Who the _______ is Jackson Pollock video

I did not enjoy this video at all really. The documentary i thought was supposed to be on jackson however it was about an old lady that has a little too much pride. She turns down an offer of 9 MILLION dollars. Now i am not one to say that i think that the world revolves around money but society says that money is pivotal for surviving in western culture. I want to travel and take pictures for the rest of my life. With 9 million i could have with no repercussions at all. I would have worked, but not for money just to have something to do when i get bored. And all that is just my dream which would have only cost a fraction of he total amount. think of how many dreams around me could have been fulfilled.

The painting and the principle itself is one that I find funny. The art world says "not a jackson pollock" old lady says"of course it is a pollock" art world responds with "she doesnt know anything," she responds with "you cant tell me what i know" and it goes from there.

The old lady has a point and just as valid as one the the art world has, and the final verdict is no one knows. and that is okay by me. Everyone wants to go on all these rants about why they know what they do and in reality its all false they lied from the beginning saying that they knew something. My solution would be to take the painting and lay it down in Pollocks studio to see if paint splatters match the floor, but what do i know?

The only enlightening feature of the movie showed me something that i did not want to see. The politics of art. Once an artist gets huge and their work becomes a collectors item thats when the politics enter the equation. People lie cheat and steal their way to acquire money or value. Funny because upon becoming an art major i was looking forward to leaving that lifestyle behind. I'm not saying that i will make it big, i am saying now that I dont really want to.

Those are my thoughts on the film

Project notes. final

I have a few options, for my photography final we had to recreate a piece of art history. I am not using the piece that I shot for that final but i thought about choosing something else. Maybe something a little more modern, or just choose something not really related to art at all and just showing a picture of the original along with my creation of it. I plan on changing a few things within the piece to call its my own.

The other idea i have is, i just stumble across a LiteBrite and I dont quite know what i would like to do with it but i would like to make some sort of mixed media piece out of it.

Charles Ray

Is the toy firetruck really that big?, Why does he take the mannequin to the next level of realism, is it neccesary?

I find it funny that the author of the book seems to not like the fact that Charles gets so much attention, sensing a bit of jealousy/hostility. Another thing that I find intriguing about this blurb is that the author is using complicated sentence structure and higher level vocabulary words, whilst talking about a simple "kind of " guy. Ray seems like a very open fellow with nothing to hide. I admire that he uses himself as a model in a number of his works, not my style but respectable. The way his mind works is what sticks out the most to me, he takes things that are mostly obsurd/mundane and puts a spin on it. He makes tabletop objects move with his mind. What I mean is that he uses his knowledge to build machines to move the objects therefore fulfilling the statement just in a different way. The life-size toy firetruck is awesome, enough said. The mannequin is a recreation of charles' body, therefore almost serving as a self-portrait. However, he uses this object to symbolize the union of commerce and art, he does something that is taboo in our society and succeeds. Let us think for a moment, what if we hit a dark ages time, and records are lost, computers destroyed and cities burn. A couple thousand years later some new civilization finds our shopping malls, they assume that it is like a castle or hotel something like that and mannequins are sculpture pieces, are they going to assume that everyone was bald and lifeless looking with no reproductive parts. He is brave.

Overall I like the ideas that he is portraying and feel like he is taking on a daunting task by taking our society and turning it over on itself.

Guest Speaker: Sonja

Sonja is an interesting person who has experienced many new places and stories throughout her life. Seeming to live from one artist residency to another, she has made her way across a good portion of the globe. That part of her inspired me greatly, to travel for life creating artwork, yeah I am a fan. She showed two videos during the lecture, sorry, but I didn't really pull much from those. The map made out of sand was awesome and I completely respect the time it took to create something like that, but the video of her walking through amsterdam with the camera pointing at the ground the entire time. It's basically like a book that has a decent intro, and you could pull some rising action but then, once you see it is not going anywhere, you discard the book and never pick it back up. The pieces of hers that I really enjoyed were the snow walking circles. I recognized them from the McCol Centre, the discipline used to create something like that is quite respectable. Sonja is very creative and has a pretty abstract mind as far as I can tell. I would like to adopt some of her thinking into my artwork, but not all of it.

Faculty show speakers.

Today we went to the Faculty show. I didn't really enjoy or understand the two pieces that were talked about, even after they were explained. The machine (I forget the artist's name) just didn't do anything for me nor did i take anything away with me from examining it. You once asked me in class about my first project "Do you think that people will get all of that from this image?" and after the artist explained her piece I ask, Do you think that I am supposed to get any of this content from this work?

War photographer,

James Nachtway

"I have been a witness and these pictures are my testimony. The events that I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated." = awesome

I, being a photo major, Thoroughly enjoyed viewing his work. It sucks that we could not get the video on him. His pictures and his willingness to photo these subjects is incredible. He definately inspired me to new ideas about what photography can be.

Class notes: Guerilla Girls+ Guillermo Gomez-Pena

October 14: today we talked about our art & activism project(all thoughts on matter are in the project notes blog.) We also watched a video to get an example of an artist that uses politics in his artwork. Guillermo is a mexican-american that basically sets up a vocally interactive booth where himself and his assistants sit with props acting out different situations that are supposed to make the viewers slightly to extremely offended. He wants to get a reaction and evoke emotions. He brings to light ideas about race and class in our society that most people would like to not think of. I am a fan of what he is trying to accomplish, his concept. But what I don't particularly enjoy is his form, the installation pieces are not my interest, viewing or creating.