Understanding Visual Culture with the Open College of the Arts
The last module of level 1 of a Fine Art degree.
Familiarise yourself with Serra’s work and say why you think he made these films. Serra is best known for his architectural sculpture, particularly site specific work which, according to MoMA, emphasise “materiality and an engagement between the viewer, the site, and the work” (moma.org). The Serra pieces are concerned with, it seems, the contrast between their …
Continue reading “Exercise 5.5 Richard Serra’s “Hand Catching Lead” and “Boomerang””
Does institutional critique presuppose an “insider” audience requiring familiarity with artworld topics and issues or can it be understood by almost anyone spending an hour or two in a gallery? As our manual informs us (page 129), works produced from the genre of Institutional Critique address the institution of which they are a part. They …
I have chosen a piece by Christian Jankowski called “The Finest Art on Water” which was shown at The Frieze Art Fair in London, 2011. Charlotte Higgins writes “You see them moored in the lagoon, the yachts: each one conveying their cargo of multimillionaire art collectors to the prosecco-sodden art ritual that is the opening …
What would be the significance of reversing the arrows in Barr’s chart? “Make two columns- one ‘forwards’ the other ‘back’. List as many relevant concepts as you are able to develop the contrast between the two columns”. I feel as if I am being encouraged to be clever, for the sheer hell of it. I …
I have done what is required, but I have also included some thoughts on Barnett Newman’s Vir heroicus sublimis, which seemed to fit well here. Tricky… how to sum up an entire philosophy in nuggets of fifty (ish) words? here goes. The Sublime v The Beautiful While beautiful things have an immediate effect on the …
Read the first three pages of Danto’s “Works of Art and Mere Real Things”, then conduct your own “thought experiment” by choosing a picture or object that is, or you can imagine to be, a work of art. Give this “work” three or more different titles, then reflect on the effect of the title on …
Continue reading “Exercise 5.0 “Works of Art and Mere Real Things””
In a conversation with Dan Turello John Searle said that “we are getting closer to understanding consciousness as a biological phenomenon” (2015). If intelligence has to come from a conscious mind then- at the moment at least- it can only be artificial for as long as it comes from a non-biological source. In this sense …
Continue reading “Exercise 3.5 Artificial Intelligence Revisited.”
There is a separate post concerning my sketchbook, which I have used as one long chronological entry which I am editing as I go along. However I am putting this post here, at the end of part 4, before I tackle the assignment. John Berger says (in The Shape of a Pocket, 2002) “The history …
Apply the Dialectic diagram to Barr’s chart. Refer to art works. I made my own dialectic diagram to reflect modernism. I’m finding it very hard to find a way into this exercise: I have flicked through books and magazines, thought and thought, referred to books: in the end the conclusion that I have come to …
To what extent can Giotto’s painting serve to illustrate Deleuze’s quote? “Let us imagine something which is distinguished- and yet that from which it is distinguished is not distinguished from it. The flash of lightning for example, is distinguished from the black sky, but must carry the sky along with it… one would say that …
Continue reading “Exercise 4.4 Giotto’s “The Kiss of Judas””
Understanding Visual Culture with the Open College of the Arts