a very different kind of post for me. and a different sort of eye candy.
on 06/21/2012 at 06:35 AM
My first thought when looking at the pictures was that she’s just bronze plating old objects, but looking deeper I saw that they are all carved from wood. She’s very talented with a chisel then.
I’m with you - can’t draw a straight line with a ruler and can’t carry a tune - but those who are true artists - capture my respect and love of their work.
I’m not sure it’s art though, or just outstanding craftsmanship. I’m so nonplussed by the whole ‘deconstructional “art is what we say it is” movement’ and the dual hubris/audacity that goes along with it, that I don’t have much confidence is my own ability to make the call.
I followed Peiper’s links and then took a side path when I saw that another featured artist was a convicted murderer, and ran across a column that explained most of the ‘modern’, ‘post modern’, and I guess ‘neo’ eras to me: artists have been having a juvenile hissy fit since the mid-19th century, with each successive generation rejecting the reactionism of the previous generation as being too formal and staid. And as the definition of what is art devolves and thus broadens to encompass nearly anything, the arrogance of the creators increases, giving us the “you’re not cool enough to appreciate our creativity” attitude I’ve run up against so many times.
The revolutionary subversion of mainstream art began in the late 19th century at precisely the time when the LDS Church was sending amateurs to Paris to become traditional masters. Subsequent events have done little to shake the overwhelming loyalty of the Utah audience to the tradition of image-making that is representational, narrative, and largely unacquainted with the grown-up facts of life.
There you go: the viewer, who exists in the real world with all of it’s problems and pains, is “unacquainted with the grown-up facts of life”. You ain’t cool enough. Hey, fuck you.
Yet in the wider art world in the last half-century what an artist has created has become less important than what it says on her CV. Adriana Lara’s Mexican origin gives her third world credibility, a vigorous language culture, and connections to a large and enterprising US minority.
There’s some PC Bullshit for you: this completely untrained artist is “more valid” and “more real” because she comes from “a vigorous language culture” (as does anyone who is not a mute, right?) and has “third world credibility” with “minority connections”. Wow, that sounds rather racist to me. Her art is better than mine because she isn’t white? Damn.
And if you ask me why Mona Lisa’s familiar mug is in the Louvre’s gallery and the no-less familiar T.P. stays in the washroom, I’ll tell you it’s because that’s how most of us want it. It’s not that art is or isn’t a good place to talk philosophy, or has something more worth doing. It’s that art that only questions art has already eroded its credibility. Twice.
Audacity much? La Giaconda is only art because so many of us plebes say so, but really has no more intrinsic value than the latest creation of this artiste, who’s work is a roll of toilet paper sitting on top of an empty display case. Her art is art that mocks art, for art’s sake. Oh, such irony. Gak.
Read Art salts its own tale. Hur hur hur, tale for tail, such a sophisticated bit of wordplay.
Our next great work of cutting edge modern art will be an artificially grainy, artificially black & white video of a small child seeing pictures in passing clouds. “Look mommy” (since PC completely denies a male parental figure) “that cloud looks like a pony”. And a passing breeze causes the cloud to change shape. We’ll call the work “shattered visions”, and you’ll pay $500 to watch it live on a monitor, out in the very same field as the child and her mother and the clouds themselves, of which YOUR visual imagination won’t be art but simplistic shape association, even if you saw a pony too.
Drew, seeing the typewriter itself in the gallery impressed the heck outta me. And wife too.
There is so much detail and to be honest, it never occurred to us that it might possibly be more craft with a chisel then art as we think of art. But there has to be enormous talent at play for someone to reproduce something like that, and the sewing machine and the bike and the little details like the glove and the bat. We all know what a horse looks like but is she less an artist because she has the eye to sculpt a horse out of wood?I never read the other reviews as I was focused on this one lady.
Drew - Ms Alden/Sessions wasn’t much of an artist to be living in a mobile home - nor was she really much of a battered woman - to drag his body out with the jeep and bury it before even calling anyone. And of course all the misguided Christians are condemning those of us who want to hold her accountable (I did not see a single reference to a police report visavis her ‘years of abuse’).
There is always one in every crowd who brings down the ‘group’ - I don’t judge real art by the crappola pushed by hatefilled anti-Christians any more than I judge my Latino friends by the ‘wise’ Latina.
Still like Ms Davis’ work.
06/22/2012 at 11:00 AM