Tag: art history
-
Notes from the Crocker
[ 2/25/15 edit: The links to individual artworks no longer function. The Crocker Art Museum’s website no longer serves as a digital representation of their holdings. I hope this is temporary, since it is certainly contrary to the larger trend of art museums releasing their collections digitally. ] It shames me to admit that last…
-
Bi-hourly comic
This, the most complicated mat I’ve cut to date, represents a twenty-four hour period through comics. This was…a stretch for me. (Three of the spaces are blank because nothing particularly noteworthy happened as I slept.) Between 7 and 9 am, I apparently found it crucial to record that: “As it transpired, that cappuchino [sic] at…
-
Proof of concept?
I’m starting something new… My plans owe a grateful nod to work by Jaclyn Seufert and Beth Scher. …oh, and maybe Sandro Botticelli as well.
-
Four months of work
Correspondence art: and a scrap/accordion book to document it 1) Proust’s madeleines 2) Honkers 3) pictures of the pink/purple seal (designed with feedback from mail art #1) 4) bees 5) luggage tags 6) a book to document the project Opiate of the Masses the triptych about seductive things (with a…
-
Souvenirs, part 2
I recently completed what I considered a research trip to Europe. I brought a stack of quality paper and pencils and attempted to create as many souvenirs (aka postcards) as I could while engaged in the inevitable “hurry up and wait” parts of such travel. Obviously Gaudi’s Basilica de la Sagrada Familia made a…
-
Identity politics
Today’s derailing experience comes courtesy of my studio mentor. He pointed out that an opinion I expressed about identity politics invalidated my entire thesis. He wasn’t wrong…but the opinion I voiced this morning was less nuanced than the one I would have stated if given more time. To give the appropriate visual context, here are…
-
The One and Only Original, 2nd ed.
Seven hundred pages of research and note-taking later, I was floored by déjà vu. As George Santayana’s epigram scolds, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (qtd. in The Culture of the Copy 271). The repetition was this: I wrote on the relative merits of originality and duplication in art almost…
-
More recursion
It’s time to present another eclectic batch of artworks that question assumptions and generally inspire imagination. Simon Stalenhag’s illustrations present a divergent version of the eighties. The Swedish artist provides the alternative reality’s historical summary in a review of his work in WIRED. In this case, each digital illustration combines elements of white, middle-class…
-
luggage vs. WOODEN FRAMES
One of this semester’s experiments was to create two different types of frames for the same polyptych. One is an altered piece of secondhand luggage that opens up to expose a triptych. The other is closer to the hinged polyptychs I’ve been making for the past year. Today I’ll present the paintings in their wooden…
-
Yoshimoto cubes, part 3
My previous art cubes used appropriation to present opposing two-dimensional views of womanhood in religious art history. This time that same self-transformation has a much larger scale. (Each of the black component pieces is an eight inch cube.) I thought I was finished creating art about the whole Creation vs. Evolution argument last fall, but…
-
Our hubris regarding realism
[ This paper was written in November 2012 to highlight the central irony of realistic painting. ] Naively, we artists often expect our familiarity with art to protect us from its tricks; like wise fools, we fall prey to its more disingenuous incarnations. As a prime example, consider the paradox of realistic painting. It pretends…
-
The One and Only Original
[The following is a defense of original artwork I wrote during October 2012.] “We heard about this paint,” the customers explained, “which you put on a print to make it just like a real painting.” They might have purchased Liquitex acrylic gel or perhaps (if they balked at the price) some Mod Podge. Unfortunately, they…
-
Kewpies, feminism, and humility
As Elaine Scarry mentions in On Beauty and Being Just, we more vividly remember our mistakes about beauty than intellectual topics (11). Somehow it is easier to recall a time when we dramatically revised our opinion about the beauty of a person, place, or experience. I have recently had just such a humbling experience…about paper…
-
Yoshimoto cubes, part 2
What visual and Biblical archetypes does art history (aka art by European or American men in the last 2,000 years) provide for women? Sadly, the most popular archetypes are the passive “good” girl or the deadly vamp. I now realize that Salome paintings interest me as the darker side of what I studied in all…
-
Lessons from the Penn Museum
Here are a few thoughts from a recent visit to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The majority of what I noticed was curatorial. Most of the museum is arranged for a rather passive ambulatory viewer. The current Imagine Africa installation is a major exception to this traditional format. It is highly…
-
Curating is harder than it looks
My longest essay last term was on the subject of polyptychs, their format’s rich addition to meaning, and the concomitant curatorial nightmare they pose. (Sans pompous academic language: they’re cool, but it’s a real pain to show them to best advantage) My essay was righteously indignant about books and public displays which misleadingly or desultorily…
-
Tableau vivant
def. “a silent or motionless group of people arranged to represent a scene or incident” Those who have read Jane Eyre might recall the odd form of charades described midway through. In Charlotte Brönte’s version, participants dressed up and arranged themselves in a static position to provide clues for their audience. As with charades, the…
Colleen Wampole 