Daily Notes - Daily notes are just the notes taken about what happens in class, brief descriptions about either what we talked about, things that got me thinking for project ideas, or just nonsense that is only connected to class activity through the most tenuous strands of logic I can muster.
The majority of these notes will consist of the third option.
Project Notes - These notes are ideas, ponderings, questions, and such regarding the development of my projects for class. Things like explaining my thinking behind certain ideas or working out whether or not I really like other ideas. Things like that.
It will also be used as a self-evaluation after I have completed my projects, to discuss my solution to a given problem and determine what works and what I probably could have done better.
Sorta like a Self-critique!
Text Notes - Text notes are when I provide and answer my own questions during my assigned readings for this class. She's actually asked us to try a rather specific method for this.
This method:
1. Scan the text and look at images of artists and their works before I start reading. Come up with 3 specific questions regarding the artists or works or context or materials or something like that.
2. Write intuitive comments as you read. What am I thinking? Does what I am reading relate to any aspect of my personal history? Does it relate to me at all, and how?
3. Comment on and answer each question asked. Try relating the artist or other artists I've read about to things I've seen myself.
4. Ask 3 more questions that demonstrate creative and critical thinking, and show that I have become more thoughtful.
Yup. Fun times.
So I had better get to it, then!
TEXT NOTES
William Kentridge.Kentridge seems to have a very bold style and use of charcoal. (I'm sorry you must answer in the form of a question...)
1.It seems to me that his drawings have a sense of sadness, loneliness, or sorrow to them. Why is this?
2.In each picture I see the subjects are middle-aged to older balding men. all wearing some sort of pinstriped suit. Is this supposed to represent something, and if so, what?
3.Is his works relating to economical stress for businessmen and working men, or to some other sort of emotional issue?
Well the book says that his works are focused around the idea of an entire nation (south africa) suffering through a shared distress caused by a political circumstance, in this case the apartheid.
Unfortunately I know absolutely nothing about the apartheid, so I really can't make any conclusions so far. I'll just keep reading.
Apparently Kentridge didn't illustrate the apartheid, but instead wanted to base drawings off the idea of a nation that remains brutalized after the event. He said he is interested in a "political art", which he describes as one that is an art of ambiguity, contradictions, uncompleted gestures and uncertain endings. This, in my mind, can pretty much sum up politics in general, I'd say.
Wow. When he was six he went into his father's study (his father was a lawyer for families of people who had been killed) and opened up a yellow kodak box that looked like it could be a box of chocolates. Instead he found inside it pictures. Pictures of women with their backs blown off, a person with only half their head visible, pictures of some of the victims that belonged to those families. At six years old I can only imagine what an intense effect that could have on him. It's no wonder he's dedicated his art to the subject.
After reading I see that the two images I had seen were still frames from animations he had created, and the characters I had seen were all the same character, one if his protagonists.
Kentridge's "the history of the main complaint" depicts his protagonist, Soho, lying comatose in a hospital bed surrounded by doctors who dress exactly as he does. I like that symbolism representing the need for self-evaluation and self-diagnosis in order to truly heal. And in the animation it shows a dream he is having where he is driving down a road and passing various buildings and people. Images such as two white africans beating a black african, which just get wiped away by the furiously working windshield wipers. And as he passes more imagery and attempts to wipe it away the car windshield just gets grimier and grimier until he can't really see at all. Finally, a dark figure breaks free from the scenery and jumps in front of his car. The idea was that he had not deliberately set out to kill someone, but simply because he was there at that time and that person was there at that time, he was guilty for the murder. He awakens in his hospital bed, aware of the horrors around him. But apparently he is not cured, because later the scene returns to him in the hospital, but he is sitting at his desk still surrounded by all the tools and accoutrements that made him such a bureaucrat in the first place. Basically it is supposed to represent how memories can have intense effects on people, but those effects only last a short time before the memories often get repressed back, and they continue their business as usual. What really bothers me is how true that often is. People often see so much wrong but just ignore it, and even after they are forced to face it and actually SEE what they are in part guilty of, if not for perpetrating it, but at least for being a silent witness to, they are affected for usually not that long a time. Oh, sometimes it has a profound, lasting affect on a man, but so often I've seen people who refuse to acknowledge that the world around them isn't what they think it is. And sometimes it makes you wonder if that entire journey Soho took was even worth the time. has he learned anything at all? After reading this passage in the book I decided to watch the video for myself.
The piece is... powerful. watching the part where Soho stops his car and sees the white africns beating the black one, and seeing each little red X appear, one by one, one for each blow, in each area, really comes through clear. Because he watched, he saw what happened but didn't DO anything, he was in part guilty of the crime. The pictured beating was brutal indeed, and watching it made me wonder if there were times I just sat aside and let things happen that never should have. I can't think of any right now, but I'm sure that in time they will come to me.
The animation was fantastic, both in technique and in metaphorical content. I would recommend anyone reading this to go view it.
You can do so here ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1sPLXMg1BQ ).
The way he describes his technique for creating these animations is incredible as well: he has a piece of paper on a wall, and halfway across the room is his camera. He draws a frame then takes a picture, moves back, and changes the drawing slightly. So instead of each frame being a separate drawing, each sequence is (albeit a grayed, smudged, and rubbed out one).
But still this technique itself sort of embodies a message in itself. Even though he rubs away the recent additions to his paper memory, small traces of it will always remain. And those of you who work with charcoal know full well the faint ghosts it will leave behind if you put it in so dark as he is doing. So as his animations progress they get darker, and grayer, and more blurred from everything they've picked up along the way. It makes me think of a child, learning for the first time how dark the world can sometimes be. But with each new experience, with each new memory, they learn, and become something new. Sometimes they become something dark themselves, twisted and blurred. But they can change. Even if it leaves a dark ghost in their past, they can still become something new and beautiful. It just takes a little more work than it would for them to change than it would for a newer, more innocent and less experienced child to. Much like comparing the idea of drawing straight on a scratch paper to the idea of erasing out or editing a drawing that already exists as a full or near-complete piece of work.
There is a quote in here from Kentridge I really like: "Drawing for me is about fluidity. There may be a vague sense of what you're going to draw but things occur during the process that may modify, consolidate, or shed doubts on what you know. So drawing is a testing of ideas, a slow-motion version of thought. It does not arrive instantly like a photograph. The uncertain and imprecise way of constructing a drawing is sometimes a model of how to construct meaning. What ends in clarity does not begin that way."
Now I don't know if that just sounds like nonsense to any of you, but to me that feels almost like an echo somewhere in my mind. I'm not entirely sure how though, I think it was the part of drawing being like thought, and that clarity isn't something that just appears - you have to sift though dozens, or even hundreds, of bad ideas, failed attempts, and self critiques to finish a drawing successfully. I like this guy.
Well, I'm done with my reading. Its time to answer my 3 questions.
1. His drawings, or stills from his animations, use a very somber attitude to depict the guilt and fear Soho is feeling for his being an unintentional perpetrator in all the injustice around him. It weighs heavily on his mind and on his soul.
2. It is his main character, Soho. And the other picture is him being diagnosed by a doctor looking just like him, and later ten doctors looking just like him, representing the need for self evaluation in order to truly see the world around us.
3. his works relate to the horrors of the apartheid. Soho is a bureaucrat who simply ignored the majority of what he saw until he was forced to look at it during a crisis.
and now for my revised, "critical thinking" questions (pfft.)
1. His works show a distinct gray area, a central ambiguity between hope and cynicism. Did this example of the evident fallacy of mankind do anything to bring these thoughts and questions into the minds of the people he made them for?
2. How were his works recieved? Were they disdained for their heavy metaphoric value and emotionally disturbing imagery? were they loved?
3. When did he start drawing his works on the apartheid? how much of his life did he dedicate to this purpose?
Well there is one reading out of TWO.
I think I am going to go insane, but I will update this blog tomorrow and post the second reading, as well as my project notes.
Nan Goldin
Questions:
1. Her pictures seem to all be of very intimate moments, is this a matter of not caring about one's privacy, or is it intended to mean something else?
2. she seems very candid with both her own trauma and that of her friends. Is this more like a personal journal than a deliberate series of artworks?
3. There looks to be a central theme of loss and suffering in her picture series. Is this intentional?
I see why she is so candid with her photographs now. Not only is her camera her tool of art but it is also acting as a form of stress relief for her, helping her to gain a moment of clarity in an otherwise unclear world. She describes herself a not a single person but a complex entity made up of all her tightly knit relationships.
She developed a compulsion when she was a teenager to chronicle each and every day, often writing down conversations with her friends even as they were occurring. I can't imagine anyone writing that fast, much less wanting to write that much.
She started photographing when her sister committed suicide by laying across the railroad tracks. After that she ran away from home, living with families and being kicked out until she finally fell in with a group she could be happy with. This helps explain, at least in my mind, why it is she views herself not as a single person, but as part of a whole. Perhaps it was the lack of any family ties? Or maybe the joy of finally finding a group she could be a part of? In any case, I can understand how this could have fueled her photographing. She took pictures of everything, even their deaths and moments of crises. I can imagine how such action would only serve to strengthen the bond between the survivors and friends, and while they were never blood family they were family nonetheless, and that was more than enough for Goldin.
Her pictures of things like her friends masturbating, shitting, having sex, showering... it is shocking in the idea that here is a form of journalism that is as true as can possibly be. No props. No stage lighting. No posing. It's almost as if you are there watching what she is, seeing and hearing and getting to know these people like she does. This sort of personal journalism is astounding, presenting its subject matter on an even more human level than videocameras can. Instead of keeping specific track of every event, we have here a collection of bits and pieces, here and there, key moments and non, that make up a body of work that can comprise an entire history for these people. This creates an emotional attachment for these works that really affects the viewer.
Question Answers:
1. The reason these pictures are intimate is because she, as well as the commune she lived with, didn't ever put much emphasis on privacy. It is also because they believed that honesty was incredibly important among themselves, so had no problem documenting these (or allowing their camera-obsessed friend to document).
2. It is indeed more like a personal journal. Instead of planning ahead the pictures each one represents a memory or moment in time snapped at once, without prior preparation or planning.
3. Her pictures show the decline of their lives into drug-induced chaos, punctuated by AIDS, beatings, deaths, and any number of sad events. These documentations of their lives are why so many of them are surrounded by a feeling of loss: the feeling of loss is genuine.
New questions:
1. Does Goldin plan to continue this documentation of teir lives indefinitely, like some sort of macabre death-journal?
2. How has her work impacted the work of other artists? Have people changed their methods/emphasis/ideas based on what they've seen?
3. Why do some people still view her work as exploitative? It really doesn't seem like it's up to them. The images between her and her friends are personal and memorable.
Well that reading wasn't as exciting for me, although it was still interesting. I just can't get too worked up over photography... I've never been a fan. Hell, I still hate people taking pictures of me, or even have pictures of myself online. I enjoy my anonymity.
Next up is my first
PROJECT NOTES:
This first project is based on Identity. It is a project where me and my classmates find touchpoints we have written in our bios (which she had us write earlier), and decide on a non-representational self-portrait to create.So what this means is no simply drawing through a mirror. Metaphor, symbolism, abstraction, use of unusual materials, performance art, sound art, etc., are all valid project ideas. I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with mine, though I have some Ideas.
I'm going to go ahead and document my touchpoints I've taken from my Bio:
1. Art helped me through a serious depression in my life. It is likely I wouldn't even be who I am today if I hadn't picked up a pencil and started drawing my little cartoons.
2. My cartoon characters are based all off of people I've met, albeit loosely. In addition many of my characters seem like different aspects of myself, and while drawn in often silly or ridiculous situations their interactions have helped me to get a slightly better understanding of how my mind works, and who I am.
3. I never intend to give up on my goals to become a skilled cartoonist/artist/whatever (pick a term, any term.)
4. My friends and family have been a powerful support to me in my life. I wouldn't be where I am today without them!
5. My stories and cartoons are often silly and outright idiotic at times. Sometimes I feel people nowadays don't know how to stop taking themselves so seriously!
I think I've decided on touchpoint number 2.
My drawings have helped me through my severe depression, sure, but they also served as a powerful self-analysis to me. Through them I've answered questions about myself and my life that I would have had difficulty in answering.
Descriptors of touchpoint selected (for helping in think of project ideas):
1.silly
2.friendly
3.self-indulgent
4.narcissistic
5.fun
some fun project Ideas I could do:
1.Perhaps a mirror, painted with the image of one of my characters. He's holding a pencil and appearing to draw on a piece of paper that is lain on the table in front of the glass. On the paper is a fairly incomplete self-portrait, with various drawing supplies lying stacked against the mirror
2.
3.
4.
5.
Okay I need to think up more ideas. I got nothin.
