Week 6- Anish Kapoor Sculpture

Anish Kapoor

Celebrated for his gigantic, stainless steel Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago’s Millennium Park, Anish Kapoor is changing the cultural environment with his public works. 

1.Research Kapoor's work in order to discuss whether it is conceptual art or not. Explain your answer, using a definition of conceptual art.

"Conceptual Art" is a contemporary form of artistic representation, in which a specific concept or idea, often personal, complex and inclusive, takes shape in an abstract, nonconforming manner, based upon a negation of aesthetic principles.

Kapoor's work belong to conceptual art because what all he did concept ideas more important than the work's meaning. Like the work "Cloud Gate" does not harbor some technologically advanced monster, but rather draws in the surrounding beauty, it's the artist representation how the architecture of the clouds and the buildings attract the people who come to visit it.


 

2. Research 3 quite different works by Kapoor from countries outside New Zealand to discuss the ideas behind the work. Include images of each work on your blog.

 ArcelorMittal Orbit

Artist Anish Kapoor has won a commission to design a 115m high public artwork at Olympic Park in London, to be built as part of London’s Olympic Games in 2012. The ArcelorMittal Orbit set to become UK’s largest sculpture. Nowadays unveiled the artist and design chosen to create a spectacular new visitor attraction in the Olympic Park, The ArcelorMittal Orbit means the sculpture will ensure the Park remains an unrivalled visitor destination following the 2012 Games, providing the key Olympic legacy Mayor of London Boris Johnson envisaged for the East End.

As Lakshmi Mittal, CEO of ArcelorMittal, commented: “We set out to create a transformational piece of art that will be an iconic symbol for the Olympics and also a new landmark that will endure long after the Games themselves. Everyone at ArcelorMittal is delighted with the outcome of the ArcelorMittal Orbit. London will have a bold, beautiful and magnificent sculpture that also showcases the great versatility of steel.”

Yellow, 1999
Fibreglass and pigment
600 x 600 x 300 cm
Courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery, London
Installation: Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2007-08
Photo: Erika Ede © FMGB Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa, 2010


Yellow is a monumental and arresting work. Here Anish Kapoor uses colour as an autonomous tool: it embraces and subverts form. A great gaping belly recedes deep into the wall.  Kapoor has a deep interest in the use of varying tones of a single colour. I can see him explore its sculptural and metaphysical possibilities again and again in his work. Also I admired how the colour changed just like Anish Kapoor described : the idea that in monochrome there is no composition, there is only a kind of ‘witness’. We want to make colour such that it is a condition so absolute and complete that it’s rather like water is wet. Yellow should be yellow or red should be red. There, total. What that does, or what that can do (as we know from Barnett Newman, who was a great hero of mine...) is that it can change time.

With Yellow, our eyes begin to operate in a similar way: - they pull in and push out. We find we are as drawn to the overwhelming strength of the colour as much as to the void at the centre of the work. This is the amazing way artists to express their ideas.

Anish Kapoor, Svayambh, 2007

"Svayambh" is a deep red, wax-like block that will be moving almost imperceptibly along a set of tracks, which reach from one end of the entire eastern galleries to the other. Its appearance which is reminiscent of a train can be related back to Kapoor’s fascination with Andrei Konchalovsky’s film "Runaway Train" (1985), where two escaped convicts and a female railway worker find themselves trapped on a train with no brakes and nobody driving. Creating a red line through the building, "Svayambh" passes through two doorways, which form and seemingly force the block through their restrictive frames making it leave behind smeary traces of its material: a mixture of Vaseline, paint and wax.

This enormous red mass reminiscent of compacted blood evokes an almost apocalyptic image. Interestingly a red heifer or "parah adumah" notably adom means red and dam means blood in Hebrew is often associated with the Apocalypse in Judaism. "Svayambh" can be seen in direct correlation to a further site-specific work, a "wound" or slit of about 1,5 m that Kapoor will carve directly into a wall.

3.Discuss the large scale 'site specific' work that has been installed on a private site in New Zealand.

Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork. Kapoor’s first outdoor Site-specific art sculpture in fabric, “The Farm” (the sculpture is named after its site), is designed to withstand the high winds that blow inland from the Tasman Sea off the northwest coast of New Zealand’s North Island.

 

The ellipses are orientated one horizontal, the other vertical. Thirty-two longitudinal mono-filament cables provide displacement and deflection resistance to the wind loads while assisting with the fabric transition from horizontal ellipse, to a perfect circle at midspan, through to the vertical ellipse at the other end. The sculpture, which passes through a carefully cut hillside, provides a kaleidoscopic view of the beautiful Kaipara Harbor at the vertical ellipse end and the hand contoured rolling valleys and hills of “The Farm” from the horizontal ellipse.

4. Where is the Kapoor's work in New Zealand? What are its form and materials? What are the ideas behind the work?

Kapoor has also completed the massive Dismemberment Site 1, installed in New Zealand on the private "art park" known as "The Farm" and owned by New Zealand businessman and art patron Alan Gibbs.

 

 The sculpture is fabricated in a custom deep red PVC-coated polyester fabric by Ferrari Textiles supported by two identical matching red structural steel ellipses that weigh 42,750kg each. The fabric alone weighs 7,200kg.

The ideas behind the work is  "passage", giving the singular impression we can enter it to discover an unknown "elsewhere".

5. Comment on which work by Kapoor is your favourite, and explain why. Are you personally attracted more by the ideas or the aesthetics of the work?

"The farm" is my favourite because I went to the Gibbs farm and closely had look around it, the sculpture in the photos looks small but in reality this art work is spectacular. It looks like a staircase leads to two worlds but still can contact each other through the horn.

Youtube has some excellent footage on Kapoor-take a look at Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy.

www.royalacademy.org.uk › 
http://www.robgarrettcfa.com/thefarm.htm
http://www.billslater.com/cloudgate/

Dismemberment of Jeanne d’Arc- 

Old Municipal Market Building Brighton

http://www.sculpture.net/community/showthread.php?t=6790

http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/microsites/anish_kapoor/secciones/galeria_imagenes/galeria_imagenes_detalle.php?idioma=en&id_imagen=27

http://www.dezeen.com/2010/03/31/arcelormittal-orbit-by-anish-kapoor/http://www.caroun.com/art/conceptualart/conceptualart.html
http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=10411

http://fabricarchitecturemag.com/articles/0110_sk_sculpture.html

Week 5 - Pluralism and the Treat of Waitangi

Pluralism and the Treaty of Waitangi

In teaching week 5 you will discuss pluralism and the Treaty of Waitangi in your tutorials.
Use this discussion, the notes in your ALVC book and the internet to respond to the following
questions;

1. Define the term 'pluralism' using APA referencing.

Pluralism is the theory that a multitude of groups, not the people as a whole, govern the United States. These organizations, which include among others unions, trade and professional associations, environmentalists, civil rights activists, business and financial lobbies, and formal and informal coalitions of like-minded citizens, influence the making and administration of laws and policy.

According to Caldwell (1999), Pluralism in art refers to the nature of artforms and artists as diverse(para1). It is emphasis on a single social and cultural group mixing by contemporary visual culture from other cultural and social groups.     


.2. How would you describe New Zealand's current dominant culture?

Throughout this time New Zealand was still firmly under Maori control. New Zealand keep all  Maori tradition and  give welfare to Kiwi, no wars happened anymore and everyone who lives there feel happy because New Zealand has become the world's top tourist attractions, there are two languages can speak in school. Especially their famous rubgy team "All BLACK" which composition by white and Maori people, All of the New Zealand people proud of them. "All BLACK" team represents the idea of peaceful coexistence.



3. Before 1840, what was New Zealand's dominant culture?

The Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840, it is an agreement which forms a contract or covenant between the Crown and Maori hapu, through their chiefs. According to JMR Owens, the cultural framework of New Zealand in 1840 was still essentially Polynesian, all European residents absorbed Mario values to some extent, some Europeans were incorporated, however loosely, into a tribal structure and the basic social divisions were tribal, not the European divisions of race, class or sect. The history of these years is of tribal societies interacting with each other and with European societies still being traditional but undergoing major cultural change(p.29).


4. How does the Treaty of Waitangi relate to us all as artists and designers working
in New Zealand?

Before the Treaty of Waitangi Maori had their own traditional art totern and Dance. It happened as culture shock when artist and designers working in New Zealand in that time. Everyone respect their culture past and how the culture changed and developed until now New Zealand appeared lots of artits and designers, working as a designer someway reflect into the works as shows made in NZ, like fashion "lonely heart" Although there is still not fame but it made by New Zealanders who deeply love in fashion. 


5. How can globalization be seen as having a negative effect on 'regional diversity' that leads to a 'homogenized world culture' in New Zealand in particular? (ALVC2 handbook page 52, http://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/globalization) 


Firstly New Zealand is not an economic powers country, national geographic position is different with the limited material and resources led to the slow economic growth situation. For example the globalization of luxury product LV not everyone can afford, the main aspect should be Mass Market. On the other hand Globalization potentially cause New Zealand lose Maori culture and instead of changing social morality. Nowadays teenagers prefer watch American dramas such like GOSSIL GIRL, how many people can lives  and buy luxury in New Zealand, but they still enjoyed following the trend because how globaliztion changed.


6. Shane Cotton's paintings are said to examine the cultural landscape. Research Cotton's work 'Welcome'(2004) and 'Three quarter view ' (2005) to analyze what he is saying about colonialization and the Treaty of Waitangi.


 

 

'Welcome' (2004) Shane Cotton 

                                 http://www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au/catalogues/work/52293/shane-cotton-welcome.aspx

 

 

'Three Quarter view'(2005) Shane Cotton

http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail-LRG.cfm?IRN=149998 

http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/shane-cotton-paintings-examine-cultural-landscape-126412



Landscape references in Cotton’s early paintings recall the symmetry of Maori carving and the work of Colin McCahon. Simple images, sepia-coloured and scaled metaphorically, derive from nineteenth-century Maori Folk Art, which Cotton perceives as signifiers of Maori culture cleverly veiled within a Christian context. The works he did above tried to combine Maori and Pakeha sources to form a hybrid poetic painting that shows the shared experience of the two cultures within New Zealand.  He questions the notion of cultural identity and the space between Maori and Pakeha perspectives.

The piece welcome by shane cotton is made up of very symbolic imagery. It is seen as a presence of death or "the goddess of death" in the Maori culture. In the piece 'Forked Tongue', Cotton uses very dark colours and imagery. This may reflect death and the blood that was spilt throughout the colonization between the Maori and the Europeans.



7. Tony Albert's installation 'Sorry' (2008) reflect the effects of colonization on the aboriginal people of Australia. Research the work and comment on what Albert is communicating through his work, and what he is referring to. Describe the materials that Albert uses on this installation and say what he hopes his work can achieve.


Tony Albert has captured this outpouring of emotion. He introduces us to a forest of faces, each sharing elements of history with those stolen from their people, land and culture. Each represents a false identity, manufactured black faces made to fit white society.

The artist also revels in the sense of irony in the work, with the impetus of such a momentous and joyous event being an apology. On yet another level, Albert presents us simply with a word — bold letters on a wall — indicative of an Indigenous Australian response to the apology. While it was an important symbolic gesture, many Indigenous Australians are waiting to see real change within society before fully accepting the Prime Minister’s apology and speech as more than words.It means four letters can mean all the difference in a moment of forgiveness.



8. Define the term 'kitsch'.

Kitsch is art (whether or not it is good art) that is deliberately designed to move us, by presenting a well-selected and perhaps much-edited version of some particularly and predictably moving aspect of our shared experience (Solomon, 454).


9. Explain how the work of both artists relates to pluralism.

                                       Tony Albert | Australia b.1981 | Girramay people | Sorry 2008 |
                                               Found kitsch objects applied  to vinyl letters | 99 objects :   
                                               200 x 510 x 10cm (installed) | The James C Sourris Collection.
                                               Purchased 2008 with funds from James C Sourris through the 
                                               Queensland Art Gallery Foundation | Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
The cultural context of art is all encompassing in its respect for the art of the world's cultures. They each use a combinations of cultures to display colonization and the issues that arise when two cultures collide. 




References:

Solomon, Robert. "On Kitsch and Sentimentality." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49 (Winter 1991): 1-14. http://qagoma.qld.gov.au/collection/indigenous_australian_art/tony_albert

http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/resources/global-etiquette/new-zealand.html
http://qag.qld.gov.au/collection/indigenous_australian_art/tony_albert

http://www.wallaceartstrust.org.nz/
http://eyecontactsite.com/2010/07/pondering-the-marks-and-symbols-of-shane-cotton

Week 4 - Kehinde Wiley and inter-textuality

Kehinde Wiley

1. Untitled (2009)

2. Untitled(2009)

3. Kehinde Wiley Count Potocki, 2008 oil on canvas, 274.3 x 274.3cm

4. Kehinde Wiley Support Army and Look after People, 2007 oil on canvas, 258.4 x 227.3cm

Kehinde Wiley is a Gay American based painter born in Los Angeles, who has an international reputation. Wiley lives and practices between Beijing and Brooklyn.

This weeks ALVC class focuses on the Postmodern theme "INTERTEXTUALITY", re-read Extract 1 The death of the author on page 44 of your ALVC books and respond to the oil paintings of Kehinde Wiley. 

1. Find a clear definition of Intertextuality and quote it accurately on your blog using the APA referencing system. Use your own words to explain the definition more thoroughly.

"Intertextuality, the condition of any text whatsoever, cannot, of course, be reduced to a problem of sources or influences; the intertext is a general field of anonymous formulae whose origin can scarcely ever be located; of unconscious or automatic quotations, given without quotation marks” (Barthes, 1981).    

The relation each text has to the texts surrounding it, we call intertextuality.  Intertextual analysis examines the relation of a statement to that sea of words, how it uses those words, how it positions itself in respect to those other words. As a result the works of many postmodern visual communicators disscuss the notion of intertextuality itself or are explicitly intertextual in nature. It's  the links between one literary work and another or others, it refres to the way that any written or visual text is influenced  or made up by a variety other texts. 

2. Research Wiley's work and write a paragraph that analyzes how we might make sense of his work. Identify intertextuality in Wiley's work.

Intertextuality is an important issue in postmodern theory, it suggests that whenever we try to make sense of a text we are constantly referring back to our understanding of its influences to help us understand it. The definition linked to Wiley's work that we can make sense he created melds a fluid concept of modern culture, ranging from French Rococo to today’s urban landscape. 

Wiley creates a fusion of period styles, it is ranging from French rococo, Islamic architecture and West African textile design to urban hip–hop and the "Sea Foam Green" of a Martha Stewart Interiors color swatch. His painting realised classical combine hip hop modern style especially when Hip hop culture meets The Renaissance deeply gives the viewers strong visual effect.

3. Wiley's work relates to next weeks Postmodern theme "PLURALISM" . Read page 51 and discuss how the work relates to this theme.            

According to Caldwell (1999) pluralism in art refers to the nature of art forms and artists as diverse(para1). It relates to Wiley’s paintings because he often blur the boundaries between traditional and contemporary modes of representation. He creates a fusion of period styles, ranging from French Rococo, Islamic architecture and West African textile design to urban hip hop and the "Sea Foam Green" of a Martha Stewart Interiors color swatch. As a result Caldwell emphasizes Art can communicate multiple identities within one culture as well as make cross- cultural comparisons. Artistic processes and products may also show cultural mixing( para4). It is shows into Wiley's paintings, also his work mentioned individuals of differing ethnicities, genders and economic status. 

4. Comment on how Wiley's work raises questions around social/cultural hierarchies , colonisation, globalisation, stereotypes and the politics which govern a western worldview.  

Wiley's portraits initially depicted African-American men against rich textile or wallpaper backgrounds whose patterns he has likened to abstractions of sperm. Personally he created a new way to represent his thinking, made himself a brand therefore everyone are getting to familiar with this artist. This is how Globalization changed by increasing his social status. When the artists break the stereotypes and created something new and eye-catching. the viewers will easily remember the artists because postmodern art work always gives audiences strong visual effect.     

5. Add some reflective comments of your own, which may add more information that
you have read during your research. 

Kehinde Wiley has become one of the most dominant figures in the New York art scene in recent years. His large scale oil portraits of contemporary urban men, shown in poses quoted from works by some of art history's greatest masters, are now internationally well known. True to the photographs they are realisticly and complexly rendered, while their highly decorative and ornamentative qualities and formidable scale make them doubly impressive. As the works shows above, they contains strongly Renaissance style also combined with modern fashion people,Once glance at this works told me made by Wiley because they are so unique.

I researched Kehinde Wiley's interview from internet and I really appreciated that he talks about ideas more important than just painting.
     
Wiley said: "My work is driven by an idea, more than a marketplace, or how many people want paintings. If I have a great idea that's going to take a very long time to actualize I don't hesitate to do it, because I think what makes for a great work of art is a constant vigilance on that work, rather than the people who consume that work. In that sense I'm doing the viewership a favor, by ignoring it."





 Reference:

Cadwell, B. (1999) Cultural context. Retried 18 Aug, 2012
from: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~design/ART/NAB/PluArt.html


http://www.art-interview.com/Issue_009/interview_Wiley_Kehinde.html
http://www.cretique.com/archives/4012
http://www.deitch.com/artists/sub.php?artistId=11
http://www.thinkcontra.com/kehinde-wiley-on-current/
            

 

Week 3- Hussein Chalayan and Post-Modern Fashion

Hussein Chalayan

Chalayan is an artist and designer, working in film, dress and installation art. Research Chalayan’s work, and then consider these questions in some thoughtful reflective writing.

1. Chalayan’s works in clothing, like Afterwords (2000) and Burka (1996) , are often challenging to both the viewer and the wearer. What are your personal responses to these works? Are Afterwords and Burka fashion, or are they art? What is the difference?

Not all clothing is fashion, so what makes fashion fashion? (Research some definitions  for these terms.)

Hussein Chalayan, Burka (1996) (99

6

                                                                 Hussein Chalayan, Afterwords, 2000

 I personally like the way that Hussein designed "cloth" for Muslim women. This is the obvious art work could linked to be  Post-Modern Fashion. As we can see that similarity happened at both Chalayan's fashion and Aiweiwei's Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola logo. They give the viewers culture shock and pluralism ideas, take advantage of the dominance of high culture by popular culture. Mixing the contrast and created a new form.

As everyone knows the custom of Muslim is more special because women cannot revealing too much skin in the public, bachelorette protect their face to avoid strangers can see it. Hussein Chalayan break the rules, it is a new valuation of hybrid culture forms cancel "high/Low" categories. According to Kreis (2000) by 1990 artist start have their own mind in their art. They tried to visually represent what could not yet be given verbal expression(p.251). Artist start destroy the traditional style and have more open stage. Like Hussein used his own way to express's feeling about what is fashion mean.

I think Afterwords (2000) and Burka (1996)  are genuine fashion because Chalayan's clothing not only can give people eye effect, they also utility in the real word. Afterwords(2000) was an amazing fashion because he used different textures which was nobody else used before, metal gives the feeling more restore ancient ways combined with modern fashion girl, what a big differences and contrast shows.

What makes fashion “Fashion” is that it is more than a visual-tactile-olfactory code or language, but that this “code” is constantly in flux, constantly changing and almost always ambiguous.

So what makes Chalayans fashion fashion? I think his works are often express a concept. He always keep consistent design style and develop clothing that others don't sectors, relative to fashion, he chose pragmatic, relative to luxury, he chose to design. Therefore I do think his clothing can be called fashion.

2. Chalayan has strong links to industry. Pieces like The Level Tunnel (2006) and Repose (2006) are made in collaboration with, and paid for by, commercial business; in these cases, a vodka company and a crystal manufacturer. How does this impact on the nature of Chalayan’s work? Does the meaning of art change when it is used to sell products? Is it still art?

                                                      The Level Tunnel (2006) 

                                                                      Repose (2006)

Chalayan has strong links to industry. He put his wild idea associated with business and balance up, creating market clothes which has hit the market trend and so popular. He jump into design 3D work which really different by designing cloth, but he successful made valuable industry work and sell them a good price. As he said : My work is about ideas. If I had to define my philosophy in just a few words, it would be about an exploration, a journey, and storytelling – it is a combination of these things with suggestions and proposals at the same time.There is no limit for art so every visual thing can be defined to art, just because how special Chalayan's idea make him special.

3. Chalayan’s film Absent Presence screened at the 2005 Venice Biennale. It features the process of caring for worn clothes, and retrieving and analysing the traces of the wearer, in the form of DNA. This work has been influenced by many different art movements; can you think of some, and in what ways they might have inspired Chalayan’s approach?   

Hussein Chalayan, still from Absent Presence, 2005 (motion picture)

The Absent Presence is an enigmatic story based on identity, geography, genetics, biology and anthropology. It opens the argument on how certain identities can or cannot adapt to new environments and generates a research based narration for Hussein's cross-disciplined installation with filmic images and sculptures.

The ways they might have inspired Chalayan’s approach which was his project for venice biennale last year was a strong experience. the one before that called place to passage, which he toured with, was a film. His collections are always challenging and

he get a lot out of them. all the projects have a different impact on him. He make a real effort to push himself as far as possible with each one.

4. Many of Chalayan’s pieces are physically designed and constructed by someone else; for example, sculptor Lone Sigurdsson made some works from Chalayan’s Echoform (1999) and Before Minus Now (2000) fashion ranges. In fashion design this is standard practice, but in art it remains unexpected. Work by artists such as Jackson Pollock hold their value in the fact that he personally made the painting. Contrastingly, Andy Warhol’s pop art was largely produced in a New York collective called The Factory, and many of his silk-screened works were produced by assistants. Contemporarily, Damien Hirst doesn’t personally build his vitrines or preserve the sharks himself. So when and why is it important that the artist personally made the piece?

I think it doesn't matter when and why it is important that the artist personally made the piece, all we talk about is idea. How artist created an idea that interested audience and it become their intellectual property and is credited to them no matter how much they personally crafted. It is good for artist trying something new.

‘The Tangent Flows’ was a concept based on his experiment, it is important that the artist personally made the piece like Chalayan's experiment, try different materials like he said: It is part of his creative process, a method that keeps him interested in fashion design.

 After his design concept have tremendous influences he success due to his full of emotions, every time he create clothing, he does not happy only finish the standrad practice, for him is a huge mankind step and he do the works by himself completely. For Chalayan, fashion is an applied art in as much as it represents the employment of an artistic sensibility to create functional objects: function over beauty.

http://exn.tumblr.com/post/491987881/what-makes-fashion-fashion-pt-1   

http://www.husseinchalayan.com/#/home/
http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/chalayan.html 
http://www.husseinchalayan.com/blog/    

http://dilsahdesigndiary.blogspot.co.nz/2010/10/review-on-hussein-chalayan.html