Cody M. reading responses

Reading Response 4

 Titling a piece is a very powerful move, but it is often a necessary to convey the true message of a piece. The example of the red square is used over and over again in the reading. The same subject matter has different meaning because of the subject that is supposed to represent. The first example is of the Israelites crossing the red sea, or having crossed the sea, with the Egyptians being swallowed up behind them…this is represented by a red cube, representative of the mood of the piece, of anger, triumph, and even pain. The red cube is also described as being representative of a psychological mood, and another is a landscape from Moscow, titled red square.  The entire point of this passage to tell us that these nearly identical pieces, have very different subject matter, and corresponding titles. In the reading, it is later talked about an artist creating a piece of work which is untitled and has no description.  The reading examines this…what weight does this piece have with no story and no title? My issue is that art can be worthwhile without these things. Artwork can be aesthetically correct, or beautiful. If this red square was examined, and it showed that it was of some perfect proportion, of that is was a particularly beautiful hue of red, it would be just as important as another red square that has a title and a meaning. Who knows, maybe the fact that a particular red square having no title and meaning adds to its mysteriousness and forces people to try and go deeper into thought beyond what the artist had thought of.

In the next section, where the raising of Jesus’ hand is examined for deeper meaning. Is

His hand raised, has it just been raised, the fact that it is raised means that it is not lowered, is it a bodily movment or is it being purposefully raised by its owner. I feel that anyone who reads this passage will be much better equipped to answer the question, which came first, the chicken or the egg; or maybe they people who read this in the first place are already adept enough to answer that question.

The next section for me was confusing. This passage about a mirror was difficult for me to understand, but I do agree with the writers final statement, that the artist J has convinced me that this mirror, a mere a object (haha, a mere mirror) is somehow a piece of art.

 Reading Response 3

I found the writing on page 5 talking about how artist are the dreamers and dreamers particularly powerful. “Artists and poets landed on the moon long before any astronaut did, travelled through space and time, teletransported, practiced non-invasive medicine, and almost everything else one can think of before they were invented.”  This is a very true statement! The job of the artist is to be imaginative, to think of what has not been done, and how to do it differently. To be an artist, one must also be a mathematician, a story teller, a chemist, a designer, a philosopher, a craftsman, and anything else in-between. The limitation of the artist then becomes what the artist is experienced with in terms of materials and media.

As a sculptor, I have a certain amount of control over the piece I am making, but eventually there is a point where the piece I am working on no longer resembles the initial idea I had. This is because of limitations in the particular media I am working with, or new ideas I have had to make the piece better. An interesting point the writing makes is that art today is more of a political message, or that the art is based on conveying a message versus showing innovation based on art form. I agree with this to an extent…just like in the past, when there were innovations in figure drawings, still life’s and landscapes, there are still innovations today that still have artistic relevance. Using new tools and methods such as CNC based sculpting techniques, new materials such as carbon fiber to make ultra lightweight sculpture, or using computers and printers to produce exact pieces of art still have merit. They do not need to have a message to be art. That being said, we are reaching a point where so many different uses for media have been explored that to have new different art, one must have a powerful different message.  Duchamp turned the art world upside down with his ‘fountain’, making all art conceptual…when will see another Duchamp who will change the art world again and give us new ideas and possibilities to explore?

 Reading Response 2

Once again, the critique handbook! Oddly enough to me, I found some parts of this chapter particularly insightful. Chapter 2 is all really about meaning…how variations may change a piece of arts significance and/or meaning. This can be very important, because it takes artwork beyond just being aesthetically pleasing to something that has cultural significance. A particularly insightful part of the text I found was the section dealing with religion, titled “the Loaded Message.” In this section of the reading, It is discussed about how many pieces of art, which may not be correct (not having correctly proportioned figures, or using awkward color combinations) will be praised or even cherished because of the religious figure or message depicted. In my own opinion, so of my favorites of these are depictions of the Christ child with his mother from the Dark ages. Baby Jesus in these paintings looks more like a giant monster that will grow to be a 9ft tall behemoth. Early artist were able to get away with this because of the religious message of the painting, and In my opinion, no one wanted to talk down a religious painting, even if it was incorrect. I understand that some artwork has meaning but I feel that this ability to attach meaning to artwork has caused abuse of meaning. I have a joke of whenever a person asks what message I was trying to convey with my artwork, I reply with that this piece is a reflection of our counties lack of motivation to provide aid to countries that we have been ravaging for decades. I usually say this as a joke, but I have seen this in a lot of galleries on and off campus, and it is my opinion that people are becoming too attached to the meaning of their artwork. Just like it is written in the critique hand book, many people can use the color red as their primary card swath, and will be able to have their artwork as being angry because of the color choice. My question is simply, what happened to the artwork made simply to have good artwork? Not all art has to has a ridiculous meaning attached to it (either by the artist or the audience) Art as a whole needs to go back to its roots to when art was just about form…although, that would be kinda impossible. Art has been a way of story telling and teaching the different meanings of life for thousands of years. Maybe meaning isn’t such a useless pain…although if someone asks me why I chose to use plastic for a particular project and asks if it is a critique on our dependence on foreign oil, I might just scream!

Reading Response 1

The reading was mostly about how to, not so much critique artwork, but how to analyze artwork from all angles. We were asked as critique-ers to think about not only the finished product but to also consider the process that the material went through from raw to finish. We were also asked to use this knowledge of material and the construction/deconstruction process to see how the message of the artwork changes.

We also found that the meaning of artwork can change immensely simply with a change

in the title. Although obvious, I found the passage on page 4 especially helpful . This passage, which discusses a hypothetical monochrome red painting initially is untitled, making it a color study and not much else. However, this piece is greatly changed when it is titled something like “after the massacre” changing this piece to a reflection of a probable real world event. My own interpretation of this would be a painting with unknown title of rugged sailors/pirates from the 1700’s stealing cargo. If one were to rename it “Tea Party” the viewer would immediately know this is a reference to the Boston tea party of colonial America. In addition, the more historically savvy viewers would then try to find certain famous revolutionaries in the painting making it all the more successful.

The rest of the reading was pretty straight forward. Like I said, we were asked to consider all the different aspects of the art pic, from typs of material for construction, through tools used in that construction process, to the finishing polish or color on the piece. A large portion of this reading simply summarized these different processes.

I didn’t quite agree with the reading completely however. I felt that the writers(s) really focused on the narrative of the finished art piece. The authors want us to analyze how the material, title, context, ect, effect the meaning of the art piece. My question is: “why cant art just be compositionaly good, and just that?” How do you attach a narrative to an untitled paint splatter by Jackson Pollock? Wouldn’t some deeper meaning potentially degrade the quality of the artwork? My point that I am trying to make is that sometimes a great piece of art doesn’t not need a narrative and that an attached narrative will cause the human mind to attach both obvious and subconscious meaning to a piece, thus changing the value of the piece between each viewer.

My only other criticism of the reading is the fact that on numerous occasions, the authors made conclusions so complex and full of art jargon that the sentence almost became unreadable. This was so bad that at almost every one of these encounters, the writers then restated their position, often starting with the term “in other words” and stating a simple and easy enough sentence to understand. From a pure writing standpoint, this made the reading exceptionally tedious.