I've been reading Richard Sennett's book, "The Fall of Public Man," (Alfred A Knopf, 1977.) (The book was included in one of the course syllabi of Anthony Raynsford, the architectural historian who will be joining SJSU in the Fall.) This paragraph seemed to address one of the chief problems I have faced for many years as an art professor: the deep-seated belief among students and others that the sole purpose of art is to "express" the "inner psyche" of its maker, rather than to find and interpret interesting relationships among the objects and ideas of the world through which the artist navigates. Sennett writes:
Few people today would claim that their psychic life arises by spontaneous generation, independent of social conditions and environmental influences. Nevertheless, the psyche is treated as though it had an inner life of its own. This psychic life is seen as so precious and so delicate that it will wither if exposed to the harsh realities of the social world, and will flower only to the extent that it is protected and isolated. Each person's self has become his principal burden; to know oneself has become an end, instead of a means through which one knows the world. And precisely because we are so self-absorbed, it is extremely difficult for us to arrive at a private principle, to give any clear account to ourselves or to others of what our personalities are. The reason is that, the more privatized the psyche, the less it is stimulated, and the more difficult it is for us to feel or to express feeling.
And later, he continues:
Masses of people are concerned with their single life-histories and particular emotions as never; this concern has proved to be a trap rather than a liberation.
The search for a new "category" other than "art", from my prior post, could perhaps involve the prerequisite that the new thing not be about "self-expression".
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
Escaping the Category of "Art"
On the subject of Olafur Eliasson, Peter Schjeldahl says:
"...there should be a nice, clean, special word other than "art" for what he does, to set him apart. There won't be. "Art" has become the promiscuous catchall for anything artificial that meets no practical need but which we like, or are presumed or supposed to like."
-from his review of the Olafur Eliasson retrospective, the New Yorker, April 28, 2008.
"...there should be a nice, clean, special word other than "art" for what he does, to set him apart. There won't be. "Art" has become the promiscuous catchall for anything artificial that meets no practical need but which we like, or are presumed or supposed to like."
-from his review of the Olafur Eliasson retrospective, the New Yorker, April 28, 2008.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Me and Will Oldham!
I got to meet a longtime hero, musician Will Oldham, today. He's doing a residency at Headlands Center for the Arts. He said he's never done this sort of thing before. I asked him to pretend like he was my best buddy long enough to get a picture, so he did:
Me and Bonnie Prince Billy, AKA Will Oldham
He had a brand new rocking chair from Target, and a banana, in preparation for being on display all day at the Headlands Open House. He talked about the elephant seals you could hear from his studio. He said something like, "Imagine the top fifteen most horrible sounds you've ever heard: vomiting, screaming, etc. The cute little baby elephant seal looks up at you with its massive black eyes and then suddenly makes all fifteen of those noises in succession."
I hope he doesn't mind my paraphrasing him.
Me and Bonnie Prince Billy, AKA Will Oldham
He had a brand new rocking chair from Target, and a banana, in preparation for being on display all day at the Headlands Open House. He talked about the elephant seals you could hear from his studio. He said something like, "Imagine the top fifteen most horrible sounds you've ever heard: vomiting, screaming, etc. The cute little baby elephant seal looks up at you with its massive black eyes and then suddenly makes all fifteen of those noises in succession."
I hope he doesn't mind my paraphrasing him.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
New Artist's Statement
In the process of applying for a couple of residencies, I ended up writing a new artist's statement. It's not radically different from my others, but hopefully clearer. One residency asked for a 400 word statement. This one is 403. They can ignore the last three words.
I'm posting this because I edit harder when I have the possibility of being embarassed by something I've written. This is a temporary place to edit it before I put it up on the website.
Statement March 27, 2008
I make objects and environments, and vector-based drawings that also turn into objects such as didactic-looking wall charts, enameled metal tiles, or wallpaper. I have also produced some animations with the help of another artist. Most of my work explores our apparent cultural preference for virtual or simulated experiences and things in favour of their “authentic” or “natural” counterparts.
I intend for most of my projects to appear as awkward, misguided solutions to contemporary problems. For example, when I designed the galvanized and chain-link trees depicted in Surrogate: Modular Outdoor Fixture after Hurricane Katrina, I imagined a mass shipment of soulless steel trees issued by the government to restore the devastated Louisiana landscape. Another piece, Ride, supposes that we might prefer the predictable, virtual experience of riding a mechanized “bucking bronco” ride rather than the live horse that plods in circles below, powering the contraption.
Crucial to all of my projects is the choice of materials that will best communicate a given idea. I am most skilled as a woodworker, but I need to learn how to work with a new material for every new project. I approve of sculptor Tony Cragg’s attitude towards materials use. He has written:
Because of the way and speed in which we produce new materials and objects, we do not have the time to develop a meaningful relationship with these materials. Trying to give these things more meaning, mythology and poetry is the clear predicate of art in this century.
Rather than forming a material in order to infuse it with meaning, though, I’m interested in allowing the industrial or commercial connotations of a material to direct the meaning of the artwork. I find it hard to distinguish between materials and products, since most materials I purchase are in no way raw, but are coherent things in themselves, laden with associations.
I’m fascinated by the notion of style, which I consider an inevitable byproduct of any juxtaposition, accumulation, shaping or connection of materials. Even as I intentionally design dysfunctional solutions to ambiguous problems, I try to do so elegantly, saturating each object with art-historical (and design-historical) references. These range from the aesthetics of museum display and “cabinets of wonder” in my early kinetic pieces (please see Quicktime movies on my website, http://www.shannonwright.org) to the Victorian decorative excess in my wallpaper that glorifies vigorously healthy urinary systems. This wallpaper and several upcoming pieces resemble designed products for mass consumption, while also attempting to critique the culture that would encourage their production.
I'm posting this because I edit harder when I have the possibility of being embarassed by something I've written. This is a temporary place to edit it before I put it up on the website.
Statement March 27, 2008
I make objects and environments, and vector-based drawings that also turn into objects such as didactic-looking wall charts, enameled metal tiles, or wallpaper. I have also produced some animations with the help of another artist. Most of my work explores our apparent cultural preference for virtual or simulated experiences and things in favour of their “authentic” or “natural” counterparts.
I intend for most of my projects to appear as awkward, misguided solutions to contemporary problems. For example, when I designed the galvanized and chain-link trees depicted in Surrogate: Modular Outdoor Fixture after Hurricane Katrina, I imagined a mass shipment of soulless steel trees issued by the government to restore the devastated Louisiana landscape. Another piece, Ride, supposes that we might prefer the predictable, virtual experience of riding a mechanized “bucking bronco” ride rather than the live horse that plods in circles below, powering the contraption.
Crucial to all of my projects is the choice of materials that will best communicate a given idea. I am most skilled as a woodworker, but I need to learn how to work with a new material for every new project. I approve of sculptor Tony Cragg’s attitude towards materials use. He has written:
Because of the way and speed in which we produce new materials and objects, we do not have the time to develop a meaningful relationship with these materials. Trying to give these things more meaning, mythology and poetry is the clear predicate of art in this century.
Rather than forming a material in order to infuse it with meaning, though, I’m interested in allowing the industrial or commercial connotations of a material to direct the meaning of the artwork. I find it hard to distinguish between materials and products, since most materials I purchase are in no way raw, but are coherent things in themselves, laden with associations.
I’m fascinated by the notion of style, which I consider an inevitable byproduct of any juxtaposition, accumulation, shaping or connection of materials. Even as I intentionally design dysfunctional solutions to ambiguous problems, I try to do so elegantly, saturating each object with art-historical (and design-historical) references. These range from the aesthetics of museum display and “cabinets of wonder” in my early kinetic pieces (please see Quicktime movies on my website, http://www.shannonwright.org) to the Victorian decorative excess in my wallpaper that glorifies vigorously healthy urinary systems. This wallpaper and several upcoming pieces resemble designed products for mass consumption, while also attempting to critique the culture that would encourage their production.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Some Artists Who Confound our Perception of Space (and some that I just like for other reasons).
Paul Klee
I came across this watercolour painting by Paul Klee for the first time the other day. If I've seen it before, I don't remember it. I think it's a brilliant analysis/ parody of the conventions of pictorial space, with its shifting horizon lines and transparencies. The application of the "scientific" perspective-construction approach to a flat stick-figure is cool, and like so much of Klee's work, the painting seems uncannily "ahead of its time".
Uncomposed Objects in Space, 1929
Thomas Huber
(b. Zurich, 1955)
I first discovered Thomas Huber's work around 1990, and his work has continued to amaze me ever since. I'm particularly interested in his experimentation with different (and conflicting) levels of pictorial space "beyond" the picture plane. As described on Galerie Akinci's website,
Huber conceives of the pictorial space as a place to live. The fact that paintings are open on the spectator's side means that the spectator can enter the picture. According to Huber, the painting is not a surface but a boundary, a dividing-line between appearance and reality.
I'm also interested in the references to "instruction" in Huber's work-- each painting seems to function (self-consciously and with ironic intent) as a sort of fable.
Lachen und Weinen, 1996
Winkelsumme,2003
Entresol, 2003
Paolo Uccello
(b. circa 1397)
The Miracle of the Profaned Host (1467-1468, tempera on wood)
For many years, I've been fascinated by Uccello's use of cutaway views (and a sort of accordion-folded perspective) in this painting, allowing him to show multiple, seemingly discrete stories simultaneously.
Royksopp Video
The beautiful video by H5 of France for Royksopp's song, "Remind Me", achieves everything I always wanted to do with microscopic-to-macroscopic vantage points, but better, in a couple of minutes. Play video.
Maginot Line
Below: murals and frescoes from the underground tunnels of the Maginot Line.
From Wikipedia:
The Maginot Line (IPA: [maʒi'noː], named after French minister of defense André Maginot) was a line of concrete fortifications, tank obstacles, artillery casemates, machine gun posts, and other defenses, which France constructed along its borders with Germany and Italy, in the light of experience from World War I, and in the run-up to World War II. Generally the term describes either the entire system or just the defenses facing Germany, while the Alpine Line is used for the Franco-Italian defenses.
I really like the earnestness of these attempts to create illusionistic "outdoor" spaces beyond the claustrophobic tunnel walls. And the fact that art, in this case, acquires the status of a necessity-- a contributor to the mental health of the tunnel occupants.
Yi Eung-nok
Korean, born 1808
This is an eight-panel screen. I am inferring that the objects are depicted at approximately "real" scale. I am intrigued by the choice of one-point perspective, and how the painting suggests only a slight deepening of the space of the room. My initial take on the stacks of paper and knick-knacks was that they appeared surprisingly mundane and contemporary as subject matter. Apparently, though, these objects are "symbols of the scholar's life, evoking the Confucian ideal of self-cultivation as a duty to society" (Kenneth Baker.)
Rik Hagt
I saw this artist's work for the first time the other day, on a Dutch blog that also showed a few images of my own work. I think that what attracted me to this painting was my interest in "style", as a set of visual characteristics that allow us to immediately pinpoint the time period in which an object was made. Hagt's methodical rendering of the quirky bedspread pattern (not once, but twice), gives the room a sense of austerity. There is something about painting a picture of a patterned fabric that is sort of like painting a picture of a painting-- an interpretation of an abstraction.
Damian Ortega
This appears to be "3-D" version of the early 20th century attempts to capture rapid movement in a static painting (such as Duchamp's "The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes" of 1912, below.) I like how all the chair parts seem to compete with one another for space, and the fact that Ortega carried through with the tedious joinery necessary to realize this piece.
Marcel Duchamp
The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes, 1912
Kenny Hunter
(b. Edinburgh, Scotland 1962)
This Scottish artist stylizes his figures in a way that seems to refer simultaneously to a sort of Lego aesthetic, and to the kinds of figures one might see in Chinese propaganda posters. The contexts of the figures suggest the history of "the monument", but the figures' attitudes suggest humility and isolation. Each figure's "gaze" seems to be contained within the space that is claimed by the sculpture.
Seated Couple
Reclining Man, 2004
I came across this watercolour painting by Paul Klee for the first time the other day. If I've seen it before, I don't remember it. I think it's a brilliant analysis/ parody of the conventions of pictorial space, with its shifting horizon lines and transparencies. The application of the "scientific" perspective-construction approach to a flat stick-figure is cool, and like so much of Klee's work, the painting seems uncannily "ahead of its time".
Uncomposed Objects in Space, 1929Thomas Huber
(b. Zurich, 1955)
I first discovered Thomas Huber's work around 1990, and his work has continued to amaze me ever since. I'm particularly interested in his experimentation with different (and conflicting) levels of pictorial space "beyond" the picture plane. As described on Galerie Akinci's website,
Huber conceives of the pictorial space as a place to live. The fact that paintings are open on the spectator's side means that the spectator can enter the picture. According to Huber, the painting is not a surface but a boundary, a dividing-line between appearance and reality.
I'm also interested in the references to "instruction" in Huber's work-- each painting seems to function (self-consciously and with ironic intent) as a sort of fable.
Lachen und Weinen, 1996
Winkelsumme,2003
Entresol, 2003Paolo Uccello
(b. circa 1397)
The Miracle of the Profaned Host (1467-1468, tempera on wood)
For many years, I've been fascinated by Uccello's use of cutaway views (and a sort of accordion-folded perspective) in this painting, allowing him to show multiple, seemingly discrete stories simultaneously.
Royksopp Video
The beautiful video by H5 of France for Royksopp's song, "Remind Me", achieves everything I always wanted to do with microscopic-to-macroscopic vantage points, but better, in a couple of minutes. Play video.
Maginot Line
Below: murals and frescoes from the underground tunnels of the Maginot Line.
From Wikipedia:
The Maginot Line (IPA: [maʒi'noː], named after French minister of defense André Maginot) was a line of concrete fortifications, tank obstacles, artillery casemates, machine gun posts, and other defenses, which France constructed along its borders with Germany and Italy, in the light of experience from World War I, and in the run-up to World War II. Generally the term describes either the entire system or just the defenses facing Germany, while the Alpine Line is used for the Franco-Italian defenses.
I really like the earnestness of these attempts to create illusionistic "outdoor" spaces beyond the claustrophobic tunnel walls. And the fact that art, in this case, acquires the status of a necessity-- a contributor to the mental health of the tunnel occupants.
Yi Eung-nok
Korean, born 1808
This is an eight-panel screen. I am inferring that the objects are depicted at approximately "real" scale. I am intrigued by the choice of one-point perspective, and how the painting suggests only a slight deepening of the space of the room. My initial take on the stacks of paper and knick-knacks was that they appeared surprisingly mundane and contemporary as subject matter. Apparently, though, these objects are "symbols of the scholar's life, evoking the Confucian ideal of self-cultivation as a duty to society" (Kenneth Baker.)
Rik Hagt
I saw this artist's work for the first time the other day, on a Dutch blog that also showed a few images of my own work. I think that what attracted me to this painting was my interest in "style", as a set of visual characteristics that allow us to immediately pinpoint the time period in which an object was made. Hagt's methodical rendering of the quirky bedspread pattern (not once, but twice), gives the room a sense of austerity. There is something about painting a picture of a patterned fabric that is sort of like painting a picture of a painting-- an interpretation of an abstraction.
Damian Ortega
This appears to be "3-D" version of the early 20th century attempts to capture rapid movement in a static painting (such as Duchamp's "The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes" of 1912, below.) I like how all the chair parts seem to compete with one another for space, and the fact that Ortega carried through with the tedious joinery necessary to realize this piece.
Marcel Duchamp
The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes, 1912Kenny Hunter
(b. Edinburgh, Scotland 1962)
This Scottish artist stylizes his figures in a way that seems to refer simultaneously to a sort of Lego aesthetic, and to the kinds of figures one might see in Chinese propaganda posters. The contexts of the figures suggest the history of "the monument", but the figures' attitudes suggest humility and isolation. Each figure's "gaze" seems to be contained within the space that is claimed by the sculpture.
Seated Couple
Reclining Man, 2004
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