SDitAW: Chapter 6 - The Studio Visit

1. I get a kick out of the fact that Murakami doesn't use Illustrator, or rather he doesn't know how to. It's a sign of a true traditional artist who likes to stick to what he knows. Or maybe he just finds it troublesome to explore other mediums; whatever floats your boat Murakami, your work already looks like vector work as is.

2. I appreciate Murakami's devotion to his use of color (flat color). It lends his work a very sharp crisp and bright look, something that me a designer finds very attractive.

3."I threw out my general life so I can make concentration for my job."Holy crap is this guy ever so focused. Six years in college and I can't think of a single moment where I wasn't finding enjoyment in my general life. I can understand where he's going with this, but it feels a little too extreme for me. You gotta have the fun and everyday relaxation to balance out the work.

4. Respect. I greatly respect his activeness and interaction with all of his studios.

5. Merchandise, merchandise, merchandise. I remember this very much about Murakami, and it seems to be a very big thing amongst the Japanese. I don't knock it, in fact I think it's nice that he can find use in his work outside of the gallery halls.

SDitAW: Chapter 3 - The Fair

1. I understand that the art world is a very competitive field and that making a living out of it is important; but reading into this chapter, I felt that somewhere along the way, art had sort of lost its original purpose of pleasing an audience, rather than bringing in a profit or any kind of fame.

2. Overall there was too much talk about the economy in art. It kinda bored me.

3. “An artist doesn’t become an artist in a day, so a collector shouldn’t become a collector in a day. It’s a lifetime process.” This is so true that it's not even funny. I see myself as both an artist and a collector, and in both cases I believe that I'll be spending the rest of my life in perfecting my craft and collection.

4. "Occasionally meeting an artist destroys the art. You almost don't trust it. You think what you're seeing in the work is an accident."

5. "In the art world, gossip is never idle. It is a vital form of market intelligence." Yeaaaaaah, I gotta give it to this one. Too many things ring true with this line. The only way to keep up with the art world is to hear what's going on and what's the latest big thing. Unfortunately for me, that's something that I need to work on.

SDitAW: Chapter 2 - The Crit

- "MFA stands for yet another Mother-Fucking Artist."

- "The prevailing belief is that any artist whose work fails to display some conceptual rigor is little more than a pretender, illustrator, or designer."

- "In more senses than one, it costs a lot to be an artist."

- "Creative is definitely a dirty word.... You Would not want to say it in Post Studio. People would gag!it's almost as embarrassing as beautiful or sublime or masterpiece."

- "Group critiques offer a unique-some say "utopian"-situation in which everyone focuses on the student's work with a mandate to understand it as deeply as possible."

The Mason Gross MFA Show

I've got three letters for this show. U...G...H, ugh, yes ugh, I know that's not a word, but this work wasn't what I'd call "art" either. Now I know many would give me hell for saying that, but hey it's my opinion so I'll voice it however I want. Let's see where do I begin, a lot of the work that I saw in there was simply no different from what I've seen in other MG exhibitions. Concept, concept, and more concept. Did I mention concept? I see that art as half concept and half technique, but that show right there was mostly eighty-percent concept and twenty-percent artistic ability. In fact, I have a bone to pick with the vast majority of the art world; I don't call them artists, I call them posers and opportunists. People follow the art "trend" just because randomly splattering paint on a canvas in a single color or painting a geometric form on top of a photo is now the new thing; and guess what folks? IT'S EASY!
(I'll be back with more to say on this later)

Zimmerli: Japanese Prints

Okay so here I am reviewing an exhibition that I saw over at the Zimmerli last week. Honestly speaking, I wasn't expecting much from the Zimmerli museum, due to the fact that it's a university attraction. I sorta have this bad bias towards such museums, thinking that they only exist for the sake of the univeristy's public recognition. Shallow yes, and it's something that I'm still trying to get over. However I was glad to see something that struck my misconceptions upside the head.

Wood block prints. Japanese related ones at that. Though they may not have been made by the hands of their cultural kinsmen, these prints showed remarkable craftsmanship resembling the likeness of the prints of old. One of the things I love about Japanese prints, is the color that is being used in a composition. How the colors are not vibrant but earthly, uniform in "temperature" and not fighting for attention. Such as the image up top, notice how the majority of the composition is supported by the variety of brown colors. This is one of the things that I admire about Japanese block prints, because it makes the atmosphere around the work seem "real". When I mean real I'm referring to the pressence of a more mundane surrounding; our world after all is not just a world of sunshine and bright colors, it is also gray and cold.

Dennis Hopper: A Second Look

Alright, so I have already confirmed with myself that one visit to Chelsea was not enough. Thus I returned to take another glance at a gallery that peaked my fascination the last time. The exhibition in which I'm referring to is Dennis Hopper's "Signs of the Times", an exploration of iconic 60's photographs, or so they say. My first impression of his work was nothing too special; a bunch of photos lined up against the wall, with a few blown up sized images sitting right next to them. I thought to myself, "oh Christ, not another one of these photo galleries, been here, done that, I've seen it all".

















Hopper does a good job in making me feel inferior

Yeah, that's what I thought, until upon closer inspection I noticed that the large scaled photos were not photos at all, but in actuality photo realistic paintings. Let's just say that my mind was blown out of proportion. Never in my life would I have ever imagined seeing such an accurate representation of a photo at such a monumental scale. Hopper's attention to detail and sensitivity to realism made even the best copy machines in the world look like a mockery. I may be a graphic designer, but that's just my concentration. When it comes down to it, I'm a hardcore fan of the fine arts.


















Strike a pose! (detail... THE DETAIL!)

Interview with Alan Cano

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZTEnyz7O3c

Uhhhhhhh yeah, this was my interview with Alan Cano if you haven't realized it by now. The video pretty much covers most of what we talked about, except that the battery for my camera died during recording, so I'll talk about the rest of the interview below.

Aside from talking about his inspiration and work, Alan mentioned and I quote, " I don't consider myself an artist; the word artist in my opinion is too objective." To follow up with the last statement, I in return questioned the identity of his work, that if he didn't consider himself an artist, then what would his art be considered as. His reply was "a release, a visual diary". To him, the term artist is a word that should only be given to those of high regard, such as the old masters of the Renaissance; thus in that regard, the term "artist" has died. I took the time to also asked him about his future plans and where he plans to take his work after graduation. His response was to simply be known, to make an impact in the world through his work, and that the key to achieving that is to do whatever it takes to make it there.

3 Weeks Old Chelsea Visit

Okay okay, so I'm three weeks behind on this blog post for thesis. I realize this and I know it's not a good thing to be behind, but there's no point in crying over spilled milk. The fact of the matter is, I don't enjoy posting stuff on the internet. Procrastination it may be, but I just find the whole process to be mind numbing. But alas, for my own personal sake, I mustered up my determination and kicked my own lazy ass out of the bed of laziness.

So apart from that, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the Chelsea art galleries. A lot of the work that I saw gave me the huge rush of visual creativity that I was craving for, quite the opposite from the New Museum where I felt nothing in particular. If I had to put it in three words on why I enjoyed my visit to NY this time around infinitely better, it would have to be:

1. Weather (it was perfect, not too cold but a bit breezy.)

2. Variety (every gallery had something different to offer. The mediums were different and the scale of the works went from small to immense.)

3. Concept (As much as I appreciate and respect political work, I just can't help but admire a subject that goes beyond issues of society.)

Speaking of concept, good lord was the Maya Lin exhibit amazing.

I honestly can't say anything better than that for Maya Lin. I was impressed enough by looking at the piece from outside of the gallery; but upon closer inspection I realized that what I was looking at was a wondrous behemoth consisting of 50,000 2x4's. 50,000?? REALLY!? All that was running in the back of my head was, "as expected from the individual who gave us the Vietnam Wall Memorial".

The James Turrell exhibition was also intriguing with all of the colored lights and mirrors. In addition to that, the vastness of the gallery space and the lack of ambient light apart from the colored light used in the work really brought about a very enjoyable and exhilarating atmosphere.

______________ IT!

This is an assignment for my Advanced Design class. Where the objective is to create a new cliche and find a way to distribute and advertise it. The concept for this cliche is to use the blank as a source of interaction for the viewer, where in this situation they can write or draw however they please over the line. In connection to the IT! part, the result will be a strong response to other viewers, who in turn will be provoked to created their own response.

Alex Bag Video

I'll start off by saying that this video is not terrible; on the contrary it has high points in the way it portrays the average art student's thoughts, pet peeves, and personal desires. It also shows a whole lot of personality and atmosphere in each of the pieces in between the ranting.

On that note I will have to say that I didn't find very much enjoyment in the overall piece. The reasons are simple. One I hate having to hear "um and like" for every other word in a sentence; it makes the conversation sound so irritating and unintelligent. Second, I found a lot of the in between works to be lame and not to my satisfaction. I felt like I was sometimes listening to high pitched cacophony that had the power to regress me back to a lower form of life; and that the only solution to such a miserable fate was to end my own. "I don't care who killed Annie, just get out of my head! You sound like a rejected Southpark script!"

Once again I stress that I didn't think it was terrible. I still found some parts of the video enjoyable, such as the part with Bjork. Even though I didn't bust a gut, I still found myself smirking and amused at Bjork's cluelessness as to how a TV functions. Apparently she also used to be a huge conspiracy buff. I must say I also liked how art students were portrayed in this video. The unfortunate truth of it all is that some of us really are complaining, erratic s.o.b's that only appreciate most things at face value. This includes everything from art to our jobs.

So as my own personal suggestion I give this video a 10..............................................................................out of 20

Un-Amuseumd

It says HELL YES! How inviting!

So what do I have to say about my trip to the New Museum? Intriguing? Unique? Maybe more along the lines of, "I wished there was something more visually stimulating". After bearing witness to the actual building itself and its stunning architecture, added on top of that the sky room view, the exhibition itself was sort of a side show. Granted, I won't say that I hated the work I saw in there, but it just wasn't the kind of work that I thought was worth spending round-trip train tickets and an $8 admission fee. I do admire and respect the concept behind the whole social rights freedom subject with the Black Panthers and Apartheid, but that alone doesn't sell my interest.

Call me whatever you like, but I honestly don't find much amusement in looking at lithograph after lithograph of what I believe to be only sub par work. As far as Goldblatt's photography is concerned, the most fascinating about that exhibit wasn't the subject matter; it was the quality of the print that he was able to achieve at such a large scale, and that one of the photos had a set of cans in it that said KOO on its label.

The view would've been better if not for the stupid rain.

It has begun!

Welcome to the grand opening of my blog! Though there is not much to look at right now, I hope to getting this thing kicking on all gears in the hopeful near future.