Little Marla

Personally I feel her dad and the gallery owner where both responsible for this whole thing. I feel that they were doctoring up her paintings and passing them off as the work of a 4 year old knowing that it would cause a commotion in the art world. It is also my belief that her mother knew nothing about this and truly believed they were being wrongly persecuted. I really hope I am wrong for the sake of everyone involved but that is what my gut tells me. One thing that sits wrong with me about this film was the reaction of her adult support system when they were questioned about the authenticty of her work. If I were in their shoes and the minute the story flipped and people started questioning my childs work I would of pulled the plug on the whole thing right there. A 4 yr old girls does not need to prove anything to anybody. If however my child was old enough to understand what was happening, wanted to pursue painting as a career and people were doubting the legitimacy of her passion I would help her fight tooth and nail to protect her reputation. If thats what SHE wanted me to do. The reaction of some of the adults in this situation just seemed like they wanted to protect their cash cow.

On another subject and mainly from our discussion about what is art I hope some of you had the chance to watch Pollock on HBO Tuesday night. If you missed it I'm sure it will be on again. I wont go into it much other than to say if was pretty entertaining even for my 8yr old. He watched a little bit of it with me before he went to bed and then we talked about it again in the morning when he woke up. He was kind of curious about his paintings so we did what we always do whenever he is curious about something and Googled him up. That led us to a cool website jacksonpollock.org where you can play Pollock and splash paint all over a canvas. Knock yourself out. However to truly feel the experience you should probably do it while drinking and smoking a cigarette.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude's The Gates, Central Park, New York City

I appreciated the The Gates because it is a free form of creativity. I don't agree with the artists own argument that art does not have a purpose. The fact that they desperately wanted to complete this project serves a purpose. I believe that most artists need to create, its a form of therapy and expression. If they don't express themselves they could go mad by bottling up their emotions. This in itself is a purpose for creating art. Another purpose of art in my book is to inspire others and to make them think about what they have seen. Entertainment in itself is another purpose of art. Just like a child reading a book or someone watching an action movie. Both are forms of art and the purpose many times is to help the viewer or reader forget about the troubles of the real world for a short time and just get lost in another persons creation for a little bit. I believe there are many purposes of art and to deny that is taking art in itself for granted.

Drawing Restraint 9

Oh man. Where to begin? This film was weird to say the least. I thought Clockwork Orange was probably the most outthere film I have ever seen but this one made Clockwork seem like an elementary back to school special. Its not that I didn't enjoy it but I was frustrated at the time about not knowing what was going on exactly and even more so about the pace of the film. The tea seen was particularly painful to me with the slow methodical moving around the room and the way they had to hold and rotate the tea pot. That wore on my patience a little bit. However, I got over the fact that I didn't really know what was going on at times after I had a few hours to digest the whole thing. I came to the conclusion that it really doesn't matter what the artist was trying to portray and what was important is what I was taking away from the film. I feel this is a concept very common in fine art and we sometimes go blind to it. The artist will sometimes put it out there for us to run with and come to our own conclusions. After watching the film and researching Matthew Barney a little bit last night I feel this is a very common theme in a lot of his work.

Overall I'm glad to have experienced this film even if it all doesn't make sense right now. Just being exposed to something like that can only contribute to your own creativity and help you to push your own limits as an artist.

Andy Goldsworthy- Rivers and Tides

One thing you have to take from this video is how much the artist loves his work. I beleive at one point he said he needs to do this more than it needs him. I beleive this has to do with the amount of failure that must occur while he works with such and unforgiving medium. The film touched on it slightly with his rocks on the beach falling over and again with his grass sculpture that is blown from the tree. I'm sure that is one of the reasons he seems so fanatical about his work. When you continually have something fall to peices in the middle of building it I would think it would make completing something like that so very rewarding. Almost addicting to accomplish something that you know could all fall to peices with the smallest weight shift gust of wind.

Installation and Performance Art

Of all of the artists and their examples of their work one that I was most inspired by was Jessica Stockholder. I love mixed media artwork and really enjoy the idea of taking everyday household items and someway somehow turning them into works of art. Her style really reminds of a local artist named Bart Vargas. I went to a Bart Vargas show and was really surprised at how limited my imagination was when it came to fine art. He had alot of pieces made up out of household items such as bombs made up of keyboard keys and computer cords as a fuse.

Another artist who's work I enjoyed was the Matthew Barneys Construction Dance from Drawing Restraint 9. I didn't think I was going to really enjoy his work based on our lectures but I was surprised by what I saw. I thought his work was going to be all sex, blood and WTF? for the sake of shock value but I was wrong. The clip we saw was impressive to me. I appreciated all of the work that had to go into such a tiny piece of the film that we seen. This was a major production that reminded me of a Beastie Boys music video.

And another 1

An oldy but a goody.
I love the imagery and again I think of this video alot during our lectures so I'm posting it.
I think this video was ahead of its time but maybe thats just the lunatic in me.
Enjoy.

First Post

I like this song and I thought of this video when we first started talking about animations.
Enjoy.

P.S.- Universal Music Group wont allow embedding of this video so you will have to click the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWzlD7Lc6w8