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."