Ana Mendieta

Ana Mendieta is a Cuban-American earth artist who does a lot of works involving the female body along with her earth projects. Sometimes she combines the two, whether that be her laying naked in a hole in the ground or her painted like bark against a wall made to camouflage.

Her other works are also somewhat violent, she has some pieces that are unrelated to her earth works that may show a body wrapped up in white but covered in blood or her drawing a blood looking paint on a wall with her hands. This could mean a lot of things but I think it comes down to her life as a child when her family was exiled from Cuba because her family opposed the dictatorship and I think that has a lot of influence with her work.

Survival Research Labs

SRL focuses on using technology and machines to create machines that are operated by humans to do whatever basically. Whether they have an actual purpose, like the Shockwave Cannon here, which, when fired, explodes propylene and oxygen, being able to destroy windows up to 700 feet, however when shot at humans all they feel is a puff of air. Although not really very useful it is rather interesting scientifically and is a very interesting technological piece of art.

 The one below here is called the "Mumbly Peg Stabber", which is exactly what it looks like, a machine that is supposed to take the knife and stab around the persons fingers, as long as they keep their fingers between the lines they should be okay, however there were some videos of people getting cut by the machine.

Xavier Cha

Xavier Cha is a performance artist who does some very interesting things concerning advertisement in the public.

These are two costumes that she has used to dance in front of stores. Cha does not like the public advertisements that get in peoples faces whether it be billboards or people dancing in front of a restaurant to get people to come inside, and she dressed up as a nail to dance in front of a nail salon and a shrimp to dance in front of a sushi bar. It's not that she's taunting the store or the store owners but more in fact the advertisers or the stores that use those types of advertisements. What is normal among society  now is for things like this to happen, so seeing this in the middle of Los Angeles was probably not a very big deal for many people which could be another statement that she's trying to make.

Robert Smithson

Robert Smithson is most famous for his earthwork titled "Spiral Jetty". What I found so interesting about this was that the piece itself is forever changing because of the environment. Whether it be the tide or the stuff thats in the water or the position of the sun, the piece never really looks the same twice and there are many beautiful photos that don't even seem like it could be from the same piece of work because of how diverse it looks at times.

James Turrell

James Turrell is an earth artist who seems like he focuses much on earth and space with his artwork.

This is called "Into the Light", made out of neon lights, glass, gypsum board, and plaster. I viewed this as the artist's interpretation of "seeing the light at the end of the tunnel". The neon lights put a different flavor on the artwork, making it seem almost as if you're in space, maybe you're hitting lightspeed like in the Star Wars movies or whatever but it does give a very good sense of tunnel vision and I think that is what Turrell was at least trying to partially portray.

Stelarc

Stelarc's early works were mostly focused on suspensions, where he'd have hooks go into his skin and it would suspend him, however his later works are centered more around technology as seen in the picture above. His idea was that we as humans can better ourselves and evolve with the use of technology. 

Much of it also seems revolved around him basically doing stuff to himself, modifying his body or cutting into himself to "improve" upon himself. In this case he puts something inside his arm to make it look like he has an ear there.

Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramovic is a performance artist who has done many past pieces of other artists as well as her own new performance pieces, such as this one titled "The Artist is Present". This consisted of her sitting at a table in complete silence as people would line up to sit across from her. She spent a total of 736 hours at the table, not all at once but oftentimes she'd be sitting there for a very long time in complete silence with a stranger staring back at her. It kind of gives a different perspective on things and helps filter out all the incidental stuff that really doesn't matter, this would include things like small talk or whatever.

Burning Man

Burning Man is a week long "participant-driven" festival that focuses on much of its art installations and music. The theme for the art installations for Burning Man 2011 is Rites of Passage.

I honestly think most of these art installations are made for people who are on drugs just to experience a crazy trip or something. Because of when the festival started during the hippie era, when LSD was a huge part of the hippie scene and such, the art installations were made specifically for people tripping out on acid. Now that LSD is illegal of course the festival wouldn't condone drug use but I know they have the same idea in mind that they did all those years ago, people are going to be on drugs there so in the spirit of Burning Man let's have these crazy art installations.

Nancy Popp

I realized I had posted my presentation on Nancy Popp on WordPress by accident so I'm putting it back onto Blogger.

Nancy Popp

Originally from Los Angeles, Nancy Popp is a performance artist who performs a lot of public pieces, many of which seem rather confusing and often make you sit there wondering what she's doing. Her performance pieces need explanation because much of it comes down to her own interpretation of the piece she's doing. These videos up here kind of give you an idea of what she's about, the last two videos are her performing someone else's piece but the piece itself is very much her kind of style when you see everything else that she's done and is doing.

This is part of her Untitled (street climbing performances) where she would climb random street poles and someone would take a photo of her. Her explanation of these performances were to break out of the normal "pattern of movement" (on the sidewalk) and to observe the flow of the sidewalk and seek out new sightlines. Basically she climbed the pole to see how people walked from her point of view and to also check out the cool view.

In her other works, she often portrays herself naked or almost naked, sometimes in the fetal position sometimes in a well or whatever. Much of it comes down to the human form being in a vulnerable position, and the photos I took off her website actually have their own explanation of the pictures, most of which say "video coming soon", and considering some of the works that she's doing that would be a very interesting thing to see.

These are just a few examples

Bill Viola

Bill Viola is a very creative artist that uses the elements as a way of expressing his art. Much of what he uses is water, or to be more specific, he has people in different poses or doing certain things that are combined with them either underwater or with it raining water down on top of them. In other cases it can also involve fire, in the photo above the figure is actually walking through the fire. He does a very good job of setting a very powerful tone with these images, whether it be with a hot or cold element.

Scott Blake

Scott Blake is pretty unique in that he uses single images of bar codes, sizes them and gives them a color or shade and organizes those in a way to make a much larger image. Much of these can take up to 6 months to make just because of the tedious work involved. This is still a very next generation way of thinking for him, and it shows just how artists can use technology to create a new type of art that will inspire others.

Joan Jonas

Much of Joan Jonas' video and other artwork seems like something that you would see if you had a very bad nightmare about humans with animal heads. Either that or if had a very bad acid trip and started seeing mirrors with peoples' distorted faces, a person with a horse head, a woman with a skull mask and other such pictures that would otherwise freak you out. The above image actually reminds me of The Shining by Stephen King, when it talks about the man in the dog suit who is giving oral sex to the other guy, much like the above image, it seemed like a nightmare from how Stephen King wrote that scene and from a lot of Joan Jonas' stuff it just seems like she's gone crazy and has a fetish for people dressed up as animals.

Erwin Redl

I liked Erwins artwork a lot due to the that the he was being unique with LED lights. I don't know if he did this sober or tried it out sober and then not sober but it takes a lot of ingenuity and imagination to make such beautiful pieces of artwork with lights and a room. I tried to imagine something like this at an event where they had music accompanying this and sober or not I know it would blow my mind. Needless to say, I have a strong desire to check out his work myself just because of the simple fact that its pretty awesome. His use of tunnels and geometric figures is not only precise and mathematical, but also high-tech and beautiful.

Gary Hill

This is a piece from Gary Hill, a video artist. Here you can see each person slightly moving in real time, and thats all they really do. They don't talk, however the idea for this piece isn't for them to talk, its for them to convey a presence, almost like something a small crowd would do. Since you don't know these people, they're there to fill up space, much like a normal crowd would, however the only difference is that they don't talk. I thought this was a very smart way of giving the viewer a sense of not being alone even when they were actually alone. Even walking around the room had to have been different since it doesn't seem like the figures are moving in the exact same way everytime even though that might be exactly what they're doing.

Nam June Paik

This is a piece from Nam June Paik, who uses televisions in all his artwork. Sometimes he makes an American flag, or throws a bunch of tvs in the middle of a garden. In this case he replaced the majority of what should be a cello with televisions. The only thing thats really left that even resembles an instrument would be the strings and the stick the lady uses to play the piece.

Even the woman, a musician who is playing a very old and ancient instrument (in this case updated), has on glasses that we might be able to assume that are 3 dimensional from the look on her face and from the things that are attached to the glasses. This artist does a good job of revealing the idea that technology is taking over everything, even things that seemed like they could not be updated.

Bryn Oh

Bryn Oh is an oil painter living in Toronto, Canada but also does virtual art based in Second Life.
Although Second Life never really appealed to me simply because of the fact that I'm a gaming gamer who needs goals and objectives and things to shoot and people to kill and all that jazz, Bryn Oh actually has some very interesting and unique stuff posted up on Second Life that made me respect the game a little bit more.

Much of what I thought of Second Life involved mostly you and your avatar running around in a brightly lit place talking to people. And every now and then you find people who put up statues they made virtually and stuff. However with Bryn Oh it seems much more different, much more separate and isolated from the rest of Second Life. For the most part in the videos or "machinimas" I've seen Bryn Oh just stands there with the avatar and lets the camera just go into the map and explore. Much of Bryn Oh's stuff is very mysterious yet almost peaceful. From some of Bryn Oh's artwork, the environment is dark, with stars or fireflies all over the place. Most of it conveys that twilight time of night, when its very late or very early yet its actually bright out because of the stars or the moon.

A talented Second Life artist, Bryn Oh wrote a book called The Rabbicorn story which incorporates much of Bryn Oh's artwork into the story that was written, which is "The melancholy story of a robots search for love and belonging". Bryn Oh's blog is simple in her explanation: "I am a professional oil painter who has come into second life to create new media art ideas that don't work as well in the oil painting medium." In her videos she also likes to add poetry related to the piece, in one she talks about the life of a mayfly.

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/03/bryn-oh-avatar-gets-government-grant.html
Among the videos its known that in much of her work, such as Immersiva she likes to include hidden poems, music boxes and other such items.

Collage!

right side

left side

So a quick rundown of my collage: top right I cut strips of me in my uniform for tennis and my birthday party with my friends and mixed them together. Basically my friends & family and tennis are what take up much of my time and they are pretty mixed together. The picture of me playing with the writing on it is just me being nit-picky about myself and my tennis. A lot of the times I do it when its not even appropriate and I get mad at myself too often. The quote on the bottom right, "We avoid risks in life, so we can make it safely to death" makes me think a lot about how I'm sometimes too timid, and I need to get out and be more aggressive with things. The picture of my friend in the middle of the lights is my friend Preston who got me into my obsession with raves and gloving. The picture of the eagle with the man arms is an inside joke I have with my close friends, and the picture with "I'm not doing shit today" is a feeling that I get a lot....now whether it's an appropriate feeling is another story haha. Then on the left is the blurry photo of me with my friends, and I wrote "Sometimes the shitty photos are the best photos", because every time I look at this picture it reminds me of all the great times I've had with those people, the fact that it's blurry kind of adds to that whole effect for me. In the center is a picture of me with my best friend, I didn't really feel like I needed to do anything to that picture.

A Distorted Perception of Beauty

The lecture retaining to beauty had some very interesting points that really made me think. What I liked about the lecture a lot what the discussion about how our idea of beauty doesn't really seem very realistic. Watching that Dove commercial, the girl had to be modified with make-up and hairspray, and on top of that some graphic artist ends up modifying her picture in a way that makes her neck and face look longer, as well as blowing her eyes up to almost alien proportions. Now, is that what we perceive as beautiful? Is that what every woman wants to look like? Because they simply can't do it when people are made to look like Greek gods. Our idea of beautiful is something foreign to the human race, something that can never be reached by normal means. Because of this, many people feel depressed when they see billboards and pictures of these flawless individuals wearing the latest trends, because they always tell themselves that they'll never be that beautiful. On the contrary, those people are more beautiful than anything else in the world, physical beauty is a minute and shallow portion of true beauty. There are so many more factors that are a part of beauty all of which we should be focusing on rather than trying to look like something that is not "us".

In conclusion, once we get past the idea that beauty is all physical, society will be able to progress in a different direction, although I don't know what direction that will be, society as a whole will be enlightened. We'll be able to put our insecurities aside and just be ourselves.

Nikki S. Lee

From the Skateboarders Project

My artist is Nikki S. Lee, a photographer born in 1970. Although she is Korean, it doesn't seem like that has held her back from being an active member in about every social class/culture known to man. Nikki Lee is probably one of the most dedicated photographers I've seen out there, in that she studies the group of people she intends to interact with, then she imitates their style of dress,  their gestures, postures, and then basically integrates into the subculture. She makes it aware to them that she is an artist, however whether they take it seriously or not is another story.

From the Hispanic Project

As a photographer, she is unique in that she isn't the one actually taking the photographs, instead she has someone else do it for her and they take pictures upon request by her. Doing what is "normal" or "routine" for these people, she has this person take photographs of her with these people, doing everything she can to blend in with them. Many of the photographs are shot in an "amateur" form so as to seem normal, something that a person would see in their everyday life, something that
maybe you or I would be able to relate to in some way.

The Hip Hop Project

As I've noticed in many of these photos, although you can pick out where she is in the photos, she blends in well with each ethnic group or subculture she is in. Whether she uses make-up a certain way or dresses a different way or acts a different way it shows her dedication to seriously entrenching herself in the lifestyle of whatever group of people she happens to be around. Reading about her I thought she was a great example of an Identity artist, someone who makes you question whether or not you are who you from the group of people you are with. Is it that, or is it how you define yourself through that group of people? Do you blend in with the rest of them, or try to stand out in your own way? In Nikki's case, through the use of her photography she uses blending in as a way of standing out, by exploring all these cultures and immersing herself in them it brings about a new level of understanding to her that most people on this Earth don't have about other people. She understands their likes, dislikes, as well as why they may discriminate towards another group of people, and then as well as that group of peoples point of view. It really makes you think. She also came out with something called Parts, snapshots of her with a man, however the man is cut out for the most part.

While some seem pretty normal and out of the ordinary, others kind of make you do a double take and think to yourself, "whats going on here?" Either way, Nikki S. Lee is a very unique artist, using culture as her driving force in her art. Whether she's a lesbian, a hispanic, a skateboarder, a redneck, whatever, she completely commits to it for a period of time and it brings about a form of education that only she can truly understand, and that people can discuss about through her photos.

LACMA

Going through the LACMA was a huge change from when we had gone to the Norton Simon. The area was enormous, with several buildings holding different kinds of art ranging from paintings to sculptures to old historic civilization war masks and egyptian talismans.

This really caught my attention, simply just because it stood out so well in the middle of this big empty area, and once it got darker it really looked just that much more amazing. I don't know if this was the intention for this piece but it does a great job of marking where to walk when you are looking for the entrance, same as when you leave since the museum is so big it seemed like there were 10 different front entrances. What I liked most about it was that it seemed like it belonged there, it didn't seem  like it shouldn't have been there and I liked that it was unique yet it blended in well with the area.

I went through quite a few buildings, however the entire hour we were there it didn't seem like we had covered nearly as much ground as we thought we had because there was this whole other side of the museum we hadn't stepped into, and we didn't even realize this until we had walked out and went "dam dude theres that whole other building we didn't even step into". But either way the experience was great, I actually almost thought I had wasted my 10 dollars in the museum because there was nobody that actually took your ticket when you walked in, then I realized that the people standing around are super anal about making sure you have your ticket with you so that was a relief.

This was created in 1919 in Germany, with no real author as its artist is titled Anonymous. The text, translated from German, says "So Spartacus leads you! Brothers, save our revolution!". As revolution propaganda, the art is so dark and sadistic its much more unique from what you would think of as something to spark a revolution. It reminded me of some kind of Halloween poster, with Death holding a sickle walking around surrounded by bats in this crazy atmosphere. Looking back on these photos of the paintings, I realized that the more gruesome paintings caught my eye. Yea there were many great paintings of boring naked women who were supposed to resemble Greek goddesses, but I've seen all that before. These crazier paintings I haven't, probably because they try to keep you away from that when you're younger, they're not exactly going to show you a painting of the Spanish Inquisition when you're in elementary school.

This one is titled Suicide at Dawn by Victor Brauner. I was disappointed when I read the description because all it gave me was a list of people who contributed funds to help buy the painting and I wanted to know what the artist was thinking when he went out of his way to paint such an interesting piece. It almost seems like the individual in the painting is literally breaking free of his skin, however it doesn't make sense that the figure coming out of the naked ghost-like figure with the white eyes has skin from the waist down and seems to be without skin from the waist up after cutting through the stomach of the white figure. Either way, this painting stood out to me and I took a couple minutes to look at it, which is pretty long in my standards.

I couldn't even get the whole of this enormous painting in the picture, but that is Torsten acting like a freak next to me for some reason haha. Anyway this piece was is titled Burn, Baby, Burn by Roberto Matta. This painting was dedicated towards the Watts riots in 1965 in Los Angeles, when a California highway patrol motorcycle officer pulled over a black man on charges of drunk driving, which erupted into a racial debate among the citizens of LA. Eventually they began protesting which erupted into the riots. "Burn, Baby, Burn is a powerful indictment of the destructiveness of mankind and a manifesto for peace." I enjoyed the painting a lot because it did a good job of giving you this sense of chaos and destruction that had occurred back then. No law, no order, just chaos. That's what went through my head when I saw this painting.

This is titled Landscape in Red (Paisaje en rojo) by David Alfaro Siqueiros. The deep, dark red really made me do a double take, and I looked at the painting for a while wondering whether it was supposed to be a fire or some kind of massacre, yet its titled Landscape in Red, so it confused me, yet I still felt really drawn to the piece. The artist was known for doing pieces on political activism, so I'm not sure what sort of political meaning this had however I know that it does leave an impact on the viewer, when they're so used to seeing pretty colors and being almost numbed by them, they get to see something like this that makes them look again and go wow whats this all about.

This was also pretty cool they had another one on the other side of the room.











As a whole, the LACMA visit was a huge success, I learned a lot about art, and I also learned a lot about my taste in art, which I thought was the most significant.

New Blogger Account

Hey guys, finally switched over to blogger...will be posting more stuff about the LACMA and other stuff soon!