Global Networks

Global Networks was made by Mark Lombardi. He calls his diagrams Narrative Structures. They are a type of graph drawings, but in Lombardi's historical diagrams, each node or connection was drawn from news stories from reputable media organizations. The exhibit has traveled to nine museums over 2003–2005. It is quite interesting how he connects all these stories into a web like piece. This piece makes me think of how everything in the world is interconnected but you just don't realize it. It might not be the most visually appealing piece but it definitely makes you think.

Never Mind That Noise You Heard

This piece Never Mind That Noise You Heard is a quite interesting piece. It was put together by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. It is currently in the Stedejik Museum. The piece comes from investigations of the artists into how power, militarism, and war are encoded in to sound. The design of the piece creates a unique musical composition. I really like this piece because it puts together two things with the music of it and the visual. It is definitely not like anything we have looked at before in class.

Marcus Coates

Marcus Coates is a very unusual artist to say the least.  I would definitely call him a performance artist. What he does is  descends into the ‘lower world’ and consults the birds and animals that he encounters there. Usually they respond in cryptic clues; uncharacteristic behaviour is what he is looking out for, which he then does his best to interpret for his audience on his return. The videos that we watched of him were really wacky and I could not help but laugh. I'm not sure how much of art this is but it definitely has a little bit of comedy in it.

Embankment

This piece is called Embankment by Rachel Whiteread premeired in the Tate Modern. It consists of some 14,000 transluscent, white polyethylene boxes stacked in various ways; some in very tall mountain-like peaks and others in lower, rectangular, more levelled arrangements. This piece looks truly spectacular from the picture it reminds me of legos that everyone used to play with as a kid. It is truly a fascinating piece

A Day at the Met

Over my Thanksgiving break I went to the Museum of Metropolitan Art in New York City. For those that have never been there before it s a huge museum and it is almost impossible to see and comprehend everything in one day. So I decided to pick things that really caught my eye or  gathered my interest as I walked by. These are only a few pictures of what I saw at museum.


This first piece is a piece of ancient history. It is the armor that King Henry VIII, king of England wore when they went to battle. I thought it was very interesting because I remember learning about him in my high school history classes. This armor is the earliest dated example from the Royal Workshops at Greenwich, which were established in 1514 . I think it's amazing to be able to have something that has survived that long, for that reason alone it is a great work of art. There is a whole room of armor at the museum.



The next picture that grabbed my attention was from an exhibition that was going on of John Baldesseri. His name captured me alone to look at the exhibit because we learned about him in class. The picture consists of his hands framing New York Harbor in 1971. It is very interesting because he points out Hudson River pier which used to be a very busy port but has since vanished. To me it was like a little kid when they make this image and like imagine things and its as if he imagines the port not there which eventually happens.




This is a picture of the Christmas nativity scene with the tree in the background and it just caught my eye as I walked by it because it was gorgeous. It reminded me of when I get my own tree with my family. It might not compare to the tree in Rockefeller center but it is very beautiful and gets you into the mood for Christmas season. (Even though I went over Thanksgiving Break)



The last picture that I was really interested in was this Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue by Georgia O'Keeffe. I knew as I walked by it that I had somewhere seen it before. Then I realized that I actually had a copy of it in my grandmother's basement. I thought this summed up my trip to the Museum pretty well because you never know what you are going to see there. It has beautiful works of art from the past couple of centuries that you probably have seen on television or in a magazine or something. The trip was a lot of fun and I recommend that anyone go and visit it because it has something for everyone.

An Oak Tree

This is a very interesting piece done by Michael Craig-Martin in 1973. This piece is made up of two objects, a glass of water on a glass shelf. As simple as this piece may look it is actually rather complex from the perspective of the artist. He believes that the pieces is " a glass of water into a full-grown oak tree without altering the accidents of the glass of water," and explains that "the actual oak tree is physically present but in the form of the glass of water." It seems very strange to get such a complex idea from a simple piece but you really just have to believe what the artist is telling you and go with it. Once you know what to visualize and think about it is a very interesting piece and for myself it sparks a lot of thought.

Custodians of Culture - Schoolyard Art: Playing Fair Without the Referee

This speech by Dave Hickey has a very interesting take on the way the modern art world has been running lately. He first starts his speech talking about Dr. J the famous basketball player, and how he used to call fouls on himself and how he always played by the rules because he always wanted to play in the pros. He applies this to the art world in a very simple matter, artists should be in it for the art not for the money that the art will make. He is very witty in his speech which probably comes from his background as a professor at the University of Nevada. He says that art can be a lucrative business but it should not be just for profitable gain. He talks about how non-commerical art can be very beneficial for art shows and it makes them money.  HE says how art has changed since the 1970's and now it is much more post-modernism. His speech drags on a little bit and is hard to understand the whole thing but the I think the gist of it talks about how art has changed and it is all about money now. 

Shibboleth

Shibboleth by Doris Salcedo in the middle of Turbine Hall, the main entrance lobby of Tate Modern in London. Salcedo's installation took the form of a 548-foot long crack in the floor of the Turbine Hall, initially a very small crack and eventually widening to a few inches and around two feet deep. The crack was made by opening up the floor and then by inserting a cast from a Colombian rock face. The piece is supposed to represent immigration and segregation. The piece is quite interesting and every time I see it reminds me of an earthquake. It is quite remarkable how people can look at one thing and get so many different symbolic meanings from it.

Public in Art

Using public places and turning architecture into art is very inspiring. Place like the hills and valleys look great in someone house or at a place of buisness. Using people as art is another thing. This turns just regular art that can be seen in homes into art that can be found in museums. Damien Hirst's twin art is an example of using the people for art. He uses a set of twins wearing and doing the same thing under a similar pattern of dots. Using people as art brings an image to a more personal level. The expression of the people help portray what the artist is also trying to say in terms of emotion. This helps the veiwer become closer to the artwork and helps the artist depict the feelings in teh artwork much easier.

John Baldesseri

John Baldesarri is a renown conceptual artist. I believe that this is called Fissures and ribbons. Much of Baldessari's work involves pointing, in which he tells the viewer not only what to look at but how to make selections and comparisons, often simply for the sake of doing so. This is exactly what he is doing in this picture. He adds to images to paintings, I presume to emphasize what he wants you to be looking at. Or maybe he just wants you to block those people out, so he changes the color of their faces. It is very intriguing to look at it, just because the colors pop out at you. 

The Mona Lisa Curse

The Mona Lisa Curse was a documentary film by Robert Hughes and it brought up some very interesting questions. It proposes the idea that contemporary art is now worth way too much money. Hughes' says how the art is now valued more about the amount of money it is sold for rather than the comments of an art critic. So technically if an art piece is to sell for millions of dollars that is just supposed to be classified as a great painting, whereas Hughes completely disagrees with that idea. Hughes talks about how some art collectors would buy pieces for a very minimum amount and hold on to the paintings and then eventually sell them for great sums of money. Hughes strongly dislikes such contemporary artists as Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol because their pieces are made with one intention and that is to make money. It is kind of funny because he has bashed a lot of the artists that we have covered throughout the course but these are the leading contemporary artists. Now this piece was probably the most intriguing thing to me that we have gone over, for the simple fact that it had a lot to do with money and art and I happen to be a prospective finance major. In one manor I can see how a renown art critic would be agitated, but from a business standpoint you are seeing some incredible feats. These art collectors have found a way to make tons of money off of this art that they didn't even happen to create. I admire their intuition to be entrepreneurs in the art world even though much of what they did seemed to be unethical. The whole movie I couldn't stop wondering how amazing it was that these so called “artists" were making millions of dollars off of things that took no art skill at all such as the shark in the shark tank.


        

Marina Abramović

Rhythm 0, 1974

 Marina Abramovic is a very famous performance artist. For one of her pieces she tested the limits of the relationship between performer and audience, Abramović developed one of her most challenging and well known performances. She assigned a passive role to herself, with the public being the force which would act on her. They could basically do anything they wanted to her. Abramović had placed upon a table 72 objects that people were allowed to use. Most people reacted cautiously but after a while they got aggressive and into the performance. One man even pointed a gun to her head before someone took it away from him. This piece is really scary as a viewer because it shows people's aggressive nature although I think that what she did was very stupid. Performance art is definitely a different type of art than many people think of but is definitely interesting to say the least.

Sunflower Seeds

 




Sunflower Seeds was created by Ali Weiwei in 2010 in the Tate Modern. Sunflower Seeds is made up of millions of small works, each apparently identical, but actually unique. However realistic they may seem, these life-sized sunflower seed husks are in fact intricately hand-crafted in porcelain. Each seed has been individually sculpted and painted by specialists working in small-scale workshops in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. It is quite remarkable how many of these there are and it is avery interesting piece. People were allowed to walk on them but it got shut down because the dust it created was unhealthy. I hope it opens back up because there was a lot of work that went into it, and it is maybe something that I would like to visit myself one day.

Collecting Them All

When collecting and buying art, peopletend to have a lot of mone and time on their hands. For Herb and Dorothy Vogel, collecting art didnt require any of the sort. Herb and Dorothy were very much ordinary people, Dorothy worked as a librarian and Herb worked as a part of the postal service. Herb and Dorothy collected many pieces of art that were affordable to the ordinary salary, They wouold live off of Dorothy's earning and  Herb's salary would go toward purchasing all of the pictures that they could. Over the decades Herb and Dorothy collected over 2000 pieces of art, (keeping all of it in their tiny apartment) and became patrons of artists including Sol LeWitt, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Richard Tuttle, Chuck Close, Robert and Sylvia Mangold, Lynda Benglis, Pat Steir, Robert Barry, Lucio Pozzi, and Lawrence Weiner.

Louise Bourgeois · Maman, I Do, I Undo, I Redo

    When I first witnessed this exhibit in class, that looks amazing because how large these pieces look.I Do I Undo I Redo by Louise Bourgeois (May–December 2000) The installation consisted of three steel towers which visitors could climb, as well as a giant spider. This picture is cool because you see how big these towers are compared to the people standing next to it. They are interactive which is also very unique not many other pieces let you climb them. It's almost not just like an art piece that you look at, you're experiencing it by climbing it. Another part of this museum is a giant spider. This is interesting because many people have arachnophobia, and it's probably very frightening for them. It's almost like bringing a fear to real life by making it so enormous. This is truly a unique exhibit and one that I would like to experience because it looks fun and interesting.

Unusual Artwork

Josef Albers
Sanctuary 1942
Zinc plate lithograph
The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation

I found this artwork very interesting because at first glance, it take one square and then it surrounds it with many squares. When you ontinue to look at the artwork it does begin to look slike three doors down a couple of hallways. I alway found this interesting because it reminded me of that willy wonka clip where they enter the hallway into the very small door. The door, at first, only takes the apperence of a small door but its typical at the end of a hallway; however, when you get closer the door becomes much bigger. This is the exact opposite of that because you never get closer to the door no matter how much you move in. It alo looks very similar to topography which is how we would measure the hieght and depth of many landscapes now. This piece of artwork really intrigues the view and makes the viewer take that second glance.  

Michael Jackson & Bubbles

This piece is very intriguing to almost
 everyone's native eye. It is an example of Pop art at its highest form and it 
is one of Jeff Koons' best pieces of work. This piece is part of  the Banality series which started in 1988 with Michael Jackson and Bubbles,a series of three life-size gold-leaf plated porcelain statues of the sitting singer cuddling Bubbles, his pet chimpanzee. This piece seems recently intriguing because of Jackson's recent death. This picture depicts Jackson as a caring individual and loving his pet. It was made while Jackson was on top of the charts as the "King of Pop". Afterwards, however Jackson was accused of many things during the course of his life. From what we know now, you can't help but think if the accusations are true and to me this piece brings you back to that. Although it is visually stunning, it is a piece that is timeless and will help us to remember him forever. The piece sold for $5.6 million

Abstarct Art

Art can be very great at times. You talk about all the Michealangelos and Picassos and you realize that this kind of art is not the art that really makes people think. Abstract at does this in such a way that these artist cannot depict in such paintings as the Mona Lisa. This art was greatly depicted in Bruce Nauman's work. His "Clown Torture" workand other arts were about the most insane things that a person could call art but it makes you really think about what we call art. His art and concepts help pull the most of te mind and mkes people really think about what they call art nowadays.

 

The Shark Bites!!!

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you examine a pice such as this one?
 It definitely isnt happiness and joy. Its more of a feeling of fear and the realism of the shark creates an even darker atmosphere. Damien Hirst titled this piece "The Physical Impossibility of Death In the Mind of Someone Living", which you cant deny about the artwork itself. Just seeing this artwork it creates an image of death and despair to the hands of a live Tiger Shark. Accrding to some sources it took him about $10,000 just to keep this shrk afloat. As I witnessed this  atwork on the screen i asked my self if there was anything biger out there than a tiger shark? I did some research and i found that there is in fact sharks larger than a Tiger Shark. As for this artwork I would say that there is nothing that could possibly give a person Stendhal Syndrome as this probably could.

 

Blue Shark Prionace glauca 4 Meters

Tiger Shark Galeocerdo cuvier 3 -4 Meters

Great Hammerhead Shark Sphyrna mokarran 3.5 Meters

Great White Shark Carcharodon carcharias 4 - 5 Meters

Duchamp Fountain

When you look at this particular picture, it epitomizes the idea of how conceptual art can be just about anything. Duchamp, in this particular picture, takes a urinal and places it in a museum with the label "R. Mutt" as if this was the name of the actual artist. I am vrey confused when it comes to how this typical urinal can be called art. It makes me think twice about what art can possibly be. From being justa simple drawing of a cat to the many object being taken out of place and put into different, abstract settings. Conceptual art is very different though becasue its just about anything and it makes us think of it as completely different things. I guess this is what Duchamp does with his concept of a fountain. Duchamp may see this urinal as a fountain and convince everyone else that this is a fountain; however, I dont think anyone will be drinking out of this so called "fountain" anytime soon.