The diagram that accompanied the installation, meant for identification purposes.
All photos courtesy of the wonderful Julia McKinley.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
THESIS EXHIBITION
I've been meaning to upload these for a while.
The diagram that accompanied the installation, meant for identification purposes.
All photos courtesy of the wonderful Julia McKinley.
The diagram that accompanied the installation, meant for identification purposes.
All photos courtesy of the wonderful Julia McKinley.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
THESIS TIME
We're getting close to the opening. Here's an image of our postcard.
Installation has begun! I installed 13 out of 50 frames today.
More to come!
Installation has begun! I installed 13 out of 50 frames today.
More to come!
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
ARTIST STATEMENT
Unfortunately I don't have time for a real update, which is very disappointing to me because I have several things I'd like to write about. Namely, some work I've seen online by Aaron Stephan, an artist who I took as a departure point for my current Thesis work, my trip to Chicago (A.K.A. going to the Art Institute), and finally about how my thesis is evolving (and coming to a close, scarily enough). But, for now, I just finished what I think may be the final draft for my artist statement so I thought I'd at least post that to tide me over until I can really post. I don't think it's fantastic but, to be honest, I tend to be long-winded in my writing so this is the shortest I could cut it down and still retain all the essential information for understanding the works. I think my thesis paper is much better because I'm not constricted by a length maximum, but oh well. Here it is.
ARTIST STATEMENT
"Art history is a discipline involving a lot of reading – about 1,000 pages per course, actually -- meaning I have read about 10,000 pages of art history in my college career. Name, Title, Date focuses on the role that reading about art history has had on my ability to view and contextualize art, particularly in the unfamiliar display setting of old European museums.
Studying and travelling in Italy for six weeks last summer exerted a major influence on this work, as I spent much time on a pilgrimage to see as many amazing artworks as possible. Some of the works I saw are in situ in various churches, but most have been moved to museums or are in palace art collections. When confronted with works in museums that have no contextualization other than the wall labels in a foreign language, I had to fill in the blanks with the bits of knowledge I’d acquired through reading -- facts about the life of the artist, the composition, gestures, the use of color, its original context, etc. This reliance on my memory of readings has made text a central aspect of my work. The basic form of the frame takes on characteristics of the artwork of its period: the Italian Renaissance frame is classicized, the Dutch frame is reserved and plain, the French Rococo frame is both elegant and ornate. The image, or lack thereof, is composed of art historical texts, the basis of my knowledge. In this process of recollection, the formal aesthetic value of the image is diminished and the wealth of information takes over, creating an art historical veil through which I view artworks.
My distinctly American sensibility was also unfamiliar with the Salon-style display of Renaissance palace museums, such as Florence’s Pitti Palace, once home to the Medici. Unlike modern American white-walled museums, the Pitti Palace was lavishly decorated, with paintings hung up to the high ceilings. Viewing paintings displayed in the Salon-style proved difficult, particularly when they were hung 20 feet high and near to the corners. Name, Title, Date references this experience of distance and difficult viewing, both central aspects of my experience of viewing art in a European context, which forced me to reconsider my own art historical knowledge, fundamentally contextualized by reading."
"Art history is a discipline involving a lot of reading – about 1,000 pages per course, actually -- meaning I have read about 10,000 pages of art history in my college career. Name, Title, Date focuses on the role that reading about art history has had on my ability to view and contextualize art, particularly in the unfamiliar display setting of old European museums.
Studying and travelling in Italy for six weeks last summer exerted a major influence on this work, as I spent much time on a pilgrimage to see as many amazing artworks as possible. Some of the works I saw are in situ in various churches, but most have been moved to museums or are in palace art collections. When confronted with works in museums that have no contextualization other than the wall labels in a foreign language, I had to fill in the blanks with the bits of knowledge I’d acquired through reading -- facts about the life of the artist, the composition, gestures, the use of color, its original context, etc. This reliance on my memory of readings has made text a central aspect of my work. The basic form of the frame takes on characteristics of the artwork of its period: the Italian Renaissance frame is classicized, the Dutch frame is reserved and plain, the French Rococo frame is both elegant and ornate. The image, or lack thereof, is composed of art historical texts, the basis of my knowledge. In this process of recollection, the formal aesthetic value of the image is diminished and the wealth of information takes over, creating an art historical veil through which I view artworks.
My distinctly American sensibility was also unfamiliar with the Salon-style display of Renaissance palace museums, such as Florence’s Pitti Palace, once home to the Medici. Unlike modern American white-walled museums, the Pitti Palace was lavishly decorated, with paintings hung up to the high ceilings. Viewing paintings displayed in the Salon-style proved difficult, particularly when they were hung 20 feet high and near to the corners. Name, Title, Date references this experience of distance and difficult viewing, both central aspects of my experience of viewing art in a European context, which forced me to reconsider my own art historical knowledge, fundamentally contextualized by reading."
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
WARHOL DISASTERS.
We discussed Warhol today in my Art from 1940-1970 class, and I must say I've always kept myself emotionally distant from Warhol because as a figure who constructed his own image I found him to be someone as a person that I didn't really like very much. Now, I'd seen lots of these disaster images when I went to the Warhol museum in Pittsburgh a couple of years ago, and they were striking in their scale but I was left pretty confused because I didn't know that much about Warhol other than his most iconic images of the Campbell's soup cans and the Marilyn Monroes. To me, they hadn't resonated with other images I'd known by him up until that point, particularly since they weren't emotionally cool images. However, talking about these in class today, I was really struck by these, mostly in how disgusting it is that as a society we are proliferated with repeated images of gruesome disasters. It made me particularly think about the repeated playing of the video of the planes flying into the World Trade Center and how it makes you wonder if we really need to actually SEE it over and over again. Granted, there might have been some political reasons behind the 9/11 instance of repeatedly showing that, but still, I kept making this connection today. Warhol claims in his interview with Gene Swenson (1963) that repeated images of disasters just desensitize us and have no emotional effect, and maybe that was his intention with these or maybe that's just what he wanted us to think that that was his intention, but I don't find that to be entirely true. I think they speak more with what we focus on in the news and what we want to hear about, which connects these to his images of celebrities and commercial products. Anyway, I guess my point is that I've grown to really value these images and I am more compelled by them than with his celebrity images or more playful, cool, distant images.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
PHOTO DUMP
My final presentation from last semester's Studio Topics class...
"Simone Martini, Annunciation, 1333"
The above work was in ARTSWorcester's Sixth Annual Colleges of the Worcester Consortium Exhibit...
And finally, a glimpse of my work in progress for my thesis... Excuse the tacks on the wall, there are some missing pieces. I've shrunk the scale of the works in order to fit a greater number of the frames on the wall. Like my other works from last semester, each one is based on a specific artwork and is covered in text I have researched that is relevant to the piece. They're about how I contextualize artworks based on information because of my background as an art history major. I'm fascinated by Salon-style hanging in its aesthetic as I was confronted with it on my trip to Italy last summer (particularly in the Pitti Palace in Florence) -- I found it both visually impressive and extremely annoying, as it's impossible to properly view pieces that are way up high. I'm toying with this a bit by making my frames smaller, and therefore harder to see, as they are higher. I'm also varnishing them because another problem with viewing paintings hung Salon-style was in dealing with the intense glare that varnish produces.
The above work was in ARTSWorcester's Sixth Annual Colleges of the Worcester Consortium Exhibit...
And finally, a glimpse of my work in progress for my thesis... Excuse the tacks on the wall, there are some missing pieces. I've shrunk the scale of the works in order to fit a greater number of the frames on the wall. Like my other works from last semester, each one is based on a specific artwork and is covered in text I have researched that is relevant to the piece. They're about how I contextualize artworks based on information because of my background as an art history major. I'm fascinated by Salon-style hanging in its aesthetic as I was confronted with it on my trip to Italy last summer (particularly in the Pitti Palace in Florence) -- I found it both visually impressive and extremely annoying, as it's impossible to properly view pieces that are way up high. I'm toying with this a bit by making my frames smaller, and therefore harder to see, as they are higher. I'm also varnishing them because another problem with viewing paintings hung Salon-style was in dealing with the intense glare that varnish produces.
SHOWS
12 Steps Forward Facebook event page
In and Out of the Box Facebook event page
Pictures from both shows to come. I've got 9 frames in the 12 Steps Forward show and a kitschy Caravaggio-inspired wall-hanging in In and Out of the Box.
QUOTES
Bear with me here for a bit, I'm going to be doing a lot of posting to get (sort of )caught up to the goings-on of this semester.
First of all, some quotes that I've picked out of readings from my Art from 1940-1970 class that I kind of like:
"The [artist]’s obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work. People are driven towards making works of art, not by familiarity with the process by which this is done, but by a necessity to communicate their feelings about the object of their choice with such intensity that these feelings become infectious."
- Lucian Freud, "Some Thoughts on Painting," 1954.
"You see, all art has now become completely a game by which man distracts himself; and you may say it has always been like that, but now it’s entirely a game."
- Francis Bacon, Interview with David Sylvester, 1962 (from The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon, London, 1975.)
"I am for the art of underwear and the art of taxicabs. I am for the art of ice-cream cones dropped on concrete. I am for the majestic art of dog-turds, rising like cathedrals."
- Claes Oldenburg, "I Am for an Art...", 1970.
First of all, some quotes that I've picked out of readings from my Art from 1940-1970 class that I kind of like:
"The [artist]’s obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work. People are driven towards making works of art, not by familiarity with the process by which this is done, but by a necessity to communicate their feelings about the object of their choice with such intensity that these feelings become infectious."
- Lucian Freud, "Some Thoughts on Painting," 1954.
"You see, all art has now become completely a game by which man distracts himself; and you may say it has always been like that, but now it’s entirely a game."
- Francis Bacon, Interview with David Sylvester, 1962 (from The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon, London, 1975.)
"I am for the art of underwear and the art of taxicabs. I am for the art of ice-cream cones dropped on concrete. I am for the majestic art of dog-turds, rising like cathedrals."
- Claes Oldenburg, "I Am for an Art...", 1970.
"I Am for an Art..."
Hi,
I'm Julie. I'm graduating from Clark University this spring (2010) with a B.A. in Art History and Studio Art. I'm currently completing an honors thesis for my studio art major based on my interest in art history and how I perceive/contextualize work. I'll be using this blog to post my work, other's work in which I am interested, and things I read, etc. I'm most interested in Renaissance/Baroque art but am generating a growing appreciation for twentieth century and contemporary art. I'm hoping to use this after graduation as well in order to keep myself engaged with art until graduate school (art museum studies and/or art history.)
I'm Julie. I'm graduating from Clark University this spring (2010) with a B.A. in Art History and Studio Art. I'm currently completing an honors thesis for my studio art major based on my interest in art history and how I perceive/contextualize work. I'll be using this blog to post my work, other's work in which I am interested, and things I read, etc. I'm most interested in Renaissance/Baroque art but am generating a growing appreciation for twentieth century and contemporary art. I'm hoping to use this after graduation as well in order to keep myself engaged with art until graduate school (art museum studies and/or art history.)
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