Thursday a.m. Idea Post 1/29

Because I am moving in the direction of using my body as a basic tool for creating work, I find myself now beginning to question the accepting or rejecting that this work often gets. A lot of beautiful things come from this alternative method of using body parts other than the hands to create work. However, while I was working on my shoot last weekend, I continued to think about how my viewer would take to what I was doing.
So why paint with all things except the customary objects like brushes? There happened to be this specific moment while I was performing my “body painting performance” last weekend where I felt that I was using all of myself in ways that I never had before. There were definite moments of awkward positions and bizarre sensations while the tempera paint sunk into the pores on my face but the act itself felt right. The entire time my mind directed my body in the directions that it would usually direct my hands; an experience where I felt in complete control of what my body was doing. There was a point where my upper leg was subconsciously ordered to apply paint to a specific part on the canvas. As much as my hands wanted to get involved they were only there to balance myself over the plates of paint where each of my body parts got there paint supply from.
While writing a good bit about the experience and thinking about how the performance made me feel, reminded me of this teacher in the county where I grew up. He was an art teacher at a high school who did his own art work outside of school that consisted of using his body parts to paint. When the school system found out what kind of art he created in his spare time, they fired him because they felt he was not setting a proper example for his students. Since recalling that story from 2007, I found a few articles about the situation and why the county felt justified firing their employee. Stated by Chesterfield County Superintendent Marcus J. Newsome in an article from the Fox News website, “The school system operates under an idea that holds respect, responsibility, honesty, and accountability as core values for all students and employees to abide, and the board clearly felt that Murmer had gone outside those parameters with his art.” I feel that the statement made by the superintendent could be seen as the county trying to make their employees conform to a certain way and deviate from building their own character. I am still confused and troubled by the decision and do not want to think of a school system bearing down on their youth’s leaders so much that the teachers can not even have a personal career outside of the education system.

Fox News Article
Stan Murmer's Website

Monday a.m. Artist Post 1/26

Janine Antoni was born on January 19, 1964 in Freeport, Bahamas. After leaving her home and coming to the U.S., she attended college and got her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. Later, Antoni attended Rhode Island School of Design where she then earned her M.F.A. Today, she is working in New York and is often described as a performance and sculpture artist; sometimes intermixing the two. Antoni received a fellowship from the MacArthur Fellowship, a painting and sculpture grant in 1998, and an award from the Larry Aldrich Foundation in 1999.
A quote from Antoni from the PBS Art 21 excerpt is what has convinced me our works are similar to each other and makes me believe I have a lot to learn from her. I “came to the knowledge through the experience of my body…” After watching her segment it became very clear to me what my intentions are for my upcoming work. I completely get and understand how and why Antoni uses her body as a tool for her experiments and work. In the Art 21 segment she explained that the viewer is able to identify with her personal work because they have a body too and therefore can empathize with the artist. This past semester up until the present I have used my body in my works as a tool to complete my experiments. I often worry that if my work is too personal then my viewer will not be as involved as I would like he/she to be. However, after going through and seeing how personal Antoni’s works are and how I felt from them, I know it’s possible to make personal work accessible.
Some of her works were live performances while others were performances that were documented with photography or some part of the performance turned into her final piece. An influential piece of hers is “Loving Care.” This was a performance that took place in a gallery space in 1992. Antoni uses her hair as a paintbrush and on her hands and knees paints the floor while dunking her head in hair dye. While she is performing this, she gradually works her way closer to the viewers and eventually pushes them out of the space. Another piece that influences me is “Lick and Lather” from 1993. Antoni made a mold of her bust out of chocolate and soap. Then she fed herself with herself and washed herself with herself. All the while that she licked and washed these busts, she gradually erased the identity of the bust; her identity.
Antoni is heavily influencing my upcoming shoot. I plan to really think and try to understand how to use my body as a tool and how to gain knowledge from my body’s interactions with the outside world.

Luhring Augustine Website (displays some of her work)
PBS Website for Antoni

Other sources of info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janine_Antoni

PBS art:21 Art in the Twenty-First Century: Disc Two, Season Two; stories, loss, and desire time, and humor. Copyright 2003

Thursday a.m. Idea Post 1/22

“The human condition clearly is a function of what one knows about the nature and course of the life-form on the planet and what he can do about the particular situation of interest” (http://condition.org/humcon.htm). As humans we strive to find answers for everything and will not let ourselves succumb to the unknown. We crave knowledge. Because of our need to fulfill every loophole and opening about reality causes many to question ourselves as beings. At the same time we question our existence, purpose and the ultimate meaning of our lives.
Logician, mathematician and philosopher Kurt Godel created proofs and theories and one of his proofs accounts for the existence of the human condition. Because of the research and study he has done with the human condition we are aware that ourselves as beings are going to be faced with ignorance and problems on a daily basis. The ways we handle ourselves through those trying moments depicts how we react and cope with events that make us human.
There have been several artists who have used the human condition as the central idea for their works. A literary artist, Hannah Arendt, published “The Human Condition” in 1958. As a philosopher Arendt’s approach to the subject was on a more literal descriptive way. She pinpoints out at the beginning that the purpose of the book is to help one attain the immortal through action. She lays out three actions that human carry out on a daily basis; our mindless human routine. The three activities are labor, work and action. These activities become representations of repetitive never-ending routines that are necessary to sustain life. For example, obtaining food, water, shelter and reproduction are key activities in the human condition.
William Hawk, an associate professor of art at University of Missouri-Columbia and a visual artist, is currently incorporating themes of the human condition into his paintings. Jason Rogers, writer for the Alestle newspaper, wrote an article on Hawk explaining how Hawk’s paintings “study the social culture and seek the meaning of human nature…”(Rogers 1). Hawk uses certain colors and painting techniques to evoke certain energy from the viewer. For example he “uses varying colors that vibrate the viewer’s consciousness. Cool colors contrasting with suddenly illuminated areas create and energetic blend that grasps the casual viewer’s attention” (Rogers 1).
The purpose of Hawk’s work is to compare and contrast the perceptions of the human world with the natural world. I found that our works were similar in that the aesthetic aspects were not stressed as much as making art with a sole purpose of aiding and prompting the viewer to find “some solutions for meaningful living…” (Rogers 2-3). This semester I plan to further this exploration of the human condition in my work and single down a part of the condition. At this point I am focusing on the question what is the meaning of my existence? And incorporating the many answers into what comes next.

Rogers, Jason. “Exhibit Displays Human Condition.” The Alestle Jan. 2009: 4. http://www.siue.edu/ALESTLE/library/SPRING2001/feb27/exhibit.html <> <>

An Essay on the Human Condition
Godel's Proof and The Human Condition

Monday a.m. Artist Post 1/19

Born in 1960 in Milan, Italy, artist Franko B is known as a London based performance artist who also works with video, photography, installation and sculpture. Franko studied at Camberwell College of Arts in London and Chelsea College of Art and is now an established artist with a great amount of shock factor in his work. Very often Franko B uses his blood as a medium and focuses his attention on portraying “the pain, the love, the hate, the loss, the power and the fears of the human condition” in his work. “I Miss You”, is one of his most recent performance pieces that took place on May 20, 2000 in a Bar Nightclub in Birmingham, England. This piece was described with “the likeness of a catwalk show, but with his body naked, abject, monochromatic and bleeding, Franko B plays with the worlds of fashion and art whilst confronting the human form at its most existential and essential” (www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/liveculture/frankob.htm). Franko B intentionally attached his arms to catheters and bled down the canvas-covered catwalk and back amongst a sea of people and lights. Jennifer Doyle, art critic explained that the performance turned out to be a very overwhelming self-conscious experience. Completely covered in white paint Franko’s ceremonious walk seems to resemble a fashion show with its model leaving behind traces of blood on the canvas that would soon be rolled up and made into small pieces of art to follow the performance. (Doyle 1)
I first found Franko in a book titled From Arkhipov to Zittel, which is a collection of work done by the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. Setting the book I aside I began checking out his site and found myself strangely drawn to him in a way. I could see what thoughts and ideas he puts into his work and found how I also use those concepts to drive my work as well. Each piece of his is very personal and self-exposing. My most recent work has been focusing on metaphorically describing to my audience the various challenges I take on through performance. Both Franko and myself have our main focus on human conditions and choose to portray how we see those in different ways.
Last semester my human condition was daily challenges/obstacles that each human is confronted and deals with. Because we all handle challenges differently I chose to interpret the act my brain pictures me going through and beyond those challenges presented. During my most recent performance the obstacles I set up were external ones in my environment as opposed to internal obstacles Franko set up for himself like the continuous flow of blood out of his veins.
Despite how graphic Franko B’s performances and works are, he clearly performs a message to his audience of pain that all humans endure. Even though my work is not nearly as graphic and as dark as his, I want to start incorporating some things I saw in his work that I thought could help the success in my art. I appreciated his use of the long rolls of canvas to catch everything that fell during his performance because when the performance was complete the canvas was collected and then available to use for a new piece.

Watkins, Jonathan. From Arkhipov to Zittel. Birmingham: Ikon Gallery, 2002.

Jennifer Doyle, “Critical Tears: Melodrama and Museums” in Nicholas Baume ed., Getting emotional (Boston Institute of Contemporary Art/DAP, forthcoming summer 2005).

Video Link of "I Miss You" Performance
Art Critic Jennifer Doyle's Look at Franko B