more post-modernist artwork

This set of readings/videos showcased four more post-modern artists, all of whom used pre-existing objects as the raw material for their work.  Jessica Stockholder's work incorporated brightly colored plastic items, Fred Wilson collected chachkis of all kinds, which he used to compose his work, and Arturo Herrera did the same, but with images that he manipulated in his collages.  Matthew Richie's work borrows in a slightly different way.  He translated his own line drawing into various different media, a process which eventually culminated in cage-like metal sculptures.  These artists simultaneously prove and disprove post-modern thought.  Essentially, their work is the very definition of post-modern art, yet by compiling these objects and arranging them the way these artists do, they are creating something new.  It reminds me of the musician Girl Talk.  He mashes up slivers of various songs to make his albums, arranging them the way other musicians arrange notes.  The bottom line is that these songs and the pieces created by those four artists are not stale because of their origins.  These post-modernist methods yield modern results with a modern optimism.  

Michelle's Revised Artist Statement

My current work consists of mixed media "paintings" using elements such as spray paint, thread, Bic ball-point pens, even yesterday's left over coffee. Implementing these "at-hand" everyday household items, I create intimate forms where these non-typical mediums assume a more personable and delicate character. In addition, the juxtaposition between these various mediums and subject matter explore the separation and coexistence between the natural and the synthetic. My gravitation towards representing nature and man-made objects are rendered primarily in life-size scale. The conscious choice of depicting representational objects at such a size seeks to question technical and conceptual perceptions of the true object. Playing with scale and detail allow me to reference the concept of simulacra by constructing landscapes and objects as tweaked, quirky versions of their realistic counterparts. The focus on detail within this process of collage and painting has carried over to my other pieces in digital photography, installation, and fiber-art. The manner with which I use color and line is crucial to the personal narrative interwoven in my works. Bright, opaque, almost jarring colors in conjunction with flat and delicately detailed linear form are informed by my obsession with objects, ideas, and places that are usually overlooked, discarded, and/or taken for granted in highly materialistic American culture. 

Exhibition Review #2 at the ICA

Upon visiting the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia there were two artists out of four that stood out. The first was a showcased in the show entitled R. Crumb’s Underground. Within this artist based exhibition, the life long work of Robert Crumb was placed on display for the audience of viewers. This work was composed of mainly pen and ink comic strip or other related work, but also included some sculptural pieces. All of these works held one strong common ground, that they were created by the extremely innovative and edgy mind of R. Crumb. Even upon entering the show the viewer is confronted with a sign that stated the material within the gallery was intended for mature audiences only and this was just a taste of what the viewer was yet to see. Spanned between two rooms within the gallery the work of R. Crumb filled up much of the wall space as well as many glass cases and a good amount of floor room. Each piece stood as an individual statement on sexuality, as well as the underground comic industry and the environment that surrounded it. Viewers are taken aback by some of the overtly sexual content that verges on that of a pornographic nature. These images and the content of each piece set a tone for the works of R. Crumb. They create a playful and humorous depiction of the world and its issues as seen through what very closely resemble the eyes of a pubescent boy. Although the mindset seems to be stuck in the issues of sexuality it also brings about messages on many other topics including racism and feminism. Not only do these intellectual subjects stray from some of the seemingly adolescent ideals, but so does the level of craftsmanship. Each image is created with an excruciating quality of work and displays the artist mastery of technique and content.R. Crumb is someone who is now know as the king of underground comics and widely thought of as a genius in the art world. One piece that suggests this talent and insight was a sculpture of a large cartoon-like female figure. The figure is poised in a fairly suggestive gesture. On the sculpture there are visible details of female genitalia that are suggested through the sculpture’s painted clothing. This piece demonstrates not only the many ideas that are captured in the work of R. Crumb, but also the versatility of the artist’s hand. Although Crumb works mainly with comic strip layouts and pen and ink drawings, he broke from this structure when moving to three-dimensional work. Moving away from the original format of his work while still holding the ideals and concepts of his earlier work Crumb breaks out of a static mold and creates a body of work that show a great amount of breath. This idea of movement into the world of dimensionality can also be observed in the use of large images that are posted throughout the exhibition that break from the original picture plains.
The next artist that stood out in the Institute of Contemporary Art’s exhibitions was Kate Gilmore, an artist whose works were primarily video footage of performance pieces. These videos are based on the idea of constructing spaces and events for Gilmore to struggle and fight her way out of. Building tunnels that she squeezes through and boxes that she kicks and pushes her way out of, Gilmore eventually breaks out of the structures. She does all this while dressed in formal outfits donning make-up and heels. With pieces like Every Girl Likes Pink, Gilmore shows the idea of building captive walls around one’s self and then trying to break out of their containing structures. This thought reflects the idea of building a persona that others may expect or impose on you and similarly trying to break down these walls to experience the world of views that sits just outside the tiny space we have constructed. Gilmore’s work also comments on the oppression of women by society and the struggle of women in the attempt to break out of these restrictions while being bogged down by the stereotypes and constructs that are formed around female image. Both these views speak strongly in her physical struggle that is seen in her video instillations and can be paired greatly with the pieces of R. Crumb, which also speak loudly on the topics of the female images and how society views female figures. Both artists, in their own respects, make loud statements on these culture-based topics and create work that confronts viewers about these different ideas.

More Art:21 Peeps

The artists in this week’s readings and videos seem to be exclusively from the Post-Modernist movement. Each artist takes strides forward in their thought processes, as well as the formation of their pieces. The artist Jessica Stockholder embodied these ideals of Post-Modernism by creating innovative and unique pieces, as well as spaces, by collected and composing objects. These objects range in difference from refrigerators to plastic buckets, but each takes on a new shape and being when recontextualized by the hand of Stockholder. When speaking of her art, Jessica Stockholder makes a comment about her attraction to the aesthetic quality of plastic, and how this becomes a large part in her creations. This idea can be seen greatly in the incorporation of bright playful colors, the materials, as well as the transformation of many objects by painting over their old surfaces to create a more “plastic” finish. The use of the found or collected objects creates a strong connection to post-modernism, which is also true about the next artist.
Fred Wilson takes the idea of found object art to an entirely different level than most might think of when referring to this art form. Wilson very literally creates pieces of art with found objects, but not by molding them together and forming them into a completely new structure or object; instead, he takes a very distinct approach. This take on creation is one that is focused around placement and grouping, moving away from the idea of incorporation and recontextualization. The pieces that Wilson creates are based largely on the idea of positioning objects and forming a composition with how each object is placed and sit. This idea moves far away from that of the artist as a hero and reflects more the concept of chance. The idea of using objects that are not created distinctly by the artist is one that is fairly common with the concept of collage. Because of this connection, Wilson and Stockholder’s work can relate to each other as well as that of collage artists.
By taking images from children’s books as well as other widely recognizable images, Arturo Herrera seeks to transform already existing icons into something very distinct. This is another way of incorporating found objects into artwork, but one of a very different nature. Although Herrera does use some of his own images to create his collages, this idea of found objects and recycling already existing art remains very consistent. The work of Herrera creates varying layers of recognition, whether they work together as a whole image or through dissecting the visuals that might hold a certain amount of memory for the viewer. Playing with this idea of connection to memory as well as the creation of something new, this artist seems to display many characteristics of a Post-Modernist as well as a strong relationship with the idea of progress and sustainability in art. In the written interview with Stephanie Smith, Herrera speaks extensively about the inspiration he drew from ballet and the many aspects that stand behind its creation. Though this particular project is not touched upon in the video documentation, projected pieces are discussed in the written interview and show the aspect of multi-media coming into play with Herrera’s pieces, a characteristic attributed to the work of Post-Modernism.
Lastly, the artist Matthew Richie is discussed displaying his large amount of variety and some of his insights into the pieces. Richie’s pieces create a strong sense of visual attention to rhythmic line and shapes. These works range in their size, media, and display, creating a widely diverse sense of creativity when compared to one and other. In the written article on the work of Richie it can be viewed that many aspects come into play within each pieces. Whether this playfulness manifests itself in many layers of drawing, the addition of written components, or interaction with the environment surrounding the work, it creates a sense of collectivity and unity. The Art:21 video segment also shows how the work spans into the realm of interactive media and large metal pieces cut by machines that piece together to form sculptures. Each work explores the artist’s ideas about the universe around him and different game and life theories. This aspect of spanning very common themes across the terrain of multiple media creates a strong supportive foundation for this artist’s body of work. It was this idea that created a contrast between Richie and the above artists by making his work more interesting when I viewed it along with the video segment. This idea of unity forms a great foundation for Richie’s work that is discussed and promotes the success of it as a whole.

Reivsed Artist Statement

Details, whether through mark making or the planning stages, inform each individual work and forms a consistent theme throughout the grouping of my works. Layering of delicate lines creates a compulsive act of rendering. This act of intricate mark making allows for a sense of meditation, while also maintaining a strong sense of labor. These actions promote an emotional involvement and personal attachment to each piece. Recently, my works have explored the direction of book arts as well as printmaking. Within these two fields, I use my sense of detail and a strong interest in a wide range of books to create work that is both unique and powerful. Currently experimenting with the technique of lithograph prints and hand-drawn layers on book forms, I strive to create a sense of story that is non-traditional. This idea can manifest in the use of a singular image spanning over the duration of the book’s pages only depicting a single scene, or in printing the main narrative text on the cover instead of inside the book’s form. Each work often displays a graphic line quality, creating strong visual elements as well as enhancing the dramatic nature of the work. These works examine personal events and the nostalgic idea of comic book related subject matter. Both ideas aid in forming a foundation for description of visual images, but also for the conceptual ground work. Growing up with an attachment to both comic books and graphic novels, the styles of these media seep through my personal style to create a distinct look that alludes to both these foundations. This work incorporates delicately described details that capture fleeting moments and explore both personal experiences and the many facets of the world around us.

ICA: R. Crumb's Underground

Edith Newhall writes of the Robert Crumb show at the University of the Arts’ Rosenwald-Wolf gallery in February 2007:

            “Even 10 years ago, long after it had been turning up in galleries in major American             cities and in Europe, comic art as “art” was still hard to sell. If it was art, purists           reasoned, then all commercial art should be reconsidered for loftier status. Nothing that             drastic has happened yet. But comic artists- the darker the better - are increasingly visible in gallery and museum exhibitions. Case in point: Robert Crumb.” “Crumb gets his due in Phila.”, Philadelphia Inquirer (February 2, 2007)

Close to one year later, R. Crumb’s work is back in Philadelphia, this time at the Institute of Contemporary Art. R. “Crumb’s Underground”, curated by Todd Hignite, contains a selection of more than 100 works throughout the comic book artist’s five-decade career. R. Crumb’s “low-art” comics are framed and presented as “fine art”. Loaded with sex, commercialism, and adult social satire, Crumb’s drawings are perverse and guiltily entertaining.

            The show features an array of characters from Crumb’s own Zap Comix and Philadelphia based comic series Yarrowstalk. “ Crumb’s tales of funny animals and misguided souls seeking enlightenment (including Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, Devil Girl, and his most enduring character, R. Crumb) vibrate with libidinal obsessions, feminist empowerment, racial tension, counterculture paranoia, government repression, and big-business commodification—the hustles and bustles hidden beneath the American dream” (ICA R. Crumb’s Underground Press Release). The illustrative line qualities within his drawings add to the grunginess of his subject matter and characters. Cross-hatching and dark bold lines allow his figures to pop out of the setting they are placed in. Crumb also pays attention to detail as he leaves little quirky comical bits of information and objects hiding within scenes.

            Crumb’s renderings of large Amazon buxom babes appear throughout his work in all formats. Sexually driven “Devil Girl” not only exists on paper, but also becomes a life-size sculpture. This presentation is confrontational as it breaks away from the framed drawings on the wall into the viewer’s space. Another noteworthy reflection upon the exhibition’s layout and design is Hignite’s conscious decision to arrange Crumb’s erotic drawings below and above eye level. This placement highlights the voyeurism within reading and looking at the drawings. “How to Have Fun With a Strong Girl” (2002) complies with this arrangement. In this work, Crumb depicts himself as a scrawny twerp in multiple stages of trying to mount a powerfully built woman. A feminist’s blood would boil at the sight of his victory over the sleeping conquered conquest. Crumb is open and honest with his sexual fantasies, fearlessly cheeky, and an excruciatingly funny satirist of all things modern and progressively high-minded.

         It was beneficial to see this exhibit in conjunction to viewing the UArt’s collection last year. The selection of works at the University of the Arts presented a subtle, less sexually aroused Crumb. Being able to see both sides to Crumb as a comic book and fine artist was interesting. At a glance, R. Crumb’s works might read as perverted doodles on stained placemats and napkins. Look more closely, and these drawings become subversive witty renderings capturing aspects of the human psyche and society. At times these illustrations are shocking, funny and entertaining. Why? Perhaps there’s hilarity in the truth- things we avoid talking about and Crumb’s need to show it.

R. Crumb: Exhibit Review #2

The top floor of the ICA was dedicated almost entirely to R. Crumb's Underground, a show that focused on his comics drawn from the 60s to the present that dealt specifically with, as the catalogue puts it, "social satire, sex, blues and jazz music, mind-altering substances, autobiography, and biography." Perhaps I will betray myself by this observation, but it seemed as though a particular type of woman dominated the exhibit.  In fact, I noticed almost nothing else.  (Freud, shut up!)  His comics depicted this Amazon in various incarnations, and a sculpture of her in a sexual contortion loomed in the entrance to the second room.  In a series of twelve drawings, entitled, "How to Have Fun with a Strong Girl," R. Crumb himself, a scrawny, freckled, bespectacled little man, wrangles with a woman of epic proportions. Crumb, after maintaining his control throughout the grueling encounter, finally succumbs (pun absolutely intentional) once he realizes that his powerful partner has dozed off beneath him.

Because the framed pages are arranged in a grid, the observer must crouch down to read the final row of panels, making it impossible to seem nonchalant or disinterested by the sexual olympics depicted.  This is a very clever decision on the part of the curator.  By placing some of the cartoons well below eye level, the curator insured that those who witness the most graphic of the images make a conscious choice to do so.  I do not mean it protects the prudes--it actually converts them into voyeurs.  How can you be offended by images of R. Crumb cumming if you're the one who knelt down in the first place?

Kate's new artist statement

Please give me feedback!

"My work is a collision between idealism and realism. I am obsessed with translating ordinary objects into unexpected materials. Each sculpture fulfills an impossible function that solves the problems we face when dwelling in reality. As an artist, I suspend disbelief by summoning these contraptions into existence and insisting stubbornly that they actually work."

Stockholder, Herrera, Ritchie, Wilson

This week’s readings and video excerpts highlight various artists’ forms of inspiration, thought processes, and work ethic. Jessica Stockholder, installation artist and sculptor, finds her subject and medium within everyday objects. Arturo Herrera quite similarly sources images from popular media as well as musical arrangements for his abstract collages and video projections.  Also referencing culture of the present and past, Fred Wilson acquires objects from museum collections to create site-specific installations. Applying multimedia and interactive components to his installation art, Matthew Ritchie transfers his imaginative drawings of the universe, mythology, and the natural order of things into elaborate abstract environments.

            All of these artists gather information and inspiration from culture, society, religion and identity. Jessica Stockholder discusses the value of new and old objects in her interview with Klaus Ottoman in the Journal of Contemporary Art. It was peculiar to me that this particular aesthetic in her search for materials was more important than her objects reading as junk. In the art 21video, Stockholder seemed to stress the idea of junk within her work and the importance of the junk’s identity in popular culture. I found her pictorial way of looking at things from a painter’s perspective an interesting application to her installation process. The fusion between each sculpture and their fabricated environment provokes a different mood and interpretation. Stockholder’s approach to installation work revolves around internal logic that develops as she disconnects and conjoins various objects. 

            Arturo Herrera’s collage process is comparable to Stockholder’s installation work. His dissection of magazines, drawings, advertisements, and cartoons form unexpected relationships where there were none before. This abstracting and reworking of an image or multiple images end up producing something new and distinct. Herrera’s manipulation of imagery and experimentation with scale grabbed my attention. His interview with Stephanie Smith highlighting his projection, Les Noces, showcased an interesting way of transferring small-scale collage techniques unto larger formats.

            Along the same parallel as Arturo Herrera, Matthew Ritchie digitally enlarges his drawings to create large installations. These blown up paintings and drawings in their installation state become huge environments that engulf the viewer. His personal narratives of the universe and depictions of symbolic characters are essential to the work. Ritchie is connected to his work through his attempts to represent the entire universe and the structures of knowledge and belief that we use to understand and visualize it.

            Fred Wilson’s heritage and collecting obsession is a key component to his work. His site-specific installations within established museums challenge curatorial practices and organization within collections. His “Duchampian” found-art approach to installations is conceptual and aims to uncover topics that will connect artifacts and historical objects in newfound ways. Wilson’s culture and heritage plays a big role in inspiring his work, which is evident throughout his works that address conflict in racial and cultural identity.

             Jessica Stockholder, Arturo Herrera, Matthew Ritchie, and Fred Wilson are artists that approach structure and installation similarly. Whether it be through the combination of gathering objects to form a new entity, or cutting paper to do the same, these artists show multiple ways of furthering a project outside of its set medium into larger spaces and different presentations.

Artist Series: Ho Suh, Hawkinson, Zittel & Ali

Whether through fabric, gouache, or recycled materials, Do Ho Suh, Tim Hawkinson, Andrea Zittel, and Laylah Ali’s work inform concepts of postmodernism. Rejecting the notion of progress and the idea of the avant-garde, these artists tend to reflect upon the past, eliminate the sense of individualistic identity, and allude to consumer or pop culture.

             Do Ho Suh’s fabric recreations of architecture are far removed from their origins. Though they directly reference personal spaces, they are ghostly and “mute constructions” that show little evidence of the crafter’s hand. This elimination of the artist as “creator” is definitely a postmodern thought.

            Andrea Zittel’s sculptures and installations transform things such as eating, sleeping, bathing, and socializing into artful experiments in living. She directly references consumerism within “A–Z Administrative Services”. Zittel designed this organization to mass-produce homes, furnishings, and vehicles for contemporary consumers. Her standpoint on consumerism as an entrapment hones in on the redundant process of duplicating many of the objects she makes- such as her outfits or personal pods.

            Tim Hawkinson’s collage technique and the implementation of photographing himself to use those pictures within his work are also postmodern. Collage and its borrowed imagery can be seen within the Dada movement, which in itself was postmodern. His use of household items and industrial material also go hand in hand with the appropriation element of postmodernism.

            Laylah Ali’s cartoon characters though colorful and playful looking address societal issues such as discrimination, power and violence. Art 21 shows Ali applying her 2-D works to modern dance. This transfer of what can be seen as “low art” into something that can be viewed as more than drawings on paper, is somewhat progressive and modern in concept. Ali remains a postmodern artist though; in the manner she references pop culture in the media and the stylized execution of her cartoon figures.

            Do Ho Suh, Tim Hawkinson, Andrea Zittel, and Laylah Ali work in different mediums and are inspired by various issues in contemporary culture. What link these artists together are their postmodern concepts and innovative ways of provoking discussions about politics, consumerism, memory, and appropriation.