FOR GRAPHIC DESIGN:
"New Wave" --GD term for postmodernism --response to perceived sterility in modernism --reject modernism's obsession with progress & instead challenge ideas of order & discipline as established by Bauhaus & others. --reject "form follows function" (limited as too predictable) --solution is radical, anarchic ("new wave") style --embraces technology as a way to increase appropriations and manipulations **eclectic approach** **legibility often sacrificed for expression** **emphasis on intuition & potency of typography**
April Greiman --highly innovative style; has some swiss influences (esp. Matter) --color and culture of california --multi-layered effects made possible by technology (when she starts working with the computer, in 1980s, she questions what the quality and texture of the image on the page wcould be) ***approaches the page as if it were three-dimensional space within which typographic, photographic and formal elements playfully juxtapose, overlay, tilt and recede in a dynamic balance. --tries to make a 3D statement in two dimensions.
Greiman, Design Quarterly 133, 1986 "Does it make sense?" --computer generated --single page poster folded to create issue 133 of Design Quarterly (1986) --montage format denies traditional magazine layout --mag. normally 32 pages; here reconfigured as poster with ideograms and thoughts about the creation of humankind.
(Petronio Bendito, "If Art is a Commodity then let it be Money")
The first note in the series Picasso 300 PTNs (edition of 3, figure 7) contains a stylization of the Chicago Picasso Monument in combination with several patterns that were custom-designed to give the appearance of the intricacy of bank notes. A mathematical formula derives the price of the digital note from statistics: Chicago's unemployment rate as of April 2002 (6.9%), the total adjustments made by the IRS to art appraisals submitted by taxpayers for 2001 (73.1 million) and the year the Picasso monument was dedicated (1967) are articulated in a mathematical formula to determine the price of the work. The Chicago Picasso monument was chosen because it was not actually created by the artist, rather fabricated from a plan by workers at U.S. Steel. Neither Picasso experts, nor the city of Chicago can assign a firm "value" to this work of art.
The second note, Guggenheim 500 PTNs (edition of 5, figure 8) is priced based on New YorkÕs unemployment rate as of April 2002 (7.5%), the budget for the World Education Association Building proposed for NYC (1.5 billion), and the year New YorkÕs Guggenheim Museum opened (1959). The Guggenheim was chosen because of its current status as a museum "franchise" and the controversy over a planned sixth structure in Brazil.
The third note, Rodin 175 PTNs (edition of 17, figure 9) is priced based on PhiladelphiaÕs unemployment rate as of April 2002 (6.6%), the estimated cost to society for each high school dropout who enters a life of crime and drug abuse (1.7 million dollars) and the year RodinÕs Thinker became a socialist symbol (1906). Rodin's Thinker was chosen in part to highlight the issue of mass reproduction of artworks. (The Philadelphia Museum of Art sells reproductions for $100.00 each). So many versions exist that it is no longer possible to establish a firm date or an "original size" for the piece (and as is the case with all bronze sculpture, the "original" is destroyed in the process of creating the reproductions). Rodin used technology available during his lifetime to create copies in different sizes, which has contributed to the current confusion.
FOR TEXTILES:
see http://www.motleystudio.com -- "found objects" and "old technology" turned into "funtional objects" and/or "art"???
Rubén Ortiz Torres... issues revolving around processes of transculturation. focus on borderlands Mexico/U.S., uses diverse media (video, sculpture, paintings) in addition to textiles. Baseball caps address global expressions and concerns resulting from overlay and fusion that shape cultures in postnational context. Born in Mexico city, trained at CALARTS, issue of high/low culture. Altered baseball caps, urban youth culture, use of sports attire as fashion accessory, weaves in events and cross-cultural political and historical significance, linguistic plays.
FOR CERAMICS
Voulkos... ceramic vessels vs. ceramic SCULPTURE as a way of asserting "fine art" level of ceramics. If "modern" is a vessel proper... functional, what happens when destroy vessel form or remove its function... postmodernism? Problem here is that there has been at least one publication about Postmodern Ceramics that asserts a different definition, calling Voulkos modern for disrupting the function of the vessel forms, and then stating that postmodernism happens when the function is put back into the vessel. Voulkos' work from the 1950s is very expressive of zen ideas, especially wabi/sabi aesthetic, the "accident" is prized as a moment of loss of control, the "moment" of creation is symbolized. "Expression proceeds function as existence precedes essence." Existentialist ideas in Voulkos... if you take function out of vessel or IMPLY vessel... moment in which created (he tries to show ACTUAL moment), can only express what has been experienced. modern style/form constructed/decontructed, direct experimentation. Process of material/medium, implies loss of identity in work, not as important as what it means to the audience. Influenced by music (guitar) improvisation, mood altering, movement, bend notes/sustain a note. Voulkos sees platters as canvas or a sketchbook, influence of Matisse (black lines, flatten form versus define plane) and Rothko (use of color as emotional, reflect mood of vessel).,
Ron Nagle/Hung Liu... collaboration... ceramic and painting... Nagle is potter, asked Liu to crate decals to put on the work (see Merchant Cup on review page, for instance). Juxtaposition of bland illustrations with authoratative but contradictory captions. Compare to Magritte 'an object is not so attached to its name that one cannot find another that might suit it better." Systematic bilingual mislabeling... inability to find common referent for two signs... slippage between signifier and signified within the sign itself. People will still make a story out of it, similar to work of David Salle. (notes come from Ceramics Art and Perception, issue 49, 2002, international).
Richard Milette ... uses historical vessel forms (that appear to have been broken and then glued back together) and decorates with rebus puzzles (all about semiotics here, and deconstruction, literally, although Earl Miller, in Ceramics Art and Perception, issue 49, 2002 says too "easy" to call Milette postmodern, and proposes that the artist "should be viewed as an individualistic artist creating ceramics using traditional forms, while simultaneously acknowledging their contemporary context");
Grayson Perry ... layering, decals, historical forms (cf. Greek red and black figure vases) but content of imagery in Perry's work is frequently from popular culture and/or pornographic in a contemporary sense. His recent exhibition described as "Guerilla Tactics" (stealth tactic), seductively beautiful pots with challenging themes discovered only upon careful examination. is it art or is it craft? Perry is accepted by neither. Perry says "I don't want to sacrifice the aesthetic for the idea". Themes capture a flavor in society... sex scandals and tabloid obsessions, missing children, imbalance in new coverage missing child versus child abuse. Perry has transvestite alter-ego (Claire), who accepted his Turner prize a couple of years back. "One of the reasons I dress up as a woman is my low self esteem, to go with the image of woman being seen as second class... it's like pottery... that is seen as a second-class thing too" ... "I like the whole iconography of pottery. It hasn't any pretensions to being great public works of art, and no mattery how brash a statement I make, on a pot it will always have a certain humility." His work is technically sophisticated... each work takes MONTHS to complete. Ceramics as unexpected means to communicate challenging ideas. Domestic medium with controversial content.
FOR GLASS:
Koons quotablesÉ. (excerpts from the catalogue for the exhibition MADE IN HEAVEN)...show included carnival glass depicting graphic sexual acts and life-size ceramics of Koons and then-wife (and porn star) Ilona. You can see installation views of the exhibition and some of the works on the review page. In my opinion, these statements, put in print, are at least part of why this show pretty much ended Koons' career. He appeared in Vanity Fair a couple of years ago claiming that he was staging a comeback, but it hasn't happened yet.)
" I demand the right to express my own sexuality. I believe artists must exploit themselves and take the responsibility to exploit their viewers.
Ilona and I were born for each other. She's a media woman. I'm a media man. We are the contemporary Adam and Eve.
I'm not involved in pornography. Pornography is performing a sexual act. It really has no interest for me. I'm interested in love, I'm interested in reunion, I'm interested in the spiritual, to be able to [show to] people that they can have impact, to achieve their desires.
I went through moral conflict. I could not sleep for a long time in the preparation of my new work. I had to go to the depths of my own sexuality, my own morality, to be able to remove fear, guilt and shame from myself. All of this has been removed for the viewer. So when the viewer sees it, they are in the realm of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
(Calls Puppy a contemporary Sacred Heart of Jesus which communicates happiness and warmth to everyone); vacuum cleaners @ cleanlinessÉ male and female sexuality, order, minimalism; Bear and policeman É man sexually toyed withÉ banality out of controlÉ you can have someone come along and exploit power)É artificial value, artificial luxury which transforms them completely, changing their function and to a certain extent decriticizing them. My surface is very much a false front for degradation.
Ilona is one of the greatest artists in the world. She is a great communicator, a great liberator. Other artists use a paintbrush. Ilona uses her genitalia.
I am making some of the greatest art being made now. It'll take the art world 10 years to get around to it. In this century there was Picasso and Duchamp. Now I'm taking us out of the twentieth century.
I'm dealing with the subjective and the objective. Modernism is subjective. I use modernism as a metaphor for sexuality without loveÉ a kind of masturbation. And that's Modernism. I played this off the Post-modern. Sex with love is a higher state. It's an objective state, in which one loves and enters the eternal and I believe that's what I showed people. There was love there. That's why it wasn't pornographic.
I use the Baroque to show the public that we are in the realm of the spiritual, the eternel. The church uses the Baroque to manipulate and seduce, but in return it does give the public a spiritual experience. My work deals in the vocabulary of the baroque."
FOR ARCHITECTURE:
If you have Arnason History of Modern Art, (from A&D 383), look at chapter 16 (Modern Architecture between the Wars), chapter 23 (the Second Wave of International Style Architecture and chapter 25 (Postmodernism in Architecture). Ward also has a very good summary of Postmodern Architecture in chapter 2.
FOR WEB ART-- SEE THE FOLLOWING: