Retroactive 1, 1964

Rauschenberg’s art deals with the question, “Why am I here?” As a WWII veteran and artist, he became a spectacular figure of American energy. He used silk screens to create a new type of history in a brilliant reaction to mass culture. In his 1964 collage Retroactive, Rauschenberg used magazine and newspaper images to symbolize an American culture overwhelmed by media during the Cold War. The military conflicts covered by television screens saturated the lives of millions of Americans. His blue image of the freshly assassinated president John F. Kennedy pointing his accusing finger towards the viewer invoked a moving emotional response. This picture shows JFK, the youngest president in US history, demonstrating aggressive and outright protective body language. After looking first at the picture of Kennedy, the viewer analyzes the top left picture of a parachuting astronaut. JFK’s initiatives to make the United States the first nation to go to the moon come to mind. Americans were lost in Cold War fears. The media may have exacerbated these fears, but the media did allow JFK to bring the nation together. The man helped prevent a feared nuclear holocaust that so many Americans saw as an inevitable reality. In 1964, someone may have asked, “Why are we here?” JFK could be the answer to that question.

The Unilever Series: Ai Weiwei

There are approximately 100 million of them. The sunflower seeds look identical and natural but they are entirely artificial and unique. Every single sunflower seed has its own story behind it. The seeds are created through a rigorous process by Chinese workers. Some workers are very skilled and can paint many seeds per minute. Some workers are children just learning the steps. Families may paint seeds together or a young child may do it in his or her spare time before dinner. Regardless, the sculpture implements a thought-provoking mechanism for the viewer. When I look at it, I want to walk through the seeds barefoot like I am at the beach. I want to swim through the seeds. They look so real that I want to eat the seeds. But then I come back to reality and tell myself that they are not real. And then look at them again and my mind goes off in wonderland.

Performance Art

Performance art can be anything that involves the following: 1) Time 2) Space 3) Performance Body 4) a relationship between the audience and the performer. Marina Abramovic does a great job at touching all these categories in her work. I have two favorites – Rest Energy and Imponderabilia. Rest energy shows a women who is about to get shot straight in the face by a man holding a bow and arrow. This makes the individual experiencing the exhibit very uncomfortable. But making the individual uncomfortable is the exact point the artist is trying to make! Imponderabilia shows a woman trying to squeeze through a tight space between a naked man and woman. If this doesn’t make a person feel awkward, then I don’t know what would. But that’s the point of the performance art! Experiencing a gallery like that gets the blood going. Marina Abramovic’s work is an offshoot of abstract expressionism with no limitation in terms of human duress. Performance art is intended to express the human condition.

Ritual to Art

Mike Kelley takes ritual and makes art out of it. He started working with stuffed animals. He explained this at first as symbolizing his individual child abuse. He then evolved this idea as a presumption that all motivation is a form of some kind of oppressed trauma.

Kelley was born a Catholic but never was a true believer. He had an interest in the materialist ritual and not the personal religious side. One of Kelley’s videos portrays his view of the Catholic “ritual,” showing an acapella group singing to Mary. This could be seen as a sort of black humor.

Kelley built his career on the idea where his art is available to the laziest viewer but there to the more sophisticated viewer as well. In doing so, he makes something beautiful by confusing terms and categories; thus, producing a sublime effect or humor. This is what separates his art from folk art. His work underlines the social function of art as a negative aesthetic. If it was not a negative aesthetic, then it would not be art.

Small Art for All

Minimalist painting is often described as flat and emotionless. It is also very literal meaning a square means and represents a bunch of squares represents just that and not the artist’s inner struggle with four sided shapes. The naming of art typically becomes very general often drawn from the tools and resources used to produce the piece rather than the deeper meaning or inspiration. In fact in one of Robert Ryman’s works pictured to the right the title is “No Title Required”. It is simply a collection of wooden frames on white enamel painted walls. This may inspire great feelings in an individual and it may not. It may speak on an extremely deep and personal level to someone and it may not. However, for Ryman that is far from significant. “Painting is about pleasing” says Ryman when asked if he felt viewers need to understand the deeper complex meanings he replied “you don’t need to know the score of a song to like the music”. This simplifies art without reducing it. It is not denying there maybe some prophetic inspiration or message conveyed but it’s not a requirement to appreciate it.
            Another artist of the minimalist genre generates a great irony in her work. Vija Celmins on several occasions painted very small paintings of outer space. Vija uses a very small brush to add a little different touch each time over and over again. She makes a very slight impact on the work but over time creating a beautiful piece of art. On more than one occasion Celmins has completely painted over the piece in all black to start again feeling she “builds the work from the very beginning”. Celmins also enjoys working on paintings of a snapshot of ocean water and spider webs.
            The approach of minimalist art to simply amuse and not provoke deep conversation and thought in turn does just that. As individuals not very verse in the art world it is nice to feel you can appreciate art for its face value it’s art everyone can understand.