I agree with Wired Magazine, which characterizes Banksy's interventions as "art attack." Banksy is a graffitti artist from the UK, who has turned back alleys into galleries and hacked the MoMA and the Met. Art attack, art activism, public performance, whatever you call it, handle it carefully.
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This Thursday, September 8, we have Jordan Massengale coming to our class. Jordan is one of Miami's best painters. See some of his work here. After that, I'm going to check out a couple of exhibitions at the Design District: Carlos de Villasante at the Buena Vista Building. Villasante will visit our class in October. Also, this event, at the Moore Space should be fun. Please, make plans to come to the Design District after class. The first home work of our semester will be to write a critical page about at least one of these events.
13 comments:
so far, i like Massengale's work. it has a sketchbook quality to it which you can never go wrong with. although some are better than others.
Villasante: i love that he uses mixed media. his work is clean, sleek, and nice to look at--which makes me think of design...i don't know if that's good or bad. i'm leaning towards not so good...
question: what time, exactly, are these events?
The usual gallery hours around 8pm - 11pm.
is it okay if we, or i, don't or can't go to the galleries on thursday nights? it's inconvenient for me. can i do it over the weekend, i.e. friday or saturday?
(hope you say "yes!")
I really like Bansky's work. The idea of using an alley way as a canvas is a great idea. I love the recycle bin that is half way cropped in the picture. I think it is interesting how he uses the messages random people spray paint and puts them into visual pictures. Massengale's work i also like because he has these detailed sketches with touches of vibrant colors, i am also i huge fan of stipilisim.
Well, Ana, there's nothing like the opening to catch the energy of the people. Art (and artists) need community. Aesthetic contemplation? Perhaps a more solitary process, but at this point, you people need to network. How about meeting in a middle point?
well, see, the problem is that i don't drive. i take the train to UM. and i don't live anywhere near by. and that's a problem because i have no way of getting to the district or of getting home from the district.
i really appreciated massengale's style and subject matter. i'm not a fan of gore or corpses, but i can appreciate the powerful imagery that jordan uses. to me, it poses as a shock as to what some people do to others especially when you know the purpose for the actions.
one hell of a read for any illustrator, painter, or graphic designer: "graffiti world" by nicholas ganz
I've always been a fan of Banksy. I think its great that you dont have to visit a museum to see it but rather he forces you to look.
I really enjoyed Jordan's work especially his movie scenes, but i have a question i wish i would have asked him or any art teacher... tell me what you think. How is it that you can grade students, and give them such guidlines when we should really be finding our style? I had an experience with a teacher here where i was extremly satisfied with my work but was told to go back and change things. How as a art student do you still get an "A" with out comprimising your style?
Sierra, good question. Life is like tight-rope walking. Being a student means compromising to a degree while developing and making evident (to your teachers) "who you are." The teacher has to see it, if not he/she is not good (drop him/her). I guess you have to communicate to your teacher what your art is about.
i know what sierra is talking about. i think that sometimes for a specific course, you just have to go with the rules, and try not to compromise your own style. for example, drawing iii is a big pain in the *ss. that class is so damn technical it gets on my nerves. but i guess the point is that you have to learn how to draw well and you just have to be patient!
some people still believe that as an artist, you must know how to draw well even if you don't use that in your work (i include myself in this category :-D). either that, or (no offense to anyone) teachers think that everyone is studying to be a graphic designer...
I was very impressed, at a technical and design level by Jordan Massengale's work. If I were a painter, his presentation would have given me a lot of ideas that I would have gone straight home and tried out.
But for me his talk raised some questions, including one that we don't really seem to be allowed to ask anymore when viewing a artist's body of work: What is going in this person's head?? He touched on this himself; he refered to the people from MIUD's (his employer) corporate headquarters questioning his motivation on viewing some of his more violent pieces. So of course, this puts us on the defensive; we don't want to seem to be part of anything that even hints at censorship. But as students, we have no "power" over him, so why can we not consider this?
Is his work "social commentary"? If so what is the comment? Is it that, as his work is undeniably beautiful, violence is also beautiful? I doubt this was his message...so what else could it be? One of the problems with dealing with social issues through art (other than film), I think, is that it often doesn't show causes and solutions, things that I think are part of effective and purposeful social commentary.
One of the other students speaks of "shock"--if this is the reason for the subject matter, I, speaking for myself, become even more inquisitive as to the artist's psychological state. Why the need to shock? I think these questions are even more intriguing when the work in question is at such an undeniably high level of technique and imagination.
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