Art and Globalism + Art and it's Institutions

Questions, thoughts, and responses...

#1
"...Globalism is just a code word for the Westernization of non-Western cultures. Some critics charge that globalism charges homogenization, while others argue that it reinforces the value of local concerns, histories and identities."
I think globalism has done both. I think it has opened doors that were once sealed shut. It has helped us to understand and learn of new cultures, religions, lifestyles and people. However, at the same time, it has created a sort of flat world where things have started to intermingle and mix together. It is hard to look at an artists work and try to decide where that artist might have come from. Or even to look at a person and understand their background. Whether that is good or bad I can't say, but the loss of cultural awareness and identity is frightening and sad at the same time.


Yinka Shonibare Deep Blue


Yinka Shonibare The Sleep of Reason ~ Asia and Africa


Daphne Diallo - Title Unknown

#2 "While critiquing globalism, some artists also find ways to exploit systems of global exchange and communication for their own purposes. Yet others reflect on their own changing status within a globalized universe. For some this means an examination of post-colonial realities, for others a reflection on their own condition as global nomads. For all of these artists, the ambiguous legacy yields a new understanding of the individuals place in the world." (pg 295 Art and Today)
With the invention of the internet, and the click of a button, we can open up entirely new and foreign doors. I can visit the Met while still in my pajamas. I can access the library, long after it has closed. I can also study and learn of new cultures without ever leaving my house. If I do decide to go visit these new lands, the internet makes that easier too! I can book flights, hotels and entire vacations faster than ever before.
This technology brought with it a vast new collection of information, and since then we have become an internet greedy society. We want everything, and we want it now. As artists if we need to know about an artist, we hit up search engines and read quick blurbs about them. The internet has also allowed us to display our work. Although a jpeg image is never as good as the real thing, it is something that Monet, or Picasso, never would have had to deal with. For us it is now an everyday part of our lives. You want to get in a show? Send a PDF. You want to show your work? Send a JPEG. It has sped things up in a sense but also requires us to be internet and computer savvy. Technology has not overlooked the art world.

#3 "There is no art without those who speak the language of the artworld... The world has to be ready for certain thinks, "Danto wrote nearly forty years ago, "the artworld no less than the real one. " (Pamela M. Lee "Boundary issues: the art world under the sign of globalism - Critical Essay". ArtForum)
The art world hast to be ready for all things. The world wasn't ready for 911, but the entire world responded. Indonesia and the surrounding countries weren't ready for the 2004 Tsunami and Haiti wasn't ready for an earthquake earlier this year, but the world responded. Artists and others alike. I don't think that we can be completely ready for everything. No matter whether it is a natural disaster or come new technological phenomenon. However, we can respond in positive and reassuring ways, and learn about the ever changing future that lies ahead of us.



Jake Beckman Transformation
"The tidal wave transformed so many lives. I found myself avoiding the TV so as not to become as transfixed as I was after 9-11, but I had to do something, therefore I got out the biggest canvas I had and began painting. In the end there are more than 160 birds in this painting in addition to the screaming seagull in the foreground. I wanted the point of this work to be clear, hence my visual allusion to Hokusai's Great Wave, which is an image recognizable to most people." -Jake Beckman
This artist, although not as widely known as Dittborn or Meireles has responded in his own way about what was happening in the world at that time. Brought to him via CNN and a million on the news networks these things begin to plague our mind and as artists we have to find ways of controlling and channeling our emotions.
Dittborn and his airmail painting also addressed a time when he as an artist and human being needed to find a way to deal with the suppression that was going on around him. Instead of getting sucked in he found a way out by creating artwork that could be airmailed possibly a way of getting himself out of the situation piece by piece.




#4 "It is not the object in its self but rather the context in which it is seen that determines whether or not something is considered art." (Pg. 348 Art and Today)
I think that the way people see objects is different. I consider myself to have an easy, laid back sense of humor when it comes to dealing with life and even art. However, those who take themselves too seriously might have a different reaction to the same piece of art. For example. The Pink Football by James Jaxxa, is covered in pink sequins, which ultimately destroys it actual purpose, of being able to be thrown around and tossed in the mud. The fact that it is in pink, which is usually associated with girls, also add a playful jest to the piece of work. I imagine that if a serious football player found that instead of the old leather footballs they used to sell in the store were replaced with this new pink sequined version, he would be utterly upset.
I also think that if I were standing in a museum next to this football player, he would be griping and moaning about what art actually is. Unless, he too could laugh at the parody of the piece. I think pieces like this have to be looked at with a bit of "everything goes" attitude.


James Jaxxa Pink Football

#5 "Avant-garde is always connected to the ruling class ... very sustenance depends on attracting purchases by the elite, a cold reality that sets up an unavoidable clash between the myth of avant -garde artists' radical freedom and the reality of their entanglement in a world of status." (Pg. 347 Art and Today)
The idea that an artist must always be accepted by the elite social class isn't a new one. It is true that many of those elite and high class individuals of privileged backgrounds can change our lives with a simple purchase. However, the entanglement happens, in my opinion, when the artists get a taste for money, becoming greedy. The line is crossed from enjoying the radical freedom from "the man" that we often claim to enjoy. Instead that is where we would find our boss, our shackles, and our deterrents from actually focusing on what it is we want to make, instead, we would start thinking of what it is people want to buy.