Notes

The Role of the artist
Ancient Egypt 3000 -1000 BC
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Renaissance [rebirth] AD 1420 -AD 1525
Mannerism & Baroque AD 1525 - AD 1700
Romanticism mid / late 1800
Realism 
-seen as shocking and offensive when first seen
-painting ordinary people with little money e.g field workers, where as romanticism was more aimed at rich, perfect scene image.
Impressionism
Futurism
Cubism
Post Modernism
-Martin Creed: Gallery piece "the lights going on and off" 2000 -interested in what it means to be an artist
-Damien Hurst: Manufacturing art work
Prior to Renaissance
-The self was not considered to be a subject to explore in isolation  
-Prior to this artists had generally been commissioned to produce work for patrons - depicting religious, moral etc. themes  


Pliny the Elder AD 77
-wrote 'natural History' as important source of artists values in the 15th and 16th centuries
-Demonstrated extraordinary status Greek artists could achieve, which Renaissance artists aspired to.


Lorenzo Ghibern "gates of paradise"
-Sculptor, goldsmith & architect
-first artist to write a biography
-had new ideas about status of male artists


Francesco del cossa 1470 "The triumph of venus"
-plea to patron to be paid for commission as making a name for himself
-the response was he would continue to be paid for work by square feet


Artist as Entertainer 
-expected to arouse the senses and provide experiences that trigger the emotions of the viewer

Michael Craig Martin
"an oak tree" glass on a shelf
he questions what is art about, what their expected to do.

Art & Crafts divide

-crafts - skills & processes where as Art is not

-Modernism - a radical break from the history that preceded it.

-Characterised by a quest for novelty 

Modernism

-complex and diverse - not straight forward progression from early avant-guard to...

-Politicised / Expressive / Formal / The ???

Artists as having access to higher sources of inspiration and talent

-The mythology of the artist having a temperamental personality

-nowadays celebrity culture, the personality's portrayed 

-Artists as being 'other' : modernist idea artists being different. Able to look at society as if they aren't part of it.

Art & Democracy / commerce

Damien Hirst: has to be experienced and the shop is where people can experience it in a democratic atmosphere  

Artistic "personalities" 

-psychology

-social history

-the artist as 'civillizer' as 'border crosser' [challenges ideas / critical] as a 'representor'  

-artists demonstrate good taste to people

Psychologist 

-Lombrosos [1863] artists had more in common with the 'insane' than with 'men of normal disposition' : supported Victorian & Romantic notions of artists

-Otto Rank [1932] artists temperament could not exist without a support ideology.

-Rudolf & Margot Wittkower [1963] notions of the artist are driven by 'cultural trends'

-Becker [1982] art works can not be the product of a sole individuals work and effort. There is always an influence whether it be other peoples work, something that's happened to influence the piece of work etc.

The Death of the Author

-Roland Barthes [1977] image, music, text

-the artist was a genius / interpreted the meaning

-we come up with our meanings through culture what we understand things to be

-anything is a text we take images apart and read them

The Role of an artist
-To produce 'great' works of art that are valuable for there own sake
-artists as 'outside' 'genius' 'to be a cultural civilizer'  'border crosser' 


Artist placement group
Suzanne Lacey 'theory is on fire'
Joost Conijn 2004 [website]
-kids that live outside an airport on Amsterdam, questions what children can and can't do, what's considered as dangerous.

Newspapers

The Guardian Culture Section includes Art, Design, Photography etc.


The Independent Arts & Entertainment  

Question..

Do artists / creative practitioners have more responsibility than other members of society for addressing social issues?
I don't think that artists or creative practitioners should have more responsibility to address social issues but due to the way they / there work is seen by the public they have in a way be given a responsibility to make sure that the work they put out is 'suitable' for the public and isn't giving off the wrong message.There position in the view of the public gives them the power to put across a message that could address social issues but the way in which people view it might be different.

Notes

Ethical Considerations
Graphics copyright issues with images, fonts, logos. The content of the design.


Photography What's considered to be an expectable image, who decides what image can be showed to the public. Misinterpreting a brand, someone might take a photo using a branded item in a way that the company wouldn't want it to be portrayed. publishing rights, who has ownership of the photo and does the photographer still have a right to it if they sell it to or work for a publication. Paparazzi, how much freedom do we have to take photos, long lenses into private property etc. Involvement, a photo is used as a record of life but in the case of natural / wildlife photography should people be allowed to get involved an example of this is Kevin Carter's Vulture

Fashion Model size issues, materials used fur, skins etc. animal cruelty. Fair trade & child labour. Environmental issues involved with creating and shipping the items. Health & safety in the work place, using workers in LED Country's where they have a lower standard of care so there for it is cheaper for the companies. Modification of animals, selective breeding them to have more fur etc. 


Art If your painting a portrait to sell you will need permission of the person etc. 


Questioning..
As a consumer does it matter to you that your paying for child labour or if your the designer would you design for the company knowing this.


Cradle to grave design -designers should following the issues all the way through the life of the product from choosing materials that will last, are recyclable etc. making things sustainable


Mark Fast plus sized Models Daily Mail story London Fashion week 2009
a member of his team refused to work with him because of his decision to use plus sized [14] models in the show,  but what message is this sending out to people.


Some brands only have clothing that goes up to a certain size as they don't want their brand associated with larger people, this isn't the image they want portrayed. 
Now with trends in fashion changing so quick they have 'throw away fashion' it could work out cheaper to keep buying new clothes from somewhere like Primark than it would be covering the cost of washing it & as the new fashion trends are changing all the time clothing isn't used for as long any more.


Art, gallery's what is acceptable..


Marco Evaristti - Goldfish in Blenders this exhibition gave the audience the chance to turn on two switches if they wanted to which would blend a fish and in a few cases some people actually did do it, this would make you question how is it acceptable and how far can you take it before those people who did it would think it was wrong for example if it was a small fluffy animal would they have switched it on?? Story from The Independent


Guillermo 'Habacuc' Vargas -Starvation, the piece of work he set up was a dog tied to a short rope that he got off the street and he left it there with nothing and a title was written above it in dog biscuits saying 'you are what you read' his point was to show that every year hundreds of dogs die of starvation and no one does anything about it, but as soon as you put it in a gallery people take notice and say it's cruelty. Guardian Story


Image manipulation, changing reality 


one of the first edited images was of Joseph Stalin, there were several photos he had with Leon Trotsky when he was working along side him, how ever they fell out and Leon was executed, Stalin had him removed from photos that he was in along side him. This was an attempt to 'alter recorded history'. 


Photos were considered as evidence, showing what was happening at the time they were taken, however manipulating or editing them is becoming increasingly easier and it can be hard to tell what's real and what's been changed.   


Thomas Demand creates image that look like real places, but he does is purely constructed from materials like card then photographs them, the way they are set up and photographed makes them look like actual room and place. From a glance you wouldn't be able to tell they weren't rooms like the image below, this could be a form of editing or misleading the viewer.

Operation Orlan

She looks at woman in art and history considered as beautiful and has operations to make herself look like them, she has the surgery while awake and talks all the way through as it is recorded. Looking at identity and changing it, people are usually recognisable by photos on passports etc. fingerprints that are unique and names, she is changing as much of this as she can. 

Robert Flaherty 1922 -Nanoke of the North, supposed to be a documentary of life in the north pole, was completely constructed, the iglu was set up so that a camera could fit in it, the person they were documenting had a wife but she was replaced by two stage wives because they looked better, they set up hunting scenes but using spears when at this time they had access to guns that they would be using anyway so it was almost set up to show life as people would expect them to be living rather than true to life.

Museum of Mankind, when they received a walrus body and a sketch of it to stuff it they over filled it as they had only seen a walrus from the sketch they were given they didn't know it's body shape, they have rolls of fat but as the sketch didn't show this they filled it solid. This shows how important information is, nowadays we can picture what certain places look like without even being there because of images, videos etc. but also the fact that images can be manipulated 'improved' doesn't always give a true to life view.

Time Magazine -OJ Simpson

the choice of editing that time magazine used on the image of OJ Simpson leaves the viewer questioning what their intention was.

National Geographic - Moved pyramids together in a cover image, as their magazine was portrait and the photo was landscape to make it a better composition they moved one of the pyramids closer so they filled the page more.

Madonna for Louis Vuitton - the original images and the edited ones for the campaign were quite different they made her look a lot younger, from looking at this edited image in particular it makes it harder to notice that it is Madonna in the photos. The thought that I get is that they are using Madonna as an icon for marketing but don't necessarily find that her 'image' is as of importance because of the amount of editing they have used. Looking at the photos you would think why didn't they just use a young model if that is the outcome they are trying to achieve which it seems like from the image, however the publicity from using Madonna would be worth more than the final image. 

Current Debates

Patrick Chappatte: The power of cartoons
In this presentation he discusses the use of cartoons as a weapon, how he had brought cartoonists together from different parts of a broken country who would usually be against each other and came up with books of the work they had done.

He went to places that were completely divided and was given the chance to do a workshop with cartoonists from all sides of the Ivory Coast, he asked them to do a project together, 'killing the issues effecting their country' they came up with a book looking at the political crisis of the Ivory Coast. In Lebanon he did something similar but then got the newspapers editors on all sides to print the work of eight cartoonists on a page together, the work covered issues of religion i politics and everyday life. They managed to get it printed in many papers including Christian and Muslim.

I think this was pretty interesting as he had also been showing how the digital age is creating change nowadays, he had made one cartoon about the digital download of music saying how it had changed adding a bit of humour the quote on the cartoon was "The internet has changed music" and the other quote was "Before, you had to go to the shop to steal it". This kind of piece shows how cartoons are witty and are a good way of putting a point across which might be controversial which I think relates to him saying that they can be used as weapons and people have been killed over them.

This shows just how much power and influence they have.

He also did work with some cartoonists in Kenya who put together a video. "Eight Kenyan Editorial Cartoonists give their take on the issue of ethnicity in politics, social and love relationships"

Miwa Matrevek's glorious Visions

The work that she does using animation on a screen and interacting with it using herself as a shadow and part of the piece is very interesting I find it quite relaxing to watch, the use of sound helps this as it's very 'dreamy' which I guess would be the idea with visions.


Dianna Cohen: Tough truths about plastic pollution video link
Dianna created some art pieces made from plastic and noticed that bits broke away from it over time, which she initially thought was good but then thought although it does this it's still plastic it doesn't disappear and she started to look at the effect it had on the environment and in particular the marine world. She offered some solutions such as using reusable containers such as pyrex tubs and glass bottles.


Christien Meindertsma: How pig parts make the world turn Video Link
She shows how there are so many everyday items that include parts from a pig that many people wouldn't even have known about. 
Soap -fatty acids from pork bone fat used as a hardening agent
shampoo, body lotion, anti-wrinkle cream, toothpaste
Proteins from hairs of the pig used in bread as an 'improver of dough'
low fat butter, they add gelatine to improve the texture that has been removed when taking the fat out.
cheesecake and many deserts from the supermarket have gelatine to make them look good
Paint, texture & glossiness Paintbrushes, use the hair
Beer, some wine and fruit juice, to remove cloudy elements while brewing they pour it through gelatine 
she found a total of 185 products from following the life of one pig "Pig 05049"
she tries to show that we don't have any idea of what goes into many of our products, I think this was very interesting and makes you wonder what else you don't know about and really shows that you learn something new everyday.

Exhibitions

Royal West of England Academy Oct 24th - Dec 12th Current Exhibition "The biggest exhibition of the year, an exciting mix of sculpture, photography, architecture, painting and printmaking from both professional and amateur artists. " I think I would find this exhibition interesting as it has pieces from a lot of different mediums.


V&A Dec 8th - April 11th Digital Design Sensations 
"The exhibition will show the latest developments in digital and interactive design, from small screen based graphics to large-scale installations."
"For the first time, the V&A is also commissioning a digital work for its website and will provide remote access to some of the works on display"
I like the sound of this exhibition the way they have described the pieces that are going to be on show and the interactivity.


Spike Island webpage


Bristol Media contemporary photography Spike Island