General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAnother fabulous Friday Afternoon Challenge: Art “Happens!”
Art happens in unexpected or new locales when artists take a fresh look at places where it can be created and/or exhibited. Can you identify these places/events?
...and, dear gentlefolks, please do not cheat and guess...
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jberryhill
(62,444 posts)#2 has to be in one of the opulent Arab states - Qatar?
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)CTyankee
(63,912 posts)jberryhill
(62,444 posts)So, like, what do I win?
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)malaise
(269,157 posts)pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)CTyankee
(63,912 posts)Tansy_Gold
(17,868 posts)Inflatable Lobster in Versailles
Tansy_Gold
(17,868 posts)Not that I know who or what he is. . . .
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)Do you like his work?
Tansy_Gold
(17,868 posts)I have no clue if I would like his work (but probably not if this is a sample -- it's just not my style) but all I did was google "Inflated Lobster" and there it was!
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)I find his rationale interesting, even in the face of a lot French people having heart attacks over it!
I think he was trying to tie "wretched excess" from our era to the 18th century of France's Marie Antoinette and Louis the 14th, etc.
I guess the question is: should art aim to be political?
What do you think?
Tansy_Gold
(17,868 posts)Whether it DOES or not is another.
And then the third question is does it succeed.
In fact, I wrote a paper on it a few years ago --
"The picture is political: Art and the power of disempowerment."
(Remember, I told you I'd taken a couple of "art appreciation" courses, though my major is sociology.)
Picasso's "Guernica" is certainly political. Virtually all of Sue Coe's is political. Kathe Kollwitz. Goya's "Third of May, 1808."
And so I wrote:
. . . The pictures shocked. The lush-shadowed Renaissance light on womens faces, the forceful fountain of blood from the mans throat. Strength in the female figures, determination without hesitation, without fear. Exquisite skill from the artists hand, unexpected. Later, the head in the basket like a ripe melon or fresh loaf of bread, the glances over the shoulders, the sword held comfortably with an eerie familiarity.
Artemisia Gentileschi painted five aspects of the biblical story of Judith, the beautiful and wealthy widow who did Gods bidding and saved her people from the tyrant Holofernes. But Artemisias Judith looks nothing like an obedient handmaiden; she challenges conventional notions as much today as she did in 1614. She dares assert woman as strength, woman as actor, woman as victor.
And then I closed the paper with
The picture shocks. The pun is on the Fauves, the beast in the livid color. Wolf-mother, starving even as she provides suckle to those who are gone. Hands, the tool of the human, guillotined by the inhuman. Rights and lefts severed.
The image comes to us as a whole. Worth far more than a thousand words, it strikes us visually and viscerally. We can turn away, but we cannot erase. If we do not turn away, we may think. We may explore. We may learn who the artist is and what she or he has meant to convey. But first we must look, and many of us choose not to.
Instead we take our art in manageable portions that do not disturb, do not shock, do not make us think that we are wrong or that they make us wrong. We look at Guernica and we do not understand. We see the pieces and parts, the dismembered and the disembodied, and we do not know that this is reality. We cannot know, we cannot allow ourselves to know. To know is to become part of the horror, the truth, the awful and terrible and hideous. They, who wield the power to have and to hold, cannot let us see the horror that they make of and for us, for then we would see the horror that they are and we might turn the power against them.
And even we who do know and do see, we are afraid, for they still wield the power. We do not yet know how to grasp Judiths sword, but we must learn, or it will sever our hands.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)I have always, always known this...
I did do a paper on Judith and Holofernes in a grad school course and I remarked on how Gentilileschi's Judith has so much more blood and gore than Caravaggio's. I cited the fact of her rape as a possible reason for her more graphic portrayal than Caravaggio's. I think it is interesting...
Tansy_Gold
(17,868 posts)You may remember, and I've lost it in my notes, but I seem to recall from another paper or something, that Gentileschi had painted one version of the beheading, then discussed the actual angle of the parabola(?) the arterial blood would spray with someone famous -- Galileo? Leonardo? I don't remember now -- and having learned that the angle was wrong in the first version, she painted another that got it right.
I know, i know, gory details.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)The "female gaze" if you will...
Did you know she was a rape victim?
Tansy_Gold
(17,868 posts)My Whitney Chadwick's "Women, Art, and Society" is on the bookshelf to my left, and I have a copy of Frederika Jacobs "Defining the Renaissance Virtuosa" around here somewhere. I discovered it and used it as a resource for one of my "Women in Art" papers, and the professor then adopted it as a text for future classes.
I'm not so sure it was a "female gaze" so much as a "female experience" Gentileschi brought to her work. Instead of painting FOR a male gaze she painted FROM a woman's experience, and that's what made her really radical.
But don't get me started, because eventually I'll get into territory I really know nothing about and then you'll know me for the intellectual fraud that I am!!
Aerows
(39,961 posts)Is *EXCEPTIONALLY* powerful, and beautiful. Thanks for posting it, I'd not seen that before.
Tansy_Gold
(17,868 posts)The first thing I noticed when I saw it was the way Judith is posed with the sword. She's just used it to decapitate the man, but she has it comfortably hoisted to her shoulder. Given the way she and Abra are alert, as if anticipating discovery in their deed, she looks as if she'd have no qualms using the weapon again.
Aerows
(39,961 posts)Sometimes beauty just for beauty's sake is wonderful (like elegant architecture or sculpture), but it's also very intriguing when an artist can capture the political milieu and transform it into a statement.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)It can be music, painting, architecture, dance, theatre...but it always DOES...
This is why I always GO to art when I am in despair and feel without hope. I know there is co-suffering there and a certain solace that I can't get elsewhere. It happens. I can't imagine a life without it...
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)I can't remember his name, but the people usually don't have clothes on.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)jberryhill
(62,444 posts)I swear, I don't cheat at these things.
(but I do keep the thread kicked )
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)thanks for the kick, tho!
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)This is the stuff they would undoubtedly like.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)I realize this is a bit "out there." But I often do classic stuff which I love and I know lots of other people love. Do come back! I have a pretty broad background in art and I love the old classics. It will be fun for you I think...
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)You know, that guy? Who does that one sort of thing? If it is that guy, and it was that sort of thing, then for people who like that kind of stuff, this is the stuff they would like. Unless it's that other guy, and not that first guy at all. In which case I was probably looking at something else entirely.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)and it ain't lemon peel...
frazzled
(18,402 posts)I didn't even have to cheat. I just the other day was (re) watching a film a friend of mine made of the installation. 50 tons of clothes!
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)There was one at the Grand Palais in Paris, tho.
Good for you! You know your art, that's for sure!
frazzled
(18,402 posts)And of course, that roof doesn't look at all like the delicate glass dome of the Grand Palais.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)frazzled
(18,402 posts)And a good friend of ours filmed the installation of the one in Paris. I just happened to be watching a video of it the other day (huge crane thing, or cherry picker, helps to pile the clothes that high). And I know Boltanski's work very well. Last year I made everyone laugh at a party (full of artists), because the hosts had put a big coatrack near the door and it collapsed, sending winter coats falling into heaps on the floor. People were shocked at first, but then I said: "Oh look, a Boltanski piece!" and everyone cracked up.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)And the meaning from this is so important. There are real people who wore these clothes. And they had real lives and gave their clothing to others...it is a stimulating thought...
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)CTyankee
(63,912 posts)CaliforniaPeggy
(149,702 posts)They are all wonderful!
Thank you for bringing these terrific threads to us every week, my dear CTyankee!
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)I like to see the new stuff that is out there. It's good and keeps us alive and kicking...
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)More of them here:
http://newyorkamera.com/?tag=naked-man-statues
Ed. to add project title and NYT link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/arts/design/19gormley.html?pagewanted=all
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)I love Gormley's works. I think they are really important and meaningful...
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)Any guesses out there?
Aerows
(39,961 posts)CTyankee
(63,912 posts)Aerows
(39,961 posts)It's driving me nuts. I was going to actually guess Brasilia, Brazil, but now that you've said Europe, I'm at a loss as to where I've seen it.
EDIT: I KNEW I'd seen that before, but just couldn't remember where. I cheated, though because it was driving me bananas, so I'll refrain from posting the answer. I really like architecture, and this is a very interesting photo.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)country should think about things that are outside of their immediate sphere!
It's a great photo, I agree! I was blown away when I first saw it a while back!
Aerows
(39,961 posts)There are many wonderful things in this world to behold.
And no, it's no fair to cheat
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)Aerows
(39,961 posts)But I would *LOVE* to!
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)And I mean that...what a country...I want to go back and see the rest of it...
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)Number two is in Europe. Number 4 is on an island...
malaise
(269,157 posts)Rec
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)Just a little bit...
Suich
(10,642 posts)CTyankee
(63,912 posts)I hope ya'll enjoyed this Friday's Challenge.
Another one for next Friday is already being cooked up for your delight/torment...hope you can visit it!