Reading the Vance essays is a confirmation to me that “the majority rules” when one is part of something immense, like the United States. I say the US because the money that the NEA received comes from the government, which really means the people or the US citizens (taxpayers) and to most of them art is portraiture and landscapes, anything other than that is not art. Especially 20 years ago when the country was much more conservative. Personally, I think if your artwork strikes a nerve with someone, the artist is headed in the right direction.
One thing I found so parallel with the AIDS reading is the between the line care
The AIDS reading was really interesting to me. Interesting and sad to see the statistics of how many deaths occurred while the government did nothing. It reminded me of Katrina in New Orleans where in both situations the people mostly affected where the minorities. people of color in New Orleans and (because of media stereotypes) gay minorities in the AIDS epidemic. There was 244 known deaths from aids in 1981 and it was not until 1987 and 1,123 deaths later when the government finally said something public about it. Twenty years later in New Orleans, a national disaster occurred and it still took 3 days for any assistance from the government. I think one point that can be made is not to vote republican!

Sexuality, Gender and Religion. A very touchy subjects for Americans, or should I say the right winged Americans. What I am most intriqued about is the power of the art and image. The mainstream of society is familiar with art, they know it is out there, but they do not necessarily understand it. Same goes for the issues presented in the week's articles.

I think it is interesting that in the case of the NEA debates, it is a question of whether or not the art is in a sense "appropriate" in a public sphere, and made/funded on the publice dime. As in regards to Mapplethorpe's work he is making a "sexual subculture visible". In the eyes of the conservative, it is one thing to know it (homosexuality) exist out "there" somewhere and that this is familiar ground for this subculture, but it is another to actually be drawn into this subculture through the arguable images. This subculture then becomes tangible and real and no longer in the closet (so to speak).

In response to the feminist article, it is interesting that the two feminist groups, the anitpornography and the fundamentlaist share a commonality, yet with different ideals.
"Both share a powerful desire to reshape cultural attitudes toward sexual imagery
as part of a larger program of political, social, and legal reform".
So it then becomes a questions of what is the best approach in reshaping these cultural attitudes. One by keeping the issue (prostitution) under the rug (antiporn feminist) or the other is exploring the issue and looking at it face on. The antipornographic feminist, MacKinnon, states that:
"It is one thing to talk about trafficking women, and it is another thing to
traffic women". She also debates that "Showing pornography sets women up for
harrasment and rape".
But what doesn't? In this cultural there are countless ways that women and girls are sexualized through media, advertising, clothing in department stores, child beauty pageants, etc.

A parrelel in both debates, NEA and the Michigan Law School, goes back to MacKinnon's statement about trafficking women-(in regards to a lifestyle or a pornographical act being tangible). It is one thing to know (homo/sexuality/prostituion, anti-religion) it's out there (talk about trafficking women), but it is another thing to actually endorse/engage in the act, and display this act in public domain.

The Vance articles on censorship make me question if there will ever be a possibility for artists to be funded again by the government? And if so are the requirements going to be stringent as to not allow the possibility for sexually offensive or pornographic images to be shown. Are artists who work in a political, sexual or social nature be restricted from receiving funding. Even though the work of Andre Serrano is responsible for this loss of funding was i feel that it is important for artists to constantly push the envelope and test limits. Which makes me think okay, thats been done now what's next.

CENSOR- WHAT?

After having watched the videos from last week's class and read Carole S. Vance's articles on War on Culture and Feminist Fundamntalism I find it quite amusing and shocking at the same time that we have to deal with the conflicts created by censorship that is in my opinion totally misplaced in the art world and a burden to free evolvment and creativity.
As the text says on page 129: " The fundamentalist attack on images in the art world must be recognized (...) to restore traditional social arrangements and reduce diversity." And: "(...) Images do stand for and motivate social change, the arena of representation is real ground for struggle."
I don't agree with that. The world lives through diveristy, change and innovtion. It lives through controversity and confrontation, though private expression and nonconformity. We need ART- especially provocative art- for that, to express our needs, thoughts and feelings. To understand and perceive society we need to be open for possible discomfort in discussions and pictures. I believe strong picutes (Art) and strong arguments are a neccesity for society to become a better one. How do we gain or develop if we never step out of our frame and old customs?!
The same is true for feminists oposed to pornographic pictures. I might have a different attitude concerning sexual issues through my european background since I see sex as a very important part in our life. Regarding the antipornography feminist's opinion, I don't believe in any of the threats that these pictures are supposed to create. In truth, I feel the opposite. What do we hide about it?
In this regard, I would like to mention Camille Paglia, who is a fellow feminist. She gives a very nice arguement to the antifeminin movement:

"whenever sexual freedom is sought or achieved, sadomasochism will not be far behind"; "rape is male power fighting female power"; and pornography is art.

Because most of my life I was openly lesbian, I totally understand men's passion for women. Women are beautiful and remote and unreachable. You feel desperate. There's nothing you can do to win their favor. The only thing men want is women's attention, and in nude dance clubs, they can get it for a moment.

The feminist line is, strippers and topless dancers are degraded, subordinated, and enslaved; they are victims, turned into objects by the display of their anatomy. But women are far from being victims -- women rule; they are in total control.

My whole life I've been gaga about beautiful women. That's why I have this angle on it -- I can see the way men see. White middle-class feminist rhetoric has been produced by professional women, lawyers, bookworms, and paper pushers who can't stand the fact -- it's unbearable to them -- that most men will still turn their heads and gasp when a beautiful women walks into the room and exposes a little tit and ass. It's a white, bourgeois prejudice to find the seductive wiggling of a butt degrading.

Even though I'm one of those supersmart white middle-class women, I don't have this jealousy. I'm strong enough as a woman to say that it's natural for a beautiful young girl walking into a room to capture the attention of all the men and women. That's an eternal human principle. It's not white male hetero-sexism. It's universal. All people admire youth and beauty. In the Greco-Roman tradition, youth and beauty are divine and worthy of worship. That's my theory. I'm saying that people go to strip clubs to see beauty and it's fucking elitist for people who go to museums to look at paintings and statues of beautiful bodies to denigrate strip clubs. These museum goers are staring at beautiful nude bodies for pleasure, and it's supposedly high art. The educated and rich get their kicks in museums. Most people who come to these mid-level or sleaze-level clubs are usually not highly educated literati. It's perfectly legitimate for them to want to look at beautiful female bodies.

I don't want a culture that says that a woman exposing her breasts is degrading. That's white middle-class bullshit. Men are fascinated and terrified by women's sexuality. That's why they pay prostitutes. The feminist analysis of prostitution says that men are using money as power over women. I'd say yes, that's all that men have. The money is a confession of weakness. They have to buy women's attention. It's not a sign of power; it's a sign of weakness.

The feminists who claim that woman are violated and diminished by this kind of format don't know what they're talking about. Current feminist rhetoric has gotten parched and bleached and sanitized and distorted. It doesn't allow for passion, for instinct, for lust, for beauty, for the awesomeness of nature. It's not sufficient to explain sex."

censorship

After reading the two Vance essays, I found myself trying to figure out what really constitutes censorship. In one section she says there is a kind of de facto censorship because it's only public funds that can reliably support a plurality of perspectives (private funds can be very easily be channeled to support only favored perspectives, and if there is no existing support for a minority perspective, a private funder is less likely to champion it). This is sort of a practical issue - but I don't think it answers the core of the issue (I can imagine Jesse Helms easily worming his way around that question). I think she states the central issue most clearly when it's a question of the implicit assumptions about a given artwork. For example:

If we are always afraid to offer a public defense of sexual images, then even in our rebuttal we have granted the right wing its most basic premise: sexuality is shameful and discrediting.

Once you give ground on the pronouncement that a given piece of art is "offensive" (in the judgment of some supposed authority), it's already been censored (whether or not it gets displayed).

I think all of the essays had this in common: a question of allowing some moral/political/economic authority to set the terms of the discussion. When coming from an outsider perspective it's common to accept the terms unconsciously, or as a prerequisite for joining the discussion. I agree there are many domains where this is an impossible position.

I really enjoyed the Deutsche essay, gives me a much clearer sense of the context of downtown San Jose, or the beige-square shopping centers all over suburbia. It's interesting how little we (the public) normally shape public space. Last week's FUSE speaker Red76 is a good reference for this stuff.

Thoughts

I recall once hearing in a philosophy class long ago, the phrase “nothing is good or bad except that thinking makes it so.” It is a laugh to consider this while reading. What conditions brought the thoughts into the minds of the politicians concerning the NEA grants. Was it really the art that they objected to, or the fact that they were somehow tied to it through government funding? If they had seen the art outside of that connection, would they have given it second thought or moved on to what’s for lunch?

The habit of urban planners to create revitalizations and restorations is from a subconscious fear of change. Granted this is not the case with all, just many. People are unsure of contemporary, they want new but not strange. This is why change happens in small steps and often masked by such terms as traditional.

What Greg mentioned, the use of art as propaganda, is an exercise of thought production: the showing of a work with the end goal of changing how people think. Could it be said that all art is for the production of thought and change of thought?

Vance, Crimp and Deutsche

One thing that really interested me in these readings is the role of art as a tool for propoganda. The use of artwork as a symbol of immorality for political agendas (images or preformance art considered obscene-sometimes these images are not shown to the public by the powers that be so that they can be mystified as a particular harmful evil), or the use of artwork as a symbol for political activists (example Silence=Death). If an artist is creating push-button type art, Should that artist have some responsibility for creating ammunition for political agendas? Is it enough to say "My part is to create dialog", and leave it at that or if you make a picture of a piss soaked christ, or a giant chocolate-christ should you actively engage in the political arena because your fame comes at the cost of the ramifications of that dialog (ie the loss NEA funding and the further privitization of the art world)?

Roberta Smith in NY Times

Dear All,

Hope you're not sitting around reading about art as I am. . . but I see that the article "Is It Art? And Who Decides?" by Roberta Smith--in the 9/16 Sunday NY Times--is floating around on the grad list. I find this interesting, particularly in light of our class discussion last week. Here are a few themes I found in Smith's article that we also addressed in our discussion/readings over the past two weeks.

1) How, since the 1960s, "site-specific" art has developed away from an interrogation of the physical site toward cultural critique (Kwon).

"Mr. Büchel’s dense, fraught creations, which compress masses of material and objects into historically charged labyrinthine environments through which viewers walk, climb and crawl."

2) The (limited) autonomy of the artist in the face of institutional pressure; the power of the curator today (Kwon, Brenson, Kester).

"The artist’s freedom includes the right to say, “This is not a work of art unless I say so.”

3) The YBA-effect, or, the artist-as-entrepreneur and the spectacle of art (Gaywood).

"The meltdown at Mass MOCA is sad for all concerned, yet is also a reflection of the changes wrought since the late 1960s, as installation art evolved from renegade form into an institutional staple of ever-bigger galleries and museums."

4) The effect of the 1990 "culture wars" on the relationship between the artist/museum/public today (this week's readings).

"It’s hard for a museum to recover when it forfeits the high ground. To this day the Corcoran Gallery of Art remains infamous for canceling its 1989 exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs after his work was denounced by Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina. To conservatives’ horror, the show had been partly financed by the National Endowment for the Arts."

Cheers,

Dr. b

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.