Week 8-Arte Povera

Arte Povera was an art movement that began in Italy in the 1960's.  The term translates to "poor art" or "impoverished art."  Artists from the Arte Povera movement tended to favor found objects, natural materials, and items that could have been crafted prior to the Industrial Revolution (paper, wood, cotton, rocks, rope etc.).    The goal was to reject the mediums typically valued by the commercial art world, and instead emphasize the beauty that can be found in every day objects.  It opposed modernism, using unprocessed natural materials juxtaposed with contemporary technology.

Supposedly it is different from Assemblage (covered earlier), though I'm not entirely sure how.

An artist synonymous with Arte Povera is Michelangelo Pistoletto.  Pistoletto took impoverished materials and either used them to create striking works of "refined" original art (Wikipedia: "an exotic and opulent tapestry wrapping common bricks in discarded scraps of fabric"), or, arranged them with work more closely matching the classical definition of "art" in an attempt to question the value of art vs. commonplace items.  A well known example of the latter being "Venus of the Rags" which juxtaposes a classical Roman statue with a pile of...well, rags, resulting in a sculpture that resembles DaVinci's laundry room:

Adornment Project

So, I worked on this entirely in class, where I didn't have access to a camera.  As a result, I wasn't able to really document the process.  All I have is a photo of it hanging on the wall:

As it's all one solid color, it doesn't read very well from a front angle.  In case it isn't obvious, it's a wolf...with wings...and a goatee.  They have those in Canada, or so I'm told.

Week 7-Art Intervention

An art intervention is an interruption, either to a public space or another work of art, designed to draw attention to a specific idea.  As an invasive act, an art intervention is often seen as a protest or objection; a negative commentary on the object being intruded upon.  Depending on context and point of view, art intervention can also be considered vandalism.

Sometimes these interventions are organized and sanctioned.  Permission is given to use space, or manipulate existing works of art.  When an intervention is an unsanctioned act with trespassing and defacement of property, this is when the law gets involved, charges are pressed, people go to jail etc.

An intervention can itself be intervened upon, which just makes me think of this:

As I was reading about this concept, I was reminded of Soy Bomb.  Michael Portnoy was a dancer hired to kind of sluggishly bop around behind Bob Dylan as he performed during the 1998 Grammy Awards.  Instead of blandly snapping his fingers and swaying his shoulders, Portnoy decided this was an excellent opportunity to inject "transformational, explosive life" into the music industry.  Like a lithe incredible Hulk, he shredded his clothes and delivered a convulsive, dance/seizure routine on a nationally televised broadcast:

My book entry on the topic is a drawing of Shakespeare I did on top of a Batman comic book.  Shakespeare is intruding upon one work of art to entreat the viewer to engage with an alternative work of art.  He's also being a real dick about it.

Week 6-Estrangement (Verfremdungseffekt)

Estrangement, the distancing effect, Verfremdungseffekt, V-Effect etc., is a technique pioneered by German director Bertolt Brecht, in which the audience is made acutely aware that they are watching a play.  Typically, one of the goals of entertainment is for the audience to become lost in the material.  To become absorbed, empathize with the characters, and feel as if they are part of a shared world.  Brecht's technique seeks to deny the audience this sense of firsthand involvement.  He wants the audience to feel disconnected, as outside observers, aware at all times that what they are witnessing is fiction.  The hope is that this sense of removal will allow the viewer to examine the material with a more critical eye, and become an active participant in the work on display.

For my book entry, I cut out sections of comic book panels, and replaced them with images of artists drawing the material.  By showing the process within the work, the goal is to keep the viewer aware of the artificiality of what they're reading...in case the capes and tights and superpowers weren't already doing that.