RE: Greg's post

I was more interested in the Kotz article than the "yBa" analysis until I read Greg's post. At the end of his comments on this article he referenced a review:

"Another review I found on the "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" show at the Tate Britain (2004 yBA exhibition) by Adrian Searle referred to the work as "Everything shouts" and "everything that doesnt, disapears". "

In the Gaywood article, he concludes with the encompassing notion that "popular art practice has attempted to imply that the pressures of market processing to a large extent override the historical credibility of that work." The relational currency of their work stems from the mythology which grounds the work in contemporary practice.

In an article on a "Freeze" retrospective, another journalist has noted that: "by portraying these artists by means of the codes of the myth that has been generated around them the perceived threat that they embody is dissipated and controlled. After all how much of a threat can they be if they are accepted and supported by the likes of the Walker Art centre and the British Council?"

These "shock artists" are being celebrated for their celebrity, but I call into question the potentiality of "everything shouting" being a culturally lasting quality when the major exchanges for art are predominantly in the Thomas-Kinkade-esque market. I'm not questioning the value of celebrity, but the sustaining potential for celebrity when the masses follow different trends. Is history written by the victors or by the avante-guard?

Gaywood has a lot to say. I would appreciate his saying it much less academically, however. That said, does anyone know of a dictionary and thesaurus product that can be loaded onto a hard drive, not requiring being online to use?


The Young British Artists didn’t see how they were pawns of the establishment. They feigned a subversive mien, but were made relevant, were invented, by an ad man, Charles Saatchi, whose economic interest supported the promotion of the artists in his collection. The YBA thought they were commenting on the Spectacle with their Duchampian appropriations, but they were actually and only agents of the Spectacle themselves.

I‘ve seen some Ybas’ artworks before and I did some more research about it yesterday. I can understand the artists’ theories and why they express art in these extreme forms. But I don’t like this kind of art.

I read some reports about the exhibition “Aftershock” in China (Mar. 2007) which was held 10 years after the exhibition “Sensation” in London. “Aftershock” awoke Chinese artists’ memories of a bunch of artworks emerged around year 2000 which were influenced by 90’s British contemporary art. But this stream of artworks just appeared for a very short period of time because of the totally different situations of China in 90’s from Britain. It lacks the cultural soil to grow this art in 90’s China. Since Duchamp, the post-modernism has been breaking through the tradition by challenging and rebelling it. Ybas tries to break people’s moral standards and society taboo and psychological taboo. In the 21st century, the anti-ybas force appeares. People got aesthetic fatigue with Ybas art style. The “Aftershock” was unshockable this time in China. Compare “Aftershock” with Venice biennial and Documenta Kassel in 2007, people can see the mainstream of art world is in a steady, skilled state. It causes Chinese artists to think about what kind of expression that artists should use? What they should care about are the art form and profundity of the theory and how to communicate with viewers, but not just extremes that provoke viewer’s eyes and nerve.

In the Kotz article, the author spoke about maximum sensory impact, which I think is video's stronghold. The ways video pieces are displayed in galleries and museums requires the viewer interaction from the viewer, from entering the space, moving around possible multiple projections, to deciphering sound and imagery. The fact that video is somewhat confined to a rectangle is not so bothersome, since we are accustomed to this in painting, photography, and everyday objects like television and computers. I did find it kind of funny that the video is not enough; the artists are also reproducing photographs and other documents of the experience for "the market" to take home.

I agree with Kotz's last line of her article, stating that video projection work was/ is "less of a disruption of mass-media signal than a sign of the times." The artists that use projection as their choice of medium are dealing directly with the digital culture we are currently in and have been moving towards in the last 20-30 years. Video work also plays on the fact that we are so bombarded with imagery on a daily basis, that for it to be effective, it has to be powerful. I think there is a definite influence of mass media on contemporary artists, but artists are also taking advantages of the tools of communication.

Dina!

Dina,
Can we show your lipstick and cutting videos in class today? If so, please bring them to class. Thanks, Ginney, Gabe and Victor

I found the article Video Projection: The Spaces In Between to be of interest to me, due to the fact that my work is video and performance. In response to Eames statement, that to many works are modeled after the moving picture, I think this is were the lack of interest to the audience is created. We are so familiar with video, television, movies, commercials, etc. that engaging the audience within the space (which is other than their living room or movie theatre) is the most difficult part of video art/ and video installation. When we go to a gallery and see a painting on the wall, how long do we spend with it? More than a minute, two minutes, five minutes? The expectation for the audience viewing video is predetermined by years of media conditioning.

I think it is interesting that many question/questioned video as an art medium, just as photography was viewed in the late 70's early 80's. Is this due to their relationship to mass media and image/media culture? Where these mediums to "familiar" to be termed art?

Video Projection/ Diana Thater

Reading about Video Projection and Diana Thater it reminded me a lot about Walter Benjamin whom we talked about last semester. While I looked into his works online I found Diana Thater's video projects which build on Walter Benjamin's analysis that is about how we perceive the world while reinflecting our understanding of nature. Using the elemental color palette of video red, green, and blue, her works show a technologically mediated nature and are an example of the mechanics of media representation. Here is another example of one of her works that I thought fits into the reading on page 104 it says " While writers celebrate the "built- in instabilities" that disrupt Thater's system- the "skweded projector lenses", "strobing color separations" and "defective optical apparatus" and "distorted image" - they neglect the extent to which these instabilities are programmed, controlled, and designed to generate pictorial effects." This is very interesting when we look how well these pictorial effects are created..

http://209.32.200.23/thater/thaterframe.html


So, video projections are kind of the "new age" medium for contemporary artists, close to paint and cinema.
I have a question about her idea of video installations- how does she archive that the video speaks about itself?

Projected Art

In my experience, Tony Oursler has been the most successful in the use of projection. He has done an beautiful job marrying projection with a space. When I view works in a gallery, I do it quickly and return to investigate over and over taking little bits of information at a time. I find that video installations distract my flow through a gallery. They seem to require a longer initial investigation which leads me to skip them like a lengthy email. There is a distinct difference in the state of mind that I must be in to view art as opposed to viewing a film. Too many projected works are modeled too closely to the moving picture.

yBa as Critique (of?)

While I read the Gaywood essay I was understanding it as a kind of criticism of the yBa movement. Suggesting that it appropriated but inverted the anti-style of the dadaists and made it style. And appropriated the ready-made but stripped it of it's institutional critique to better compliment the ruling elite. And finally that their highly mediated representation was a mythology that didn't hold much correspondence to the substance of their work.

Then I re-read the title: "yBa as Critique" ... I doubt this means that their work constitutes a critique of the power and image focused marketplace. They are actually celebrating it:

The neo-Formalism apparent in their group shows at that time takes the corporate bull by the horns and glorifies in its participation within the private sector, exposing the guts of the sacred cow (as it were) that "is", that always was "Art."

Is this to say then that they were critiquing what art pretended to be, but never really was? Art was always to serve the elite? Art, and artists always existed as highly mediated representations, and there never was anything else?

On the other hand maybe they are criticizing the same thing their celebrating, why not?

After reading Gaywoods critique of the yBa culture, I decided to research some images of yBa artists onine. I found this piece "fuck face"1994 by Jake and Dinos Chapman. Gaywood states "One recurrent theme of repoted NB developments involves their use of "shock tactics". I could see this shocking a few folks. Another review I found on the "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" show at the Tate Britain (2004 yBA exhibition) by Adrian Searle referred to the work as "Everything shouts" and "everything that doesnt, disapears". It seems there is little room for subtlety within this "movement".

"yBa" vs "yBa"

…Levi-Strauss suggests that this culturally restricted sign currency communicates at a deep structural level the significances that preserve identity within and identification with that society through “conscious” symbolic signifying artworks.

Saatchi gallery website describes My Bed as Tracey Emin’s embarrassing glory; empty booze bottles, cigarette butts, stained sheets, etc, as an aftermath of a nervous breakdown by sharing her most personal space, revealing insecurity and imperfection like the rest of the world. Looking at Tracey Emin’s My Bed, for instance, at the Saatchi gallery in London, I sensed indifference not “embarrassing glory.”

Gaywood’s explanation of mediated identity in “young British art” gave me a sense of relief. My take of his stance was that institutions support the “readymade” aesthetic, re-appropriate it and juxtapose it to the market. “young British art” re-codified low value objects as aesthetic works for an audience of consumers by the support of the institutions. I am still perplexed as what really constitutes art: is the definition of artwork intertwined with notions of historic time, place (institutions) and mass culture –or does art have a life of its own independent of these constraints? How does commercial value of a work affect its artistic worth? Are we not living in a readymade society with prefabricated set of identities to assume….?

Ever wade through Jell-o?

I have to say that Gaywood was particularly dense. After reading it I sat bleary-eyed staring at my husband wondering aloud whether what I'd read was absurdly profound or absurdly incomprehensible. I then read to him a few sentences to illustrate my point. His blank expression spoke volumes and his eventual reply was, "Maybe you should have a glass of wine before re-reading it."

Gaywood seems to applaud the "transgressive art" of the NBs and the yBas yet writes in such a way that the appeal of his writing style could only appeal to the learned and educated class which the NBs seem to be scorning. I mean, this guy uses a string of $50 words when a handful of carefully chosen $3 words would do nicely. And is it ironic that the NBs and yBas snub post-modernism and align themselves with Duchamp but are summarily purchased by the likes of Charles Saatchi and the "neo-Bourgeois?" I mean, wasn’t Duchamp was trying to subvert the system while the NBs overtly seek the commodification of kitsch?

I'm not sure exactly if the Kotz article is unintentionally drawing a parallel between the “Freeze” type stuff and the proliferation of video art although she does speak directly to the awkwardness of “the high-tech formats of modern display culture” merging with “the older forms of connoisseurship and exhibition value associated with unique objects” and further when describing the incorporation of video in the gallery and museum culture.