Tyrras Warren
Art 101
13 January 2011
Today we had a guest speaker: Laura Vandenburgh, who teaches here, at the University of Oregon. She is known to be very liberal about art and its many forms and functions. The first thing she did when she started to talk to us was explain that art is everywhere and almost no matter what we do we cannot escape it. Although that sounds almost foreboding, its not a bad thing. Most everyone draws at some point in there life, and I have found that most students have doodles on their notes and whatnot. One could argue that almost everything in life could be a medium of art and that is what she explains to us. I found this very insightful, because although I’m no art aficionado, I have seen my fair share, and my dad has a couple nice pieces. Yet what I never understood was the exclusion of what people would call “fine” art vs. “regular” (is that the right word..?) art. For some reason I remember my dad telling me the difference is where they lived and how long they have been dead. Obviously he was joking but its kind of funny to think about.
The reality of art is that it is everywhere, and everything that has some sort of connection to the artist or the viewer could be a medium to that art. It is of my opinion that art is meant to encapsulate emotions or thoughts from the viewer, whether that be the actual artist him/herself or some random that decides to glance down the hall. People say that art is as valued as it is explained, but in my opinion that is garbage. The artist might have painted it for a reason, and whatever reason that was, he/she found it in the art(hopefully). Yet, that art and reason were for one person alone and it doesn’t really matter if one thinks they can “see it” or not, it really just matters what each person feels or thinks when they see it. This just reinforces to me more that what she said in that everything can be a medium of art, for if everything can be a medium to art in different ways, then everything can also perceive the art in different ways.
She basically wanted us to know that there is no scope that is too wide, we can shape art and expressions through everything. The act of bending the limits of what is considered “art” itself will only expand our imagination and creativity. This will then only expand the options one has to express him/herself, thus giving a more accurate and specific interpretation, based on from person to person. Considering how many mediums this world gives us, it only makes sense that there could be a near infinite amount of options. The whole piece itself could be but a mark, or signature of the artist him/herself. The limits, although there, are almost too far to be reached.
So this multimedia is about a lady named Margret Kilgallen. She graduated from Colorado College with a degree in printmaking. This flowed through to her art which is focused on “a lot of typography from the 16th century, 15th century.”(Kilgallen 1) Her interest in the past is very influential in her work, which, like the older things she observes are well and hand made. However, she doesn’t think that it should be labeled as past because she still believes that people in this day and age do that as well, but she does concede that it is harder to find. She has most of her luck in metropolitan areas where there are many things that are overlooked, in her opinion that have more value that people tend to think.
Margret was also very interested in female figures and ideals, she tries to incorporate many things that connect to female rights and abuses. “Kilgallen often paints her figures simply standing or smoking. While some images are tense with action, such as two women back-to-back at the start of a gunfight, others are remarkably prosaic in the way they capture a man or woman staring out from the painting or in profile.”(Kilgallen 1) She has a broad sense of what can encapsulate her style of art. This is similar to what Laura told us in that art can be expressed and created many different ways.
Jackson Pollack is an artist that I think has a very different style of art. He likes to use canvases and things that could be left on the ground of some other sort of “real” surface. He then lets the paint drip on the canvas to express his ideas. When he is at work, he says that it is almost as if the art is creating itself, rather than he creating the art. This work, Blue Poles was “dripped” in 1952 and attracted much attention after a publication in the New York Magazine in 1973 that a man called Tony Smith, who was a friend of Pollack's, was the actual painter and that he and Pollack had met and in a state of drunkenness began to paint. This shows that even in a state of inebriation, the inspiration for great art can still exist. -Don’t try this at home-
For a bigger picture - http://leslieparke.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/g001b_pollock_blue-poles.jpg
No comments:
Post a Comment