Thursday, January 18, 2007

Today's continuing redrawing of the boundaries of art in graffiti art, in signage art, and in the various various forms of appropriation of the art of predecessors reflects our continuing exploration of areas of experience in a complex and rapidly changing world. In my view, recent art reflects a series of strong responses to provocative circumstances with themes of hedonism, humor, pathos, sexuality, compassion and concern, and others, which are presented to middle-class and non-middle-class audiences in a variety of traditional and nontraditional settings, from gallery to street corner to ballpark. Part of the puzzle and challenge in interpreting modern visual art is in the making of connections to what's happening in society as well as to prior art and to the intentions and concerns of the artist. --Marilyn Jahn, Art Journal, Vol. 53, 1994.

4 comments:

Michele Rowand said...

I saw something on cable the other day about a group of women called the Suicide Girls. Talk about redefining art. They combine the 50's ish pinup qualities with body piercing and tatoos and softporn. Some are creepy, some seem violent, and some are amazingly beautiful. A very 2006 phenemonon with social, sexual, and political implications.

Wikipedia says: The term "suicide girl" is credited to Chuck Palahniuk, in his novel Survivor. "Suicide girls is a term my friends and I had been using to describe the girls we saw in Portland's Pioneer Square with skateboards in one hand, wearing a Minor Threat hoodie, listening to Ice Cube on their iPods while reading a book of Nick Cave's poetry. They are girls who didn't fit into any conventional sub-culture and didnt [sic] define themselves based on musical taste like punk, metal, goth, etc. I think the only classifications right now people identify with are mainstream and outside of mainstream. That is why the site is called SuicideGirls."

Anonymous said...

fhgfc

Bryan F. said...

art in todays society is so differet from any other time. there are so many mediums, many more than in centuries past. not to mention the fact that almost anything can pass as art these days. what once was limited tot hings like painting and sculpture could now be as expansive as graffiti on buildings or tattoos on backs. not to mention seemingly every style has been defined and used, so there are an inumerable amount of outlets for being artistic. I think another aspect of this is that people today are doing many different things than were being done years ago. for some reason, people rush to categorize anything with lots of colors and a concept as being art. i think this is why there are so many different levels and kinds of art these days. some of it is art, and some of it was never intended as such, but was classified in that manner anyway

Caro_Marquez said...

The label "Art" nowadays seems to be superfluous. Everything is "Art" "Artsy" "Artistic"...When I talk about art I find myself thinking of Duchamp's "Fountain" and the fact that art is art because it is labelled so. Since art is a label, artists are constantly trying to redefine it, push the boundaries and challenge the norms. But then, what is normal, what is a norm and what is accepted? Today, anything goes. This is both the beauty and the beast of art. Artists have the liberty to explore their creativity in whichever means possible. They can be as loud or as subdued as they wish, point being, there will always be an audience for them, even if it's ever so small.