Dave Hickey Response by Chris Pearce

In Custodians of culture: Schoolyard Art: Playing Without the Referee, Dave Hickey describes how the art world has transformed over the past years. What was once a prominent way of an artist expressing a point and being judged on how their work has depicted their emotions has turned into art dealers creating the real value of the work. Another critic who harbors the same feelings is Robert Hughes. In “The Mona Lisa Curse” Mr. Hughes describes how the art world has become corrupt by people who run up the price of the artwork because they merely can. Both critics are right in their assessment of the art world and have similar opinions on what has happened.
Mr. Hickey describes the art world as a “place to piss away money.” Artists use to work in their studios and then took their pieces to galleries. The galleries then sold the work to members of the community. When the community purchased a great deal of work from a certain artist type of art, then that work had some form of public virtue and had a public show at a museum. This does not happen anymore. Since the government has receeded in funding the art business, the art market has gone over the edge. Now, an art show is put on because it is economically beneficial to an institution. It is no longer just a great way to view art but is presented to the viewers to make an offer. The art dealers pride themselves in creating the value of the art buy how much they purchase it. Mr. Hickey is completely against this practice and wishes things were the way they use to be as the art market is ruining what art was meant to be.
Robert Hughes also agrees with Mr. Hickey’s views. He believes the art world has gone off the deep end and has made artists who do not deserve to be well known into some of the most popular artists known to date. Their work is only respected because of the price tags they draw. The artists were dubbed popular when someone is willing to purchase their work for what it is not even close to what the real value of their work should be. Mr. Hughes is disgruntled at this and how no one seems to see how the art world is run by those who have the money to spend on a certain piece of work. The whole documentary you can see his frustration on how the art world will never be the same to him as it once did when he was younger.
Both critics are able to provide a strong case for why the art world is not what it should be. The art world has turned into a place where anyone who creates what they call art and has a backing of someone who is willing to put their money behind that artists work can make that artist very successful. It is very disappointing to hear this because what will art be like for the next generation?

Midterm Part 2 by Chris Pearce

One could say that Marcel Duchamp is one of the most influential artists of all time. He has inspired many modern artists with his groundbreaking pieces of work. One of his most famous works of art of his is known as “The Fountain.” The controversial piece and other works of this famous artist has inspired five artists who are interviewed in The Duchamp Effect and how his work has affected their own.

The first artist in the interview is Bruce Conner. Mr. Conner is a leader of the assemblages movement where he uses items in his work such as dolls, fur, jewelry and even broken bicycle wheels. In the interview, Mr. Conner looks at Duchamp as an artist that is not easily understood but one who deserves the utmost respect. He describes growing up and first seeing Duchamp’s work and the first time he had the opportunity to collaberate with him. Conner’s stated he was too bashful to approach Duchamp with his ideas so it did not go as planned. Mr. Conner’s seemed like a little kid meeting his idol for the first time. In the interview it is easy to see that Duchamp is one of the most respected artists and has very much influenced Bruce Conner and helped inspire his many pieces of artwork.

The second artist to be interviewed was Sherrie Levine. Ms. Levine is known for her photography as well as a bronze urinal which was inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s. In the interview she describes what she accomplished when she moved to New York. What was her first big step forward was literally her work with shoes. She recreated a pair of shoes just like she recreated Duchamp’s urinal. The interview with Ms. Levine shows how she was greatly influenced by Marcel Duchamp’s work. He left a legacy that Sherrie Levine used for inspiration for her work to which she became a very successful artist.

The next artist to be interviewed was Louise Lawler. Ms. Lawler is known for her photography and creates her work by taking pictures of others artwork and showing the way it is viewed. She is a fan of pop art and believes that although Duchamp is an inspiration to many, there are other artists and their works that are inspirational as well. She also describes taking photograph’s of Duchamp’s work and how it gives his pieces a completely different angle of how to view his work. Ms. Lawler believes Marcel Duchamp is an artist who has left many skeptical when viewing his work but there are so many different ways to view his work that it is possible to find a way to connect with it.

The fourth artist interviewed is Fred Wilson who is known for his work as an artist as well as a curator. Although he considers himself a conceptual artist, he believes he does most of his work visually. He would bring things into the museum that most would not expect to find in a gallery or museum because they don’t consider them to normally be art. The interview clearly shows how Mr. Wilson was influenced by Duchamp’s work for Duchamp was very controversial in what he brought into museums and called art as well such as “The Fountain.”

Each of these artists have clearly been inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s work. He was a pioneer for artists to think outside the box and be unconventional. Duchamp has left the legacy behind to not be traditional and create artwork that makes people think and not go to a gallery or museum just to look at paintings and sculptures but rather make them surprised and wanting to see more.

Midterm Part 1 by Chris Pearce

Art comes in many shapes, sizes, and forms. It can be a sculpture, a painting, and even a performance. When I found out that our midterm constituted our class to design a performance piece my mind quickly went to work. I researched performance artists and found many interesting performances that I could not have ever thought of. One was Michael Lotito who ate unusual objects who most likely would have put fear factor contestants to shame. Another was Yves Klein who painted models and moved them around on white paper to leave their impression on it. These two artists inspired me to come up with my own ideas and to think outside of the box. I did not want to have my midterm project projecting something that truly didn’t mean anything to me or did not have a message for viewers of it.

I wrote down all of my ideas and what I would like to accomplish for the viewers. It had to be something that had a theme to it. As dorky as it sounds for a guy, I wanted to have the theme be love. Something a guy loved to do and made his day. Secondly, it had to be extraordinary. As a performance piece, I felt it had to be something that glorified what a performance piece could capture that everyday life did not.

My list was long but it became clear to me as I narrowed it down that I knew what I wanted to do. My performance art would be of a man fly fishing midwinter in a parking lot . I believe it would capture what a man loves to do even when he does not have the ability to do it because of the time of the year. The man is fully dedicated to his passion and will not let snow or no open water dictate his time of enjoyment. All men have a place they like to do to get away from their life whether it is working out, watching tv, working on their car, etc. In this case, the man is depicting how he will not be denied his opportunity to his time. He decides he will not be denied and by doing it in a parking lot he is sharing to all his passion for his hobby.

There would not be any other props besides what the man would take to go fly fishing such as his fishing gear and fishing ensemble. There would not be any sound because the only sound a person has when going fishing is the sound of nature. As for the aspect of when it would take place it would have to be in the morning hours around dawn for that is when fish are more likely to be caught. The performance would last for around two hours and the man I would choose to recruit for the performance would have be someone in their mid 50’s who enjoys fly fishing as their favorite hobby.

To break down the performance the man would arrive at a parking lot in February about twenty minutes before dawn. He would get his fishing gear ready and cast away for the next two hours. The performance would depict the man enjoying his favorite hobby and having the opportunity to escape reality and collect his thoughts.

I believe my performance would be one that anyone can relate to. Everyone has a hobby that they put time aside as much as they can to do. It is a time where one can reflect on life as well as to escape any problems they are dealing with. In this case it is a man who does not have the ability to completely enjoy his hobby but he does his best to show his love for fly fishing.

Gillian Wearing and Vanessa Beecroft are two contemporary female artists whose use of performance art and the public sphere make their sometimes-shocking work even more influential. Both artists use performance art and/or public interactions as their median of self-expression.

Gillian Wearing was born in Birmingham, England and attended the prestigious Goldsmiths College. Much of Wearing’s works involves participation from complete strangers. Her first major work, “Signs that say what you want them to say and now Signs that say what someone else wants you to say” took place in 1992-1993. Within this work, Wearing found random strangers on the street and asked them to write anything they wanted on a piece of paper, which they then held up while Wearing photographed them. The responses we all different, ranging from a police officer who wrote “HELP!” to a businessman who wrote “I’m desperate”. Wearing’s interactions with strangers continued in 1994 when she asked random people to confess on video. While many of her works explore human emotions and intimacies, her work entitled “Drunk” is one that I have trouble understand. Within “Drunk”, Wearing filmed four drunk men wondering around a studio. This film does not seem to have any deeper meaning and it’s also unoriginal (any Siena student could film their drunk friend and have a similar outcome).

Similar to Gillian Wearing, Vanessa Beecroft uses the pubic sphere to hold many of her performance pieces. Beecroft, born in Genoa Italy, creates performance art pieces, often for specific places in order to comment on that locations history or social influence. Most of Beecroft’s performances involve live female models, which are often naked for the entirety of the performance. In 2005, Beecroft held her performance entitled “VB55” in the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Germany. VB55 was made up of 100 naked female models, wearing panty hose. The women were assembled according to hair color and the pattern in which they were placed resembled the colors of the German flag. Most of Beecroft’s performances are similar to VB55, which attempt to comment not only on the location, but also the use of female bodies.

Wearing and Beecrofts’s performance art pieces can be seen as a bit controversial, especially Beecrofts. The use of naked women poses some concerns, which causes many of her performances to be closed off to a large part of the public. While the two women take different approaches in using public interaction, they both succeed in expressing their creativity and artistic talent. When comparing their works, I favored Wearing’s over Beecroft’s because of Wearing’s ability to get complete strangers to confess their inner thoughts and feelings. Nevertheless, both women are seen as highly influential in the contemporary world of performance and public art.

By Hildy

Reaction to Dave Hickey

Dave Hickey’s sense of humor and insight to the art world make his podcast, Custodians of Culture: School Yard Art: Playing Fair Without the Referee, a funny, yet serious insight to the new and modern art world. While at times he appears to lose his train of though, Hickey manages to present his listeners with the idea that over the past forty or so years the art world has undergone a vast transformation. This transformation revolves around the transition from art as a mode of expression to art as a part of capitalism and the economy.

A major aspect of Hickey’s talk revolved around the development of art as an expensive commodity. Hickey stated that in an “art bubble”, money gets sucked in but it breeds greedy artists and stupid collectors. He discusses how artists started pricing their works at astronomical prices in order to get the most money for their work. This concept was also touched upon in Robert Hughes' documentary The Mona Lisa Curse. Within the documentary, Hughes enlightens viewers as to the absurdly high prices that some art pieces have produced. Both Hughes and Hickey believe that this inflation in prices has caused Americans to lost site in the beauty of art, and instead have created “monsters” in the form of greedy artists and collectors whose sole purpose is to make the most money.

I found both Hickey’s talk and Hugh’s documentary interesting because of this idea of massive amount of money within the art world. Its sad in a way that art has lost some of its aesthetic value and for some it has merely become a numbers game. Both men discuss the decline of museums and their power, which is something one does not often think about during a museum visit. Within the documentary, Hughes mentioned the prices of both some “famous” works and newer works and its mind boggling that someone would spend millions of dollars on art merely as an investment. It’s refreshing to see people like Herb and Dorothy Vogel, who collected art for the love of the art. For every Herb and Dorothy, however, there are hundreds more collectors who are merely concerned with the prestige and economic gain from owning artwork.

Another interesting point presented by Hickey is his idea of the art market place. He explains that the market place is finite, meaning that there will always be more works of art than people to buy them. This causes a ripple effect; if art does not change, no one will buy more. The market place encourages change, however, Hickey feels that within the institutional market, nothing changes. He thinks that instillation art does not change and that arts recreate different works merely to make money.

Overall, Hickey feels that art has lost its public significance and virtue through the evolution of the art market. While fifty years ago art was displayed din museums for its aesthetic value and public virtue, art today is created for the mere purpose of making up to millions of dollars from collectors willing to pay the price for prestige within the art world. While there seems to be no cure for this growing trend, perhaps speakers like Hickey will be able to remind people of art’s aesthetic value, as opposed to its monetary value.

Hildy's Midterm

Part I: Performance Piece

If I were a performance artist, my main goal would be to surprise people. Unlike performance artists such as Marina Abramovic and Joseph Beuys, I would not want my performance to be advertised or expected; I would want it to be a spontaneous occurrence that catches people off guard.

My performance piece would take place in a busy shopping center, such as a mall or outside area, during the busy infamously busy Christmas shopping season. Throughout the weeks prior to Christmas, people tend to become overly materialistic, frantic, and even stressed due to the pressure placed upon the Christmas season. My performance piece’s main purpose will be to get people to stop their shopping and observe an unexpected art show. The message of the performance will attempt to remind people of the beauty of the holiday season, aside from all the gift giving. My intentions would be to avoid commenting on the religious aspects of the Christmas season, and instead focus on the natural beauty that occurs during this time.

The performance would involve a group of people, who have prior knowledge of the performance. It would take place in a pre-setup section of the mall. The setup would include a fenced in section of fake snow.

Script:

- One by one, members of the group enter the fake snow pit. At first they walk

around the fence, looking hesitant. Before they enter, they put on a hat, gloves,

and scarf.

- Once in the fake snow, they begin playing in it as children, making snow angels

and throwing the fake snow up into the air.

- As more performers enter the “snow pit”, whimsical music will start to play in

the background. It will begin softly, and gradually increase.

- As the music increases, the lighting behind the pit will slowly go down, until at one point it goes out. When it comes back on, fake snow will be falling from the season.

- Again the lights will dim, and the performers will get out of the snow, pick up their bags, and continue on their way.

While the performance is taking place, shoppers will hopefully stop and observe the performance. The feeling I would hope to provoke in them is a feeling of nostalgia for their childhood. By remembering how it was like to be a child during this time, the shoppers will hopefully take a break from their materialistic tendencies and come to appreciate the beauty of the season through the performers actions.

Part II

Despite his death in 1968, Marcel Duchamp’s legacy continues to impact conceptual artists. Whether or not they realize it, artists from the past thirty or so years have been influenced by Duchamp’s groundbreaking and original work. Within The Duchamp Effect, five different artists discuss how Duchamp took part in both the development of their own art and the art world in general. While some mention Duchamp’s actual artwork as influence, others talk about the meaning behind Duchamp's work and how they tried to incorporate this same meaning into their work.

Bruce Conner, an American artist born in 1933, is best known for his work in film and sculpture. In his interview, Conner comments on the idea that the main meaning behind Duchamp’s work is the “idea of questioning” (57). Conner not only thinks questioning is vital to Duchamp's work but he also believes that “questioning is an overriding characteristic of what his work and he represented” (57). Conner believes that this aspect of Duchamp’s artistic purpose is what makes him both so influential and controversial. Conner took this idea and incorporated it into his own work through the way in which Conner signed his artwork. He created a stamp of his signature, yet left it up to a gallery owner what got signed. This innovative way of signing artwork stems from Duchamp and his meaning of art.

Perhaps one of the ways in which Duchamp is best known is for his ready mades. Duchamp was infamous for taking ordinary objects and transforming them into art. Artist Sherrie Levine took Duchamp’s idea and made it her own by buying pairs of black shoes, which she eventually sold. She also took pictures of her readymade shoes, as well as recreated them. The interviewer comments that “it’s very Duchampian, this idea of taking the original readymade and making it into a fabricated readymade” (177). Levine agrees, expressing that she was very happy with this form of art. Levine recreated Duchamp’s famous Fountain by creating her own bronze urinal in order to further delve into the Duchampian ways of creating art.

Louise Lawler, an American artist and photographer, is quite honest in the opening of her interview. She states, “my own relationship to Duchamp is after the fact…to me Duchamp signaled a weird looking urinal…” (183). Lawler’s initial reaction to Duchamp’s work is similar to many people who initially find his work to be confusing, or not art at all. Lawler’s connection to Duchamp stems from his idea of art and its context. Lawler’s work consists primarily of photographing other art, which in turn creates a new work. Comically, at the end of the interview Lawler explains why she does not like interviews. She states that interviews “foreground the artist- tell too much about what wouldn’t be kwon be known when confronting the work” (186). I feel that Lawler’s quote stems from Duchamp's idea that art is about questioning, and probing an artist on their work only interferes with the desired impact of the art.

Fred Wilson provides an interesting insight because he is both and artist and a curator. He admits that most of his artwork “came from my experience in museums” (187). Wilson’s takes what would be consider artifacts of African American and Native American decent and pairs them with newer modes of art. He is “really interested in surprise and how one reacts on an emotion and intuitive level before the intellectual self kicks in” (188). Here, we can see the connection between Wilson and Duchamp. Duchamp liked to bend people’s realities and make them question and Wilson’s art essentially does this. Being a curator, Wilson has an insight to museums and how they work, which he used to create art shows that defy people’s views. This idea is also similar to how Duchamp used museum’s to show off his unusual artwork.

Ed Ruscha’s insight to Duchamp and his contribution to the art world was perhaps the most interesting. Ruscha, an American Pop Artist, discusses how Duchamp was taught in art school and how a major aspect of Duchamp’s appeal to young artist is his image of a rebel. Ruscha explains how Duchamp “was for the spirit of revolt”. The idea of rebellion is very appealing, and Ruscha admits that that is part of the reason why Duchamp had such a great influence upon his own work. Duchamp's idea of rebellion made Ruscha “aware that there was another way to think about things”, which is apparent in Ruscha’s artwork that uses odd ingredients as mediums.

After reading each of these interviews, it is very apparent that Duchamp continues to have an impact on the art world. Duchamp’s theory on the meaning behind art, what actual constitutes as art, and his overall “rebellious” style all contributed to his iconic legacy. While people might still be confused by his art, others have embraced that confusion and used it to inspire new artist forms, which will in turn continue to inspire both future artists and viewers.

What is art today?

When someone is asked about what his or her favorite piece of art is, they normally would refer to either a painting or perhaps a sculpture. This is a case where the people of the present day have been subjected to what is socially acceptable. Who the artist is, how much it was sold for, or where the artwork was shown sets the standards in today’s society determines whether something is good art or bad art. It is not to say that sculptures and paintings are not great examples of fine art but rather it is as though a person has tunnel vision when thinking about what their favorite art is because they have not been subjected to biased opinions and not having the ability to see the many different art forms that are out there.

Suzi Gablik argues in her essay titled The Nature of Beauty In Contemporary Art that art is starting to become more than just going to a gallery. She describes how “a new paradigm of an engaged, participatory and socially relevant art is emerging.” Ms. Gablik shows how a majority of artists are selling their work to a dealer and the process they go through in doing so, it is not helping today’s society in any way. She finds out from one artist that “No artist has ever changed anything for better or worse." They believe they are not socially responsible for helping out the world and making it a better place. Ms. Gablik states this is completely wrong.

She then describes how one of her close friends her and friends take time once a month to go and clean garbage out of a river. She describes this as true art for it is helping the wellbeing of society. Her friend also makes a deep connection with the river to a point where the relationship is more than just how she was trying to help clean it out. The connection she makes is one that is deeper than she could have ever made with a painting or something she is viewing at an art gallery or a museum. It is because she is personally making her own connection with society and using the river as her landscape for creating her masterpiece. The connection she makes with the earth is far greater than one could ever make while stroking a brush a crossed a canvas because she is changing the earth for the better.

Joseph Beuys is an artist who is a bit exotic compared to others. He is known for his sculptures but one of his most famous pieces of work is his three night stay in New York City with a coyote. Mr. Beuys spent the time with the coyote in hopes of making a certain connection. This is far different from the concept of most artists work. Although the idea has sketched me out more than made me think of his artwork as unique and interesting, you still have to respect Mr. Beuys work for he is trying to help society for the better in the way he was trying to understand a form of life better.

Art has given the world many great contributions. The problem is the contributions have not helped the world’s society change for the good. Paintings will not pick up the garbage that is killing our environment. Sculptures do not help decrease the air pollution. Art comes in all shapes and forms so when someone is out in a ditch doing their part to help the environment I believe they are making a bigger connection with helping today’s society than an artist’s connection he is making with his work in a gallery with a viewer.

Chris Pearce