Renée Cox – Hot-en-tot Venus (1994)

‘Hot-en-tot Venus’ shows a black woman posing with her back arched, facing the camera, and has augmented breasts and rear attached to her; the image has then been rendered black and white. I believe that the piece is making a feminist statement about black women and how they’re stereotype in terms of looks. The woman is evidently arching her back to emphasise the point being made. The expression on her face comes across as sombre and melancholy, showing how stereotyping can affect someone about features they can’t change.

The context behind the piece actually begins with Cox herself, posing as the figure in the piece to redefine herself as a black woman while at the same time, representing other women who share similar situations. In this piece, we see how the female form is celebrated and appraised. The negative side of the image is the way in which the portrayal of black women is highly criticised and sexualised within the media. Nonetheless, the celebration comes through her embracing her nude stance; thus, being able to communicate to other women around the globe that our bodies are nothing to be ashamed of and that being nude is an empowering stance to take.

The image communicates a feeling of unity between all women in terms of being able to express ourselves through our bodies without having to be sexualised to have validation from society; I believe this to be a message that can be shared internationally with all women, regardless of race or circumstances because we all experience stereotyping to a degree. However, I do believe that the way black women are portrayed and sexualised in the media is a point which is international as well because there are black women all over the world who may have come across the ignorant stereotyping.

Sources:

https://artintheblackdiaspora.wordpress.com/2014/05/01/renee-cox-hot-en-tot/ Black Feminist Art

Within the two texts “The Yale Lecture by Richard Serra” written in 1990 and “Other Criteria by Leo Steinburg” published in 1972. They both speak about art in a passionate and educated manner. Serra is more interested in the process of Sculptor whereas Steinburg is more interested with the process of Painting. I feel both texts share a similarity with certain similar themed topics discussed, an example of this would be that they both speak about how the spoken practice has changed with time. Steinburg stated “The pictures of the last fifteen to twenty years insist on a radically new orientation, in which the painted surface is no longer the analogue of a visual experience of nature but of operational processes.”  He was saying in this quote how painting has evolved away from focusing on natural landscapes to a more abstract appearance of processes. However Steinburg doesn’t seem negatively affected by this transition compared to Serra who says “Sculptors for the most part have ignored the results of the industrial revolution failing to investigate these fundamental processes and methods of steel making, engineering and construction.” He is expressing his disappointment of how more recent sculptors have steered away from the traditional roots of sculpt making due to the introduction of technology, he states “the technological process is revealed depersonalizes and demythologizes the idealization of the sculptor’s craft.” Serra means that the process of making the sculpture is just as important as creating the final product, which I agree to a point. I believe an artist can learn and develop new ways of working with a more hands on approach to sculpture perhaps. However the introduction of technology allows sculpture to be far more exciting due the variety we can now create compared to when the technology we have currently wasn’t around.

When Steinburg speaks about the differences in the painting process over time, (more specifically through the Cubism Movement, in the 1900’s, through to the Abstract Expressionistic movement , in the 1940’s.) he has a less rigid approach in his opinions, he is simply discussing the transition of the artwork throughout the years. He praised artists such as Duchamp and Rauschenberg  as being huge influences within the art scene. Steinburg stated how Rauschenberg laid the “foundation of an artistic language that would deal with a different order of experience” within the 1950’s during the abstract expressionist movement. Whereas Serra only mentions artists who either back up his opinion such as Le Corbusier (who wrote a letter to Victor Nekrasov stating how he felt that paintings of sculptor don’t undermine sculpture but don’t add anything to it either (backing up Serra’s dislike for non-traditional methods of making sculpture)). Or he mentions artists to simply criticise their artwork for using sculpture in a non-traditional way.

Overall I preferred the more open minded approach of Leo Steinburg’s Other Criteria, compared to that of the more narrow minded outlook of Richard Serra’s The Yale Lecture.

When tasked to appropriate an image, I decided to comply the research I am doing for the Manifesto project and use it for this task. I am looking at the proposals of an artist called Peter Liversidge, he is known for creating hundreds upon hundreds of proposals for his artworks; in fact he has created so many that you can buy books full of them… and I decided to appropriate one.

The idea behind a manifesto or a proposal is that you are announcing to whoever will read it, what you intend to do and what you believe in. There are political manifestos, dating back to the early 1900s where socialism and change really started to set in in many countries across the world, but there are also art manifestos, and the more contemporary ones have been created in a very satirical manner in which inspired me to create something a little bizarre.

Leo Steinberg (b.1920) from ‘Other Criteria’ published in March 1972 and was a breath of fresh air against the strict regime that swallowed the early 1970s. Steinberg distinctly mentions the changing view of art and the way that it is created for the onlooker. He specifies that art is transforming into something new and that the ‘Old Masters’ are the artists who lived within the realm of Renaissance painting and he perceives this type of art as ‘flat’.

The 1970s were still the years of change, in a political, social and cultural sense. Therefore this piece of text by Steinberg would have helped push the minds of the modern world alongside the ever-changing society that the artists of that time grew with.

Richard Serra (b.1939) from The Yale Lecture published in Amsterdam in 1990 and the lecture was in January of 1990 in the middle of a period where a lot of controversy surrounded him and one of his sculpture pieces. Serra refers to the people who helped him create his sculptures as his ‘new studio’ because he needed professionals who knew the industrial sector very well in order to create his pieces. Serra specifies during his lecture that his works “never decorate, illustrate or depict a site”, they become part of it – this is most possibly why he got into trouble with his sculpture as it was deconstructed and ripped down from where it had been displayed due to making the people in the area unhappy as it was not aesthetically pleasing enough.

The similarities between these two texts are that Steinberg and Serra discuss their work as being something that society is not yet used to, these artists aspired to change the way that art was created and perceived, but to also shock in the process.

The first text, Leo Steinberg “From Other Criteria” was published in 1972, during the postmodernism error. The text explores the changes in viewing art in your typical gallery setting, seeing the work horizontally rather than in an upright position like a human posture. Steinberg mainly focuses on the work of Robert Rauschenberg and quotes from Jasper Johns that “Rauschenberg was the man who in his century had invented the most since Picasso” Steinberg says that he created a new orientation when viewing works. Throughout this text, artists are named who have influenced this massive change in art. For example, Pollock, and Duchamp.

The second text, Richard Serra “From the Yale Lecture” written in 1990, focusing on the meaning of site orientated works and the difference between them and ones which are corporate funded. The text explores how there is a very definitive line between the two. Serra states how site-specific sculpture “has nothing to do with opinion or belief”, suggesting that this is a completely different type of sculpture compared to making something in the studio. He also firmly states how a piece cannot be made in the studio and then moved to be adjusted to a certain site. Serra goes on to outline how corporate-funded sculptures are like “puppet creators”.

Both texts explore two major changes in the timeline of art, from very different angles. Touching on the way we view art in a gallery and the way we create public sculptures, moving away from the norm of simply creating a painting for a gallery and simply creating a sculpture to support and promote in a public space. Yet both seem to have a mechanical sense to them, Rauschenberg starts to bring his work to life by suspending his 3D pieces in a way we would view a painting for example, when an exhibition came up with the theme of “nature in art” to come away from the abstract paintings being created in that time, Rauschenberg submitted a piece of square grass that hung from a wall. The square suggesting a frame and the grass suggesting nature. He thought out of the box and created a piece which still represented the theme but in a very controversial way.

For this task I decided to take and appropriate an illustration by one of my favorite artists Frédéric Forest. I really like the minimalist approach that Frédéric Forest has to his work.

When recreating this image i decided to add some subtle colour while keeping the minimalist effect. For this I used two pro markers in ‘lavender’ and ‘pale pink’ to illustrate the females hand. I was going to leave it there but I wanted the sharp effect of the black fine liner so I went over the same line with a Graphik line maker in 0.2. This really made the illustration stand out and it is something that I have used in the past with previous illustrations. I think me adding colour to the image gives a completely different outcome to Frédéric Forest’s illustration. Especially adding the two different colours gives the final product a 3D effect.

Here’s a set of images, which I produced upon first arriving in this so called, new world. I was directly influenced by the tiny little pre/post arrival cards that they gave out, a sort of introduction to our new utopian like world. After months of worry and, well, for some, the road ahead was proposed so elegantly by a Southampton alumni representative that I felt indeed compelled to turn it on it’s head.

I couldn’t help but poke fun at the warm welcoming we’d received, so by taking there words and reiterating there message with a visually sinister spin, I felt this might parallel the fears and worries that students might have felt about coming to university.

At first, this was just a simple drawing, I then took it over to Photoshop and overlay it with this painting I’d produced using brusho and candlewax. By producing this work, it has led me down a path of creativity, cause I’ve decided to produce stickers from these drawings, projections  and possibly animation. I no longer want to stay confined to a sketchbook, by expanding my field of work, it’ll become more accessible and socially inviting.

During my time at school, I was told to stay away from paint as I had more talent with chalk and charcoal. However, when I went to college I decided to finally experiment with paint and I fell in love with it.

Fast forward to the present day, I devise that my mode of practice still lies within the genre of painting, but the style I worked in was always very fast and rough with large, expressive brushstrokes whereas now I want to push myself and my patience into trying to replicate and emit the atmosphere of Renaissance paintings. Instead of creating three paintings in one day, I want to take the time to study a piece and work on it over a number of days, weeks or even months. I want my mode of practice to involve paintings in a range of oil paints, Gouache, watercolour and Acrylic and to emit a real sense of the elegance that paintings by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo managed to create. However, the concepts behind these are unlikely to be traditionally Renaissance. My pieces will involve elegance but usually with an air of humour behind it. I enjoy the process of contrast and I believe a beautiful piece in the style of a Renaissance painting, with humorous undertones is something that contrasts together really well.

I took Betty Tompkins’ ‘Fuck Painting #26’ and translated it into an A4 sized, coloured oil painting to capture the individuality and euphoria of the sexual experience. The female artist has taken the male, graphic industry of pornography and appropriated it to completely change the meaning. She had softened the image with acrylic airbrush techniques, making the action more beautiful, and increased the scale to create a dramatic impact when looked upon.

In my appropriation of Tompkins’ appropriation of pornographic material, I introduced gaudy colours through vivid oils. This was to provide a sense of ecstasy in the erotic encounter, capturing the emotions of the moment through colour. I realised that I wanted to use a complimentary colour palette so that the image flowed in an aesthetically pleasing way; therefore, capturing how the bodies naturally intertwine through the natural action. The addition of colour adds a more escalated shock value to the work. As a female artist, that works such as these are highly taboo and looked down upon by more established male artists and critics- less so in contemporary society, but this would have been the case at the time Tompkins began working (the 1970s).

reference: http://www.neoimages.com/artwork.aspx?nid=2021074, accessed 7 November 2017

For this task, I decided to appropriate the work of contemporary collage artist Jesse Draxler. I was drawn to his abstraction of the human form and obscuring of the face, and was keen to develop this in some way. His monochromatic black and white colour scheme gives his work a sharp, graphic quality, due to the clean lines and high contrast. I thought this would be a good starting point from which I could develop some work.

I was inspired to consider methods of distortion and abstraction and how I could ‘edit’ his work in a way that would be relevant to my practice. Having previously discussed my use of manual image manipulation using the photocopier, I was keen to develop this in another experimental and playful way, using ‘Glitch Art’, incorporating the element of chance and unpredictability.

Using the software Notepad++ I was able to edit the code of the original JPEG image and slowly alter the makeup of the image. With limited experience in coding and no knowledge of the coding language used, I did not know which bits of the code I was changing, a very playful and unpredictable process.

The attached images demonstrate the range of outcomes from this experimental process. The results included discolouration, pixilation, the image shifting to the right or left and missing pixels or chunks of the image. Image 1 was my first attempt at ‘glitching’ the image and I did not edit the code significantly. Similarly the code for Image 3 has not been massively altered, yet the image itself differs significantly from Draxler’s original collage.

Image 1

Image 3

Images 6 and 7 however were significantly altered and I was careful to ensure the files were not corrupted from too much of the code being damaged.

Each image had multiple iterations as, at each step, the work needed to be saved as a different file, thereby documenting the process and development of the work as well. The below images are examples of the more heavily edited works, both the eighth iterations of their respective developmental processes. Having had more practice with this technique, I had a greater degree of control over the results, the compositions and effects somewhat more intentional.

Image 6 (8)

Image 7 (8)

I found this process transformed the images – some more successfully than others – and it worked well with both the colourful and monochromatic images in entirely different ways. This process raises questions about authorship and authenticity – to what extent does altering another artist’s work make it your own? Does this only happen if the work no longer bears resemblance to the original? As a collage artist, Draxler himself appropriates imagery and material in order to make work and I thought it apt to take this a step further by adding to it myself and making it my own.