Studio Practice : Donald Trump

Studio Practice : Colliding Information

Visual Examples

I did some research into ‘binary positions’ because this is something I found really interesting in one of my lectures. This system shows pairs of related terms that are opposite in meaning. It shows how two theoretical opposites are defined, such as on and off, up and down, left and right.  Some other examples I thought about included culture and nature, reason and emotion, mind and body, public and private, society and individual and civilized and primitive. These opposites are seen to be fundamental organizers of human language and culture. It seems like one of the two opposites is more dominant than the other - this is an important concept of structuralism and I would imagine that they are fundamental to thought and language. I think this is mainly due to ‘social construction’ of identity which is about the narratives or ideologies about who we are and what we need to become. The problem is that these identifications are always changing across time and space. We are defined in relation to what we are not and this operates on the basis of differentiation, which made me ask questions like ‘what makes the position of me different to the position of others?’ Linda Nochlin is a famous art historian who produced an article in 1971 called “Why have there been no great women artists?” I read this article and noticed how straight away she explores the assumptions embedded in the title’s question. An example of this could be when she considers the nature of art with the reasons why ‘artistic genius have been reserved for male geniuses’. Da Vinci and Michel Angelo are two examples I could think of. I agree with Nochlin to some extent as history seems to have hidden female artists. This was probably due to the social and political conditions but thankfully women have been given more rights now. I agree with Nochlin as she also argues that significant barriers in society prevented women from pursuing art. In the past there were restrictions on educating women in art academies but now there aren’t as many restrictions, in schools or in the workplace. Basically, she believed that the work of female artists is historically deemed ‘the other’, considered by patriarchal institutions to have a distinctly feminine ‘domestic’ essence. Project Womanhouse was an art installation and performance space designed only for women. This was a feminist piece, running from January 30th – February 28th 1972. It was organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, whom were co-founders of the Cal Arts feminist art program. Both artists were also teachers, and partnered up with their students, who were encouraged to use consciousness raising techniques to generate and encourage ideas for the exhibition. For me, it would be essential to focus the attention on a wider group of people because it would be essential for a wider group of people to be able to relate to the installation. Female artists from the local community, including Faith Wilding also partnered up with Chicago and Schapiro for the exhibition, which received approximately 10,000 visitors throughout the month. The Dinner Party was another installation piece by Judy Chicago. I found this interesting because it was very a very symbolic piece about women in western civilization. Georgia O’Keeffe, Susan Anthony and Virginia Woolf were 3 of the 39 mythical and historical famous women included in this piece, which explains the 39 elaborate place settings arranged around the table. These place settings included a hand painted china plate and a napkin with an embroidered gold edge. The Dinner table was stood on the Herritage Floor which was made up of more than 2,000 white triangle shaped tiles and each one is engraved with the name of 999 women who have made a mark on history. It was first shown in 1979 and toured many venues in 6 countries, meaning that over 15 million people were able to view it. In 2007 it became permanent exhibition in New York due to it suffering from constant traveling. The Guerrilla Girls ideas contrast with Linda Nochlin’s ideas as they look at the advantages of being a female artist. They are a group of Radical Feminists who have devoted a lot of their time to fighting sexism and racism within the art world. Although the group were formed in New York in 1985 I thought they were important to look at because their mission was about bringing gender and radical inequality into focus within the arts community. I think they achieved their aim by disrupting media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions through posters, books, billboards and public appearances, discrimination and corruption were exposed, especially in politics art, film and pop culture. I learnt that the group consists of approximately 55 women, who wear Gorilla masks in public. I believe the identities of these women were concealed because issues in society, such as gender issues, matter more than the individual’s identities. Contemporary art explores the ways in which the social construction of identity often clashes with the identities formed out of lived experiences. I believe these can be both positive and negative experiences, resulting in instances where we identify and instances where we have been identified. I think both experiences are good because they can be used to fuel our practice. Contemporary artists now have a new ground level on which we can work. Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas, Caroline Scheenman and Martha Rosler are examples of 4 contemporary artists who look at gender identity and feminism.Tracey Emin’s work is quite controversial towards societal norms in England and is best known for her personal artwork, where she looks at personal traumatic events such as rape, sexism and abortion. Her work quite clearly looks at the politics of female representation. She also produces work based on previous notions of femininity. Her work shows the collapse of her own identity and I feel like her work could be quite hard to understand as it begs for rigorous thought. However, I do like her work especially as she has used her own body as medium in self-portraits and performance pieces. I really like how she is an active participant in her artwork, and through this she lends an openness and vulnerability to her audience through emotion. Her work tackles universal ideas through her relationship to human behaviour and gender. I find it very interesting how this piece helped to redefine what a liberated woman can be. I know she influenced a whole generation of female artists, such as Marie Jacotey to explore womanhood and feminism. I also really like how her work is third-wave feminism as I’d like to think that a woman is able to define her sexuality on her own terms, without society’s influence. Emin’s work really forces the audience to focus on the real aspects of femininity through modern issues. These issues include menstruation, abortion and promiscuity, all of which are taboos in society and often lead to a women becoming stigmatised. It’s interesting especially because Emin rejects discussion of female authority in her work as she engages directly with female identity in society today. I really like Sarah Lucas’ work because she often includes puns, making it quite humorous. She also sometimes includes photography, collage and found objects such as buckets and oranges. I also find it clever how it questions conventions and highlights the absurdity of the everyday. Like Tracey Emin, it seems like Lucas is searching for a personal sense of happiness. Another of her most famous pieces is called ‘Two fried eggs and a Kebab’ and parodies the traditional still life, evoking similarities between itself and a piece called ‘Dinner party’ by Judy Chicago, another feminist. ‘Two fried eggs and a Kebab’ in 1922 has been linked to Edouard Manet’s ‘Olympia’ in 1863. Lucas’ work also seems to be an attempt to encourage female artists to become part of art history, through analytical work which mainly discusses the female body. She also appropriates masculine constructions. I feel like she attempts to dissect their nature by confronting constructions of masculinity. She does this by representing a fantastical world and playfully includes unrealistic ideals. The appropriation of masculine symbols, like the banana or ‘fried eggs’ with her, takes female work out of the feminine sphere, disrupting patriarchal power. Her work ‘The old in out’ in 1988 is also a clear reference to Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ in 1971. Her visual language empties femininity and removes her from such a clear ‘feminist art’ title but at the same time she is continuing the artistic legacy of feminist artists such as Cindy Sherman, Rachel Whiteread and Hannah Wilke. I feel like sexuality isn’t an obvious theme in her work. There seems to be a lack of association with morals, which left me at the free will of her humorous narratives.  She takes ‘sexism’ but doesn’t overtly comment on it, unlike other artists. This implies that she’s not attempting to solve the problem, she just incorporates it by exploring the moral dilemma. This means her work can be taken literal as well as conceptual, especially as her thoughts / ideas and her work is constantly building and transforming into new and exciting pieces. Like myself, it appears that Sarah Lucas is never satisfied with her final outcomes. I often like to think about and explore with every medium, until one becomes fitting. It’s most important that my work connects with the viewers, like its ‘thinking with other people’.