Relationship of the artist individual to the social mass

Theodor Adorno
Culture Industry Reconsidered

"the culture industry is defined by the fact that it . . . conserves the decaying aura as a foggy mist."
what does that mean? Because there's no unique object with a strong aura, instead there are multiple objects without any strength of aura but a weak foggy mist? That there is still some mystery preserved in the products, but holds no potential for inspiration and awe?

The culture industry started to sound like my idea of mass-media. The examples he gave made me think of sit coms and hollywood flicks. But does culture industry include more?

Louis Althusser
from 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses'

that all our practices become material manifestations of a certain ideology. They effect every relationship that we have to the real world. Some examples would be nice to discuss in class.

Meyer Schapiro
The social bases of art

Seems that works of art are more telling of where the artists comes from rather than what an artist wishes to say. The question it begs is whether the artist whose origins is of that detached, privileged environment, class, academia, art-world, can produce anything sincere and true about the world in a way that engages and connects to the social realities beyond those issues addressed by purely abstract or spectacle-works.

text to be expanded....
visual coming soon...

Barthes Text Versus Work

What is text? What is work? I don't know.
It's not letters and jobs according to Barthes.

TEXT is something like:

it overturns classical traditions.
it defies classification.
it is a methadological field.
it is the demonstrated real
it is an experience in reaction to the sign
it is the infinite deferment of the signified, a deferment that offers play.
it is radically symbolic
it is plural. Barthes equates this to a stroll he took, where he could half recognize all the sounds around him, but the combination of sounds were unique. Maybe he was trying to equate this unique product as the text.
it resists a reduction to a mimesis for the consumer.
it asks you to complete the piece rather than give expression to it.
it is visited by the author as a guest
it is a "network"
it requires abolition of the distance between writing and reading (practice and consumption)

Whereas the WORK is:
the seen reality
the fragment of substance, occupying a part of the space of books.
the tail to the body of text.
the hand-holdable (vs. held in language)
the thing that closes on a signified (vs. reaction to the sign)
the thing that functions as a general sign
the "oraganism" (vs. the network)
the object of consumption (vs. decanting of the work to gather as play)




EXAMPLE OF TEXT:
(Requirements met: decanting the work and gathering up as play, overturning classical tradition, defying classification, infinite deferment of signified, symbolic, requiring you to complete the piece)


















- an assemblage by Joseph Cornell







EXAMPLE OF WORK:
(Requirements met: classifiable, traditional, seen reality, experience closing on the sign, not radically symbolic, general sign, object of consumption)





















- a photograph by Burtynsky

Week2

This is a painting
http://www.drublair.com/comersus/store/tica.asp

and
























http://www.helnwein.com/werke/leinwand/bild_142.html


Basically. . .
Author as Producer by Walter Benjamin
- Political tendency. Advancing means of production. Collaborative to support proletariat. Spread authorship. Organizational characteristics


Ornament and Crime by Adolf Loos
- Art is superfluous. Ornament is primitive. Smooth without elaboration is cultured.

Photography Vs. Painting by Osip Brik
- Photography is significant because of its opposition to painting. Photographers should capitalize on these advantages of speed, cheapness, accuracy. It can be fine art too. It will replace painting.


The pictures above are paintings that look very close to a photograph. Brik says that photography will inevitably come to replace painting because of its accuracy, cheapness, and speed. However, paintings like those above would seem to challenge that notion that painting cannot achieve in accuracy what photography can. It may be faster still to take a photograph of those models, but I would argue that photography possesses its own limitations in terms of accuracy and color. A painter may represent a scene as closely as it appears to the visible range of the human eye, whereas a photographer is limited to the range and characteristics of each film type. Another example is that of long exposures. In film, long exposures warp the color or stretch motion (ie. movement of stars). A painter may choose to preserve the accuracy of colors seen at any time of day or lighting condition.


Loos argued that ornament is an attribute of the primitive or less cultured, and that with the evolution of culture, people will come to realize that ornament is surplus and not only unnecessary but also unappealing. If this is the case, it does not seem to have manifested yet, as the success of Miro, Kieth Haring, Banksy and Basquiat may indicate. These artists work in a "primitive" style or are derivative of if not straight graffiti.
I also found it hard to believe that ornament brought him no joy in life. Throughout the reading, he expresses his preference of one smooth object over that of an "ornamented" and elaborate one. However, even things without elaboration or shells and jewels are products of a conscious design choice and express a certain "artistic" choice.

Art As Experience

Readings:
Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes
How to Provide an Artistic Service by Andrea Fraser
The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certeau
The Future of the Image by Jacques Ranciere
Happenings by Alan Kaprow



























Since I had to present Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life, I began to relate all the readings back to his. I saw each author, being the weaker to some other power, using tactics against that power. In Andrea Fraser's How to Provide an Artistic Service, she explains how and why she is attempting to formulate a set of self regulating rules and guidelines for the transaction of money regarding artistic services.
Her concern is that of the artists' autonomy and the integrity of each transaction.

The artist is the foreigner in the market, a place dominated by the presence of dealers and museums and their rules and regulations. The Market is their arena. The museums and dealers have knowledge and control of the terrain and may "prepare future expansions." On the other hand, the artist is the foreigner, taking opportunities when possible. The diagram is like an egg, where the sphere of the market is illustrated, and its cores or yolks and their appropriate sizes in relation to their influence and power is demonstrated. Andrea Fraser, by gathering the scattered artist-militia, conducting surveys and formulating her own guidelines and regulations, attempts
to increase the size of the artist's yolk, to make the artist less and less a foreigner and more a co-owner of the Market space.

























Alan Kaprow addresses the issue of the exhibition space. Here, the locale of power rests primarily in the galleries and museums, which Kaprow says is considered exclusive and "contain highly sophisticated habits."
Here, Kaprow tried to increase the use of the Art-dependent space. It is a space and time that is not predetermined by the museum, but one that is called for by the art itself. In the diagram, it is the museum again that holds power over the exhibition space. They maintain the advantage of a space that is their autonomous place, not that of the artist and art. Thus, the museum is able to maintain its "panoptic practices." Kaprow is using tactics with the persuasion of writing and the wit of art to decrease the dominance of the museum in the exhibition space.

























Lastly, the writing and verbalizing involved in theory itself is a tactic that refuses the tendency of the image or artwork to appear at first superficial and devoid of meaning. This diagram illustrates not the power of any one place or person, but perhaps the power of the image. Without theory and exegesis, almost all images begin as the "Naked Image." However, with the aid of theory and visual literacy provided by the likes of Barthes and Ranciere, we begin to develop the critical eye and mind to distinguish between the types of images and to fill or read meanings into images.

I also thought of this diagram in relation to Certeau's model of use/consumption. Like the television image that renders its viewers "pure receivers," the image, framed and hung, in its silence may also have the same effect on the museum visitor standing before it. He is unable to scribble his own thoughts on the margins of the museum wall or the little inscription beside the image. However, theory and discourse, represented by the smaller three circles, may be an indirect way of being involved in the production, readership, and maintenance of the meaning behind images. maybe.