i am for an art

Claes Oldenburg wrote an art manifesto in 1961 called 'I am for an art.'
The implications of his words "I am for an art" convince me that he supports art of his classifications, wants to see art made these ways, and makes art by these descriptions.


Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen
Dropped Cone
2001

"I am for the art of ice-cream cones dropped on concrete." -Claes Oldenburg


I wrote a manifesto that describes art that I want to see made and that I hope to make. I am FOR these things in the art world, but what does that mean? Would I make bumper stickers to publicize them, write a petition to save their rights, be silent for a day for them, wear them on a t-shirt, start a chain e-mail about them? Are these classifications meant to be published in the New York Times or kept silently in a journal? I share them in a blog, and otherwise seek them outside, in galleries, museums, online, in the trash, and in my own creations.


I am for an art that interjects in conversations between bathroom stalls
that can’t help but laugh at a silly haircut
that knows what dirt tastes like, and has no exceptions for the five-second rule, even for ice cream
that scrapes its nails against a chalkboard
that moves like a slug, drags its feet, and stumbles
that doesn’t know the difference between flour and salt
that attracts wild animals
that is not potty trained
that doggy paddles
that tracks mud all over the carpet
that destroys carefully constructed sand castles in front of the builders
that steals oars from canoes left on the side of a lake
that curses in front of grandparents
that goes train hopping
I am for an art that sounds for only an instant

I am for an art that combs its hair a thousand times after each shower
that studies every night and never sleeps in class
that cleans behind its ears and in its bellybutton
that watches the oven the entire time food is in it
that counts calories
that waits at the park bench everyday for someone it doesn’t know
that wakes up with the sun
that makes its own clothes and perfects each stitch
that wears sunblock whenever it goes outside
that washes all the dishes every night
that molts and cleans itself with its own tongue
I am for an art that grows as slowly as a tree



david shrigley (he says it is not art, but a non-conformist snowman)

furniture art

Jamie Isenstein
Arm Chair, 2006
Wood, metal, nylon, raw cotton, linen, hardware, human arms, human legs, zippered jeans, "Will Return" sign, and Jamie performing.
Dimensions variable.

Courtesy of Andrew Kreps Gallery

"endurance performance art"
Young Masters; New York Art
http://nymag.com/arts/art/



Constantine Boym

Moss' newest event features Constantine Boym's "The Ultimate Art Furniture" collection--a group of furniture pieces literally made from art itself. Murray Moss explains,
Art, with which to construct furniture. In response (or as retaliation?) to the Art World's appropriation of Design, wherein a wooden chair, for example, is placed on a pedestal and subsequently experienced as abstract sculpture, Boym reverses the process: Art is torn from the wall, ripped from its frame, and wrought - albeit most respectfully and sensitively - into what we now experience as a chair or a table.






Pablo Reinoso
Spaghetti Bâle
2008
H 253 L 320 W 168 cm
Wood and Steel
1

this one from 2006 looks like benches way of holding hands

Spaghetti Double

http://smartpeopleiknow.wordpress.com/2008/08/30/from-furniture-to-art/


Art student Hongtao Zhou from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has constructed furniture made from ice and snow on the frozen surface of Lake Mendota, Wisconsin, USA.
http://www.dezeen.com/2009/02/12/ice-and-snow-furniture-by-hongtao-zhou/


What is the difference between furniture art and the art of furniture? Furniture art transcends functional furniture with creative design so that there is some concept that the furniture functions for. Many of the pieces I provided could be argued as to whether they fit this criteria- like the snow furniture. Is it not simply a creative way to design functional furniture? Or does its design actually inhibit it from acting as functional furniture and does it become a symbol of frigid culture?

contemporary artist

David Shrigley

I like David Shrigley because he challenges the taboo of humorous art. He doesn't take himself too seriously- his art is hilarious and simple. He does drawings, writing, sculptures, and installation work.

website

Installation at Bergen Kunsthall 2009



this reminded me of the photographs of dead animals wrapped so carefully and displayed as specimens..



..but with the david shrigley cynicism and playfulness


sculpture




drawings







animation

luncheon on the grass

Brook Sinkinson Withrow
Luncheon on the grass today
2009





Edouard Manet
Luncheon on the Grass
1863



Manet's painting of a picnic challenges the traditional way nudes were painted. Previously, the exposure of human bodies were justified with mythical settings so they wouldn't shock the bourgeois audience. Manet's nudes sit casually in the grass in a real setting. The woman in the left foreground confronts the camera with confidence in being observed. Her nakedness distinguishes her as a subject to the men. The males' ease and satisfaction mark their social power.

A woman in the right foreground has dominance over the scene with almost masculine ease. A female in the left foreground casually sits in a bathing suit top as if tanning, looking at the camera through playfully large sunglasses, asserting a tone of liberty of mind. A male sits behind her wearing a dress and seeming confused or a bit melancholy, as if dissatisfied. Behind them all is another girl, peering up from her crouching position, independent from the rest, she is doing as she pleases.

doppleganger mound

A pair of people folded into an orderly mound dominates the composition. Two left arms cross the image plane at a lazy diagonal, perfectly parallel to each other. Behind the arms, two left legs bend, folding underneath two torsos. Two heads turn to face the camera. Twin faces illuminate the repetition of lines and forms in the photograph.

In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes identifies the attraction of engaging photographs as their “advenience or even adventure.” Photos that particularly touch people have a quality of invigoration that Barthes associates with animation. “…Suddenly a specific photograph reaches me; it animates me, and I animate it. So that is how I must name the attraction which makes it exist: an animation. …This is what creates every adventure.” (Barthes 20) The stimulation a viewer experiences from looking at a photograph is an adventure of perception.

A photo of a destroyed street in a Nicaraguan rebellion by Koen Wessing captured Roland Barthes. The photograph recorded armed soldiers passing nuns. “I understood at once its existence (its "adventure") derived from the co-presence of two discontinuous elements, heterogeneous in that they did not belong to the same world…" (Barthes 23) Guns and nuns hovered in the same realm for enough time for a photograph to be taken of them, two that typically gravitate away from each other. Their juxtaposition was the advening factor that held Barthes captive.

Just as the relationship between the nuns and guns animated Wessing’s photo, the relationship between the two bodies animates the repetitious photo. Twin faces, arms, and legs interlocking to compose one form animate the viewer and are animated by the viewer’s gaze. One body echoes the other, creating a visual vibration that I cannot resist. The two forms are so alike that they transformed into one unit of continuity. Their juxtaposition mocks their individuality and their co-presence suggests that one is a doppelganger.

All of the elements of replication in the image are part of the photograph’s studium. Barthes describes this Latin phrase as the components of a photograph that are engaging and can be studied or discussed. The facets of a photograph that burn into the viewer's memories and challenge their perception comprise the punctum. The viewer's perception takes an adventure, seeing relationships that they may not have seen in real time without the photo. The photo's punctum changes the way a person perceives, whether wounding or enlightening.

The twin photo branded my perspicacity because I am one of the two echoing forms and my very own doppleganger is the other. It pierces me to look at a representation of our homogeny. Throughout our lives people so often commented on our similarity that we strived for individuality. People also relentlessly picked apart our differences despite our better knowledge of what separates us. When I see photos of us, I see every difference screaming out calling us different names. In the photo of us folded in turtle pose, I see Megan's years of basketball practice in her muscles, and laps upon laps of swimming in mine. I see Megan's mischief in her brow. I see the thirst for knowledge in mine. The rhythm of this photo lulls me and keeps me staring at the two of us. I see not only the variance that distinguishes us, but our identicality and wholeness. The photo defines us as a unit composed of two individuals.

The adventure of the photograph is the duality of sameness and variety. My perception is vibrating in a frenzy between the celebration of our unity and appreciation of our differences. I am one with Megan, yet we are unique even from each other.









(These photos were flipped from being captured by Photobooth, so right is left and left is right, hence the discrepincy in the first paragraph)

photobooth

found object response




"I'll Meet You at the Cemetery Gates
FOUND by Maryanne Hamill in Cleveland, OH
Lake View Cemetery is one of the most beautiful cemeteries in Cleveland-- it has such wonderful art throughout. People like President James Garfield, Eliot Ness and John D. Rockefeller are buried there. My favorite memorial is the angel that sits near the Haserot family plot (http://www.forgottenoh.com/LakeView/haserot.html). I was just visiting there this weekend when I found what looked like a ripped up picture in front of the angel. It was like a little treasure just for me. I was so excited. I took it to work & scanned it, then I put the pieces together in Photoshop. This is what I found."
from foundmagazine.com .. (April 21)

the angel ..


from the finder's provided link


Many of the comments at the found magazine website on the torn up picture comment on the haunting quality of the image and the find. the male is looking up with weirdly bulging eye sockets, seemingly perplexed by what he sees, almost to the point of pain. the girl confronts the camera, looking into the lense with one furrowed brow and a straight face, seemingly in jest. presumably, the picture was torn up and left at the bottom of the angel at the Haserot family plot (a popular funeral art site of the cemetary), though it could have been left lovingly in one piece and been torn up by another person later. in any case, it was found at the foot of a male angel whose acid streaked wings, body, and face leave the dark impression of crying black ink or blood.

the proximity of the camera to the figures and their positions right next to each other led me to assume that it was taken in a photobooth. it reminded me of the film amelie and its photobooth mystery subplot.


from amelie..



amelie finds a scrapbook of reassembled torn photobooth images that was put together by a character named nino. the same unidentified man keeps reappearing in the discarded photo strips, mysteriously lacking emotion in each image. she dresses up as zorro and leaves messages for nino via photobooth pictures, left in the paris metro photobooths.

from a blog called kathrine's folie (april 21)



the man in this photo (which i found online) stares up into the lens as if he has nothing to offer it

from a blog called the boat lullabies (november 18, 2007)



a young punkish boy first takes an aggressive photo in which he points directly into the lens creating an extreme close up and concealing most of his face except for his eyes. in the second photo he is looking up to the heavens with his hands held together in prayer. his playful contrast of rebellion and angelic pose reveal his childish absurdity and wit.




so what's with the (abandoned) photobooth pictures? such photos are taken in a private setting (a small "booth" enclosure) automatically. there is no photographer to judge or direct how the photo is shot. usually the images cannot be seen until after the photos have been taken, except for in contemporary photobooths or on the photobooth application on macbooks. roland barthes talks about how he changes when he becomes aware of being in front of a camera- he transforms into the image of the photograph. how would he confront a photobooth, a place almost like a confessional where someone must choose to go- in order to have their picture taken.

veiled

Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot with a Fan, 1872



Dearest Mademoiselle Berthe,


You spied right back at me through your mask of a fan; you caught me watching you. At guard, you crossed the limbs closest to me on your body, but you returned my stare, allowing mine. You acted as if you were hiding, veiling yourself with your fan, but I imagine that you were letting me in. Despite your mourning, you playfully peeked through the shadows of your veneer- an image I could not forget.

I wish to speak to you, to see your lips and hear your voice. Tell me about your father. Was he a good man? I hear he supported your artistic hand. My father supports mine as well. We have something in common, see?

Put down your fan. Take off that mask. I want to see you outside in the sun. I want to see you paint.

Wouldn't you like to discuss art together? I would like to study you and compose music that sounds like you and write a novel that reads like you and paint a landscape that is nearly as beautiful as you.

But I cannot write a novel whose pages are shut. You must remove your veil. You must show me who you are.

I hope that I have not been evasive with this letter. I want to volunteer anything I can do to help you through your grievance. If that is for me to let you be, I will have to accept it.

Do you remember seeing me?


Earnestly,

The One on the other side of the fan