Week 2: Fluidity

Laura Vandenburgh was briliant. Her ideas of drawing having an aesthetic element and a more functional element were brilliant. She seemed to suggest that drawing is not only beautiful sketches or doodles on the edges of a notebook, because it serves a more expansive purpose as well. What I got from Vandenburgh  was the incessant idea of the unconscious and the bigger picture; that art shouldn’t be viewed with a narrow eye or subjective manner. Instead, what I took from Vandenburgh was that art should encompass the bigger picture, the conscious and unconscious, the aesthetically appealing elements as well as the abstractly challenging concepts working together. That viewing art as a whole in this way is most conducive to getting the most out of it. Vandenburgh also seemed to express adamantly that anyone with a hand and a writing utensil can leave a mark. And that the mark, whatever it is and however it got there, is a product of your unconcious and concious working together to express some kind of inherent ideas, thoughts, or feelings that you have.

Margaret Kilgallen and her sentiments of “things that show the evidence of the human hand” had me feeling all giddy, nostalgic, and overwhelmed. Her craft of the handmade aesthetic and her notion of  art as beautiful because of its preserved aesthetics. Art 21 calls Margaret Kilgallen “straightforward yet stylized” and this description is quite fitting. She does work because of the possibilities it holds; maybe it will help someone else, maybe it will affect someone else in some profound way, maybe  it will mean nothing to the person and that will cause them to stop and reflect on why they got nothing out of it. But nevertheless, it’s rewarding to her, and it’s really what life and art are all about. The possibility, the connectivity and the authenticity that the art garners; the fact that art is handmade and authentic to the one person who made it, that it expresses the person’s craft as an artist and that the piece is specific to someone or something, an expression of a moment in time, and yet at the same time, that the piece has the potential to affect someone else. It seems Kilgallen’s art is focused around nurturing and maintaining these connections. For example, in the hand-painted train-yard photo, where Kilgallen takes an existing photo and hand paints another figure hugging the one in the photo, we see the power of not only the drawn-in figure, who seems to fit perfectly, but  with the word “WEED” scrawled on the hat, there is a sense of not only the handmade and authenticity, but also a sense of completion. That for Kilgallen, the photograph is now finally complete because it completes the bigger picture of her unconscious. With her large, expansive art pieces,  we encounter a straightforward style with tremendous impact. The huge walls with single words scrawled across them, as seen at the art installation at UCLA, or in “To Friend and Foe” with her giant figures of women, unique in style yet simplified and streamlined, or with her hand-painted train-yard art, all are representations of what Kilgallen exemplifies in her work: an honest and fluid portrayal of life through the human hand.

The concept that intrigued me the most in Art Theory For Beginners was the notion of “intrinsic qualities versus extrinsic qualities in art.” Bell’s formalism suggests the idea that “good” art should include all ideas within itself, so that the person viewing the art “gets it” and in turn doesn’t have to do any work or ask any hard questions,. This suggests that “representational art was bad because it focused on what was outside of the painting- what it represented” instead of being all wrapped up into one beautiful, aesthetically pleasing package, devoid of challenge and easily understood. I think Bell got it wrong. Way wrong. Because, art should be challenging, difficult, overwhelming, uncomfortable, uncertain, incredible, beautiful, ugly, simple, complicated, infinitely conceptual, or definitively aesthetic. It should be all and anything it can and wants to be. Suggesting that representational art was “bad” is to imply that all good ideas should be wrapped neatly and carefully up inside themselves, with no room for expanding on ideas, concepts, aesthetic qualities. When Bell says good art should include all ideas within itself, there are no possibilities, there is no future, there is no fluidity of ideas and emotions. It’s limited. And quite frankly, I think it’s boring. Instead, what we see with Margaret Kilgallen and Laura Vandenburgh is this brilliant practice of art, with ideas outside of themselves. Ideas that are not limited, that reverberate throughout their other works, and that focus on what is outside of the painting. How powerful is an art piece, object, or installation that makes you think outside of what you’re viewing. That pushes you and makes you uncomfortable, and that often times, warrants the “WTF?!” moment. That’s the good staff. 

 

Another interesting notion I encountered in ATFB was Danto’s perspective on art and art theory. He thought that Andy Warhols’ Brillo Boxes were the “representative of the end of art” in the sense that the “dominant orthodox trajectory of what art was thought to be” had collapsed.  The thing that resonates most with me in all of this is Danto’s idea of “institutional acceptance” as not being enough; that an art object should have to “earn its status” in the sense that art has to prove itself, in whatever capacity and whichever context, whether it’s in a gallery or on the side of a train, that art has to work for itself, and can’t rely solely on the institutionalization of itself to be considered art. 

As I understand it, at the same time Pop Art, Neo-Dadaism, and Minimalism were all crucial to the breaking of old institutionalized constructs of art and art theory, as was prevalant for decades before. As a broader spectrum of what art could be emerged, so too did the “dematerialization” of art objects. That’s to say, that this idea of dematerializing art was just a byway to the conceptualization of art: that in place of the materials, the craft, and the stroke as the crucial components and means by which to evaluate an art object, came a style of art where the concept of the work was the art. This conceptualization of art was more concerned with ideas, and less concerned with the objects used in an art piece, and was imperative in the progression of art as a display of the unconscious that can still be seen today. Just as Pop Art was not originally understood as it began in the 1950’s, so too was Kilgallen’s train-yard art not widely understood by her parents (and I’m sure, many others as well). I believe Kilgallen mentions something in one of her articles about her parents not understanding graffiti on the sides of buildings and trains, yet they don’t even stop to question print ads, television commercials, or any of the other “junk” being visually thrown at them on a daily basis. It’s interesting to note this comparison between visual ‘junk’ that our minds swift through on a daily basis, and how, depending on the medium it is being projected onto, we react differently, or rank one as “higher” form and the other as “lower”, such as graffiti.  

This idea is also discussed in ATFB, when they write: “There has always been a dialogue between mass culture and art, between the High and the Low.” I think this dialogue between differentiating the “good” and the “bad” or the “high and the “low” and the need to do so is a direct product of cultural constructions and cultural conditioning in terms of art; that is to say, that “high” art is/was often considered so because of the institution, and our tendencies as a society are to side with and trust in such institutional constructs, so of course most aren’t going to argue what is “good” art because some higher authority (i.e. a gallery) already said it was so. And on the flip side of that coin, “bad” art is considered so because of it’s exclusion from galleries and the stigmas attached to it.  

The other intriguing notion in Art Theory For Beginners is Heidegger’s concern with looking at art “less as objects, and more about arriving at truth.” This idea of arriving at truth can be seen in both Margaret Kilgalen’s work with train graffiti and her larger installations, and Laura Vandenburgh’s work with drawing as a means to access the unconscious. For Killagen the “evidence of the human hand” is obvious. Your hands don’t lie. Your hands reveal what kind of person you are, what kind of values you hold, what kind of truths you know to be true; your hands reveal your character in the sense that what you do with your hands, whether that be drawing, doodling, playing basketball, or helping an old lady walk across the street, all these actions reveal the truth. They give evidence as to what you stand for and who you are, what’s really important. And for Kilgalen, the evidence we see from her hand’s work is that she’s real. Honest. And that her work is never static. As for Laura Vandenburgh, the evidence of her human hand at work can be found in her ability to seam together the minute details with the larger, sweeping picture. She reveals her truths through her hand and her craft and her ideas and her expressions. 

Art shouldn’t be static. It should have a fluidity about it; there aren’t certain parameters that need to be filled, or that an artist has to prescribe to in order to make art and engage with an audience. It’s all encompassing and flexible and leaves room for the artist to reveal their truths, in their own time and in their own way. Simply putting thoughts, messages, drawings, doodles, whatever, on to a some sort of medium is enough. It is enough because through the hands, and ultimately, through the mind, truths are revealed.

This video by Ryan Woodward completely captures my heart, not only lyrically and stylistically, but also in the manner in which it was constructed- it’s an aesthetically pleasing mix of sketches and animation with great care for the handmade.

Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.