Thoughts, notes and questions...
a) On page 84 in the last paragraph Borriaud writes " A modern movement took place at the end of the nineteenth century: the brushstroke became visible, expressing the painting's autonomy and magnifying the human in reaction to the industrialization of images and objects."
Our parents grew up in a time when you saved up for things that you wanted. You worked, and put your money in the bank. Then came credit cards. You could have what you wanted now and pay later. I suppose with the idea of having what you wanted now comes the idea with making things now. With technology things can be mass produced, assembly lined, and on the shelves in a matter of days. We live in an "I want it now" society. Everything from movies to food. If we have to wait five minutes for our text messages to travel 22,000 miles to space and back, then it is too long.
With the reaction of brush strokes showing up and placing emphasis on manmade objects, it is only natural that in a society where almost nothing is manmade anymore, we would react with art that is made from mass produced items. Even our art supplies are mass produced.
Master pieces in Styrofoam at iamboey.com
With the creation of the internet, we can even see one of these tiny masterpeices created. I am Boey
Skin of Spaces by artist Daisuke Hiraiwa.
b) I find it interesting that Bourriaud compares Koons to Hurst. Two people that I don't think I would have compared prior to this reading. He writes:
"Jeff Koons takes children's toys and endows them with and enormous Physical weight that contrasts with their frivolousness... For Koons, the density of matter becomes the quintessential code by which to organize the visible." He goes on, "As for Damien Hurst, the magnificent visual means he employs... only serve to underscore the morbidness of fragility of the subjects he pins or imprisons there."
Is it possible that Koons is also trying to immortalize a bit of history? I have often wondered why it is that if you take a shark, put it in a tank, and place it in an art museum, it becomes art. Why not put it in a natural history museum? However, the same could be said about Koons' work. Why not put them in a toy store? Each of these artists is, in their own way, immortalizing a piece of life. Whether by placing it in a museum, to be seen as an art object, or by emphasizing its size, so as not to get tossed out or lost with the other long-since-forgotten toys.
Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1992
Jeff Koons, Rabbit, 1986
c) Pg. 95 "Seurat attempts to reproduce the movement of industry in painting... Seurat anticipated the pixel."Bourriaud began the chapter by writing about how the "lifespan of objects is becoming shorter." However, if Seurat anticipated that his paintings could be easily mass produced, and therefore created them in such a manner, could it be said that by embracing the mass production he also solidified his lifespan? Making him an ever popular, and easily reproducible, master of art?
d) As semionauts we "wander in search of connections to establish." I don't think Bourriaud means an internet connection but if you think of his sentence with that meaning it still makes plenty of sense. We wander in search of connections. We yearn for the information at the touch of a button. We want it now, we need it now. We are also searching for ways of connecting with others. Through facebook, e-mail, blogs, and even news. Just yesterday I was informed of world events that happened thousands of miles away, via text. I quickly set out searching for my "connection" and rapidly found the information I needed- only minutes after the actual events had taken place. Something that just a few decades ago would have taken weeks or months to learn about. We are in the same position as the hunters and gatherers of old, but we are not hunting animals or gathering sticks for our fires. We are now hunting information.
e) As a printmaker I cannot close the doors on the machine and its ability to aid me in my creative process. I think that as semionauts and wanderers in search of anything and everything it would be unwise to do so. On pg 103 Bourriaud writes about how the "photographic reproductions, the forms appear as so many transient incarnations. The visible appears here as essentially nomadic, as a collection of iconographic phantoms." I agree. I would even go so far as to say this has become its own sort of art movement. Those who embrace the machine, be it a printing press of old, or a simple Xerox machine can find that they are very powerful tools.
Jean Daviot, Silences, 2001, Musée Chosum, Kwangju (Corée)
SUPERFLEX
If value, then copy, 2008
Photographer: Sam Hartnett
(Copy Light consists of a workshop where a series of famous and popular lamp designs are fabricated and hung in the main gallery. Images representing iconic lamps such as the Billberry A338, the VP globe, the Bubble and Opera suspension, are photocopied onto transparencies and attached to a basic cubic lighting structure. These new lights are constructed and hung in ARTSPACE's main gallery gradually filling and illuminating the space over the span of the exhibition. Copy Light is seeking the borders between a copy and its original. Through this manufacturing process a copy of a copy turns into something new: an original lamp that communicates the problems of the current copyright system.)
artspace@artspace.org.nz
http://www.artspace.org.nz
)
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