic. It no longer functions like a perfunctory toilet. It’s intentionally fake looking. This is how an “ordinary” toilet becomes art.

Sarah Lucas, Solid Gold Easy Action.

Ford Capri, hydraulic pump, 133 x 167 x 439.5.
Sadie Coles HQ, London 1997.

This sculpture by Lucas is also a modernist design titled Solid Gold Easy Action. The work features a gold Ford Capri with hydraulics moving to give the impression of two people having sex in the car. Lucas has used a manufactured object but has given the car a context, which validates its transformation into art. The function of the car is irrelevant. The car is art because it generates for the viewer multiple and contradictory meanings for instance, while sex in cars is generally considered degrading for women how do they feel about sex in a solid gold car? Does the type of car modify the moral?

Can Art be justified and defined as Art simply by having an artist’s name behind it? If any of Lucas’ objects were in their normal context, for instance, on the street or in a house they would remain simply objects. However, in an incongruent context her objects pose new questions and engage the viewer in a powerful reassessment of what is familiar and what is alien. With humour and irony Lucas tilts reality and makes the pieces of it resonate.

Bibliography

1. Collings, Mathew. Sarah Lucas. London: Tate Publishing, 2002
2. Heartney, Eleanor. Art and Today. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2008

Footnotes

1. Eleanor Heartney, Art and Today. (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2008), 43.
2. Mathew Collings, Sarah Lucas. (London: Tate Publishing, 2002), 21.

Artworks

1. Lucas, Sarah. The Old In Out, 1998. Installation view. Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York. Reproduced by Larry Lame, Sarah Lucas (London: Tate Publishing, 2002), 49.
2. Lucas, Sarah. The Old In Out, 1998. Cast polyurethane resin, 42 x 50.8 x 36.8. Tate Modern London. Reproduced by Larry Lame, Sarah Lucas (London: Tate Publishing, 2002), 12.
3. Lucas, Sarah. Solid Gold Easy Action, 1997. Ford Capri, Hydraulic pump, 133 x 167 x 439.5. Sadie Coles HQ, London. Reproduced by Mike Bruce, Sarah Lucas (London: Tate Publishing, 2002), 106.