Archive for April, 2008
Long Photographs, Long Music, and the Long Now
Bill Viola, Still from the Quintet series.
The classic short film Powers of Ten encourages us to step out of our immediate physical and temporal frame of reference. Any activity that breaks us away from our half-second-unit information-heavy attentions nowadays is a healthy one. Looking at an image, for example, is a great way to allow yourself a long moment.
In recent days there’s been some fooforaw regarding Flickr’s decision to allow users to post short videos. Much discussion has ensued on the concept of the “long photograph.”
Photographer and blogger Clayton James Cubitt has gathered a great handful of links relating to long photography. My favorites are this comment on a clip from Koyaanisquatsi and Cubitt’s own Zero Feedback pieces.
Bill Viola is another artist whose work demands that we slow down. If you are lucky enough to be in an art museum that has a Viola in their collection, do yourself a favor and stand in front of it for at least two minutes. What at first appears to be a still image will be revealed as a super-slow-motion moving picture — a long moment. (Here is Bill Viola at Wikipedia.)
Also out this week is a trailer for the documentary Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts. While watching the abovementioned clip from Koyaanisquatsi, I heard a snippet of the score and thought, “Gosh, that sounds like Philip Glass.” Sure enough, it is. You’d have thunk I went to college.
Finally, if you’re looking to step way way way out of your current temporal perception, look into the Long Now Foundation. Among other projects, they’re building a 10,000-year clock.
Illustration Friday: Wrinkles
Crotchety Old Man, ink and graphite on paper, 2005.
From Wiktionary:
crotchety (comparative crotchetier or more crotchety, superlative crotchetiest or most crotchety)
See more at Illustration Friday.
Art 365 Closing Reception: Sat 4.26.08 in OKC
Normal, OK: Installation View, at Untitled Artspace in OKC, 2008
This Saturday, April 26, the Art 365 show will bid adieu to Oklahoma City. This closing reception, from 5–8 p.m., will also feature the show catalogue debut and a preview screening of Art 365: The Film.
Art 365, which includes my project Normal, OK, travels to Tulsa in May, and to Cedar Rapids, Iowa in October. Watch this space for more wheres and whens.
Click here to see more of Normal, OK.
Video: Action NONnews at Art 365
The unstoppable media duo NONzine was filming at the opening reception for Art 365. Here’s what they found:
Click here to read more about my project for the show, Normal, OK.
Luc Tuymans: Art Is Not About Changing The World
This video, which came to me via bOingbOing, shows us an experiment staged by Klara.be, a Belgian cultural collective. In the above scenario, a Luc Tuymans painting is removed from its gallery context and placed on an ordinary street. Only 4 percent of passersby stop to look at the painting. The purpose of this experiment may have been to slap us with a shockingly low number to demonstrate how underappreciated art is. But other voices in the video seem to contradict that. One representative from Christie’s maintains that art is context-dependent, so we shouldn’t be surprised when interest in art plummets outside the gallery:
“…art is usually defined by the intention for it to be a work of art, and the context in which you see it.” (quote from the video)
That’s the central problem with art after the twentieth century. As soon as it became okay to make any object into art (or no object at all), our culture lost the ability to determine what is art and what isn’t. (I see that as an inevitable, not a negative, development.) Plus, with so much visual culture (advertising, cinema, television, internet) saturating our attention, it can be difficult to tell if an image is intended for our quick consumption or sustained contemplation. That’s where context comes in: if the image is in a magazine, we know it’s okay to flip the page. In a museum, we know we’re supposed to stop and consider.
This experiment neither surprises nor discourages me. I already know that as a painter, my impact on human history is extremely small, and that’s okay. I chose a path and have worked hard to perform well at it — that satisfies me. Tuymans himself seems reconciled to his role in visual culture:
“I don’t think that art can change the world. That’s not what art is about. Art is about creating images and passing on ideas.” (translated quote from the above video)
I agree. Art is a form of communication. One piece of information passed between two entities is all that’s needed for a successful communication. If just one person stops to look at a picture I made, then I’ve done my job. My success is not measured by a certain number of eyeballs. Every creation matters, and every viewer matters.
Ev(l)olve: A Sticky Wicket
Ev(l)olve: A Sticky Wicket, acrylic on canvas, 2008.
Ev(l)olve will be in my upcoming solo show, Idiolect. (Idiolect is a word that means personal language.) Idiolect opens Friday, May 2, at AKA Gallery in OKC’s Paseo District. The show runs through the end of June and will be open during the annual Paseo Art Fest.
Phoebe Gloeckner Knows Bodies
As I mentioned earlier this week, I admire the way Phoebe Gloeckner depicts the human figure (particularly the female form). After doing some more research, I learned that she is also a medical illustrator. Have a look at these haunting, virtuosic images. (Notabene: these are anatomically explicit. You have been warned.)
Read more about Gloeckner in this interview about cartooning on the PBS website, or straight from the horse’s mouth in Diary of a Teenage Girl.
Snip from the interview, in which Gloeckner talks about how she teaches art students:
…the classes change from semester to semester, but no matter the topic, the basic principle underlying my “method” of teaching (developed in just two years) is that a properly prepared artist/creator must simply know everything. Not just how to draw, but how to see. Not just how to use a computer program, but what the word “penultimate” means. And the shape and orientation of a goat’s pupil. And where Kentucky and Chile are, at least approximately. The only way to know everything is to learn how to think, how to ask questions, how to navigate the world. Students must learn how to teach themselves to use new tools, how to talk to unfamiliar people, and basically how to be brave.
On Deck Show @ Arockalypse in OKC, 4/19
I have two pieces in this show, opening Saturday, April 19, 2008. Arockalypse is at 6900 N Western in Oklahoma City. The show will run through the month of May.
Special thanks to Dylan for giving me the heads-up!
