Make no mistake...I heart Jed Perl!!!Week 6 - Made and Manufactured:
1. Readymade Resistance, Josiah McElheny,ARTFORUM, 2007.
2. The Artisanal Urge, Jed Perl, The New Republic, 2008
3. Golden Bull, Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic, 2008.
4. Why Craft Never Was a Four-Letter Word, Smith, 2009
Optional additional readings / video on the topic:
1. Postcards From Nowhere, Jed Perl, The New Republic, 2008
This video showcases 3 artists who make "by hand."
2. http://www.kqed.org/arts/programs/spark/episode.jsp?epid=113410
3. Murakami, Review by Gerard Brown, 2007.
Laurel Patterson - Week 6 Response
ReplyDeleteSo I am getting a lot of negativity from these readings towards the idea of ready-made arts. In a way I understand people’s anxieties towards the idea and I respect their efforts to try and save the artisanal urge behind the arts, but the fact is ready-mades are a common form of expression in these times. I don’t think its wise to just boycott something that has given so many artists means of translation and understanding within certain arenas. To me art is about ideas, if an artist can use a pre-made object to get their idea across in a way that is also aesthetically pleasing then they should do it. I don’t think that and material involvement has to define a piece and with that I don’t think that the artist has any less of a right to call that piece his or her own. If an artist decides to use a material or object for an idea that they conjured up then I believe it then becomes just as much an extension of them as if they had made it from scratch.
kelly mcgovern Personally, I believe that “Readymades” were a great “discovery” of sorts. A real eye opener of the time that still to this day stirs the pot of “what is art”. In my mind they are one of the greatest things to have ever happened to sculpture. If not solely for the purpose of having people stop and actually think about what they are looking at as opposed to just another expensive sculpture exhibit.
ReplyDeleteI cannot stand the divider between “art” and “craft” it’s a stupid to me as the idea as “art with a capital ‘a’” and “art with a lowercase ‘a’”. Like there are all these boundaries and labels to different creative processes. Fine art was rooted in “craft” so it should be respected as such and recognized and not segregated from the art world. God, that drives me wild. I realize that SOFA is recognizing this but the idea just gets me so riled up.
Sophie Strachan
ReplyDeleteEach of these articles has their own strong perspective and none of them are right or wrong. I feel like the issue of handmade vs. readymade is very subjective. Personally I think that a work of art is entirely more impressing when it is handmade and seemingly perfect in everyway. I understand the commentary on industry when it comes to ready-mades, but by appropriating factory processes I feel like maybe they are just falling into that system again instead of fighting it. Unless of course they don’t want to fight it and then all is well. I don’t really think it’s a question anymore about what is or can be art because we are at a point in time when anything is fair game. It’s great that we have opened up the possibilities of art, but we shouldn’t forget where it started.
I found the ArtForum article, Readymade Resistance, very informative and really very interesting.
ReplyDeleteI liked how the article really noted the “friction between individual and industrial labor.” The works of Jeff Koons and some of the work by Robert Gober were the examples of the industrial labor. For me, the works of these two artists can only hold my interest for so long. My interests in art are rooted at seeing the artist’s “hand” in the work and knowing that someone physically made something. What is the difference between a product that was manufactured in a factory at the discretion of a production company vs. a product (or art work) that was manufactured in a factory at the discretion of an artist? I understand the conceptual importance of the work by Koons and Gober and the conversation it creates about consumerism and our value system. But for me, art is about the physicality of working with my hands and seeing imperfections, because as artists we aren’t machines and we live in a time when something made by an actual person is a novelty.
But, I do agree with the article in the fact that the “change in material… represents the strongest element of resistance toward the power of industry.” Casting blow-up toys in aluminum or casting nails in gold, this changes the value of the object completely. I feel like Gober’s diaper package, lacked this element since he used the exact same methods of production as a normal plastic bag of diapers.
The work of Jessica Stockholder, Isa Genzken and Rachel Harrison, in my opinion, best utilizes the use of the “readymade” object. These artists have an “antiaesthetic that leaves objects, with all their attendant information, intact so that we might contemplate their history,” while simultaneously, also using traditional artist mediums such as painting, collaging and sculpting. They aren’t just “Duchamping” these objects but they “consume and repurpose the products of industry for use in [their own] expressive palette.”
In my perspective, I feel that hand-made art has always been more interesting. Not to say that an artist cannot get my attention with ready-made art, but there is a quality I feel between artist and artwork when they're involved in every aspect: mentally, physically, emotionally, and even psychologically. For me, that is what I seek in art. Not just the subject matter but what I feel the artist felt at the time of creating the piece. It is just my opinion that the interaction between artist and his/her artwork is extremely important.
ReplyDeleteMy interest has never really been focused long enough on ready made art. It usually looks too perfect, industrialized as if there could be many made and no one would know the difference. One of the best qualities of hand-made art to me is usually there's a one-of-a-kind feel to it. Being a jewelry designer, I know the importance of both worlds: hand-made and ready made, but producing for the masses is something I MUST do in the future to maintain, while my hand-made art will be where my heart lies!
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteWhile I enjoyed the idea behind “Readymade Resistance,” I didn’t necessarily feel like most of the artists’ work that used industrialized or pass produced materials were critiquing capitalism. Their use of these materials, which have becomes everywhere and everything, bring about a natural crtitique of capitalism, but often it seems that they are working with another message in mind. Regardless, I see the barrowing, or stealing of capitalist materials as a means of artistic expression and possible protest exciting. I just want to see artists pushing their impact on the systems they’re critiquing a bit more.
ReplyDeleteDamien Hirst. What a freaking successful joke. I mean, what a contribution to society. I suppose in the last year or so my idea (or ideal) of an artist has narrowed down to one who tries to better world or humanity or society or some equally vague large population. Of course, this is not true, just like the term politician or mechanic, the term artist comes with no required set of morals. There can be those who try to communicate something, those who do it for the attention, and those who do it because they know they can cash in on others’ hysteria. Damien Hirst is of the latter category. I guess I am entering some point in my whatever this is where I am realizing why I want to be an artist, and how I want to impact others. Someone wise reminded me that not anyone can affect or change everyone (everyone being the whole world), but as an artist I hope to have the potential to affect a small number of individuals. I don’t really want to be an economic freak show, I just want to remind a few people to breathe and live.
On the other end of almost every art-related spectrum, Smith’s review of SOFA New York was a rare hurrah for craft. I was happy to see someone looking out for the ceramicists, weavers and glass blowers of the world, but that was all. Lately art writings, mostly criticism and historian papers, have just exhausted me. Don’t get me wrong; at their best (or maybe at my best) they are great declarations or solvers of mystery. But at their worst (or mine) they are tedious, self perpetuating the smallest divisions, creating factions in the art world. The largest division, of course, being craft vs. art (even larger that illustration vs. art). I mean, seriously. Why do people care so much about
I think that ready-made objects turned into art pieces can be very interesting. If you buy or find machine-made consumer products and assemble them in different ways transforming them into sculpture or installations, it is art. If you just display a store bought item or utilitarian object like, a shopping cart and put it on display it is still just a shopping cart, you didn’t change anything. It’s like the grey line in appropriation. Often times I will look at a piece of machinery and think it looks like a design or geometric pattern, like computer chips or circuits. In a way, the piece I made called time machine has some ready-made qualities, only in the images I acquired, I used those motifs to design my collage such as screws and bolts. I like the idea of being informed by machine made objects and creating a hand made piece of artwork out of them.
ReplyDelete“Creative spirits, whether painters or potters, cannot leave a mark on the world if they have not first left a mark on their materials” Jed Perl, The Artisanal Urge
I’m looking at lamp chandeliers my dad bought a discount scrape metals warehouse. He attached it to the ceiling, its not plugged into an outlet, or wired to the ceiling thus it doesn’t work. Some would say it’s just a broken lamp hanging from the ceiling. Others would say it is now a readymade sculpture
I think its true that crafts people- who make furniture or other common objects are making a work of art they are making something by hand, they have the same desire to build like a sculptor would. Its like woven peasant quilts. I feel like they don’t get as much merit because they take the form of something so universal, a quilt.
It reminds me a lot of Laurels work. She took everyday objects but embellished upon them, in a successful way. She didn’t just take a broken ladder and say hey I like this form, its art, she changed it up to mimic its structure. I think just taking an object and placing it is not enough, you have to think about the lighting and arrangement and other elements to change it from a everyday object to a piece of work.
I like the idea of combating capitalism with a taste of it’s own medicine, so to speak. I also like the emphasis on the handmade, the individual, and the one of a kind form. I can’t say that visually any of these remade commodities is too interesting to me, though I do find Johns’ bronze castings kind of appealing, the idea of giving the man and the factory a big fuck you excites me. Or at the very least, getting people to question what they’re doing excites me, too.
ReplyDeleteI do, as well as Jed Perl, prefer the “artisanal” objects to the factory-like ones that are gaining popularity today. I work that way, and I will work that way and continue to appreciate other artists that do, but I don’t wish everyone did. If there is one thing I think about the function of art, is that it is a great example of our time, and I think the entire conglomeration of what’s being made today is an accurately dispersed example of what our world is like.
“But there is no ideal in Hirst; there is only a capitalist's complacence. For him, the gold is more significant than the calf. His extrusions deserve a place in economic history, not in aesthetic history.” Hahaha! I love this shit.
I find that the processes of traditional craft are what interest me most and are the majority of what I have taken the time to study in my education. It really bothers me to separate art and craft because there have been more beautiful creations of “craft” works in our history than otherwise, and as a result indigenous cultures are always overlooked just because some things have a function. But visually, I find these objects more interesting than most things I see in museums.
Okay, this was difficult reading for me...not the writing, but the content! I get incredibly frustrated these days when I read about art as a commodity, even art that appears as a commodity in order to critique the commodification of art. No matter what Jeff Koons is trying to say, he is so LOUD(ly bland) that he only needed to say it once, in my opinion. Damien Hirst is in the same boat as far as I am concerned: he lucked out with his celebrity status because he continues to make one liners. I don't see much substance in his combination of art and science, beyond exactly that synthesis. I look at the Golden Bull and find myself suspicious...did Hirst know that art historians would extrapolate on the piece, making layers of meaning and semiotics so that Hirst wouldn't have to? Even if there is more meaning behind this work than a paycheck (which I doubt) than meets the eye, I find it irresponsible of Hirst to not try harder to communicate that.
ReplyDeleteI sincerely think it's time to let go of the old distinction between art and craft. Enough boundaries have been blurred in the art world (artist/viewer, object/experience, function/nonfunction to name a few) that any remaining are arbitrary. That discussion of art versus craft, which I see as pretty irrelevant now, and something of a dead and beaten horse, is perpetuated by an attitude much too close-minded for what this generation of artists is capable of talking about with their (our) work. I'm glad that craft is getting more attention, but my idealism about how things should be causes me to react with "okay, why are we still having separate shows for craft?" I know why...I know the art world isn't THERE yet, but it should be.
Brit's right. One of the most valuable functions of the art community is the diversity of approaches to artmaking--which is a diversity of modes of communicating a diverse population of issues from a diverse community of people. So, there will always be room for the factory-made object without any evidence of the artists hand because there is that dialogue to be had. However, my biased view (based on personal aesthetic and values) is that the conversation about mass-production and commodification has happened...and now artwork made in that mode (physically and intellectually), unless presented in a unique context (other than the traditional artspace) or with some radically different content (other than riffs on pop and material culture), are excessive and unnecessary, not saying anything enlightening, and, for the most part, an eyesore and an irresponsible waste of resources, time, energy.
I have to acknowledge that my passionate hatred of Jeff Koons' and Damien Hirst's work is handicapping my ability to be level-headed, articulate, and open-minded--qualities I normally am proud of possessing when confronted with difference. Bri says to let myself go this time.
Courtney Coolbaugh
ReplyDeleteI think before we begin worrying about why Damien Hirst made (or had assistants make) a golden calf, we should ask ourselves why we make anything. And does art have to be made for a particular reason in order to be considered art? And what is art anyway? Apparently the umbrella definition of art stretches across everything in existence, so much so that there is almost no point in calling anything art (to save ourselves from redundancy).
I think of course he made it for the masses to crack their skulls about why he made it, boiling up a conversation to propagate his popularity. There is a great deal of materialistic symbolism inherent in a golden calf and perhaps he is poking a bit of fun at the buyers. So is he an economist or an artist? I say both. Wasn’t there some pre-gallery time in history when artists only made commissioned work?
And does it matter if he made it or if he had assistants make it to add to the grandeur of his oeuvre? After doing an internship this summer, I learned that it did not matter who contributed to an art work. Money pays for more assistants which generates more work. Maybe the evolution of a successful artist transforms them into an orchestrator of ideas and execution.
I also think the argument between fine art and craft is a trivial one. I like how Roberta Smith wrote in the New York Times article how in the SOFA show, “the conviction that an object made to serve no purpose whatever is automatically art. Too often the result is just really, really bad, whatever you call it: schlocky, oblivious of history, full of empty technique. Art doesn’t have to do anything except convince you that it is art.” So maybe the weight of worth is in the idea of non-functionality, and the questions that are generated from it, because a fully functioning cup is created in a vacuum.
Dani Finger
ReplyDeleteThe articles don’t reflect on readymades very positively, which is fine with me because the artists making readymades are getting enough attention right now and beyond criticizing readymades, at least one of the articles makes a compelling argument for the intrinsic value of craft in making art. Based upon the reading, craft currently seems to be something sorely underappreciated. In the Artisanal Urge, Jed Perl talks about getting back to the basic principles of why people make art and like art. It always feels awesome to take a pile or a tube of muck, manipulate it, and turn it into something beautiful. I like when he says, “In some essential sense the making of art triumphs the conceptualizing.” There seems to be a fight against being given the lowly label of manual worker even though that is what most artists are because art can’t be “separated from the mysterious process of its making,” and with this being the case the question is why is art that is concerned with craft not getting the respect and popularity it deserves. An artist like Damien Hirst is making art for people to buy who may have a hell of a lot more money than they have of good taste. There is incentive for any artist like Damien Hirst to continue to make readymade art that may have no value to him because he’s going to make bank. I wonder if he’s now making art just for the paycheck. I couldn’t blame him if that was his sole motivation, especially when people are willing to drop millions on buying his art.
I feel that ready made art is art to say the least but you don't get that hand made feel to it. They all look the same, they are perfectly done, and its done by a manufacturing company usually. there is no specific artist that actually makes them, they just designed whatever it is.
ReplyDeleteI think though hand made works of art have a more powerful meaning to it, it has its own individual look and feel to it. There isn't another piece like it. Hand made work is definitely more valuable in my eyes. I like making my work and taking the time to make it and if i would decide to make multiple pieces of the same I would still make them all individually.