Andrew Schroeder

Arthur Danto...

One of the better things to come out of building up a new website is the forced evacuation of all of my archived images, sketchbooks, and writings about art making.

From time to time I’ll be posting new blasts from my artistic past under the Writing parent page…

Today’s goodie comes from my days at the U of M… we hosted Arthur Danto as a visiting artist/critic and had the distinct pleasure of hearing him lecture about aesthetics.

Here are my notes/musings/thoughts about his presentation.

This is going to seem like a ramble… but… I’m idle at the moment and idle fingers must tap keys in order for me to stay awake at my desk. I might as well think through some one of the things that is running through my weasel-brain today.

My neighbors probably hate me right now.

Last night, like a true multi-tasker, I cranked up a great Philosophy Bites podcast and hopped in my shower. In the latest download Julian Savulescu talks about the ‘Yuk’ Factor. Put more in expanded terms, the Yuk factor is more of the question: should we make decisions based on our base emotional/gut responses to situations/objects/actions.

I rather loved this discussion as it brought me back to the feelings I have when looking (or trying to look) at visual art. Back in graduate school I had the good fortune of taking a theory seminar with Jan Estep. One of our tasks was to respond to the question: what if a person, who has NO knowledge of art, looks at your work – how do they find value in what you’re doing? This person without any base knowledge of art is then, in theory, running purely on their yuk factor.

This question was a tough one for me to answer because my work isn’t concerned with aesthetics/beauty/sublimation. How is it possible to hook someone into looking at your work, when your work doesn’t visually stimulate them? If someone doesn’t have a preconceived notion of what art is, how can you make them consider something art? In the past, I’ve tried to make the argument that aesthetic appeal is not a necessary ingredient for a great piece. If this is possible, then I believe that there is a different mode of experiencing art that can be invoked… perhaps something along the lines of the viewer as researcher?

Speaking as a viewer, I love art that makes me work to uncover or create meaning. That’s always been the hook for me… understanding as a type of conceptual challenge. It’s not so much the gut-response factor that makes me love art. Instead, I find myself drawn to work that forces me to suspend any yuk factor, delve deeper, and resist making a judgment.

Enough of my blathering.

*****

Definitely worth reading today:

Strained Relations, by Rick Poynor

AND

Letter from London: See You Later Contemporary Art Curator, by Ben Street

*****

I’m going to blather on and on today. I started this post, stopped it, started it again, and am now finally finishing it while I dread looking up my checking account balance. That’s the life of a multi-tasker. 

I’ve been thinking too much about the role of the market and salable visual appeasement in art production. This little bit of mental annoyance has led me back to a basic questioning of my stance on idealism and materialism. 

When it comes to both art/life, I’m an idealist. Despite being enmeshed in a thoroughly material culture, I maintain that meaning and value lie somewhere outside of, or underneath material reality. Plato’s notions being conscious, or being able to sense, indicates that there is a higher reality – replete with greater meaning.

Perhaps there is some small part of me that wholly subscribes to this idea. And… perhaps its the role of the artist to indicate other forms of meaning that could be underlying material reality. 

However, there is a very large part of me that is yearning to just give in and subscribe to a fundamentally materialist view of the art world. I’d like to think that it is governed by laws… that there is a rhyme and reason to the production and selling of art objects. To be honest, it might be refreshing to see art as just another realm of objects to be bought and sold… traded off and refurbished when the time is right. To know that if something is marketable it is therefore good, could be the revelation I’ve been waiting for.

I was having dinner last night with two friends and the same question that has followed me through graduate school popped up again to say hello. I thought I’d take a second to stick my tongue out.

The question is age old… if you count the last 30 years as an age…

Does visual art have to be visually compelling?*

With the risk of being rude, here is the answer that I did not give last night as I was downing my gin and tonic:  No. Personally and professionally speaking, I do not feel for a piece of art to be worthy of my attention that it has to be visually compelling. I would go so far to say that I am utterly fascinated and refreshed by visual artists who are able to make aesthetic decisions that lead to work that isn’t visually thrilling.

I’m compelled by images constantly and it is not a pleasant experience.

Visual culture in the West is characterized by a constant and unending stream of images that are… visually compelling. Some people call them advertisements and they are always there, captivating us to buy/feel/do something. It is all really quite numbing and feel like I’m building up an immunity to this type of image-function.

After all, there is something inexplicably gracious about an image that can function in ways other than… aesthetically compelling.

*I’m going to go ahead and assume the unsaid/uncouth/unfashionable connection between saying that something visually compelling is also saying it is formally compelling.

Colleen Mullins has another great post in the continuing discussion of relationships between the market and art production. LINK.

Here’s my comment on her comment:

I can’t stop thinking about this…

Now… wouldn’t it be exceptionally ironic if we looked at those little hand-made cards that come with each 20X200 purchase in the same way as the defunct signage Miyazaki photographs? To quote from Miyazaki’s 20X200 page, they could easily be seen as objects whose “transformation to… relic is fast and impersonal…” Perhaps that unopened print you mention is already undergoing this transformation as it lays perfectly flat in its little cardboard coffin.

To take this one step further, maybe in the not-too-distant future, the 20X200 website will be regarded as one of those “unsentimental spaces created through corporate analysis of demographics, traffic flow, and consumer desire.”

A response to Question #1 over at Elysium.

Check out Mullins’ site for the whole conversation…

I’ll answer question #1 in the simplest possible terms:

Colleen, I agree with your assertion that venues such as 20X200 serve as excellent indicators of the overall state of art sales within the greater entity known as the free market.

Now, I want to complicate things:

I don’t feel that it is ultimately healthy to view art in these highly commoditized terms. To be blunt, the free market is not always good. Reducing images and art objects down to ready-to-buy commodities signifies to me there is NO PLACE left in our culture that isn’t about mass consumption. This is, of course, my personal opinion.

I do not mean to suggest that art is pure or that artists are somehow exempt from global capitalism.

I do, however, want to suggest (like Naomi Klein hints at) that there are some parts of our culture that we can declare as non-commercial. As a culture, we have internalized advertising and the commercialization of… everything that it seems absurd to even suggest the possibility of drawing boundaries.

There are some glimmering hints at how these boundaries could take shape.

For example, photographer Matt Siber’s series, Untitled Project* explores power relationships between text (much of which is commercial) and inhabitants of various urban public spaces. His displacement and re-contextualization (or is it de-contextualization in this case) of text reminds me of the city of Sao Paulo’s banning of outdoor advertising.

…and with that… I give you my two cents on the matter… at least for the time being.

*After thought and aside… wouldn’t it be ironic if Siber’s work ended up as yet another 20 X 200 edition?

Peter Griffin - Postmodern Superhero?

In the last two years, I’ve seen many episodes of the television show “Family Guy” and have to say, I’ve enjoyed every single one. I’m a little bit embarrassed to admit this – as I like to point out that I don’t watch television and generally avoid many of the institutions of popular/mass-mediated culture.  Being an overly neurotic creature, I can’t let myself enjoy something without analyzing it to death.

Today’s question for y’all is Family Guy -or, more specifically: what is the relationship between Family Guy and Postmodernism. Does the TV series represent the epitome of the postmodern concepts of intertextuality, opposition to meta-narratives, deconstruction, and “death of the author”?

Does anyone else see this?

What Would Lyotard Have to Say?