Graduate art seminar Week 5
Bruce Hill

The Caribbean is an example of cultural diversity created as an unintended result of colonization by mixing of African,European, Native American and Asian people over time.Creolization is the "interaction or transactional aggreat of these "cultural wanderings",and as such, makes a good model for the ideas put forth by Bourriaud, that emerging in the space left by the breakdown of a unified modernist cultural overview,is an "altermodernity" that he defines as a process of exchange in all directions.
Bourriaud equates modernism with a passion for ralicality.Twentieth century's avant-garde movements were,at the core, about purification,elimination of the old and creation of the new, whereas post-modernists are more interested in using what ever signs and styles they need by borrowing freely to suit specific situations.
A common theme, used throughout the Radicant,is the idea of the journey, traveling, or wandering as a metaphor for the mixing or exchange
of ideas and cultural forms.Bourriaud argues against cultural determinism,and asks in effect, what are the processes by which the individual artist and social formations create,or change each other. His artist is a nomad willing to inhabit existing forms and change them to suit the moment. He compares this to the botanical family of the radicands, which develop their roots as they advance,and adapt to new environments.
Art becomes an act of translation, the displacement of meaning from one form to another,a form of negotiation better served by the installation than by medium-specific work. "The radicant takes the form of a trajectory or path,…not a stable, closed and self contained identity," rather it is "movement that ultimately permits the formation of an identity".
Victor Segalen seemed ahead of his time when he focused on the historical narrative of marginalized peoples. Segalen coined the term "exote" as one who experiences diversity without romanticizing it and travel to return to one's self.
Bourriaud compares the radicant aesthetic to the links of a chain rather than a fixed or static image.

Week 4 pictures

Mike Kelly "Horse dance"







Jason Rodes "Untitled"







Cornelia Parker "Anti-Mass"







Jassica Stockholder "Untitled"





Liam Gillick "Untitled"

Mike Kelly"Horse Dance"

Graduate Art Seminar
Week 4

Bourriaud asks, in writing about Liam Gillick, "at what point in the development of the industrial process did mechanization destroy the last traces of human intervention"? Gillick's work has a stageset like quality that invites viewers to participate in creating a narrative that proposes alternative possibilities to those put forth by commonly accepted notions of historical succession. This creation of new scenarios is evolving and built on layers of association of various objects and structures.Gillick's piece "Assessment Think Tank"1997, seems to reference minimalism in its form and color, but is propelled along another narritive path by its use of parody in its nameing.

What is the gap between production and consumption? Production and consumption are the flip sides of the same coin. Bourriaud uses the analogy of the DJ, who uses dubbing to make "linkages through which the works flow into each other, presenting at once a product, a tool, and a medium." Marx, according to Bourriaud, wrote "consumption is simultaneously also production." A product is defined by its use. We are all agents of cultural re-appropriation just by the act of listening, reading, watching and participating in the multi-faceted culture of today.

How is the use of subversion aiding in the transformation of critical attitudes? Subversion implies trying to change or use the existing structure from within.Raising questions about our perception of current or past events makes one aware of the impossibility of objective analysis and leads to the belief that there are only interpreatations.Simulationism,appropriating,and dubbing,reject the modernist myth of originality in favor of celebrating the use of ordinary objects in works of art,thereby proclaiming that intention and context form the basis of meaning in art.

How did the Duchamp's use of the "readymade" change the way we use art? Bourriaud quotes Duchamp as saying "it is the viewer that makes the painting". This implies that the interaction or process of regarding is the core experience in art. In essence, it's not what you see but how you are seeing it.This again implies that intention is the basis for determining if something is to be regarded as art.Eleanor Hearlney suggests that rather than elevating common objects to the level of art,Duchamp was knocking art off its pedestal and into everyday life where it is more useful. What is the role of the artist today? Among other things,Bourriaud sees the artist as a mediator between various divergent points of view.By creating scenarios that require more activity and accountability from viewers/consumers,art is evolving toward a more socially respon sible,interactive tool that we can employ to reinvent,or reflect upon, our society.

List of Post isms (ongoing)

Post Modern
Post Colonial
Post Feminism
Post Formalism
Post Expressionist
Post Structuralist
Post Deconstructuralist
Post Marxist
Post Abstract
Post Humanist
Post Industrialist
Post Vietnam
Post 9/ll
Post Pop
Post Conceptualism
Post Neo-Expressionist
Post Dada
Post Relational

modern art pictures

Bruce Hill
Grad Art Seminar - Week 3
Walter Benjamin assignment

Benjamin argues that "aura" is a unique element of a work of art that is eliminated by mechanical reproduction. His concept of authenticity seems to be based, not on any intrinsic aesthetic qualities, in a work of art, but rather on external attributes such as "its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be", physical condition and line of ownership. A work of art is detached from the domain of tradition by substituting a plurality of copies for uniqueness, but is "re-activated" by the ability to meet the viewer in ones own particular situation. Benjamin states the "aura" of a work has its basis in ritual, the location of its original value.

To Benjamin, mechanical reproduction in film especially, gave the viewer no opportunity for contemplation, which he viewed as a school for asocial behavior. Distraction better allows the mass to absorb a work of art, rather than being absorbed by it. For the mass, collective experiences, with less association with bourgeois power structure was preferred. "The greater the decrease in social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public." "Exhibition value" is increased by technical reproductions of an art work to such an extent that a qualitative transformation takes place.

For a socialist, art should have a social function. When the "criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed." Art should be political rather than politics being artistic, according to Benjamin.

I would say the sue of computers, digital media and internet are changing the ways we sue and perceive art. This was prophesied by Paul Valery and quoted by Benjamin, "....so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign."

Bruce Hill
Graduate Art Seminar - Week 2

The Modern Art Movement, is generally thought to have begun in the mid-nineteenth century in western Europe amid a background of social and political upheaval. Like the larger movement of modernism it is characterized by ideas that emphasize the individual. Industrialization and urbanization were ascending while the importance of religion and artistic patronage were on the decline. The rise of a middle class created a new market for artists and craftsmen free to choose the subject or content of their art. This is manifest in the rebellion against the art academies and the eventual abandonment of "realism". This was very liberating to artists who mostly continued to work in traditional mediums. Issues of "quality" and artistic merit were and still are being debated. A cycle of movements an counter movements was the result of the ego driven rebelliousness against the established order of the day. The abandonment of a clear subject matter eventually led to the formal elements of art, such as composition, line, value, shape, schale and qualities of the medium to be considered as content (ex. a painting is about paint). This related to the ideas that quality or beauty is inherent in the object. The idea of fromalism is usually associated with the art critic Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, who promoted the wrok of mid-century artists: Jackson Pollock, William DeKooning, and Mark Rothko, and other abstract expressionists. Eventually, the reduction of painting and sculpture to its most essential elements brought about a amovement known as minimalism, perhaps best illustrated by the black paintings of Ad Reinhardt, and the cubes of Donald Judd. Art critics like Greenberg and dealers like Leo Castelli, became king makers in the art world, where art becme a commodity for well off collectors and museums, but other forces were at work.

In the 1960's pop artists like Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein and others, blurred the distinction between high and low culture. In, Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post Historical Perspective, the author Arthur Danto credits Warhol with "the end of art", a point maked by some as the end of modernism as a art movement. Obviously, modernism is not dead, but has been somewhat defanged by the advent of post-modernism, a movement that seems to have provided a new liberation for artists. While modernism venerates the artistic genius and the notion that certain truths are universal, post-modernism, like the post-structuralists, find truth relative and see arbitrariness in nature. Post-modernists seem to be more electic in their choice of media, more concerned with popular culture, and an awareness that aart has a socio-cultural context, an ability to sample, appropriate and assemble art ou to the detris of our world, for whatever shifting purposes one might need. Much feminist art seems to embody mony of the charaacteristics of post-modernity's pluralistic sensibilities and willingness to take on certain cultural and political issues. The idea that an artwork can have multiple interpretations based on the context of the viewers' experiences seems to have gained institutional credence. Jeff Koons, Sherrie Levine, and David Salle are among the artists that are appropriating objects and ideas from the past and placing them in a new context.

In naming the art of this time, I will engage in a little borrowing by calling it "Multi-cultural Neo-pluralism". It began in pre-historical times when Cro-Magnon and Homosapien crossed paths. The main principle of this movement is adaptability. No major critics of the movement have emerged yet to m knowledge, but some of the main charcteristics or important aspects might be an interest in: storytelling or narrative imagery, exploration of process, mapping, accessing the subconcsious, making or building things, humor, movement or transition.