Nonfinito

Nonfinito seems particularly interesting to me. Leaving something unfinished would appear to beg the question of why. In the book it explained that nonfinito was used to give a sense of worldly imperfection to certain pieces of sculpture but I think it would be interesting to be used in painting, especially murals. At the High School I graduated from, a girl painted a part of one of the walls but intentionally left space, as well as connecting pieces (painted to look unfinished at the edge) for another painter to integrate their own scene next to it.

Art 1B: Art/Religion

Is Art and Religion Relevant Today?

Art and religion are both relevant today. Art, creative expression, etc. are always relevant as indicators of contemporary beliefs and perceptions. The effect religion has on people shows its importance in American culture (as Patton Oswalt put it in reference to Mel Gibson's film: "Jesus beat Spider-man at the box office!"). Mel Gibson's "Passion of The Christ" seems so strange to me, but is an excellent example of the huge impact of religion on people. If it were ANY other man, very few people would last more than 10 or 15 minutes of watching a similar beating on a big screen. The closest thing I can imagine is "Roots" and I can understand that part a little more because it seems closer to a personal struggle and EVERYONE loves to feel heroic through someone else. Why would someone spend $10 to watch their Lord and Savior get beaten and nailed to a plank? I don't think they would have the same self-projection to Jesus, but then again, some people are just so righteous. It seems to me that this is exactly like any other kind of advertising: bringing people closer to an idea or belief (or product) by emotionally pulling them into it. Outside of the United States: some years ago there were riots and murders in Europe because somebody drew Allah in a cartoon (for some reason this didn't happen when Allah appeared in an episode of South Park with Joseph Smith, Jesus and the like to fight David Blaine's cult).

Arbitrary Value of Art

An interesting example of some contemporary artists' opinion of the value of their art is heard from British rapper The Streets in his song "Hotel Expressionism" in which he sings about checking into a hotel, filling the iron with brandy and letting it out in steam, pouring shampoo and soap all over the carpet and upholstery etc. explaining that it is only done in big hotel chains which ca afford or are insured against damage. He also explains that in the end his credit card is charged for the damage anyway, thereby assigning his "art" it's own value, also claiming that the albums he puts out are intended to fund this. The Streets real name is Mike Skinner, he is heavily interested in western philosophy and psychology but his first album, as one of my former supervisors at Borders put it, "is great if you like hearing someone rap about smoking weed and playing playstation."

Cezanne seen by Burroughs

"A painting tells a story but viewed from different time and positions simultaneously. Cezanne shows a pear seen close up, at a distance, from various angles and in different light... the pear at dawn, midday, twilight... all compacted into one pear... time and space in a pear, an apple, a fish. Still life? No such thing. As he paints, the pear is ripening, rotting, shrinking, swelling."(p.15)
- from My Education: A Book of Dreams by William S. Burroughs
Written in 1990, it is obvious to see the lasting effect of art on artists. William Burroughs often melds together past, present and future in his writing which would explain why he wold gravitate to this interpretation of Cezannes style. William Burroughs and Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five) are both contemporary writers (Burroughs wrote up to and died in 1997, Vonnegut until 2005 or 2006) who were very interested in time travel in a sense that everything that was and would be already existed in some way, just that we were unable to access it as an alternate reality or universe. Burroughs explains that anything painted by Cezanne, such as the pear, expresses in itself its own creation, destruction and everything in between. I think that because of this Burroughs had a similar view to that of Nietzsche that through introspection and self discovery one could understand more than through outside observation alone.

Offili

The public reaction to Ofillis "Virgin Mary" is eerily common. People often see something and assume that their first reaction is automatically correct rather than looking deeper into what something really means. It seems strange that if something raised an eyebrow people would not want to find out more about it.

hyper-realism

I would agree that trying to emulate something real almost exactly is not worth doing because the real thing will always be more correct. The exception would be to exagerate certain aspects in which case one is not really emulating reality.

Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus' work is interesting but it is specific to it's time. Today there are so many photographers that no matter how compelling the subject matter, there would be much criticism because of lack of composition. Photography now seems to be very competitive and the same subjects would likely have been shot by others. I order to get the kind of recognition she had then, these days she would have had to have printed them on sheets of human skin or something.