Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Reading Response


  1. All three three of these stem from the same sort of idea about breaking the social constructs of art. They all want to tear down the idea of “high art” and bring it back to the minimalist aspects of daily life. Futurists emphasize change, flux, and indeterminacy in their work. The act of liberating themselves from the social norms. Dada believe thats its the fundamentals of culture that need to be changed, that logic has imprisoned the mind to look at art either as good or bad. Lastly the Fluxus look at art as an everyday occurrence in life, that the very simplistic nature of art is the form that is shown naturally.
  2. During the 20th century many artists are put down for their conventional art and united as a force against the social constructs of high art. The main goals of using the body was to use the most natural, everyday contact piece that we can think of, which is the body. It taps into the primitive and minimalistic sense because it doesn’t necessarily focus on aesthetics but the sound, movement and actions surrounding the body.
  3. Performance art was not a medium at this time because people thought it was controversial and pushed the barriers of social acceptance. A lot of works done during this time were in secret or were consequences because of these art practices.
  4. Conceptual art is when ideas are the main focus of the work rather than the actual aesthetic or pleasing the audience.
  5. I’d say that conceptual art really confronted the Late Modernists by twisting their beliefs into something that deems true like the ideas over appearance. That there is a lot more to a piece of art than the way it looks, by creating a classist system in art itself is demeaning and unacceptable since it tells people which ideas are deemed better than others. I think these artist rebelled because they were fed up with being criticized for their work that is just as good if not more conceptually aware than a painting by itself.
  6. I believe that performance art has been so left out because people cannot categorize and understand the ideas of someone else. It is a lot easier to see someone ideas and feel it being pleasing to you or displeasing but watching a performance of it creates a different dimension where one is enveloped within the performance itself. This makes it harder to deem a performance wrong or right and therefore is looked at as all bad because they can’t understand if there even is a difference at all. It is easier for humans to categorize than just accept the differences.
  7. The futurists focus on the liberation of oneself to the established social norms. By creating movement in this sense they are creating new art forms, not new art. Matter is constantly changing just like the movement in our body, experience nature as a process and the most basic process of nature is the movement of a body. On the other hand Dada confronts the social construction itself and question it’s legitimacy. By using chance and movement, they are turning to the absurd, naive, primitive effects created by chance.
  8. Living art became so popular in the 60’s because the idea of the happening. That the performers and the audience are apart of the momentary movement, sound and smells of this performance. A happening is the in moment feeling that one can only experience at that moment in time.
  9. Chance operations are extremely important to the artist process because it stops from being too aesthetically pleasing and the ego of the artist. It mimics nature in that it is always changing and at random therefore is a force of nature that the artist cannot control. This being said the force of nature is than deemed as art in the performance to make it more apart of the everyday experience.
  10. John Cage is a primary influence as well as duchamp because he mimicks the same principals of the Zen metaphysics, in the process and change that the world is constantly in. This unifying force integrates all life activities within the concept of nature.  Duchamp brings up “retinal art” by describing art that was only visual, this was in comparison to his ready made work. He said that the difference between the “retinal art” and his ready made is that it reflected his sense of irony, humor, and ambiguity.
  11. Klein used people's bodies as living paint brushes and he stated, “at my direction the flesh itself applied the colour to the surface and with perfect exactness”. Manzoni in a very similar way to Klein believe it was essential to reveal the process of art, however Manzoni believed it was based on the affirmation of the body itself as a valid art material, the everyday reality of the body the functions and forms. Schneemann’s Meat Joy used blood of meat carcasses instead of paint to cover the bodies.
  12. Joseph Beuys a german artist who believed that art should effectively transform people’s everyday lives. He focus on the idea of revolutionizing human thought. Used passion plays and objects to create metaphorical protagonists in his performances. I think that he chose to do this piece because it is the basis of america itself, the very primitive and basic idea of being apart of nature, in this case the coyote. He used this piece to become a transformation of ideology into the idea of freedom itself.

1 comment:

  1. Madison - good response. One thought that you did not mention and we have not really discussed YET - is how women artists actively adopted body art and video art--- why? bc women were and still are in most cases - left out of the canon of high art -- who are the majority of artists in the museums? .... it is and it has changed but white males dominate. Stepping outside of the dominant and traditional forms of painting and sculpture was ONE way of making new work.

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