Shepard Fairey - Artist
started his carrier in 1989 with stickers on street to go against capitalism and social problems in 2001 he launched his brand OBEY and since then his company is one of the top brands influenced by street art. Conclusion is how from a belief against capitalism and consumerism ending up to be a company going with the flow and selling ideas of capitalism to support capitalism. |
Documentary on Banksy Exit through the gift shop 2010, shows a camera man copying street art for money
people believe already that art is expensive and they have associate art with galleries wealthy and upper class
a documentary showing street artist on act , Banksy interview , and the camera man who decided to become an artist in order to sell !
again we see street art being copied and used for reasons
people believe already that art is expensive and they have associate art with galleries wealthy and upper class
a documentary showing street artist on act , Banksy interview , and the camera man who decided to become an artist in order to sell !
again we see street art being copied and used for reasons
Religion … is the opium of the people (Die Religion … ist das Opium des Volkes)
This snippet, from Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, is to many people their only exposure to the ideas and writings of Marx, but is all that is needed in order to relegate him to the seventh circle of hell. It is also thrown by many as some sort of decisive riposte to any sort of positive claim about religion or to the idea that religion is anything more than the foolishness of the hoi polloi. Heck, I have seen these seven words bandied about as being fully supportive of religion, and while I do not agree with that assessment, I do think that the nuance of what Marx was getting at is lost on most who use it.
And while I am but an armchair philosopher, I shall attempt to explain what Marx meant by saying religion is the opium of the people. Here is the snippet in a more fuller context:
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.
Marx believed that all of our social institutions, including religion, are essentially the result of economic realities. There are the economically well-off and the economically not-so-well-off, the obscenely wealthy and the very poor, with the former groups seen as oppressing the latter (whether directly or indirectly). How is religion the opium of the people? Through a belief in post-mortem rewards and punishments (e.g. heaven and hell), religion placates people into accepting social injustices brought about by economic disparities. From what I understand, in Marx’s day opium was a mainstream sedative or pain killer, though it was also used to induce visions, as well as also being used medicinally in the fight against cholera. Just as opium was used as a pain killer, Marx saw that religion likewise kills the pain of the oppression brought about by economic inequalities and the concomitant social injustices (though as Marx would point out, this is only a temporary pain killer which doesn’t get to the underlying root cause). Just as opium could induce visions, Marx saw religion as offering up an illusion promising the eschatological reversal of fortunes (e.g., see the story of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16.19-31), causing people not to fight against the injustices in this life.
http://diglotting.com/2012/08/10/karl-marx-and-religion-is-the-opium-of-the-people/
Related to Edward Bernays and understanding the public opinion.
The desire to own the latest model of smart phone or the newest and most fashionable pair of shoes is thought of as completely natural but, believe it or not, there was a time when people had no desire for things that did not have a logical and necessary place in their lives. The shift from simply needing to wanting has completely shaped modern society and culture and it was almost entirely devised and orchestrated by a man who is almost unknown – Edward Bernays, the nephew to the renowned psychotherapist Sigmund Freud.
Edward Bernays started his fascinating career working for the propaganda arm of the Woodrow Wilson administration in WW1. After the war, the strong and wealthy American corporations were scared that people would soon stop buying things and that production would cease, simply because they would have already purchased everything they could ever need. Bernays, inspired by his uncle’s new book ‘A General Introduction to Psycho Analysis’ and his experience in the propaganda business, set about trying to appeal to people’s unconscious and make them consume in a way that had never been seen before, and on mass.
Up until this point in history, products were not marketed to consumers in the way that we think of as being the norm today. Companies would advertise their products based on their functional place in people’s lives. It was assumed that nobody would buy something that they did not need and this rational thought process was considered unshakable. Shoes were sold based on their durability and comfort and cars for their function.
Books
brands fundamentally transform how we manage an organizations identity how we think of its culture and how we organize innovation. simultaneously brands transform the politics and society on the diagonal: following them means moving sideways from production to consumption from management to lifestyle and back.http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=el&lr=&id=j-njBg7RzSQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1956&dq=brands+and+society&ots=UBQwk7R-Fw&sig=om2F6y14M-xVIaMn-MMUZAn2c_Y#v=onepage&q=brands%20and%20society&f=false
This newly acceptable form of graffiti is currently storming the traditional bastions of high culture. On Tuesday, venerable old Bonhams is holding the capital’s first dedicated auction of ‘urban art’ in Bond Street (not exactly its natural habitat), and Tate Modern will be dedicating a weekend to the arrival of the street art genre in May. With such establishment credentials come big money opportunities, but also huge contradictions. How can you call yourself a street artist when your work is hanging in a gallery or depicted in an auction catalogue or emblazoned on a promotional T-shirt? When ad agencies are employing graffiti artists to make their products look cool, doesn’t your raison d’être as an illegal, guerrilla artist implode?
How graffiti became art
time out london
By Ossian Ward Tue Jan 29 2008
http://www.timeout.com/london/art/how-graffiti-became-art
Already, Banksy’s pseudo-anonymity has come to seem less of a necessity to avoid prosecution for his years of paint-inflicted property damage and more a ploy to maintain his aura as international man of mystery. It may also backfire on him, as fraudulent Bansky prints have been peddled on eBay and any number of unscrupulous art dealers continue to sell secondhand Banksies as though they’re his official agents, when in fact he has only one (gallery owner Steve Lazarides). In spite of the circling wannabes, a whole street art industry is forming around young galleries and artists selling prints and unique pieces. So, while the current boom may have begun with Banksy, his witty one-liners won’t be the last word in street art.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=el&lr=&id=x8T7qheiI2oC&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=public+space+and+politics&ots=RMidG5t7qy&sig=g1_RJUxAY4R_Bmfx-kXDD6-w0iw#v=onepage&q=public%20space%20and%20politics&f=false
Paragraph on public space in Ancient Greece, page 5,6, 7,
FOUCAULT the politics of freedom
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=RceUyyX9gdMC&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=foucault+on+free+space&source=bl&ots=9E8KnT0hWO&sig=9BrXRsRq9SW5WcujVNyYr0iqCEI&hl=el&sa=X&ei=aEtJVMrDBILe7AbsrIG4Aw&ved=0CFgQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=foucault%20on%20free%20space&f=false
page 67 thoughts
THE ART OF DOUBTING
page on metaphysical doubt , Paul cesanne
THE MANIFESTO CLUB
Over the past 10 years, public spaces have become increasingly policed by unaccountable officials bearing open-ended powers.
On-the-spot fines mean that police and other officials can punish people for a series of offences ‘on-the-spot’, without legal checks and balances. Criminal offences that would have been tried in court are now often dealt with like a parking ticket.
On-the-spot fines have been running at around 200,000 a year since they were introduced in 2004. Now ‘out of court’ punishments make up nearly half of all offences ‘brought to justice’.
The result has been arbitrary punishments for perfectly innocent activities. A woman was fined for feeding the ducks (‘littering’), as was a man who dropped a £10 note. One Women’s Institute group received threats of fines for putting up a poster (‘fly posting’), and handing out leaflets (‘unlicensed leafleting’), while others have been fined for putting up lost cat posters. A number of political protesters were issued with penalty notices for ‘harassment’, including an anti-CCTV campaigner who handed out leaflets to his neighbours.
A new Manifesto Club campaign against ‘pavement injustice’ will take on unaccountable officials in public spaces – investigating how powers are being used, and calling for their review and limitation. We want to defend the principle that justice is done properly in the courtroom, rather than on-the-spot by a badged busybody. And that law-abiding citizens should be able to use public spaces freely, without risking censure for feeding the ducks.
SOUTHWARK COUNCIL
Graffiti What is graffiti and why is it a problem? 'Graffiti' refers to any drawings, scribbles, messages or 'tags' that are painted, written or carved on walls and other surfaces.
Graffiti is vandalism and it's become a really expensive problem. Removing graffiti costs the UK over £1 billion a year. We and other agencies have to remove graffiti from walls, street furniture, telephone boxes, bus shelters, monuments and even gravestones.
Graffiti is:
If you see someone writing or painting graffiti, do not approach them - what they're doing is illegal, they don't want to get caught and could be dangerous. Instead, make a note of what you remember about the incident and report it to us.
Paragraph on public space in Ancient Greece, page 5,6, 7,
FOUCAULT the politics of freedom
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=RceUyyX9gdMC&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=foucault+on+free+space&source=bl&ots=9E8KnT0hWO&sig=9BrXRsRq9SW5WcujVNyYr0iqCEI&hl=el&sa=X&ei=aEtJVMrDBILe7AbsrIG4Aw&ved=0CFgQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=foucault%20on%20free%20space&f=false
page 67 thoughts
THE ART OF DOUBTING
page on metaphysical doubt , Paul cesanne
THE MANIFESTO CLUB
Over the past 10 years, public spaces have become increasingly policed by unaccountable officials bearing open-ended powers.
On-the-spot fines mean that police and other officials can punish people for a series of offences ‘on-the-spot’, without legal checks and balances. Criminal offences that would have been tried in court are now often dealt with like a parking ticket.
On-the-spot fines have been running at around 200,000 a year since they were introduced in 2004. Now ‘out of court’ punishments make up nearly half of all offences ‘brought to justice’.
The result has been arbitrary punishments for perfectly innocent activities. A woman was fined for feeding the ducks (‘littering’), as was a man who dropped a £10 note. One Women’s Institute group received threats of fines for putting up a poster (‘fly posting’), and handing out leaflets (‘unlicensed leafleting’), while others have been fined for putting up lost cat posters. A number of political protesters were issued with penalty notices for ‘harassment’, including an anti-CCTV campaigner who handed out leaflets to his neighbours.
A new Manifesto Club campaign against ‘pavement injustice’ will take on unaccountable officials in public spaces – investigating how powers are being used, and calling for their review and limitation. We want to defend the principle that justice is done properly in the courtroom, rather than on-the-spot by a badged busybody. And that law-abiding citizens should be able to use public spaces freely, without risking censure for feeding the ducks.
SOUTHWARK COUNCIL
Graffiti What is graffiti and why is it a problem? 'Graffiti' refers to any drawings, scribbles, messages or 'tags' that are painted, written or carved on walls and other surfaces.
Graffiti is vandalism and it's become a really expensive problem. Removing graffiti costs the UK over £1 billion a year. We and other agencies have to remove graffiti from walls, street furniture, telephone boxes, bus shelters, monuments and even gravestones.
Graffiti is:
- Illegal - and clearing it up costs tax payer's money
- Unsightly - graffiti is a sign of a neglected neighbourhood and is associated with increased levels of crime and the fear of crime. It also discourages investment and new businesses from moving into the area.
- Offensive (e.g. contains language or images that are racist, homophobic, express religious intolerance or anything else that could be described as offensive)
- On council owned property (e.g. public buildings, monuments, subways, parks etc.)
If you see someone writing or painting graffiti, do not approach them - what they're doing is illegal, they don't want to get caught and could be dangerous. Instead, make a note of what you remember about the incident and report it to us.
THE MANIFESTO OF STENCILISM
“What does all this mean? Why are these people doing this?”
Unfortunately, nobody could give me a proper answer, except that it was the work of people without any reason or sense of responsibility, the “Dusty rabble,” said Lindsay, the former mayor of NYC. In Paris, this kind of expression hadn’t emerged at this time. Of course there were a lot of political slogans in 1968 during the student riots and of course we discussed art in public through the posters produced in the popular workshops of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. But there wasn’t any bigger movement of artists determined to investigate urban architecture. Graffiti, this kind of wild art, was born in the US in the mid-sixties when about ten artists, condemned to anonymity, started the ball rolling by writing their assumed names on the walls. I kept all this souvenirs in my mind where they took ten years to
mature, then I started to add my bit. While studying Engraving and Archictecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, I got acquainted with the subject. So, in the seventies I learned the art of etching and the techniques of lithography and seriography, while the study of architecture waked my conscience for measurable public space.
Edgar Wind 1960
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00hbd16
Audio
on authenticity of art , and how artists has become mechanical
which is the opposite of creative.
PABLO PICASSO
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/may/08/pablo-picasso-politics-exhibition-tate
"What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who only has eyes if he's a painter, ears if he's a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he's a poet – or even, if he's a boxer, only some muscles? Quite the contrary, he is at the same time a political being constantly alert to the horrifying, passionate or pleasing events in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How is it possible to be uninterested in other men and by virtue of what cold nonchalance can you detach yourself from the life that they supply so copiously? No, painting is not made to decorate apartments. It's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy."That flash of grandiloquence might be taken as the text for the forthcoming exhibition at Tate Liverpool, Picasso: Peace and Freedom, which sets out to explore the artist as a political being, through the causes he espoused, and above all through his commitment to the French Communist party (PCF), which he joined in 1944, with great fanfare, and never left. Picasso always hoped to go on for ever, and he very nearly did. In the course of a long lifetime (1881-1973) he had seen it all, from the Spanish-American war of 1898 to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. He knew anarchists, bolshevists, socialists, communists, fascists, pacifists, falangists and Stalinists, to say nothing of cubists, futurists, dadaists, surrealists, suprematists, constructivists, destructivists and stridentists.
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/may/08/pablo-picasso-politics-exhibition-tate
"What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who only has eyes if he's a painter, ears if he's a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he's a poet – or even, if he's a boxer, only some muscles? Quite the contrary, he is at the same time a political being constantly alert to the horrifying, passionate or pleasing events in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How is it possible to be uninterested in other men and by virtue of what cold nonchalance can you detach yourself from the life that they supply so copiously? No, painting is not made to decorate apartments. It's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy."That flash of grandiloquence might be taken as the text for the forthcoming exhibition at Tate Liverpool, Picasso: Peace and Freedom, which sets out to explore the artist as a political being, through the causes he espoused, and above all through his commitment to the French Communist party (PCF), which he joined in 1944, with great fanfare, and never left. Picasso always hoped to go on for ever, and he very nearly did. In the course of a long lifetime (1881-1973) he had seen it all, from the Spanish-American war of 1898 to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. He knew anarchists, bolshevists, socialists, communists, fascists, pacifists, falangists and Stalinists, to say nothing of cubists, futurists, dadaists, surrealists, suprematists, constructivists, destructivists and stridentists.
By DONALD ROOUM
For dictionary purposes, anarchism may be correctly defined as opposition to government in all its forms. But it would be a mistake to think of anarchism as essentially negative. The opposition to government arises out of a belief about society which is positive.
In other words, anarchism opposes government in all its forms.
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/donald-rooum-and-freedom-press-ed-what-is-anarchism-an-introduction
For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.
The connection is improbable. This was a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art - President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: "If that's art, then I'm a Hottentot." As for the artists themselves, many were ex- communists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html
Those vandals bring up another point. Graffiti is oft used not just to record, but also to make a statement. There is some unfortunate vandalism, to be sure. Yet there is also what we call street art, public art, guerrilla art. Street art is technically definable, usually referring to unsanctioned art that is produced in public spaces, but since that definition does not really speak to medium, genre, or materials, then we realize that street art is boundless in its possible range.
Artists resisting more traditional forms often engage in street art. Strong movements of the form emerge in newly liberated places, such as when that infamous wall fell. In that vein, we know that historically speaking, creative movements explode in places with newfound freedom – what better way to make your social or political message public, than well, in public. Recently, the world haswatched in awe as the Arab Spring has taken hold in northern Africa and the Middle East. Right along with the emergence of newly vocal masses, has been the emergence of street artists using their skill to make visual statement.
http://musedialogue.org/articles-by-genre/visual-arts/street-art/public-art-public-statements-an-opinion-on-graffiti/ts.
I have never walked into a lecture hall and not been bored at the very thought of it, until last weekend. The Guerrilla Girls are, I have to admit, wearing gorilla masks. One has a big, laughy face, and the other has a more contemplative expression; these traits are echoed, I think, by the personalities of the women inside. Of course it enhances any gathering when some people are dressed as animals, but that is not why they're engaging. They're engaging because they're fast-talking and reactive and witty, but most of all because they are making a very clear, unarguable point - that women are under-represented in the art world.
The Guerrilla Girls have been pointing this out since 1985, when they picketed the Museum of Modern Art in New York. At the time it was running a show that purported to be the definitive survey of contemporary painting and sculpture, and only 13 of the 169 artists featured were women. But nobody really paid any attention to them, which is why they put on the masks - and they haven't taken them off since (except, perhaps, for baths).
To cover the basics of guerrilla: there are several of them but they are all anonymous, and, when asked for their names, they will assume the identity of a dead female artist. Mine were Frida Kahlo and Käthe Kollwitz.
Before I met them, I'll tell you what the guerrilla concept reminded me of - Bolsheviks, before the revolution, when they didn't have to worry about governing, and only had to say: "Peace! Bread! Land!" You're never going to get any argument there; everybody likes bread, peace and land. And surely everybody, broadly, would agree that women should be better represented by the art establishment - particularly when they aren't exactly in a tiny minority in the community of practising artists. But it turns out that the French for one don't agree: there was an exhibition called Dionysiac in Paris at the Pompidou Centre last year with no women artists, which prompted critics and curators rather unabashedly to speculate as to whether women were capable of creativity at all. "Curators were bragging," say the Guerrilla Girls, "they were bragging about how only men are doing work that's worthwhile!" Even apart from the cheese-eating misogyny monkeys, everybody, globally, is moving incredibly slowly on this; women artists working today still earn the most shaming fraction of what men earn.
The Guerrilla Girls, rather depressingly I think, seem to take this lack of progress with a shrug, averring that chauvinism is always with us - it simply takes different forms for different generations. Part of this, no doubt, is a reluctance to make vast claims for their own influence. "We've had a number of periods of self-criticism," the mirthless gorilla says at one point. "We're not perfect. We're really funny, but we're not perfect." But part of it, also, is that America is getting more, not less, conservative, and this is clearly having an impact on the art world. "Let's just say there's probably no one in the Bush administration who subscribes to our point of view," says the cheerful gorilla.
The Guerrilla Girls are in London this week to give a series of lectures, and also to visit the room now given over to their polemical posters as part of Tate Modern's rehang. One of their first and possibly most famous was a 1989 rendering of Ingres's Odalisque wearing a gorilla's head, and the strapline: "Do Women Have to be Naked to Get into the Met Museum?" But before that, in 1986, they did a bald, black on white, text-only poster that said: "IT'S EVEN WORSE IN EUROPE." "We didn't even have to explain it, we didn't have to do anything. Everybody knew what it meant!" says the laughing gorilla.
They say it's amazing how little has changed: in 2005, they conducted some fresh research into European collections, and found that, even where museums owned significant amounts of work by female artists, it was all in the basement. To coincide with last September's Venice Biennale, they released the following statistics: of 1,238 artworks exhibited by the major Venice spaces, fewer than 40 are by women. They believe the city's Museo Correr actively does women a disservice by collecting their work, since they have 15 pieces by women in their collection and not one of them is on show. One of the Guerrilla Girls' Ten Commandments is: "Thou shalt provide lavish funerals for women and artists of colour who thou planneth to exhibit only after their death." The swizz of a posthumous fanfare must be matched only by the insult of seeing your work ... well, never seeing your work, and knowing no one else will see it, either.
Amusingly, the Guerrilla Girls are not that sold on Tate Modern, or its rehang. "We should be having an installation in the Turbine Hall about art in Britain - why are we stuck in this little room?" says the non-laughing one, and the laugher tries to smooth things over with: "But on the other hand, we're glad to have this space, if only to encourage other people to question the Tate." There's a pause; I get the impression she's fighting her natural tact. "To be honest, 16% [women] in the rehang is not fantastic."
I raised this with Tate curator Frances Morris, who is just about the most cautious woman I've ever spoken to. "It's a really important issue to raise, and keep raising, for institutions and the public ... It seems like a very simple message, but in fact it's a very complicated one." I asked her about ethnic representation, which is another hot-button issue for the Guerrilla Girls. "I ... I think that's a difficult thing to answer. There is much more of a sense of global balance ... I don't think I want to talk about diversity." Honestly, you'd get more straight talking out of Alastair Campbell.
The Guerrilla Girls say that tokenism is "rampant in the American art world. Suddenly, in the early 90s, the art world became fascinated with multi-culturalism. You could have written their small ads - they would have read, 'Curator seeks artist of colour for one show every five years. Must have shown in every other museum.'" I ask them if they think this has had an impact on the kind of work that finds its way into galleries - whether there's a vogue for women artists who are intensely focused on their sex so that gallerists can squeeze maximum goodwill out of the gesture. "That's something for other people to tell us," laughing gorilla says evenly. "We would encourage your readers to go to galleries [that] under-represent women and report back on whether that has an effect on the kind of art they're showing."
Interestingly, for the first time in 20 years, the Guerrilla Girls are concentrating their energies on Hollywood and the film industry, "which is where the art world was 25 years ago: it's shocking". Earlier this year, around the time of the Academy awards, they put up billboard posters in Los Angeles pointing out that no woman has ever won an Oscar for directing a film, and that only three have even been nominated (Sophia Coppola, Jane Campion, Lina Wertmuller in 1976).
Someone comes up to us and says: "How do you get to be a guerrilla girl?" Very charmingly they say that, well, there are tons of them, and they're not canvassing for more members. "But you know," says stern gorilla, "you could set up on your own. Find something that makes you really angry and aestheticise it. I don't enjoy wearing a gorilla mask, but that's how I'm taken seriously. You don't have to be gorillas. There's always room in the world for more masked feminist avengers"
'They're as strong as men'
"I think things are on an up at the moment. Take the Venice Biennale - it's the first time in more than 100 years women have even curated the show. There is still a discrepancy in prices at the high end, but that will change as more women buy more art."
Stella Vine, artist
"I don't think women are under-represented in the art world. There are plenty of good women artists. But I do think they are underpriced."
Sadie Coles, director of the Sadie Coles gallery
"Nowadays women can own and control their own galleries. Five out of the 12 artists I represent are women. Women have changed: they are more independent, more ambitious. The role of women and men is almost equal, and that's reflected in the arts scene."
Virginia Damtsa, director of the Riflemaker gallery
"I'm proud of the Whitechapel's history of pioneering the work of female artists. I curated the first MaxMara art prize for women this year, and it was fantastic to dedicate a prize to the work of so many hugely talented women working in Britain today. All artists have a difficult time after graduation, but for women the financial pressures and family commitments are amplified. Too many female artists end up having to give up."
Iwona Blazwick, director of the Whitechapel Gallery
"I have 50% women artists, and 50% male artists in the gallery, and they're as strong as each other. A lot of contemporary art is photography- and film-based, and it doesn't have that same weight of history as painting and sculpture. I think that's one reason why women artists are strong in this area. That's where the revolution is taking place."
Maureen Paley, director of the Maureen Paley Gallery
"What's really interesting is the number of women who are important in the art world in general. Just in London, Iwona Blazwick runs the Whitechapel Gallery and Julia Peyton-Jones runs the Serpentine. I don't think it's entirely true women are being paid less: Dana Schutz is the most talked-about young artist in the US at the moment; she's only 32, but her paintings go for a quarter of a million dollars each."
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/jun/29/art.gender
Bentham's Panopticon is the architectural figure of this composition. We know the principle on which it was based: at the periphery, an annular building; at the centre, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring; the peripheric building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other. All that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy. By the effect of backlighting, one can observe from the tower, standing out precisely against the light, the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery. They are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible. The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately. In short, it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions - to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide - it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap.
To begin with, this made it possible - as a negative effect - to avoid those compact, swarming, howling masses that were to be found in places of confinement, those painted by Goya or described by Howard. Each individual, in his place, is securely confined to a cell from which he is seen from the front by the supervisor; but the side walls prevent him from coming into contact with his companions. He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication. The arrangement of his room, opposite the central tower, imposes on him an axial visibility; but the divisions of the ring, those separated cells, imply a lateral invisibility. And this invisibility is a guarantee of order. If the inmates are convicts, there is no danger of a plot, an attempt at collective escape, the planning of new crimes for the future, bad reciprocal influences; if they are patients, there is no danger of contagion; if they are madmen there is no risk of their committing violence upon one another; if they are schoolchildren, there is no copying, no noise, no chatter, no waste of time; if they are workers, there are no disorders, no theft, no coalitions, none of those distractions that slow down the rate of work, make it less perfect or cause accidents. The crowd, a compact mass, a locus of multiple exchanges, individualities merging together, a collective effect, is abolished and replaced by a collection of separated individualities. From the point of view of the guardian, it is replaced by a multiplicity that can be numbered and supervised; from the point of view of the inmates, by a sequestered and observed solitude (Bentham, 60-64).
http://foucault.info/documents/disciplineandpunish/foucault.disciplineandpunish.panopticism.html
Dig deeper PUBLIC ART encompasses any work of art that an artist has created to be displayed, heard or performed in a public space. Although the oldest and most common forms of public art are monuments, memorials and statues, contemporary public art comprises a wide range of methodologies, forms and content. Public art ranges in scope from large-scale, commissioned works, which require significant collaboration amongst artists, funders and governmental agencies to implement, to independently executed small-scale works that require little to no funding. Public artworks may be site-specific, exhibited in non-conventional spaces or may alter the common function of a space. Approaches to contemporary public art include interactive art, guerilla art, sound art, community-based projects, and performance. Circus Amok
Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla
Collaborators Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, who live and work in Puerto Rico, create hybridized works, often incorporating sculpture, video, performance, sound and photography, that solicit active response and critical participation from viewers. In their piece Chalk (2000/02/04) Allora and Calzadilla placed two-dozen pieces of 64 in. long chalk in public places inviting people to make drawings and statements, which often elicited political commentary from participants. In this project and others, the artists examine the complex intersection between global politics and personal identity
For dictionary purposes, anarchism may be correctly defined as opposition to government in all its forms. But it would be a mistake to think of anarchism as essentially negative. The opposition to government arises out of a belief about society which is positive.
In other words, anarchism opposes government in all its forms.
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/donald-rooum-and-freedom-press-ed-what-is-anarchism-an-introduction
For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.
The connection is improbable. This was a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art - President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: "If that's art, then I'm a Hottentot." As for the artists themselves, many were ex- communists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html
Those vandals bring up another point. Graffiti is oft used not just to record, but also to make a statement. There is some unfortunate vandalism, to be sure. Yet there is also what we call street art, public art, guerrilla art. Street art is technically definable, usually referring to unsanctioned art that is produced in public spaces, but since that definition does not really speak to medium, genre, or materials, then we realize that street art is boundless in its possible range.
Artists resisting more traditional forms often engage in street art. Strong movements of the form emerge in newly liberated places, such as when that infamous wall fell. In that vein, we know that historically speaking, creative movements explode in places with newfound freedom – what better way to make your social or political message public, than well, in public. Recently, the world haswatched in awe as the Arab Spring has taken hold in northern Africa and the Middle East. Right along with the emergence of newly vocal masses, has been the emergence of street artists using their skill to make visual statement.
http://musedialogue.org/articles-by-genre/visual-arts/street-art/public-art-public-statements-an-opinion-on-graffiti/ts.
I have never walked into a lecture hall and not been bored at the very thought of it, until last weekend. The Guerrilla Girls are, I have to admit, wearing gorilla masks. One has a big, laughy face, and the other has a more contemplative expression; these traits are echoed, I think, by the personalities of the women inside. Of course it enhances any gathering when some people are dressed as animals, but that is not why they're engaging. They're engaging because they're fast-talking and reactive and witty, but most of all because they are making a very clear, unarguable point - that women are under-represented in the art world.
The Guerrilla Girls have been pointing this out since 1985, when they picketed the Museum of Modern Art in New York. At the time it was running a show that purported to be the definitive survey of contemporary painting and sculpture, and only 13 of the 169 artists featured were women. But nobody really paid any attention to them, which is why they put on the masks - and they haven't taken them off since (except, perhaps, for baths).
To cover the basics of guerrilla: there are several of them but they are all anonymous, and, when asked for their names, they will assume the identity of a dead female artist. Mine were Frida Kahlo and Käthe Kollwitz.
Before I met them, I'll tell you what the guerrilla concept reminded me of - Bolsheviks, before the revolution, when they didn't have to worry about governing, and only had to say: "Peace! Bread! Land!" You're never going to get any argument there; everybody likes bread, peace and land. And surely everybody, broadly, would agree that women should be better represented by the art establishment - particularly when they aren't exactly in a tiny minority in the community of practising artists. But it turns out that the French for one don't agree: there was an exhibition called Dionysiac in Paris at the Pompidou Centre last year with no women artists, which prompted critics and curators rather unabashedly to speculate as to whether women were capable of creativity at all. "Curators were bragging," say the Guerrilla Girls, "they were bragging about how only men are doing work that's worthwhile!" Even apart from the cheese-eating misogyny monkeys, everybody, globally, is moving incredibly slowly on this; women artists working today still earn the most shaming fraction of what men earn.
The Guerrilla Girls, rather depressingly I think, seem to take this lack of progress with a shrug, averring that chauvinism is always with us - it simply takes different forms for different generations. Part of this, no doubt, is a reluctance to make vast claims for their own influence. "We've had a number of periods of self-criticism," the mirthless gorilla says at one point. "We're not perfect. We're really funny, but we're not perfect." But part of it, also, is that America is getting more, not less, conservative, and this is clearly having an impact on the art world. "Let's just say there's probably no one in the Bush administration who subscribes to our point of view," says the cheerful gorilla.
The Guerrilla Girls are in London this week to give a series of lectures, and also to visit the room now given over to their polemical posters as part of Tate Modern's rehang. One of their first and possibly most famous was a 1989 rendering of Ingres's Odalisque wearing a gorilla's head, and the strapline: "Do Women Have to be Naked to Get into the Met Museum?" But before that, in 1986, they did a bald, black on white, text-only poster that said: "IT'S EVEN WORSE IN EUROPE." "We didn't even have to explain it, we didn't have to do anything. Everybody knew what it meant!" says the laughing gorilla.
They say it's amazing how little has changed: in 2005, they conducted some fresh research into European collections, and found that, even where museums owned significant amounts of work by female artists, it was all in the basement. To coincide with last September's Venice Biennale, they released the following statistics: of 1,238 artworks exhibited by the major Venice spaces, fewer than 40 are by women. They believe the city's Museo Correr actively does women a disservice by collecting their work, since they have 15 pieces by women in their collection and not one of them is on show. One of the Guerrilla Girls' Ten Commandments is: "Thou shalt provide lavish funerals for women and artists of colour who thou planneth to exhibit only after their death." The swizz of a posthumous fanfare must be matched only by the insult of seeing your work ... well, never seeing your work, and knowing no one else will see it, either.
Amusingly, the Guerrilla Girls are not that sold on Tate Modern, or its rehang. "We should be having an installation in the Turbine Hall about art in Britain - why are we stuck in this little room?" says the non-laughing one, and the laugher tries to smooth things over with: "But on the other hand, we're glad to have this space, if only to encourage other people to question the Tate." There's a pause; I get the impression she's fighting her natural tact. "To be honest, 16% [women] in the rehang is not fantastic."
I raised this with Tate curator Frances Morris, who is just about the most cautious woman I've ever spoken to. "It's a really important issue to raise, and keep raising, for institutions and the public ... It seems like a very simple message, but in fact it's a very complicated one." I asked her about ethnic representation, which is another hot-button issue for the Guerrilla Girls. "I ... I think that's a difficult thing to answer. There is much more of a sense of global balance ... I don't think I want to talk about diversity." Honestly, you'd get more straight talking out of Alastair Campbell.
The Guerrilla Girls say that tokenism is "rampant in the American art world. Suddenly, in the early 90s, the art world became fascinated with multi-culturalism. You could have written their small ads - they would have read, 'Curator seeks artist of colour for one show every five years. Must have shown in every other museum.'" I ask them if they think this has had an impact on the kind of work that finds its way into galleries - whether there's a vogue for women artists who are intensely focused on their sex so that gallerists can squeeze maximum goodwill out of the gesture. "That's something for other people to tell us," laughing gorilla says evenly. "We would encourage your readers to go to galleries [that] under-represent women and report back on whether that has an effect on the kind of art they're showing."
Interestingly, for the first time in 20 years, the Guerrilla Girls are concentrating their energies on Hollywood and the film industry, "which is where the art world was 25 years ago: it's shocking". Earlier this year, around the time of the Academy awards, they put up billboard posters in Los Angeles pointing out that no woman has ever won an Oscar for directing a film, and that only three have even been nominated (Sophia Coppola, Jane Campion, Lina Wertmuller in 1976).
Someone comes up to us and says: "How do you get to be a guerrilla girl?" Very charmingly they say that, well, there are tons of them, and they're not canvassing for more members. "But you know," says stern gorilla, "you could set up on your own. Find something that makes you really angry and aestheticise it. I don't enjoy wearing a gorilla mask, but that's how I'm taken seriously. You don't have to be gorillas. There's always room in the world for more masked feminist avengers"
'They're as strong as men'
"I think things are on an up at the moment. Take the Venice Biennale - it's the first time in more than 100 years women have even curated the show. There is still a discrepancy in prices at the high end, but that will change as more women buy more art."
Stella Vine, artist
"I don't think women are under-represented in the art world. There are plenty of good women artists. But I do think they are underpriced."
Sadie Coles, director of the Sadie Coles gallery
"Nowadays women can own and control their own galleries. Five out of the 12 artists I represent are women. Women have changed: they are more independent, more ambitious. The role of women and men is almost equal, and that's reflected in the arts scene."
Virginia Damtsa, director of the Riflemaker gallery
"I'm proud of the Whitechapel's history of pioneering the work of female artists. I curated the first MaxMara art prize for women this year, and it was fantastic to dedicate a prize to the work of so many hugely talented women working in Britain today. All artists have a difficult time after graduation, but for women the financial pressures and family commitments are amplified. Too many female artists end up having to give up."
Iwona Blazwick, director of the Whitechapel Gallery
"I have 50% women artists, and 50% male artists in the gallery, and they're as strong as each other. A lot of contemporary art is photography- and film-based, and it doesn't have that same weight of history as painting and sculpture. I think that's one reason why women artists are strong in this area. That's where the revolution is taking place."
Maureen Paley, director of the Maureen Paley Gallery
"What's really interesting is the number of women who are important in the art world in general. Just in London, Iwona Blazwick runs the Whitechapel Gallery and Julia Peyton-Jones runs the Serpentine. I don't think it's entirely true women are being paid less: Dana Schutz is the most talked-about young artist in the US at the moment; she's only 32, but her paintings go for a quarter of a million dollars each."
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/jun/29/art.gender
Bentham's Panopticon is the architectural figure of this composition. We know the principle on which it was based: at the periphery, an annular building; at the centre, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring; the peripheric building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other. All that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy. By the effect of backlighting, one can observe from the tower, standing out precisely against the light, the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery. They are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible. The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately. In short, it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions - to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide - it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap.
To begin with, this made it possible - as a negative effect - to avoid those compact, swarming, howling masses that were to be found in places of confinement, those painted by Goya or described by Howard. Each individual, in his place, is securely confined to a cell from which he is seen from the front by the supervisor; but the side walls prevent him from coming into contact with his companions. He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication. The arrangement of his room, opposite the central tower, imposes on him an axial visibility; but the divisions of the ring, those separated cells, imply a lateral invisibility. And this invisibility is a guarantee of order. If the inmates are convicts, there is no danger of a plot, an attempt at collective escape, the planning of new crimes for the future, bad reciprocal influences; if they are patients, there is no danger of contagion; if they are madmen there is no risk of their committing violence upon one another; if they are schoolchildren, there is no copying, no noise, no chatter, no waste of time; if they are workers, there are no disorders, no theft, no coalitions, none of those distractions that slow down the rate of work, make it less perfect or cause accidents. The crowd, a compact mass, a locus of multiple exchanges, individualities merging together, a collective effect, is abolished and replaced by a collection of separated individualities. From the point of view of the guardian, it is replaced by a multiplicity that can be numbered and supervised; from the point of view of the inmates, by a sequestered and observed solitude (Bentham, 60-64).
http://foucault.info/documents/disciplineandpunish/foucault.disciplineandpunish.panopticism.html
Dig deeper PUBLIC ART encompasses any work of art that an artist has created to be displayed, heard or performed in a public space. Although the oldest and most common forms of public art are monuments, memorials and statues, contemporary public art comprises a wide range of methodologies, forms and content. Public art ranges in scope from large-scale, commissioned works, which require significant collaboration amongst artists, funders and governmental agencies to implement, to independently executed small-scale works that require little to no funding. Public artworks may be site-specific, exhibited in non-conventional spaces or may alter the common function of a space. Approaches to contemporary public art include interactive art, guerilla art, sound art, community-based projects, and performance. Circus Amok
Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla
Collaborators Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, who live and work in Puerto Rico, create hybridized works, often incorporating sculpture, video, performance, sound and photography, that solicit active response and critical participation from viewers. In their piece Chalk (2000/02/04) Allora and Calzadilla placed two-dozen pieces of 64 in. long chalk in public places inviting people to make drawings and statements, which often elicited political commentary from participants. In this project and others, the artists examine the complex intersection between global politics and personal identity
«When public spaces are successful […] they will increase opportunities to participate in communal activity. This fellowship in the open nurtures the growth of public life, which is stunted by the social isolation of ghettos and suburbs. In the parks, plazas, markets, waterfronts, and natural areas of our cities, people from different cultural groups can come together in a supportive context of mutual enjoyment. As these experiences are repeated, public spaces become vessels to carry positive communal meanings»
http://www.publicspace.org/en/text-library/eng/b003-collective-culture-and-urban-public-space
Architecture and Human Behavior: the place of environment-behavior studies in architecture, Gary T. Moore
How architecture should be according to human behavior.
http://sydney.edu.au/architecture/documents/staff/garymoore/28.pdf
Urban Crisis” was spelled out in red capital letters, against a neon background, on the screen behind Antoni Muntadas, a professor in MIT’s Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) program. Muntadas, now retiring, was at the podium discussing his multi-decade art and activist practice at the symposium, “Public Space? Lost and Found,” held in his honor. From photography and video to installations and urban interventions, Muntadas’ work has served as a model for an engaged practice in which art and politics are intimately entwined. His exhortation, “Perception requires involvement,” a phrase appearing often in his work, was a call to arms for a symposium geared towards seeking new ways to intervene in the public sphere
A high culture is the self-consciousness of a society. It contains the works of art, literature, scholarship and philosophy that establish a shared frame of reference among educated people. High culture is a precarious achievement, and endures only if it is underpinned by a sense of tradition, and by a broad endorsement of the surrounding social norms. When those things evaporate, as inevitably happens, high culture is superseded by a culture of fakes.
Faking depends on a measure of complicity between the perpetrator and the victim, who together conspire to believe what they don’t believe and to feel what they are incapable of feeling. There are fake beliefs, fake opinions, fake kinds of expertise. There is also fake emotion, which comes about when people debase the forms and the language in which true feeling can take root, so that they are no longer fully aware of the difference between the true and the false. Kitsch is one very important example of this. The kitsch work of art is not a response to the real world, but a fabrication designed to replace it. Yet both producer and consumer conspire to persuade each other that what they feel in and through the kitsch work of art is something deep, important and real.
Anyone can lie. One need only have the requisite intention — in other words, to say something with the intention to deceive. Faking, by contrast, is an achievement. To fake things you have to take people in, yourself included. In an important sense, therefore, faking is not something that can be intended, even though it comes about through intentional actions. The liar can pretend to be shocked when his lies are exposed, but his pretence is merely a continuation of his lying strategy. The fake really is shocked when he is exposed, since he had created around himself a community of trust, of which he himself was a member. Understanding this phenomenon is, it seems to me, integral to understanding how a high culture works, and how it can become corrupted.
We are interested in high culture because we are interested in the life of the mind, and we entrust the life of the mind to institutions because it is a social benefit. Even if only a few people are capable of living this life to the full, we all benefit from its results, in the form of knowledge, technology, legal and political understanding, and the works of art, literature and music that evoke the human condition and also reconcile us to it. Aristotle went further, identifying contemplation (theoria) as the highest goal of mankind, and leisure (schole) as the means to it. Only in contemplation, he suggested, are our rational needs and desires properly fulfilled. Kantians might prefer to say that in the life of the mind we reach through the world of means to the kingdom of ends. We leave behind the routines of instrumental reasoning and enter a world in which ideas, artefacts and expressions exist for their own sake, as objects of intrinsic value. We are then granted the true homecoming of the spirit. Such seems to be implied by Friedrich Schiller, in his Letters Upon the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794). Similar views underlie the German romantic view of Bildung: self-cultivation as the goal of education and the foundation of the university curriculum.
The life of the mind has its intrinsic methods and rewards. It is concerned with the true, the beautiful and the good, which between them define the scope of reasoning and the goals of serious enquiry. But each of those goals can be faked, and one of the most interesting developments in our educational and cultural institutions over the past half century is the extent to which fake culture and fake scholarship have driven out the true varieties. It is important to ask why.
http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/roger-scruton-fake-culture/
The arts, after all (the apologist for capitalism might go on), are themselves by nature derivatives. Literature is, as it were, a paper currency—it no longer needs gold leaf illumination and divine authority and silver clasps to create its authentic value. Painting is just tinted muds on cheap fabric, of no intrinsic material value, yet it makes patterns in the eye that are sublimely beautiful and trigger profound insight into reality. Music is just vibrations in the air. All three are perfectly reproducible. Even sculpture and architecture can be recast in bronze or recreated from plans and blueprints. Art is always already dematerialized; it resembles commercial advertising in that it creates unnecessary desires, it represents the transcendent human spirit in surviving its fleshly makers and its local social home place.
So great art is entirely consistent with economic abstraction and financial derivatives. Corporate business, funded by banks, is part of the meaning-making that drew us up from an animal existence into a world of higher significance and set the populations of the developed world free to pursue the making of their souls. If that progress contains booms and busts, that only shows that the process of creative destruction is working as it should, testing the parameters of the phase-space within which it can healthily operate, a part of the discovery process. Mass production simply makes available to ordinary people what was once set aside for the rich and powerful alone, and there is no reason to suppose that it necessarily leads to a decline in the quality of goods. Competition will refine the excellence of manufactures until it surpasses that of handmade craft goods. - See more at: http://www.nccsc.net/legacy/art-and-economics#sthash.0YosDEVW.dpuf
for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the “authentic” print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice—politics. - See more at: http://www.nccsc.net/legacy/art-and-economics#sthash.0YosDEVW.dpuf
There are two kinds of untruth - lying and faking. The person who is lying says what he does not believe. The person who is faking says what he or she believes, though only for the time being and for the purpose in hand, writes Roger Scruton.
Anyone can lie. It suffices to say something with the intention to deceive. Faking, however, is an achievement. To fake things you have to take people in, yourself included. The liar can pretend to be shocked when his lies are exposed: but his pretence is part of the lie. The fake really is shocked when he is exposed, since he had created around himself a community of trust, of which he himself was a member.
In all ages people have lied in order to escape the consequences of their actions, and the first step in moral education is to teach children not to tell fibs. But faking is a cultural phenomenon, more prominent in some periods than in others. There is very little faking in the society described by Homer, for example, or in that described by Chaucer. By the time of Shakespeare, however, poets and playwrights are beginning to take a strong interest in this new human type.
In Shakespeare's King Lear the wicked sisters Goneril and Regan belong to a world of fake emotion, persuading themselves and their father that they feel the deepest love, when in fact they are entirely heartless. But they don't really know themselves to be heartless: if they did, they could not behave so brazenly. The tragedy of King Lear begins when the real people - Kent, Cordelia, Edgar, Gloucester - are driven out by the fakes.
The fake is a person who has rebuilt himself, with a view to occupying another social position than the one that would be natural to him. Such is Molière's Tartuffe, the religious imposter who takes control of a household through a display of scheming piety. Like Shakespeare Molière perceived that faking goes to the very heart of the person engaged in it. Tartuffe is not simply a hypocrite, who pretends to ideals that he does not believe in. He is a fabricated person, who believes in his own ideals since he is just as illusory as they are.
https://books.google.com/books?id=F1cSBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA321&lpg=PA321&dq=marcel+duchamp+and+the+end+of+modernity&source=bl&ots=6rC0RCNy3v&sig=mgysFgEC18O7KS_zXZKT_YpMO4M&hl=el&sa=X&ei=5oeVVJb8BYjnywOru4KwCw&ved=0CE8Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=marcel%20duchamp%20and%20the%20end%20of%20modernity&f=false
Pages 321-323
It is worth asking ourselves why the cult of fake originality has such a powerful appeal to our cultural institutions, so that every museum and art gallery, and every publicly funded concert hall, has take it seriously. The early modernists - Stravinsky and Schoenberg in music, Eliot and Pound in poetry, Matisse in painting and Loos in architecture - were united in the belief that popular taste had become corrupted, that sentimentality, banality and kitsch had invaded the various spheres of art and eclipsed their messages. Tonal harmonies had been corrupted by popular music, figurative painting had been trumped by photography; rhyme and meter had become the stuff of Christmas cards, and the stories had been too often told. Everything out there, in the world of naive and unthinking people, was kitsch.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30343083
http://www.publicspace.org/en/text-library/eng/b003-collective-culture-and-urban-public-space
Architecture and Human Behavior: the place of environment-behavior studies in architecture, Gary T. Moore
How architecture should be according to human behavior.
http://sydney.edu.au/architecture/documents/staff/garymoore/28.pdf
Urban Crisis” was spelled out in red capital letters, against a neon background, on the screen behind Antoni Muntadas, a professor in MIT’s Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) program. Muntadas, now retiring, was at the podium discussing his multi-decade art and activist practice at the symposium, “Public Space? Lost and Found,” held in his honor. From photography and video to installations and urban interventions, Muntadas’ work has served as a model for an engaged practice in which art and politics are intimately entwined. His exhortation, “Perception requires involvement,” a phrase appearing often in his work, was a call to arms for a symposium geared towards seeking new ways to intervene in the public sphere
A high culture is the self-consciousness of a society. It contains the works of art, literature, scholarship and philosophy that establish a shared frame of reference among educated people. High culture is a precarious achievement, and endures only if it is underpinned by a sense of tradition, and by a broad endorsement of the surrounding social norms. When those things evaporate, as inevitably happens, high culture is superseded by a culture of fakes.
Faking depends on a measure of complicity between the perpetrator and the victim, who together conspire to believe what they don’t believe and to feel what they are incapable of feeling. There are fake beliefs, fake opinions, fake kinds of expertise. There is also fake emotion, which comes about when people debase the forms and the language in which true feeling can take root, so that they are no longer fully aware of the difference between the true and the false. Kitsch is one very important example of this. The kitsch work of art is not a response to the real world, but a fabrication designed to replace it. Yet both producer and consumer conspire to persuade each other that what they feel in and through the kitsch work of art is something deep, important and real.
Anyone can lie. One need only have the requisite intention — in other words, to say something with the intention to deceive. Faking, by contrast, is an achievement. To fake things you have to take people in, yourself included. In an important sense, therefore, faking is not something that can be intended, even though it comes about through intentional actions. The liar can pretend to be shocked when his lies are exposed, but his pretence is merely a continuation of his lying strategy. The fake really is shocked when he is exposed, since he had created around himself a community of trust, of which he himself was a member. Understanding this phenomenon is, it seems to me, integral to understanding how a high culture works, and how it can become corrupted.
We are interested in high culture because we are interested in the life of the mind, and we entrust the life of the mind to institutions because it is a social benefit. Even if only a few people are capable of living this life to the full, we all benefit from its results, in the form of knowledge, technology, legal and political understanding, and the works of art, literature and music that evoke the human condition and also reconcile us to it. Aristotle went further, identifying contemplation (theoria) as the highest goal of mankind, and leisure (schole) as the means to it. Only in contemplation, he suggested, are our rational needs and desires properly fulfilled. Kantians might prefer to say that in the life of the mind we reach through the world of means to the kingdom of ends. We leave behind the routines of instrumental reasoning and enter a world in which ideas, artefacts and expressions exist for their own sake, as objects of intrinsic value. We are then granted the true homecoming of the spirit. Such seems to be implied by Friedrich Schiller, in his Letters Upon the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794). Similar views underlie the German romantic view of Bildung: self-cultivation as the goal of education and the foundation of the university curriculum.
The life of the mind has its intrinsic methods and rewards. It is concerned with the true, the beautiful and the good, which between them define the scope of reasoning and the goals of serious enquiry. But each of those goals can be faked, and one of the most interesting developments in our educational and cultural institutions over the past half century is the extent to which fake culture and fake scholarship have driven out the true varieties. It is important to ask why.
http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/roger-scruton-fake-culture/
The arts, after all (the apologist for capitalism might go on), are themselves by nature derivatives. Literature is, as it were, a paper currency—it no longer needs gold leaf illumination and divine authority and silver clasps to create its authentic value. Painting is just tinted muds on cheap fabric, of no intrinsic material value, yet it makes patterns in the eye that are sublimely beautiful and trigger profound insight into reality. Music is just vibrations in the air. All three are perfectly reproducible. Even sculpture and architecture can be recast in bronze or recreated from plans and blueprints. Art is always already dematerialized; it resembles commercial advertising in that it creates unnecessary desires, it represents the transcendent human spirit in surviving its fleshly makers and its local social home place.
So great art is entirely consistent with economic abstraction and financial derivatives. Corporate business, funded by banks, is part of the meaning-making that drew us up from an animal existence into a world of higher significance and set the populations of the developed world free to pursue the making of their souls. If that progress contains booms and busts, that only shows that the process of creative destruction is working as it should, testing the parameters of the phase-space within which it can healthily operate, a part of the discovery process. Mass production simply makes available to ordinary people what was once set aside for the rich and powerful alone, and there is no reason to suppose that it necessarily leads to a decline in the quality of goods. Competition will refine the excellence of manufactures until it surpasses that of handmade craft goods. - See more at: http://www.nccsc.net/legacy/art-and-economics#sthash.0YosDEVW.dpuf
for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the “authentic” print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice—politics. - See more at: http://www.nccsc.net/legacy/art-and-economics#sthash.0YosDEVW.dpuf
There are two kinds of untruth - lying and faking. The person who is lying says what he does not believe. The person who is faking says what he or she believes, though only for the time being and for the purpose in hand, writes Roger Scruton.
Anyone can lie. It suffices to say something with the intention to deceive. Faking, however, is an achievement. To fake things you have to take people in, yourself included. The liar can pretend to be shocked when his lies are exposed: but his pretence is part of the lie. The fake really is shocked when he is exposed, since he had created around himself a community of trust, of which he himself was a member.
In all ages people have lied in order to escape the consequences of their actions, and the first step in moral education is to teach children not to tell fibs. But faking is a cultural phenomenon, more prominent in some periods than in others. There is very little faking in the society described by Homer, for example, or in that described by Chaucer. By the time of Shakespeare, however, poets and playwrights are beginning to take a strong interest in this new human type.
In Shakespeare's King Lear the wicked sisters Goneril and Regan belong to a world of fake emotion, persuading themselves and their father that they feel the deepest love, when in fact they are entirely heartless. But they don't really know themselves to be heartless: if they did, they could not behave so brazenly. The tragedy of King Lear begins when the real people - Kent, Cordelia, Edgar, Gloucester - are driven out by the fakes.
The fake is a person who has rebuilt himself, with a view to occupying another social position than the one that would be natural to him. Such is Molière's Tartuffe, the religious imposter who takes control of a household through a display of scheming piety. Like Shakespeare Molière perceived that faking goes to the very heart of the person engaged in it. Tartuffe is not simply a hypocrite, who pretends to ideals that he does not believe in. He is a fabricated person, who believes in his own ideals since he is just as illusory as they are.
https://books.google.com/books?id=F1cSBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA321&lpg=PA321&dq=marcel+duchamp+and+the+end+of+modernity&source=bl&ots=6rC0RCNy3v&sig=mgysFgEC18O7KS_zXZKT_YpMO4M&hl=el&sa=X&ei=5oeVVJb8BYjnywOru4KwCw&ved=0CE8Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=marcel%20duchamp%20and%20the%20end%20of%20modernity&f=false
Pages 321-323
It is worth asking ourselves why the cult of fake originality has such a powerful appeal to our cultural institutions, so that every museum and art gallery, and every publicly funded concert hall, has take it seriously. The early modernists - Stravinsky and Schoenberg in music, Eliot and Pound in poetry, Matisse in painting and Loos in architecture - were united in the belief that popular taste had become corrupted, that sentimentality, banality and kitsch had invaded the various spheres of art and eclipsed their messages. Tonal harmonies had been corrupted by popular music, figurative painting had been trumped by photography; rhyme and meter had become the stuff of Christmas cards, and the stories had been too often told. Everything out there, in the world of naive and unthinking people, was kitsch.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30343083