Food For Thought

How is collage affected by the industrial advancements, technological advancements and the evolution of literature and education?

Greenberg: Collage

The use of the world "reality" when used in the context of art is something that needs to be addressed within the confines of abstraction.  Even though the term reality would not even come close to trying to describe cubist works. At first the cubist works were taking three demential objects and creating them in a to demential plane.  The imitation of printing was the key to Braques' cubist pieces to give them depth.  The way that the letters are placed they changed planes, because of the tension between surface and depth the eyes are tricked.Cubist paintings started to transform with the help of artists adding different substances to paint.  In doing so the texture was calling attention to the surface of the painting.  This texture contrasted with the printing on the paintings but because of the texture there was only room for the text on the surface.  With the telescoping effect the need to keep concentrating the surface was something of a necessity. Picasso says to have made his first collage in 1911. Braque was using simulated textures, typography and had begun the broaden and simplify the facet-planes in 1910.  Literal flatness is something that is always present, now instead of representing it, a piece of pasted paper becomes that plane. By placing layers on top of drawings and then adding other elements it starts to push back the space and make it seem what is layered in the back is in a visual space reseeding away.  Picasso and Braque opped for the re-representation of space and objects, this is where analytical cubism came to and end, and synthetic cubism started.  "Drawing in space was Picasso's way of taking something flat and reconstructing it out of pieces of paper to inhabit a three demential space. Braque and Picasso never returned to collage after 1914. Gris would start out with abstracted shapes and then place pictures overtop that were recognizable.  Grist uses the juxtaposition to create space and tension even with out fully sketching out depth in his collages.  Gris was the one artist to really stick to synthetic cubism and collage and master it.

The cave part 3 and Uncanny Pt2

I will do another installation of this and rephotograph it.

The Evil eye, repositioned higher and the addition of a hindu prayer

Cut and Paste

The use of collage is something that is rare, but the impact of the images creates an interesting dynamic.  The weight of the images correlating with the dialog it is trying to have with it's viewer.  This is something that I had never been exposed to before, I had known of making it look aesthetically pleasing but there was never the connection to how much was on the page to the weight of the message it is trying to convey.

The use of collage is a modernist idea, to turn to as a new way of rethinking, reworking and repositioning media.

From the 60's on we have to begin looking at the art of collage as a consumer- as- creator genealogy.  As the launch of digital editing software, the use of digital media increased the popularity of collage and also the easy access to its creation.

The problem with the easy access of digital media to be formed into collage is the honesty of the picture, and its authenticity. Like the problem with a picture of Bert in a Bin laden propaganda poster, which sparked outrage amongst Americans. but in the end they found the image to have been created by a third party. So the need to know that some images are "fake" need to also be understood.

Introduction of Polyvore; it turns its users into customers. Think of the walls of a teenage girl, the pictures of celebrities, clothing, places, and just things that appeal to that age group. Polyvore take this stand point of what a person, factoring in age, likes. This will be a collage generator that is in mass production, using pictures that are all over the internet.  This is actually an in-genius idea.

Not until the mid 1990's that collage found a new artistic possibility. Larry Clarks' book was the first contemporary step forward in the art of collage. After him many artists followed in the scrapbook styled works.  They were taking popular art and mashing it with classical forms of collage.

then came Jeff Koons. I am not a fan of his work but his referencing to the pop culture and pop art is resonating in his collage 

Collage even if we don't notice it, it is a surrounding art that we experience everyday

Devin Kovach

interested in observation

• the way we see the places we inhabit 
• how we perceive these places
• how we understand that place

How he makes his work

• printmaking is his passion

but photography and instillation is something else that is compelling. different ways of dealing with visual information

The experience of living in the city. Santa Fe, New Mexico. the transition of being in the open. Moved to Scotland.

• the weight to the city the stone, heavy air and complete opposite to where he grew up.

Dealt with the change of atmosphere by drawings, how he showed the intense and chaotic environment and how it was a psychological dealings.  There is a relationship between his drawings and how he moved and saw the city.

• he had to get out of the tight one point perspective.

This work culminated in his thesis exhibition

• map imagery 
• way to keep a connection to that place and maintaining a personal connection

he wanted to change the scale of his work
but also pushing it into the viewers pace

making the formation of a building that is "heavy" and make them light and transform

took a little break before going to grad school

1. expand practice
2. expand the ideas of art that you are making
3. seek out opinions for why to go to grad school
4. choose a program that best fits you not just for the name

Tyler School of art for his MFA

• everything that seemed clear.. it totally changed
• thinking not just making
• expand the ideas that go into your work
• defining conceptual work

constant onslaught of critiques and visits and pieces, shocking of finding that the confidence of making art. so he fell bak on what he knew that he knew well. His solution was to make things more complex.  He came to a new environment but he kept reaching back to undergrad for insperation, something was just off to him.

The use of left overs from old works

• how the paper hung in space and how it made interesting details and perspectives
• depth, perspective, and dynamic space.
• it seemed too easy that it must not be a serious. high lights the importance of play in studio time. Make mistakes 

having a studio to go to all the time

making constructions and instillation sketches

"all the interesting work i have done is against all the ideas I have had.."- william kentradge

-painters tape
-dowel rods
-scrim fabric
>^lines of the scaffolding and the lines of the building that was just a silly sketches and then it became an exercise of a flat space and it started to invade the studio. not just an imaginary place a real place that he had a relationship to. drawing attention to something that may seem mundane and a nuisance. this began to set things in motion and nature and construction was constantly impacting the piece.

Taking pictures of the windows instillation and how these photographs departed from the reality of the space. we are so used to seeing and understanding without really trying and his images make you stop and take a second look. working between photography and the installation.

The experience of travel

• mentally stimulating
• 2nd year in rome
• how was it going to translate in a different context
• you take nothing for granted because you are unfamiliar to the place. and to him this equates to inspiration
• roman architecture added into his work
• impression of spaces, relating to ruins and the memories to a place and a space
• to not invoke structure but to only reference it 
• photography because more prominent, black and white,  the dark room the relationship of process
• impression of the light around you
• light became and element in his work, how light transforms and confuses space
• fabric and light(video projection)
• light phenomena from Rome

Using light made him think about how time affect the pieces, using the little light phenomena
everything was site specific
the layers of architecture and the layers of light that came from the place itself. The element of time is still playing a roll. How night and day translated to different spaces

how people impact the art and space. using residency as an outlet to make more work

the illusion of space and light and making the viewer stand away from his instillation and how it changes the relationship. Seeing and understanding and seeing and believing. Then taking photographs of special spaces.
"..seeing something that isn't visible"- Norman McClean  A River Runs through it

Prints, use of photographs and distorting them.
Associations of what home means, a deep connection a place you have seen in different seasons and seeing it over time. What was the original scene?

last thought
get outside , your country, your town, your social group engage as much as you can. There is so much happening and you have to look at the different views of reality.

Chapter 4

REALISM AND PERSPECTIVE

What are the conventions between realism and abstract?

            How do we deem something to look realistic and another to be abstract?

                        -to be held by ideals to be looking like the actual object.

Pectoral images appear to have served as form of symbolic communications and expression among members of different religions when it was the time of persecutions, these symbols were a way for them to hide the true meaning from outsiders.

In the Renaissance the practice of artists changed because they labored to reproduce the appearance of a scene, as the eye of an observer would see it.

            This does not mean it became more scientific but the space as a replica of what embodied eye would see took on greater symbolic, spiritual and philosophical meaning.

Reproductability in images is not just about the capacity of art works and images to be copied but also the aim to copy, or reproduce, the real.

Cubism- the art of making an object in its simplest form and then these simple shapes are shifted in space due to multiple viewpoints.

VISUAL CODES AND HISTORICAL MEANING

Today an old image is viewed from a different perspective then it was when it was first created.

We take context clues about the style and technique to determine time period.

Neoclassical - art that aims to reproduce aspects of classical fine art.

The Pre-Raphaelite- they were a group of artists who were driven to create non-conventional art in the Victorian era to reference the medieval painter and sculptor.

QUESTIONS OF REALISM

Noticing changes in aesthetics and styles of naturalist or realist images over time, we do more then simply chart taste or progress in the history of art. We also follow the development of different ways of seeing, and different views about value and meaning.

The term realism refers to a set of conventional belief or a style of art or representation. At a given point in a historical moment to accurately represent nature or the real or to convey and interpret accurate or universal meanings about people, objects, and events in the world.

What do the different approaches to realism tell us about the cultural and politics of a given social context. There is no universal standard for realism, and the idea about that constitutes realism can vary drastically.

Soviet Constructivist Realism Manifesto of the 1930s.  The government was telling artists that they must depict art in a specific way be cause that is the “right way” . Limiting the freedom of artists.  Any artist that was outside of the realist style was deemed degenerate.  In 1974 abstract painters Oscar Rabine and Evgeny Rukhin had a public display of unofficial abstract art made by artists who defied the mandate.

Michel Foucault, in his book “The Order of Things”, used the term episteme to describe the way that and inquiry into truth is organized on a given era. An episteme is an accepted dominant mode of acquiring and organizing knowledge in a given period of history.

HISTORY OF PERSPECTIVE

The representation of objects in a space as if seen by an observer through a window or frame. In perspective, the size and detail of the objects depicted corresponds to their relative distance from the m=imaged position of the observer.

The Enlightenment promised the power of human reason would overcome superstition, end ignorance through the development of scientific knowledge, bring prosperity through the technical mastery of nature, and introduce justice and order to human affairs.

The system introduced by Brunelleschi involved the concept of regarding the picture as kind of a mirror or window frame through which one sees the world.

Architectural drawing relies on the precision of a representational system that emphasizes the measurability of basic structures of forms in space

PERSPECTIVE AND THE BODY

Mantegna adjusted the drawing so it most important feature, the head, would not look too tiny. The compression makes Christ’s feet and chest cage loom and his face appears squished.

Durer, realism is achieved by making a composite of views and parts from a varety of observed forms. Realism in this case, is achieved not by seeing one scene from the fixed perspective of an imagines spectator but by combining parts views sketched at different times of different bodies in different places and merging them into composite whole.

Da Vinci’s technique is called perspective anamorphous.

THE CAMERA OBSCURA

Today, perspective is recognized as one among a number of possible means of realism among others; it no longer characterizes our era’s episteme in a totalizing way.

CHALLENGES TO PERSPECTIVE

Perspective in its traditional forms has remained tied to the idea of an objective depiction of reality.

Impressionism was an art movement of the late 19^th century that featured work that used visible brushstrokes and impressionistic depictions of light to capture a sense of human vision differently.

Monet examined the process of looking by painting different works of the same scene to show subtle changes due to shifting light and color over time

In 1907 two painters, Braque and Picasso, became interested in depicting objects from several different points of view simultaneously.

Cubism was a style that deliberately challenged the dominant model of perspective through an analytic system that broke up the perspectival space of the conventional painterly style

Action painting drew from the surrealist interest in automatism, a technique of writing, drawing, and painting in which the producer marks the surface with spontaneous gestures, giving little or no attention to the aesthetic from that results.  It is an uncensored release of the inner feelings of the artist and that the marks on the canvas would express these feelings without direct pictorial symbolism

Greg Thielker

Sites and non-sites

Lived all over the world. Making work where ever you are.

Read an image, the feeling the story behind the image.

How we process an image

Abstract

• pushed ideas not technique
• after graduation he moved to colorado to paint
• Landscape, physical that is a memory of the place

Portable materials

•  going out and not letting materials stop you

St Louis 

• Grad school

Boston

• Studio group 

Through the Windshield 

• oil painting 
• what you would see as you were driving
• separated from the outside world while totally immersed in it
• a balance of realism and abstraction
• 5-6 years working in this 

Experiences abroad- teaching, volunteering, projects

• "do the marco polo route"
• American Vertigo by Bernard - Henri Levy and Rory Steward
• the double narrative
• Residency in India
• don't come with materials or a plan
• nothing to lose but not knowing how it would work
• temple sites from 1000 ad, describe their journey to the temple. Made an installation next to the temple.
• month long experience
• many different people, musicians writers musicians. Keeping the conversation alive.
• Larger project about India
• there is no single truth
• be a channel about many views for one single place
• from Kolkata to Dehli
• went to paint but he did drawings instead, more flexible
• drawing every 76 km
• made it more democratic 
• small drawings 
• the similarities within the small drawing
• moment between old and new, and did interviews. Reinforcing and learning about the place
• collision of old and new
• Drew the road, no nonsense approach

Interview Quotes

• drivers - "brother this is the oldest one, this shrine is from my grandfathers time, and no one knows hold old this is,... one person makes money and the rest surfers.. "
• the frustration and grim acceptance of reality

Downtown DC

• arrange the millage stops along the road, all done with pencils 
• biggest is 10.5 -11 feet long
• all to fit into the carryon 
• quotes and pictures
• receipt from Calcutta - the journey as much as the stops
• the rose petals 

Afghanistan

• support of funding agencies, but mostly on their own.
• unfiltered access to people and communities
• overlap of history, Quadram, military base is there. 
• Crystal vase
• grave yard of tanks
• THe citadel and covered by an Afghan military base 
• more about history rather then military
• mud compound , it makes people safe, they feel sheltered
• every time he thought he understood something, another thing came up and changed his view
• simply documenting the place
• what can he learn and how can he display that history in an image
• drawing on Afghan newspaper. two flags tied together.
• scarves, the afghan dark striped older generation, young men the pixelated scarf
• air space, and interviews 
• the multiple picture of the space, the snow to spring or rebirth