The Invisible Dragon by Dave Hickey

“Saying that the market is corrupt was like saying that the cancer patient has a hangnail”

“The arguments such artists mount against beauty come down to one simple gripe: Beauty sells. . .  Beautiful art sells. If it sells itself, it is an idolatrous commodity; if it sells something else, it is a seductive advertisement. Art is not idolatry, they argue, nor is it advertising. Idolatry and advertising however, are indeed art, and the greatest works of art are always and inevitably a bit of both.”

“As Baudelaire says, “the beautiful is always strange,” by which he means, of course, that it is always strangely familiar and vaguely surprising. “

“For more than four centuries, the idea of “making it beautiful” has been the keystone of our cultural vernacular-the lovers machine gun and the prisoners joy-the last redoubt of the disenfranchised and the single direct route, without a detour through church or state, from the image of the individual. Now that generosity, like Banquo’s host, is doomed to haunt our discourse about contemporary art—no longer required to recommend images to our attention or to insinuate them to vernacular memory, no longer welcome even to try. “

“Should we really look at art, however banal, because looking at art is somehow good for us, while ignoring any specific good that the individual work or artist might propose to us?”

“Art is either a democratic political instrument, or it is not”

“The vernacular of beauty, in its democratic appeal, remains a potent instrument for change in this civilization”

“Yet the vernacular of beauty, in its democratic appeal, remains a potent instrument for change. Mapplethorpe uses it, as does Warhol, as does Ruscha, to engage individuals within and without the cultural ghetto in arguments about what is good and what is beautiful. “

“Because, in truth, if a senator didn’t think an image was dangerous, it wasn’t. “

“I am certain of one think: images can change the world”

“I would suggest, but after centuries of bureaucrats employing images to validate, essentialize, and detoxify institutions, to glorify their battles, celebrate their kinds, and publicize their doctrines—we now have an institution to validate, essentialize, ad detoxify our images—to glorify art’s battles, celebrate art’s kinds, and publicize art’s doctrines—and, of course, to neutralize art’s power. “

“There are issues worth advancing in images worth admiring; and the truth is never "plain," nor appearances ever "sincere." To try to make them so is to neutralize the primary, gorgeous eccentricity of imagery in Western culture since the Reformation: the fact that it cannot be trusted, that imagery is always presumed to be proposing something contestable and controversial. This is the sheer, ebullient, slithering, dangerous fun of it. No image is presumed inviolable in our dance hall of visual politics, and all images are potentially powerful.” 

“A gorgeous island of gaudy, speculative images was borne forth like blossoms on the great tsunami of doubt and spiritual confusion that swept through the late nineteenth century, cresting into the twentieth and exploding across Europe in a conflagration of wars and revolutions, scattering beauty among the bodies. By the 1920s, however, answers were once more available, assurances against doubt and confusion were at hand, and there were men in power to assure our compliance with these assurances”

Even though this book is hard to understand, I have been able to get the main ideas from it.

My biggest question is, I guess, how to we stop this pattern of dominance from “the academy”? How do we allow beauty to come back into contemporary art?

Another question, and I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot already, is, how do we make contemporary art more accessible? Or should it be made more accessible? I think it should…. I agree that the sort of elitist and highly educated contemporary art club is basically serving no one but itself. So, do we change how contemporary art works? That seems impossible? Do we make it easier for non-art degree people to understand and appreciate and feel welcome in the contemporary art world? I think that is something worth exploring…

Trip to LA

The Broad 

Jeff Koons

Robert Rauschenberg

Jeff Koons

Cy Twombly 

John Baldessari 

Infinity Mirrored Room- Yayoi Kusama

Mark Bradford

Kara Walker

Jean-Michael Basquiat 

Keith Haring

Robert Therrien

Leon Golub

Jenny Holzer

Josh Smith

Seven Magic Mountians, Ugo Rondinone 

Guest speaker two- Dan

Dan is always awesome, and he's so super smart. He was reading to us from these philosophical books, a lot of it I was not understanding, but I was also feeling really inspired because I kept on writing down ideas for art lessons or art concepts in my sketch book. That's kind of funny. We also looked at an art 21 video of this Canadian artist who was amazing. Then we went to the MOA and looked at the potatoes.

Guest speaker one- Jethro

Jethro is so awesome! He shared a powerpoint with us about his masters thesis, which was a small portable art gallery that he had in the high school where he taught. He had students show their AP work at the end of the year inside the gallery. He said that this helped students to take ownership of their art. He showed us a lot of pictures over the years, and how the gallery kind of progressed. At first, he was very involved in helping students plan and hang the art. But he said after awhile, students would come to him with these great ideas, and instead of him doing a big part of the work for them, he would tell the student "awesome! go figure out how to do it!" I love that!
He also showed us his tally mark artwork, which is awesome! I would love to use him as an example in my future lessons on repetition.

"You can't teach anyone to be creative, but you can give them an environment"

Chaco Canyon

Vulnerability

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How can we embrace vulnerability

•How can we teach ourselves or others to believe that we are worthy?

•What can you do about homelessness? What can’t you do?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0le-hqLVJm0

Who are they

Dr Cornell West is a philosopher, activist, author, and much more. He describes himself as a non-Marxist socialist. He believes that the US is a "racist patriarchal nation" where white supremacy is still very alive today. He attributes most of the black community's problems to "existential angst derive[d] from the lived experience of ontological wounds and emotional scars inflicted by white supremacist beliefs and images permeating U.S. society and culture." He is very involved in news and media today. It also seems like he hates Wall street.
bells hooks is a feminist and social activist who focuses on gender, intersectionality of race, and capitalism. I think it's very interesting that she talks a lot about media.. how movies have an impression on us, even the strongest minds are influenced by the images seen in movies, and there's nothing we can do about it. She also talks a lot about race and feminism, and the idea of marginality..  "To be in the margin is to be part of the whole but outside the main body." She also said "Women in lower class and poor groups, particularly those who are non-white, would not have defined women's liberation as women gaining social equality with men since they are continually reminded in their everyday lives that all women do not share a common social status."
She has a lot to say about love, how loves works and when it cannot be present. While reading and writing about her, I am thinking about how I can't think of very many black woman who are activists.. and can advocate this important and unique perspective to the world..
Michael Foucault was a philosopher, social theorist, and literary critic. He thought of himself as criticizing history of modernity. He explores the relationship between power and knowledge. I got this from wikipedia, "Foucault's colleague Pierre Bourdieu summarised the philosopher's thought as "a long exploration of transgression, of going beyond social limits, always inseparably linked to knowledge and power.'" Cool.. that sounds post modern to me!
I would like to have more time to research these people.. Especially bell hooks

Art vs. Design

So I was on my mission when they separated the art department and design department as it is now.

It was really cool to see samples of the art being made in all of these classes. There are a lot of similarities between the art and design departments, but also a lot of differences.. I think design had a lot more variety.. Like they had 3-d elements, Adobe design, animation, drawing, painting, photography, video... So much! And I saw so many different styles- the animation art next to the photography was completely different in  style and feel. I also felt that the design department was more geared to occupation.. Because with those jobs, you would most likely be creating for a certain company or employer. And so I felt like a lot of the work was already trying to achieve that.. Like, trying to create the styles of companies they want to work for. Whereas art, I felt, was more unified.. (Maybe because I'm biased) but, I could see how students were developing their own voice in their art making. I mean, there was a lot of variety too, everyone has a different voice. I also saw a lot of people being inspired by their classmates and teachers' work. And I think as opposed to the design department, art students are more about creating for themselves- they want to be successful artists in their own way. 

"How To Make Modern Art"

Modernisn

I will give you an answer based on this article even though this article was basically written in Greek to me.... Ok it wasn't that bad, but I felt like I was reading the Old Testament.... I just kept zoning out (maybe in part to my ADD).... moving on...

Modernism is a continuation of the progress of art making (in this article specifically it focused on painting)..... Since the late 1800's/early 1900's... Artists took that next step, or went deeper into their craft, and began self-criticizing. Greenberg said Modernism includes "almost the whole of what is truly alive in our culture." And this is because artists began to push, and to reflect... and I think there were all these rules and conformities within painting and art, and they began to break them. And to really ask "Why?" "why are we limiting ourselves to this?" And so they started using huge globs of paint, and then started painting pictures that had to representation in them! and then started splattering the paint! and started gluing bus tickets on their canvas.. And then the art was no longer about realism, but about material, and experimentation, and about reacting to those questions.

Aesthetic biography

Birbiglia and Ira Glass response

I actually watched this video and read this article with my boyfriend, who is a musician. And we have been kind of struggling with and discussing these ideas and issues.

Ira Glass's taste vs. ability just hits home for me so hard... Like, I wish I had known this was a common problem! I feel like, well I'm sure most people feel very proud of their taste... And I do as well. I mean I basically think that I have the best taste in music in the world (ha ha ha), and same with my taste in art and movies, because I have this very specific and maybe different taste than other people. And so when I go about creating something, I was that to be reflected in my work. And 9 times out of 10 it is just NOT.  And its really a help to know that this is a normal problem, and that it will get better, and I need to keep producing and not quit. My biggest goal right now is to produce and create.

The article by Mike Birbiglia really spoke to my boyfriend, because he has all these ideas and is kind of in this quandary about it... So I think this helped to guide him to really narrow down what he wants to do. And same for me.. I have an idea of what kind of art I want to make and what kind of good I want to do in the , but I really resonated with tips #3 and #6... Recently I was at this kind of art social gathering.. it was a very casual, meant-to-be-fun sort of thing.. But there was this professional artist there who totally snubbed my work, and I felt terrible. I looked up some of his stuff later, and I was like "this isn't what I'm about at all".. Surrounding myself with people who I admire and respect, and people who I look up to for their philosophies and accomplishments, that's who I want to receive feedback from. And then, #6, I should probably try to apply this more, and be more vulnerable and more honest in my art... But it's scary. But I have to do it.

Julien Baker

"Selfish Expressionism"