Why Look? Engaging Contemporary Art: Class 2 Slides & Notes

1. Review: Why look?
1. Because we live in visual culture
2. Because the Word became flesh
3. Because contemporary art tells part of the story, but we know how the story ends.
2. Recognizing certain themes in contemporary art helps us direct our looking. They can also function as a way to introduce important artists, working today, that you should know about.
1. Ecclesiastes is approached the same way as a contemporary art gallery: confusing. It is a beautiful book, but it can be hard to read and hard to draw meaning from.

   In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him. Ecc. 7:14

   
   
3. Theme: Time and Memory
1. Art that takes time to unfold for the viewer, or took time for the artist to make.
2. Art that is about the memories or personal histories of the artist. Retelling cultural memories from their families, for example.
3. Ecclesiastes 8:17. We need each other’s experiences to fill out our own sense of reality, of God’s creation. We are created to experience things in time and to encounter other people’s experiences in time.
4. The slides shown are meant to illustrate these themes, not meant to make you derive meaning from. What do you see, and how does it relate to the theme? We will address how to look at these types of art next week.
5. Ann Hamilton, Corpus. A 10-month installation, incorporating sound, movement, paper, machines, light, etc. A meditative work, referencing a grand cathedral. Not a timeless work, but inextricably based in a certain time. The viewer is unsure whether to go in or not. Fall leaves, raking, copy machines, making a game instead of frustrating. A physical experience.
6. Yamamoto, untitled slide. 280 nails into a line in the wall with tiny words on their heads. It took some time to make, but it takes a bit of time to look at as well, especially since the line compels you to follow the words all the way to the end. Chores, monotony, a life cycle. A negative view of life. Nails as a way to get rid of the repressiveness. Nails have a religious connotation, especially when they are hammered into the wall. A bit of biographical information since we’ve had a good amount of thoughtful interaction with it so far: Yamamoto reimagines the inner thoughts of her grandmother, who was a Japanese immigrant laundress in Hawai’i who committed suicide after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
4. Theme: the Body
1. Having a body is a messy business, something that is not often acknowledged in older art.
2. The body is fragile, easily broken and not as strong as we wish.
3. The body is evoked, but not represented.
4. We don’t fully understand our bodies, but our creator does.

   As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything. - Ecc. 11:5

5. Gonzales-Torres, Placebo slide. 1200 pounds of foil-wrapped candy in a rectangle on the ground. The guard tells you that you can take a piece. Taking something from a memorial. A body that is disappearing, dissipating.
5. Theme: Identity
1. How you concive of yourself and each other in relationship to others.

   Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Ecc 4:9-12

6. Theme: Globalization
1. Effects of imperialism (British, Soviet, American, etc), especially in Africa and South America.
2. New histories, new stories.

   Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. - Ecc 4:1

3. Ghana slide. Foreign-looking large piece of textile from a distance, but closer inspection shows that it is made of liquor bottle wrapping. Effect of European liquor on Africa. Recycling and reusing what other people throw away.
7. Theme: Commodity
1. Use of consumer products

   He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity. When goods increase, they increase who eat them, and what advantage has their owner but to see them with his eyes? Ecc 5:10, 11

2. References to popular visual culture.
3. Collapse of art into life.
4. Krueger slide.
5. Flune slide. Corporate design aesthetic infiltrating our visual lives.
8. Theme: Play
1. Viewer participation, touching, looking at it in different ways
2. Surprise!

   When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night do one’s eyes see sleep, then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out. - Ecc. 8:16-17

3. Donovan slide, untitled (plastic cups). Taking something that you can go out and buy, turning it into something amazing, pleasing, beautiful.
4. Oppenheimer side. Cuts holes in walls, creating tunnels in vision allowing you to see architecture in a new, different way.
5. Eliason, your imploded view slide. View of self and surroundings changes.