The book I have consumed is Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction by Julian Stallabrass – 2004, Oxford University Press Inc., New York. Within this text, many ideas are discussed with reference to Contemporary artists and their impact from certain external factors. On page 7 Stallabrass writes ‘postmodernism was meant to have swept such concerns [of avant-garde activity] aside, challenging the category of high art itself, or at least delighting in its pollution by myriad cultural forms.’ In other words, Stallabrass discusses the ideals of cultural and contextual influence within artwork as being the shift that postmodernism in the early 1970s was to take.

Stallabrass takes a Historical approach to the development of art mediums, concepts and movements, for example, on page 16 ‘as Julie H. Reiss has it, installation – born in the 1960s – has revived from its long slumber through the commercially driven years of the 80s.’ He later adds ‘1990s art was the rise of installation art’. As an artist with an interest in installations this extract shows its utility to me as a practicing artist and helps to define that ‘Installation is not a medium-specific or itself a medium.’

The extract of Leo Steinberg discusses the ideas around a picture plane and how it has evolved in certain aspects throughout the latter half of the 20^th century. It talks about the changes from the traditional vertical picture plane that corresponds to the human perception of the image with regards to the upright posture and everything it is naturally subjected to (gravity) to a radical shift to what Steinberg calls the flatbed picture plane. The name derives from the flat bed of a printing press. Steinberg suggests that it had started to emerge in the early 20^th century among pop artists like Rauschenberg in which his works had no longer a sense of right way up therefore that connection of human posture to a picture plane disappears and the image becomes more like a scattered workbench that either makes sense or is just a mess. With a flatbed picture plane, how it is hung up doesn’t seem to be important as it can make sense in any position. This is the biggest difference Steinberg points out between the traditional picture plane like that of the renaissance and the artist of the 20^th century.  Steinberg concludes that as a result of this change comes the “change in relationship between artist and image, image and viewer”.

The extract of Richard Serra focuses on the changing perceptions of a sculptor in relation to the process and technological advances within their time. He argues that the tradition sculpture before the 15^th century where like components of a wider entity material wise. He states that the more secular views of using materials such as steel as building resources were long gone from sculpture art and as a result, the wider historical context of technological advancement through era’s such as the industrial revolution did little to effect sculptors methods of making. Serra further discusses the concept of the site specificity and how a work has an effect on its surroundings rather than the other way round. The nature of site specific works can be split into the “language” of the work and that of the surroundings. This distinguishes site specific work from that of an art piece in a gallery that isolates itself from its environment and virtually creates its on site in itself. Serra raises the problems of site specific works, in that it is difficult to implement in certain sites that belong to an institution without it becoming a “token of that institution” and thus the work becomes subservient to its ideas rather than being a separate entity with a relationship to its surroundings. Another issue that comes with creating site specific work is its recallability which is often impossible and therefore becomes a less attractive investment and therefore less sanctions by patrons.

Both the essays of Steinberg and Serra explore the topic of perception of art throughout history. They  both propose very similar ideas of the increasing flexibility of how we see art. For Steinberg, the tradition orientations of an art piece with relation to the human posture becomes less objective throughout the 20^th century as the development of abstraction started to flourish more than ever. Whereas Serra looks at perspectives of sculptors and how they are separate with their idea of materials as picture making mediums rather than their practical usage as building materials so a a sculptor materials are more than function but also meaning.

Bibliography

Art in theory 1900-1990 an anthology of changing ideas- Charles Harrison and Paul Wood

Leo Steinberg, “From Other Criteria”, Pg. 948

Richard Serra, From the Yale Lecture, Pg. 1124

My blog has helped me develop themes and ideas I’m interested in, and think about the kind of work I would like to produce in the future. It has allowed me to discover new artists and has drastically broadened my knowledge in art.

I found certain tasks more useful than others, specifically tasks 6 and 10, in which I became deeply invested in. Task 6 forced me to think outside the box and develop a new mode of practice. It made me consider using new techniques in my artwork, which I would never consider using before. Task 10 helped me self-reflect and come to a conclusion about what my artwork is about at the moment, something which, I believe, is very important for an artist to know, in order to proceed with future artwork. The process of gathering all my thoughts and ideas for that task, inspired me and gave me even more ideas to work on in the future.

Some tasks were more challenging than others, such as task 7, which required me to compare two different texts. However, I do believe this task helped me develop my conceptual and analytical skills and as a whole, this blog has helped me grow as an artist.

For this task, I am looking at the work from artist Alex Brown, the piece shown above is an ink drawing on paper, size 28×22 inches a little bit smaller than A1. In the first image, you can clearly see the outline of a person which comes across as a silhouette, creating simply the presence of a person. When you look closer to the drawing you can see many details of swirled lines which outline features of the drawing.

Considering this piece is already fairly large I’m going to imagine it on a much larger scale, as though the work was bigger than the viewer. This would create more of a chaos, similar to the effect of Monet’s water lilies, a picture would not do it justice. Brown’s technique of adding detail in such an intricate way would need to be increased, maybe even add to the background or work with the negative space. If you were to do the same pattern in the background, then the person would blend in and the idea of the presence of the person would no longer work. However, blowing this piece up into such a larger work would have a great impact on the viewer, especially when getting close and being able to see all the small intricate patterns within the silhouette of the person.