"I'm Speechless"

I really enjoyed learning about Andy Warhol today in class. I never realized the humor inserted in his art pieces. I remember when younger seeing the Campbell’s Soup cans and in class we needed to represent our own drawing off of this. Up until now I of course knew of Andy Warhol’s name and of his famous art pieces.

However, I never realized “the game” Andy was playing throughout his art and throughout his life in the media especially. I would really like to see the collection of films that portrayed a close-up of people’s faces for fifteen minutes. This makes me think of when you stare at yourself in the mirror for a while and all of the lines and freckles on your face become unfamiliar. Yet at the same time you can really see yourself objectively, I would love to have the chance to really look at a stranger for more than a few minutes. This is what is so appealing to me about this compilation of people staring into a camera.

I am also interested in the strausberger emotional memory technique and how actors/actresses were trained to bring back an intense emotional memory into their cognition and the ability to control these thoughts. It was hilarious when Andy was being interviewed because you can really understand the game he is playing with the media and the mysterious mischievous front he is all about.

Happy Accident

I loved that little activity we did in class to help us understand what an “exquisite corpse” is. This type of artwork fascinated me; I have always been very excited about surrealist art and just how you transform your dreams/drug-induced hallucinations on to paper. It is unbelievable to see how history is tied into art and how art in turn mirrors the times. I really enjoyed seeing The Bauhaus School of Design and the integration of function and beauty. The influence of Nazi power impacted art completely, as the artists fled Germany they brought new waves of ideas to the United States. We can see remnants of this style architecture in current art. Hearing of the frustrated culture of the Beats was very intriguing. I really liked how William Burrow phrased his art as a “happy accident” his cut ups were original and a funny manipulation of what already is.

Grid Art

Here are a few pictures from my grid art project. I wasn’t able to show how it would look in a dark room with a light shining through the punctured paper, yet I think everyone understood the idea.

“L.H.O.O.Q.” is an assisted readymade art piece by Marcel Duchamp. Here we see the famous Mona Lisa with a very humorous twist- a moustache and beard! How interesting that this became a legitimate art piece, simply by changing and declaring it as so in a gallery. Here we see how important the understanding of language is while appreciating humor. “L.H.O.O.Q.” is the title, when phonetically pronounced in French it sounds like “ her ass is on fire.” Of course if you did not understand French you may not understand this at all!

This humor can be traced to the Dada movement as a way of breaking apart the long line of traditional art. Duchamp was making fun of what was sacred and attempting to expand our perspective. This made people think differently about what is art, what are the possibilities of art, and how we as the viewer can change art.

“Un Chien Andalou” was a silent film that was very important, it was a film created by two surrealists: Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali. This was a very bizarre film; I was pretty grossed out after the woman’s eye was sliced open. I thought the skull on the moth was really cool. This short film reminded me of a very bizarre dream, where nothing quite makes sense when you think about it later.

Decontextualized

So in class we started to explore Impressionism, which was a major shift in how art was viewed. I liked how it was mentioned that for the first time artists began painting from their feelings. Art soon became all about the point of view and that there was no right or wrong point of view. It questioned reality because one person’s reality could be very different than another’s. I enjoyed learning more about Pointillism because I remember in elementary school looking at Seurat’s famous “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”, and thinking how cool that was. Finally I can connect this to history! Dada was also interesting to learn about, it very much reminded me of the magnetic words you can jumble around on your fridge. Although, there is a major difference between fridge magnets and Dada (Dada does not rely on the human brain’s influence.) Very weird that the human mind is disconnected from this art form. I loved hearing about Hugo Ball and how language can both define and constrain. The Rayograph made beautiful almost fossil like images.

Nerds

We finished watching the movie “Triumph of the Nerds” on Wednesday. I liked this segment the most because we really got to see the nature of the competitor’s personalities. I understood what “Great Artists Steal” meant but it still sounded so horrible. I realize that I appreciate these people much more than previously. I can’t even imagine the lifetime of hard work dedicated to something they found they had a sort of obsession for. I never truly realized how much work was involved. I also never realized how short of a time frame this all took place in. I remember by the time I was in fifth grade all of my friends had a computer at home. My family was the last family of my group of friends to get a computer. I felt so isolated in my classes when my teachers would make the sweeping statement that “everyone by now has a computer.” It felt like without a computer the world really couldn’t have functioned before! I really loved when in the movie the Graphical User Interface was talked about. Finally a computer I could recognize! This is how I think of how computers are supposed to look and feel –in a crude way of course. I was glad we watched this movie, as wacky as it was I appreciate how computers came to be and the fight to produce such technology.

Triumph of the Nerds

I got some materials for my grid art project and I’m going to start working on it tomorrow. I think I planned out about an hour a day until it is due, however I think it won’t be quite that tedious.

In class we watched Triumph of the Nerds. This is a world I would never ever want to be in. I think it is absolutely fascinating however. I really have no technical computer knowledge so watching this movie was eye opening. It really is a whole different way of thinking, language and sub culture. I liked seeing such as young geeky Bill Gates. It is phenomenal to think that these people in the movie were just about my age when they were making it big in the computer industry. I also liked watching the excerpts of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Steve Jobs makes computers sound so magical, which to me they really are anyways, “there was something beyond what you see everyday.” He thought that this same spirit could be put into products. I really liked watching this movie so far and it is interesting to see the competitive nature of this business.