Wonder Women :: Art & Technology

When I read about George Landow’s “Intertextualities” from 1987, I was actually very scared. I feel that my generation struggles with deep and serious reading because we lacked teaching in phonetics in basic understanding while rushing to teach six year olds how to draw conclusions and comparisons. Projects like Landow’s work to further break down pieces of writing, though to his credit he did so before the boom of quick blog entries, newsbyte media, fragmented talk news, etc. I just feel that breaking down writing into “textual units” takes away from the writing as a whole and does not well serve Landon’s ultimate purpose of creating an easier way to draw connections and comparisons between works; his talk of a “docuverse” is idealistic yet possible in theory, but in the real world would become chaos. But, since I was barely drooling when all of this was happening, who am I to judge?

About a decade before I was born, Michael Naimark was working on “surrogate travel” in 1979. It’s an interesting project that allows the viewer to travel to a place virtually, using panoramic film imagery that slowly turns and allows the viewer to see more of the place. Interestingly, I haven’t seen much of this technology emerge recently in regards to art, but I have seen elements of it in online panoramas so that you can see a room or apartment’s floor plan and on Google Earth so that you can see satellite images of a place. Through Google Earth I have seen the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, and even my hometown from an aerial view. It’s cool to know that this amazing technology is based off of Naimark’s work in the ‘70’s.

I think that in the future art will follow technology’s footsteps: right now, technology is all about touch capabilities (touch screens, touch functions, touch phones, etc.). Imagine art that a viewer can touch and (to some extent) control. This would allow for greater dialogue between the artist and the viewer which could lead to greater understanding of the artist’s vision and inspiration. And what would it be like if a viewer could give greater feedback to an artist? Would it influence the artist’s future work? I don’t know. Perhaps even being able to see (whether by observation or recorded records) how someone interacted with their work could influence an artist, showcasing what parts of the work people were drawn to, which they lingered at, which they passed by, etc. I think increased feedback and dialogue through this kind of technology would greatly affect art on all levels.

Posted by hurl0063 at 04:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Charles Biederman (America, 1906-2004)
PAPIER COLLE, NewYork, 1936
Collage, Graphite, Ink, Colored Pencil, and watercolor on carboard
Bidederman Archive, Weisman Art Mueseum
Gift of Charles J. Bierderman

The subject was hard to understand. I couldn’t think about what is the purpose of the artist. However, I saw a stamp in the subject, and felt nostalgia. It looked like a letter that couldn’t send to home. Because I am an international student, I felt that way.

George Morrison (American, 1919-2000)
Noname, 1977
Lithograph on paper
Museum Purchase

This subject completely did not make sense to me. It looked like just scribbling.
However, I felt something “nature” and “inartificial”. It didn’t have feeling of urban.
To me, it looked like a expression of freedom and nature.

Posted by yoonx080 at 03:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Browse this Timeline and the related concepts.

Which art work is represented as symbolic of the art created in the year that you were born?

What was happening one decade earlier?

What do you imagine may influence art work created one decade from now?

Posted by Diane Willow at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was very interested in the mixed media piece Doll (1970's-early 1980s) by Sandra Menefee. The piece was a collage of sorts. It seems as though Menefee used old reading lessons (which addressed issues of domesticity) as a canvas. On this she painted patterns to a very traditional childs (or perhaps a dolls) dresses. The various layers of paint made it harder to see the reading lessons below giving the piece a ghostly appearance. The juxtaposition of a traditional medium, painting, with collage creates an irony that lead me to read the piece as a critique of traditional gender roles and the channels through which they are enforced.
This in mind I found it very interesting the the piece neighboring Doll was Isabel Bishop's Two Girls Talking (1935). This piece is a grey wash on wove paper of two young girls talking. It is a sketch that uses minimal details to very effectively portray a scene. This piece is very traditional in all elements of the work. It uses a traditional drawing medium on a very traditional surface to portray a very traditional scene.
I feel that it is important to look at the time in which these pieces where created to further understand their relationships. Bishops pieces was created in 1935 a time where women artists a time when women artists were slowly gaining some recognition. In contrast Mennefee's piece was in the late 70's and 80's a time when feminist art was on the scene and (some) women artists were using their art to make bold statements!
I felt that the placement of these two pieces provided an interesting dialogue concerning the history of women artists.

Posted by Benjamin Faga at 05:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The first piece that really drew in my attention was also my favorite piece in the exhibit; "Backyard: Evening, 2005" by Michael Kareken. The medium was charcoal on paper, and I just loved how it looked like a blurred, black and white photo at a glance. The contrast in light and dark really brought out the energy in the light on the house, and this piece of art just seemed to have something that draws you in magnetically.

The second piece I really liked was "Witch Tree Torso 23" by Hazel Belvo. The medium was graphite, tobacco juice and vermillion on paper. The first phrase that popped into my head looking at this was "concentrated evil". I was amazed at how the harsh, dark lines could symbolize so much evil and dark energy. I liked how the little bits of red (I'm assuming the tobacco juice) and yellow splashes but some depth into an otherwise black and white drawing. This is another piece that just sticks out for being so different and bold, and that's something I really like to see in gallery work.

Posted by fjest003 at 05:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The first piece of art that attracted my attention was the Unititled piece by George Morrison. What initially attracted me to this piece was the fact that it was so different from all of the other pieces in the museum. From a distance, it looked like a bunch of scribbles all over a large sheet of paper, but as I moved closer I became more intrigued by the detail that went into creating this drawing. While the lines look like they were randomly drawn from far away, this could not have been the case. Close up, I saw that all of the lines were precisely drawn. The entire piece exemplified the oxymoron: "Organized chaos." It's incredible.

The second piece of art that I was attracted to was the Promenade du Boeuf Gras. In this drawing was a mob of people all waiting in the streets of the city. I was attracted to this piece for a reason similar to what I stated above. From far away, the people in the drawing all look very similar to each other. It is only when you move closer to the drawing that you see all of the incredible detail in this drawing. I loved the wide variety of characters. There was a wizard, a maid with a baby, a jester, and a soldier, to name a few. This was the first time I've seen such a wide variety of characters all mobbed together in one small drawing.

Posted by matth120 at 03:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The first pieces that struck me as absolutely brilliant were the 4 drawings in the Hollis Sigler series. They were right when we walked in and done with really bright, eye-grabbing colors, somewhat reminiscent of the eighties. (Perhaps they were done then, I didn't catch a date) Anyways, they all have chairs as the subjects, and the chairs take on the emotions of the piece. All of the emotions are somewhat self-loathing, such as "They were right, they were perfect" with one sad-looking chair gazing up at two other chairs on their self-righteous pedestal. I just thought it was unique that the artist chose chairs to represent someone feeling this way. A chair bears a great load, is often underappreciated, and wholly incapable of expressing oneself, and the sentiments expressed in these four pieces identify entirely with these characteristics.

The second piece I really liked seems to be a favorite in the class: Sandra Menefee Taylor's "Doll". I immediately thought of Ibsen's A Doll's House because of the four dresses along the bottom that were painted over with lines that looked like a house. The enlarged "see spot run" text on the larger dress made me think of how elementary education is (at least mine was) very focused on creating the ideal life, cut out of a magazine. For instance, there was a recent debate about whether Sesame Street re-runs from the seventies/eighties should be rated PG because in some of the skits, the puppets were wrestling. It is, of course, ridiculous to assume that children are not capable of seeing things like wrestling, but the goals behind ideas like this seem to be aimed at creating doll-like perfection in adolescents, but that simply isn't realistic, nor is it desirable.

Posted by Kari Volkmann at 12:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The first piece that caught my eye was Fortis by Diane Williams. It's a charcoal line drawing of a man, and I love the gestural quality of the lines--very free and fast, as though the artist just sat down for five minutes to sketch and that's how it came out. I also like the way the arms and hands are drawn in a few different positions, as if the artist changed her mind about where they should be placed but didn't bother erasing her original lines. The free flow of the lines and the multiple pairs of hands creates a lot of movement in the piece. The expression of the man's face also struck me; it seemed to convey an intense emotion but I wasn't exactly sure what that emotion was--maybe desperation; there was something almost inhuman about his face. Tension between the facial expression of the man and his posture, and the title of the piece which means "strength" makes the work thought provoking as well as visually appealing.

The second piece that drew me was Doll by Sandra Menefee Taylor. I was initially attracted by the white paint splatter covering the dress, which is the main element of the piece. Then I noticed the text that comprises the "fabric" of the dress, and which uses children's book-like language that has a slightly menacing overtone to it. At the bottom of the piece is a series of abstract sketches of houses containing what look like human figures, and with the title these reminded me of doll houses. I was interested in the concept of the piece more than anything, and I took it as a sort of commentary on confinement and particularly the social confinement of women--women being confined to dresses, confined to houses (the domestic sphere), confined to a certain set of expectations of what they should be and what they should do that is set forth in childhood (perhaps through playing with dolls).

Posted by lips0037 at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was drawn to "The Sacrifice of Isaac" by an unknown artist done in the seventeenth century. I'm currently reading through one of those "Read the Bible in a year" bibles, and had just recently read this story. I was moved by this drawing because it was not polished and refined; the lack of defined lines allowed the viewer to see Abraham's inner struggle: I have to do what God says, but I don't want to...God gave me this son in my old age, but now He wants me to kill him? I also thought that the fact that the brown ink was very light and not always distinguishable against the cream colored page further showcased Abraham's confusion; the lack of other colors allowed the piece to be centered entirely on the situation rather than elaborate color choices or patterns. (The viewer can't get caught up in the color of Abraham's clothing rather than his situation.)

Secondly, I was taken in by Glen Allison Ranney's "Raspberry Farm". I'm a sucker for anything black and white (though usually photography), and this--like the above--was not overly refined and polished. The picture had a serene atmosphere, which is surprising considering the stark contrast of black on white. I did find myself longing for some color, though: my family lives on a dairy farm with a big garden and a huge raspberry...well, field basically (it keeps branching out of its own accord and may one day indeed swallow the rest of the garden). The deep color of raspberries and the green of the leaves is stunning and would be the best way visually in my mind to capture something titled "Raspberry Farm," but Ranney apparently had a different interpretation. Either way, it still evokes a stillness that comes at the close of the day when things begin to calm (and the sun casts large amounts of shadow, like in the drawing) whether your raspberry "farm" is black and white or in full color. I love the serenity of country life and felt that this drawing captured it without words and transported me a hundred miles away while standing in the middle of a large city.

Posted by hurl0063 at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Piece #1
One piece that caught my attention immediately was Douglas Argue's untitled piece from 1993. I was initially drawn to it because the human figure appeared to be stuffing his/her face with something that appeared from a distance to be spaghetti. This made me laugh, and I went in for a closer look. I realized as I neared the drawing that it was not at all spaghetti that was in the figure's mouth, but the head of a small, orange, four legged hoofed animal with the rest of the body sticking out....

this startled me...

..then some other odd things began to pop out. For example, the figure seemed vaguely like a toddler based on the proportion of the head to the body. The figure was naked, and the color of the skin varied in 5 or 6 tones throughout the body as if it were many races, or even no specific race at all. The eyes of the character were intently focused on the body of the stuffed animal sticking out from his/her mouth. The most confusing element of the picture was perhaps the stick that the child held out in its right hand. Attached to the stick was a string tied to a donut shaped object. Another "toy" perhaps, albeit not a very amusing one.

What message does Argue's painting hold? Not a clue. But if the figure was indeed a child with very lame toys, I can't help but feel concern for why any parent would allow their toddler to stand with the head of a stuffed animal in his or her mouth. Perhaps thats what idle children do...

Piece #2

I really liked Sandra Menefee Taylor's mixed media piece called "Doll" from the late 1970's/early 1980's. The central figure of the picture is a hazily outlined dress, a very classic doll's dress with a short skirt and puffed cap sleeves. The dress had a very aged look with tabs atop the shoulders to suggest a paper doll dress. There was also odd white treatment applied to the collar of the dress that seemed like melted lace. A closer look at the content of the dress revealed faded sentences and pictures that one might find in a 1950's grammar book for children with phrases about Dick, Jane and the dog, Spot. Phrases like, "Jane wants a house. Find a house for Jane." seemed to subtly reinforce traditional gender roles and identities one might associate with the 1950's and earlier. Along the bottom of the piece were four small graphite sketches that appeared to be different stages of metamorphosis from the doll dress to a simple outline of a house. It seemed to imply an inextricable link between girls and the private space of the home. I think the artist was commenting on how out of date this message is by giving the whole piece an aged appearance akin to decades old newspaper.

Posted by remu0019 at 02:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The pastel on paper drawing by Viola Frey portrayed a woman and a man sitting on the floor of their home. I felt that it was full of emotion because there was a wide variety of color scattered in fragments throughout the piece and I felt that multiple moods were being expressed at the same time – anger, frustration and sadness. It felt very intimate, as if I were invading on a private domestic quarrel which the man and woman were so caught up in they didn’t even care to notice people were watching. Similarly in the picture, there were spectators in the window and door that didn’t seem to be expecting to walk in on them. I also felt like there was a power struggle between the man and woman and it seemed like both of them wanted to just curl up and revert back to being children and not have to deal with the issues in their adult lives.

In the Nancy Randall drawing titled “The Crossing,” I felt very calm and peaceful from looking at it. Across the top were a series of pictures that seemed to be telling an ancient story about the Vikings. The bottom ¾ was somewhat of a collage of canoes, insects, birds and flowers that made it feel like the scene was being preserved in time because of the overlapping figures and the way some images were fading out or were very distant. It was a graphite and pastel drawing on Japanese handmade paper so it felt like it had a very warm and comfortable feeling to it. The mediums used gave it a delicate quality and presented it in a kind of soft yellow light that reminded me of being in the middle of an empty field immersed in sunlight.

Posted by beckx214 at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My most memorable experience of art would be visiting the Milwaukee Art
Museum where I like to go every 6 months to see their new exhibits and
installations. I usually like to visit the section that has modern and
abstract art so i can see what new ways artists have come up with for
presenting their work. Just over winter break I saw a new piece that
involved an installation on a wall that began producing sounds whenever
anyone walked by it which I thought was unique and interactive.

Posted by beckx214 at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My most memorable experience of art:
In high school, I spent two weeks in Spain, including traditional sight seeing
and gallery gawking. In preparation for that trip, I actually did learn a
bit about art--specifically the art that we would see. I knew the story
behind Picasso's "Guernica" when I saw it, but photos and reprints hadn't
done justice to the immensity and emotion of that work.

Posted by hurl0063 at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My most memorable experience of art, at this moment, is The Interactive Plant Growing by Laurent Mignonneau and Christa Sommerer. I have been thinking about touch and its relationship to technology. This piece often comes to mind as Mignonneua and Sommerer have developed a touch sensor through the use of plants. To me this piece illuminates the fuzzy borders between technology and life.
Click Image for Documentation

Posted by Benjamin Faga at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sadly, my most memorable experience of art is a negative one, but only because it happened recently and I haven't seen enough art in between to erase the negative parts of it.

At the Walker right now there is an exhibit called Brave New Worlds. The exhibit itself is great, and is really politically and socially charged material that evokes a lot of emotions. One exhibit, however, was entitled "Partial Eclipse" and had a light projector on three legs faced toward a plain white screen, showing a perfect circle of bright light. There were no barriers around the exhibit and the title confused me, so I searched around the projector for clues to help me understand the art. I noticed that on the projector there were four slides that you could push or pull to manipulate the light so that it
actually looked like an eclipse. When I was pushing in one of the slides, one of the gallery supervisors asked me not touch it.

Perhaps I should have known. Don't touch anything. But one part of me got so frustrated about art that appears to be interactive and isn't, or art that doesn't tell me anything. What can that tell me but a lie? It was not a partial eclipse. Perhaps I didn't read enough into it, but how can one begin to understand the meaning if absolutely no background is provided. Maybe this class will help me answer that, or at least come to terms with
it.

Of course I have uncountable amazing experiences with art. These are
unforgettable and always renewing themselves.

Posted by Kari Volkmann at 09:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The experience that strikes me as the most memorable was my visit to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. I grew up just outside of LA and we went to the Getty on a school field trip in junior high school. I remember being surprised by the beauty and synergy of the place as we approached it on the monorail. The architecture of the museum was regal and full of light. I saw Van Gogh's Irises that day, which were the most beautiful paintings that I had ever seen.

Posted by farl0042 at 09:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of my most memorable experiences of art was when I was on a trip with my dad and we came across what I thought was an art gallery. It turns out that it was more of a studio where artists worked and also displayed their art. I got to meet and talk to a few of the artists there about their work and it was really interesting and inspiring, not just being able to talk to them but also just watching them.
Another memorable experience was my trip to Italy last May; I got to see many, many of the famous works of art I had studied in class but never seen in person. That was pretty awesome.

Posted by lips0037 at 09:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

what is your most memorable experience of art, as it occurs to you now?
- Last year, I took a music course which study about MIDI. And, I went to Spark Festival
for the class requirement. At the festival, I listened computer music that I never heard
before. My professor act on stage with MIDI input wired gloves, and his acting made music with his band.
It was very impressive music. Also, at the festival, I saw some video art. Someone showed his face, and moved his face parts with music. It was so fun.

Posted by yoonx080 at 09:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What is your most memorable experience of art, as it occurs to you now? The piece of art that I had one of my first art experiences with is "Sunburst," a blown glass sculpture that hangs in the main entry at the Minneapolis Institute of Art created by Dale Chihuly. As a child, my mom would bring me to MIA to see works up close that we had previously talked about at elementary school. This piece always made me feel a sense of awe, and it still does every time I see it. As a kid, I thought it was so incredible that someone could have imagined and made a piece so beautiful. Something about the way the light filters through the bright orange spiraling glass has always stopped me in my tracks.

Posted by remu0019 at 09:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My most memorable experience of art was at the art museum in
Chicago when I was young, getting to stand so close to a painting that
I was able to see every pixelation of the paint. I love the hands on
aspect of a painting, being able to feel the texture, so I think that
a technological side of art would be something completely different to
me.

Posted by linn0085 at 09:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One very memorable art experience I had was the first time I'd been to the Tate Modern art museum. They have an exhibit there, a room painted deep red; the walls are covered with about nine gigantic floor-to-ceiling Mark Rothko paintings. To me, the paintings exude a sort of sad, latent rage- the dark walls of the room really highlight this. I remember sitting in the room for at least 45 minutes, unable to leave because of the strange power these paintings had over me. I don't know why I was drawn to something so dark and disturbing, but I couldn't shake the sad feeling all day. Art really moves me if I can feel something radiating from it, be it dark and depressing or whimsical and joyous.

Posted by Annie at 09:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Every year when I go to the Minnesota State Fair, I separate myself from my family and go to the art exhibit building. There, I spend over an hour pouring over every single
painting/sculpture/photograph that I see. It's my favorite part of going to
the fair, and I basically zone out while looking at all these elements of
beauty and art. Black and White photographs are my favorite medium, but I
also enjoy looking at all the other forms of art being displayed.

Posted by fjest003 at 09:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My most memorable experience of art was my trip to the Holocaust Museum in
Washington D.C. a few years ago. The one particular piece that really stuck
with me was the video of the women and children in the concentration camp.
The video was not up on a screen for all to see, but was on the floor
surrounded by a solid white concrete square. To view the video, you had to
lean over the concrete, which was about 3-4 feet tall. I don't remember if
the concrete was there to prevent children from seeing the video. Even if
it was, I think it really showed how awful the conditions of the
concentration camps were. They were so awful, that the video footage had to
be hidden, so only those who wanted to see it would see. This art experience was also memorable because of the incorporation of the video footage rather than a still picture.

Posted by matth120 at 09:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My most memorable experience of art, or at least the first experience that pops into my mind, involves a visit to the Minneapolis Institute of Art. On one of my first visits to the MIA, I remember seeing a portrait of George Washington, standing in a heroic pose with red curtains around him. I don't know why I liked it so much or why it sticks with me, but I can see it perfectly in my head. I stop to see that painting every time I go to the MIA.

Posted by davis857 at 09:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Memorable experience of art: My most recent memorable experience was
visiting MOMA in New York. Although I don't really know the process by
which modern art is analyzed, it was still astonishing to see such a
collection. It was very frustrating for me to see an exhibit titled "pink
light in the corner", and to look over and see a fluorescent pink light in
the corner. I can't remember the last time I left anywhere with an
inescapable feeling that I've completely missed something.

Posted by dzub0005 at 09:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Add a description of your most memorable experience of art, as it occurs to you now.

Posted by Diane Willow at 09:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)