museum

Last week, I wrote about session 1, with Dr. Patricia Briggs, from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. It was about expressionism, abstractionism, the progression towards minimalism. This session, she continued to move forward in time to help us understand contemporary art. I took many more notes. Again, all mistakes below are mine.

Dr. Briggs started with putting forth Donald Judd as a great example of minimalism. His work shows the minimalist view that art is about expression, not self-expression. It’s a radical outside of human-ness. She again talked about Duchamp, where his art was not of the artist’s touch and hand. She gave the example of in his welded pieces, he gave a welder instruction on construction.

She referenced again action painting like Pollock and Gutai, where painting is about a trace of performance. This happened at about the same time as performance art got big. At the Walker, there are some Yves Klein body prints — naked female torsos printed onto paper. This is art that is an outcome of an activity.

Now, the aesthetic and anti-aesthetic tradition have been opposing each other in the 20th century. The anti-aesthetic tradition is Dada, conceptualism, sometimes surrealism (which can have a foot in both camps). Dada is the anti-art, that the beauty shown, if any, is convulsive beauty, the beauty of the abject, decay, beauty that hurts. Dada includes making collages as art — something common now, but not then. Making art of trash (found objects/modified found objects), art that goes out to the masses using low art, popular art such as mass media, photography. The function is to uncover those things that you usually don’t think about.

Dr. Briggs talked about Raushenberg, who was influenced by Duchamp — and Merce Cunningham (dance choreographer who felt that dance should be more real than artificial ballet) and John Cage (a pianist who would sit at a piano and let the sound of the audience be the piece). Raushenberg painted a field of white, and the shadow you cast over the piece became part of it. And if it got dirty, an assistant repainted it. Rauschenberg had a piece that was erasing a piece of art that de Kooning drew. She said it took him weeks to erase, that this was a collaboration between the artists, and that de Kooning drew something that would be hard to erase. He progresses to assemblages (vs. collages); her example was Bed, made up of his quilt and pillow, altered. The canvas is a flat tabletop, you put stuff on it, and the viewer processes it.

Neo-Dada uses expressionist paintbrush strokes, sometimes puts it next to collages, found objects, junk. These expressionist paintbrush strokes are ironic, not expressionist. Warhol was next on the neo-Dada agenda, about his appropriation of images to create art of the world. She talked about his Marilyn Monroe images — they’re not about Marilyn, they’re about how the Hollywood machine makes puppets out of people, objectifying people. Dr. Briggs said what’s brilliant about Warhol is that we like to look at it, unlike many other Dada and neo-Dada artists.

Using multiple texts is very post-modern. There’s no difference between high art and advertising. Multiple objects are pulled together, not necessarily to make a narrative. Many post-modern artists appropriate images from many contexts. Sherrie Levine is the apex of this, where she literally photographs other photographs, other paintings, and puts her name on it. This is commentary on originality (there is nothing new under the sun), authority of ownership, a very post-modern thought. To post-modern artists, the author is dead, all speaking is quotation, you can’t own an idea. Other issues explored by post-modern artists is exploration of the body, and not pretty poses. It’s a shift to art that doesn’t show the human body as a beautiful aesthetic, but physically clumsy things with vulnerabilities and openings. Racial identity is another theme explored, art about people who don’t have a voice.

At the Walker (the location of the next and last session), there is a lot of minimalism. This is not where you go to find craft, beauty, to find something that makes you feel good. Dr. Briggs is going to show us some of her favorite works. I’ll let you know what they are….

Session 3

Tonight, I attended the first of 3 sessions taught by Patricia Briggs, PhD, Associate Professor of Liberal Arts at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. The subtitle of the series is “Understanding contemporary art.”

I have no art history background, no art education. Dr. Briggs gives an enjoyable, accessible lecture, and I learned a great deal. Any errors below are mine.

She started with a discussion of the history of the Walker Art Museum, which will be the location of the last meeting (she trains docents for the Walker). It was a private collection in a home, then established in 1927 as the first public art gallery in the Upper Midwest. In 1944, a new building and a new focus came together in the wake of MoMA, to recreate the Walker as a museum of modern art. An addition in 2005 adds an architecturally postmodern wing to the modern building.

Dr. Briggs started with a discussion of the function of art. Before literacy, it was propaganda for the church and state. At the rise of the merchant class in the 17th century, different types of art emerged — landscapes, still lifes.

In the late 19th century, art moved away from narrative to art that is doing something else — expressive, abstraction; to colors and lines that don’t mimic nature. Think the brush strokes and colors of Van Gogh. These serve to suggest something, or make you feel something.

On to the early 20th century came the rise of conceptual and philosophical exploration such as Duchamp or Magritte. Think surrealism or Dada. Why is the picture and word of a pipe, a pipe? How do we know that words and signs make meaning? These conceptualists were creating a new audience for art, not entertaining, but art that was meant to make you think. The expressionists and abstractionists were one group at this time, and these conceptualists were in another.

Dr. Briggs said that Duchamp was the most important artist of the 20th century, that in the Dada shadow of WWI, he thumbed his nose at art as bourgeois, that art should be political or shocking, and incite people to think, to challenge them. Art is transforming meaning. He was the beginning of post-modernism, bringing life and art together. Duchamp spoke to a different audience; art of the formalist abstract expressionist tradition viewed art and life as separate, not for politics, not for commerce, not dirtied by life.

The Modern view is that arts’ function is to produce discourse, dialog, discussion of ideas and feelings.

Dr. Briggs went on to discuss abstractionism, usually associated with expressionism, often thought to be the natural progression of art. She showed us examples of paintings by various artists such as Gauguin, Van Gogh, where the paintings became flatter (less depth of field). She described expressionism as a way of painting, where color, shapes, and forms were more important than the subject matter. The progression was away from naturalism towards abstractionism.

She termed Kandinsky as a different type of Expressionist, a major shift to just abstract forms with no narrative. This is art that is meant to speak to emotions, like music it is intended to wash over you. Pure abstraction, no form.

In the 1920’s, Mondrian had a philosophical outlook, that if you surrounded people by soothing, calming art, we’d be a better people and a better world. Art should produce an effect.

Her example of pure abstraction was Hans Hoffman. Hans Hoffman! His work is what I loomed here. Now I know a bit more about him, more than what I read in the Smithsonian blog entry that interested me in his work. Dr. Briggs had a high school art teacher that introduced her to Hans Hoffman. Her description of his work is “form is plastic.” There is push and pull, blurry vs hard edges. Shapes and forms are supposed to dance in front of you, enliven, be plastic. She finds every one of his works “exciting.”

She went on to talk about Color Field painters, those painters who make monstrous, mural-sized paintings of one (or very few) colors. Big blocks of colors. These are meant to create an environment for you. You place yourself in front of one of these big paintings, and it can take you somewhere.

Okay, so if the progression of painting is towards flat monochrome paintings, is painting dead? Are we done? Now, we’re on to Minimalism, a new direction. There is no intended connection with spirit, or emotion. It is painting as an object, not a metaphor for anything. This is form as pure object. Ad Reinhardt was one of her examples of this — he painted black canvas after black canvas. A painting is a painting. That’s it.

Minimalism makes us self-conscious, it doesn’t say anything, it’s just a thing. It talks about the space you’re in, calls to us in a different physical way. These massive minimalist paintings or sculptures? They are intended to be the only thing in the room. There is no evidence of the artist’s hand. This is conceptual art.

Another progression was to formal abstraction. This can be like performance art, a record of the moving body — i.e., Pollock. Art and life together. Art as a stage for the moving body.

And, that was the end of this session. I’m an exuberant note taker. Can you tell?! I’ll write more next week, after the next session.

Session 2

Session 3

Katherine and I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts this past weekend to see Art in Bloom. This is when florists from around the metro area create hundreds (?) of floral arrangements based on an item in the permanent collection. It’s a wonderful museum, with a very broad collection. I probably visit at least 4 times/year — I’m very grateful to have this free museum nearby where I can periodically just go, browse, and enjoy.

Art in Bloom is held annually for one weekend, Thursday through Sunday. The place is packed, there’s special events, and parking can be challenging. Below are some pictures that I took of the event. No captions; if I took the time to take notes at the museum and then caption, I might not ever blog about it, so enjoy!

I ducked in to look at some beadwork. A tribe native to Minnesota is the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe). Here’s some pieces owned by the museum.

And as I was leaving, they were inflating a duck in the park in front of the old, main entrance. Don’t ask me why!

I went to a museum today, one that is in a beautiful mansion with carvings, etc. I took a picture of the rug, and built a palette, for my own amusement — no project planned for it.

Ancient Traders Gallery is in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, an area with a significant Native American population. It’s nearby, but I was unaware of the gallery until I read an article in the local paper about the current show, Generations, Legacy, and Tradition. There were carvings (pipestone, horn, alabaster), paintings, quilting — and beadwork. I have a beautiful glossy brochure — you can see a pdf of it on the website, under current art exhibit -> opening event flier (I can’t get it to link, sorry - and the show is until February 23rd, so the document will probably be removed after that).

My favorite quilter was Vi Colombe (Modoc); her bio from the gallery includes that she received a 2006 Bush Artist’s Fellowship, has a degree in fashion, and has been a wardrobe coordinator for a national rodeo finals competiton. Great color combos, interesting and pleasing modifications of classic quilt patterns.

Dwayne Wilcox (Oglala Lakota) had some great ledger drawings, and is also a Bush Foundation Fellow. Great sense of dark ironic humor. One painting is called “Cheese with that Whine,” and depicts an Indian in regalia, holding a piece of paper saying “broken treaties,” and being served government cheese and port by butlers, image of it here.

There were 3 beaders whom I particularly liked. I picked up a card with a picture of a turtle medallion done by Doug Limon (Ojibwe/Oneida). The center of each medallion is a turtle, and the center of the turtle is various metal objects such as buffalo head nickles. They were well-displayed in eye-catching groups; I think smaller things can be more effectively displayed this way.

Karen Beaver (Yupik/Mandan/Hidatsa) was another great bead artist. She had a shadow box about Jim Thorpe that I particularly liked. On a medallion was a very realistic beaded image of Thorpe, also two medallions that looked like gold medals, ink drawings, a quote saying that he was the greatest athlete ever (from the King of Sweden, I think?), and more. Late last year, I saw other pieces of hers at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis.

Todd Bordeaux (Sicangu Lakota) and his story sticks! He’s continuing to keep a family 7-generation winter count on them. There was one in the gallery, it’s not the one on this website, but similar. The pictographs are amazing. I couldn’t walk all the way around the piece though, I wish I could. (Actually, I wish I could pick it up, but that wasn’t happening either!) He also beaded (and put an animal head on) Pez dispensers. The title was “Reservation Diabetes Dispensers.”

Here are some other images of the pieces in the gallery. If you are so inclined, take a browse!

Then I went to gift shop/trading post next door. A gentleman came in with a great carved walking stick with a horn handle with metal inlay while I was there, and also pulled out some pipestone carvings that he’d made. Negotiations commenced. There was beadwork there, both for sale and old pieces on exhibit. And, well, I bought beads….

A great way to spend a couple of hours!