Monday, 31 January 2011
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
Monday, 24 January 2011
Kyra Poon talks on Kiki Smith Tale 1992 (29, March)
Artist: Kiki Smith
Work: Tale (1992)
lSize: 160” X 23” X 23” l
Type: Sculpture
Type: Sculpture
l
The Artist
What is it?
This work is the most controversial work from SmithIn the work, a female sculpture which is in a prostrate gesture is shown. It is naked and is crouching on all fours while defecating a long, snakelike turd onto the floor. Moreover, There is full of dirt on her body, especially on her bottom. And What makes the work unusual is the excrement; this excrement was excreted from the back of the body and is trailing behind her. On the whole, the work presents a dirty woman which disgust audiences.
What are the messages?
* Things that human cannot hide from themselves
The work actually shows our embarrassment on something, for example, the process of excrement. The feces represents some sort of internal personal garbage that you are dragging all the time. And it also states the shame and humiliation of not being able to hide things that are so apparent in one's own being.
* Shame on hiding what we actually are
Our first impression towards this work may be negative. We may feel disgusting, ashamed and want to skip it. However, when we think in depth, we should feel grief since we tried to hide things that are normal (Physical, bodily processes). And I think that is the real shame when we tried to omit what oneself truly is and to omit one's true existence.
* Potential questioning the concept of "tradition"
When we look at this work, we may think about the "tradition" matter. What is the tradition way to show human body? ( especially woman body). Are they always perfect? graceful? Clean? Tidy? Smooth? Actually Smith's work are always regarded as something "different from tradition". In my opinion, Smith's work exactly point out the true side of "tradition". The work shows the imperfect side of human and that is the realistic part about all human since none of us is perfect.
* Make people rethink, evoke self-examination on physical body
Is one's body a burden of ones? It carries meaning or trap one's spirit? Smith's work reminds the audience that our body contains mortality. Everyone of us have to face birth, aging, illness and death; these are things that none of us can hide from.
My association towards the work
When I look at the work, I think of two extreme things, the elderly who suffer from incontinence and baby who always need their parents to bath them. It shows that human is sometimes unavoidably weak and all of us should embrace that in our lives.
Question
Do you think that the messages the art work presents will still be the same if the figure is changed from a woman to a man? Why or Why not?
I think the general meaning would be the same, for example, things that we cannot hide and the shame that we tried to avoid it in our lives. However, I think the female figure actually enrich the work since it emphasizes the contrast between the tradition woman body and the realistic woman body. I reckon that the artist tries to remind the audience of human weakness. And sometimes we have to face our true selves instead of hiding it.
Reference
Maggie's Blog- Louise Bourgeois: Passage Dangereux
Artist: Louise Bourgeois
Work: Passage Dangereux
Year: 1997
Material: Mixed Media
Size: 264X356X876 cm
Background of the Artist
•Began her career in sculpture as she was “not satisfied with its(painting) level of reality”
•Her work has a degree of feminism
•Common features of work: around her lifelong experience, especially idea of “home”
•Later work: derived from childhood experience of her father hysterically
About The Work
•Long corridor with chain- link fencing
•Cage- like house:fear and loss of freedom
•With arched doors at the end of a central passage: : seems like the structure of a catherdral
•Inside place some domestic furniture and bric-a-brac, but in a strange way
For example: a glass bowl contains bones, rabbit ears- like marbles place aside of white cuffs
For example: a glass bowl contains bones, rabbit ears- like marbles place aside of white cuffs
•Many textures and surfaces were used, like wood, metal, glass, leather, etc: different impression of home and feeling
•Uncanny with designed in a strange way
•View different position and angles have different experiences within the architectural structure and its objects
•Strange contrasts of lines and volume within a wire mesh “skin”
•White cuffs with the word “Bourgeois”
-represent her memory of father dressed in starched, laundered shirts
-represent her memory of father dressed in starched, laundered shirts
•Empty bottle with bracelets
•Child- size ch and secret compartments
memory of her childhood
memory of her childhood
•Bodily amputation throughout Bourgeois' s work
- amputated feet merged with metal rods
- -> evoke multi meanings and symbolic associations
- amputated feet merged with metal rods
- -> evoke multi meanings and symbolic associations
Work about Gender
•Bourgeois followed the female movement that used wastes, pollution in representing “horror” which suggested by Julia Kristeva in 1982
•Contrast between male minimalist artists: Messy disordered and full of rubbish VS clean lines and geometric forms
Overall of the work
•Psychological disturbance and alienation
•Uncanny
•Feminism
•Reflection of personal life
My opinions on the work:
•Cage-like home: visible uncomfortable, and invisible painful (shadow) that memories can never be forgotten
•Playful with light treatment, create confusion of both the physical and the optical boundaries of the work, encourage to respond kinaestheically
•No escape for Bourgeois in her early life
First impression of the Work
•I think of Cage House in Hong Kong
•Hard life, want to escape from the cage to have a new life
•Pressure from family
Questions:
•Both Homebound (Mona Hatoum) and Passage Dangereux (Louise Bourgeois) present the theme of Home, which piece do you think is more uncanny?
•Is personal experience is an important element for the theme of Home?
Tammy talks on Wang Guanyi,Mao Zedong no 1 1988(19 April)
Artist: Wang Guangyi
Work: Mao Zedong No. 1, 1988
Medium:Oil on canvas
Work: Mao Zedong No. 1, 1988
Medium:Oil on canvas
Size: 59 x 141 in. (150 x 358.1 cm).
private collection
About Wang and the work
•Wang Guangyi (1957 Heilongjiang)
one of the pioneers of Chinese contemporary art movement and the leader of the “Political Pop” movement.
one of the pioneers of Chinese contemporary art movement and the leader of the “Political Pop” movement.
•Wang has created his own brand of paintings and sculptures based on heroic images borrowed from the Cultural Revolution.
•
In the 1980s, he created a sensation in Beijing by challenging standard portraits of Mao. He painted the Chairman behind a set of grids or boxed lines, hinting at a needed re-examination of the Chinese leader.
In the 1980s, he created a sensation in Beijing by challenging standard portraits of Mao. He painted the Chairman behind a set of grids or boxed lines, hinting at a needed re-examination of the Chinese leader.
PERSONALITY CULT
•
For more than two decades Mao Zedong’s portrait was ubiquitous throughout China. The official emblem of the Great Leader’s cult of personality, Mao’s image presided over schools, factories, committee halls, and, of course, Tiananmen Square.
For more than two decades Mao Zedong’s portrait was ubiquitous throughout China. The official emblem of the Great Leader’s cult of personality, Mao’s image presided over schools, factories, committee halls, and, of course, Tiananmen Square.
•The first Mao portrait appeared in Tiananmen Square in 1949, replacing Chiang Kai-shek’s after the Communists seized power and founded the People’s Republic of China. In the intervening years, several versions of Mao’s visage presided over Tiananmen, each executed by the then-reigning official portrait maker with the help of anonymous artists. Even today, Mao’s portrait remains above Tiananmen as the figurehead that unites the Communist Party and the People’s Republic of China. Despite his mixed legacy, his image serves as a powerful touchstone for millions of Chinese citizens.
the grid:,imposes a precise, mathematical structure on the image, stands for rationalism.
•
In a 1999 Art Journal article, Francesca Dal Lago cited political pop artist Wang Guangyi's 1988 Mao Zedong — Red Grid No. 1 as one of the first examples of the "Mao-related phenomenon in painting."
In a 1999 Art Journal article, Francesca Dal Lago cited political pop artist Wang Guangyi's 1988 Mao Zedong — Red Grid No. 1 as one of the first examples of the "Mao-related phenomenon in painting."
•This painting mocks the ubiquitous portrait of Chairman Mao,
•
caused a sensation at Beijing's first exhibition of avant-garde art in 1989.
caused a sensation at Beijing's first exhibition of avant-garde art in 1989.
•
Political pop artists such as Wang are ambivalent towards what has become the foremost icon of an entire Chinese generation.
Political pop artists such as Wang are ambivalent towards what has become the foremost icon of an entire Chinese generation.
•
the grid:,imposes a precise, mathematical structure on the image, stands for rationalism.
•formed the literal framework for a rational analysis of the picture plane;
•
•a gray version of a famous image of Mao, which the artist set within a grid of imprisoning lines.
•The color not only shocked eyes accustomed to years of reddish hosannas to the father of the revolution -- that gray can shock at all is wittily revealing -- but seemed to bleed the meaning from the ideology itself.
The letters A and O, represent nothing more than coordinates in a random system, much like the ticker-tape flurry of numbers stamped across his Great Criticism paintings.
Question:
Wang’s manifesto was qingli renwen reqing—“rationality in art was supreme, emotion to be expunged.”
Which one is better in fulfilling the purpose?Why?
References
Jean Robertson and Craig McDaniel ,“Time”,33-62
“Phillips de Pury & Company: WANG GUANGYI, Mao AO” ,Retrieved 19 April 2011, from<http://www.phillipsdepury.com/auctions/essay-detail.aspx?sn=UK010607&lotnum=511>
Spalding,D.(n.d.).ShanghArt“THE PAINTINGS OF WANG GUANGYI: REVOLUTIONARY ACTS?”,Retrieved 19 April 2011, from
Stevens.M.(1998). “ The Great Mall?”, ,Retrieved 19 April 2011, from<http://nymag.com/nymag/critics/art/3165/>
It also unthinkably implied Mao’s imprisonment or, at the very least, an insurmountable barrier between his revered image and the gaze of the worshipful masses.
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