Reflective Log: Book; Sweet Dreams: Contemporary art and complicity by Johanna Drucker

Key points & Reflections:

• Oscar Wilde - "art for arts sake" approach... "notion of autonomy... a sophisticated acknowledgment of complicity" (Drucker, 2006, xiv)
• "Artists working today are also keenly influenced by the mass media and material culture as much as by the rich traditions of fine art." (Drucker, 2006, xiv) - a bit about the conscious influences of the contemporary artist. 
• "The term "complicit" is deliberately provocative, since it implies a knowing compromise between motives of opportunism and circumstantial conditions - whether on the plane of production, or reference, or within institutional and social situations." (Drucker, 2006, xvi)

Chapter 2: Current conditions

• The chapter begins with a comparison between art in todays climate (for example 'store bought items trash and mass produced images'), is just an extreme version of the emperors new clothes, as if art is some massive illusion, or all in the concept. 
• "But the relationship of the production values of works to their symbolic value continues to be a key factor in the function of fine art as a distinct category of cultural activity."(Drucker, 2006, 12). 
• Comments on production and value of art. 

• Chapter 4 focuses on eclectic materialism, mass media culture... 

• "Rendering artistic expression in consumable material always opens it to co-optation, just as any sign of enthusiasm for the mainstream seems liable to the charge of commercial opportunism. Modern art so often and deeply marked its opposition to consumer culture except as a source for "material" (in an almost literal sense) that many current approaches seem to raise the fundamental question of how fine art distinguishes itself from other forms of cultural expression." (Drucker, 2006, 89-90). 
• This quote is basically saying fine art is commercial and has commercial opportunity because it is mainstream, yet modern art opposes its connection with material value other than that of the materials needed to create the work. I think contemporary art is therefore a contrasting development from modern art as artists have learnt to exploit their material value for consumption purposes. And perhaps that is how fine art now distinguishes itself. 
• Glossary research: co-optation: 'to elect into a body by the votes of the existing members', or, 'to assimilate, take, or win over into a larger or established group.' - Dictionary.com
• "Fine art is not advertising. Individual works of art and artistic vision, no matter how complicit, or corrupt, are distinguished by their fundamental undirectedness, by the unpurposed nature of the undertaking." This quote I could disagree with because I could argue some art has a very purposed nature of the undertaking (process). 

Chapter 4 :  Subsection: Slacker aesthetics page 93 -103 

• Talks about artist Jason Rhoades, who had a show at the David Zwirner Gallery.
• His work features badly made art, "Rhoade's piece struck me iniitally as another of those how-bad-can-it-be-and-therefore-get-a-lot-of-attention works"(Drucker, 2006, 95)
• "This "unconstructedness" and the low production values had a timely value in the early 1990s, particularly, with respect to then-current cultural reassessments of the status of work, labour and production." (Ducker, 2006, 95). Comments on overconsumption. 

Books' Conclusion

• Argument: "The argument I have tried to make arises from these many observations and is simply that the critical frameworks inherited from the avant-garde and passed through the academic discourses of current fine art history are constrained by the expectation of negativity."(Drucker, 2006, 247)
• "Fine art, artists, and critics exist in a condition of complicity with the institutions and values of contemporary culture" (Drucker, 2006, 247)
• "We respond to work because of its aesthetic effect."(Drucker, 2006, 252)

Reflections & Further research:

• This book talks about a number of topics very relative to my subject and interests. 
• Art and complicity to the market is a high theme. 
• In our culture, consumerism is an escape from life. Our culture surrounds itself with consumerism and material goods. 
• Jason Rhoades could be a good contrast artist to those working with material value, and comments on labour and production. 

Reflective Log: Silver Leaf: Gold Leaf on Donut: Chloe Wise Reference

YouTube Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqhS_c58D9E

Key Points:

• This donut was covered in edible gold leaf and it makes it look out of the ordinary, unusual, and obviously expensive and perhaps then desirable. 
• The gold leaf ameliorates the food item, it 'shouldn't' be edible, it doesn't look edible. 

Reflections

• This connects back to Chloe Wise's work due to the fact she uses food & advertising of food as a comment on consumerism, and in the same way that Chloe Wise places Chanel Logo's on bread, placing gold leaf on a donut gives it that same importance or shock factor. 

Xbox Kinect Sensor: Research, Software, Initial Steps and Working

Above are videos I was recommended to look at by an interactive design student. I became aware that I needed to install and use a software called 'Processing' to get the Kinect to work. I also needed to learn what code to put into processing; 

A website that shows code examples. http://shiffman.net/p5/kinect/ 

Further research took me to youtube videos by other artists using this Processing software, of interactive art installations, and below is something like what I want to achieve:

The above art installation cited a book in the description which I found useful, Greg Borenstein author of "Making Things See". 

    

Reflections so far:

This is the most difficult thing i've ever done, after hours I still cannot get the Kinect to work on the computer:

Further research:

• An artist that works with processing and xbox kinect: http://ericmedine.com 
• A code for processing that could work with kinect : https://github.com/CodingRainbow/Rainbow-Code/blob/master/Processing/12_kinect/sketch_12_1_ClosestThing/sketch_12_1_ClosestThing.pde 

Modul8

• After talking to a student from Interactive design, he advised me to download a software called modul8 and try using the kinect with that. 
• Further research online and on youtube suggests you can link your kinect sensor with modulate and control it.

Getting the Kinect to be recognised by the mac, using Scanet software

Artist Connection: Takashi Murakami

TAKASHI MURAKAMI

Further research after reading Contemporary art and its commercial markets... by Maria Lind and Olav Velthuis.
It would appear Murakami shares similarities with Warhol for his creation of a 'factory'. "He founded the Hiropon factory in Tokyo in 1996, which later evolved into Kaikai Kiki, an art production and art management corporation." (Gagosian, 2016).

"Takashi Murakami has stated that the artist is someone who understands the borders between worlds and who makes an effort to know them. With his distinctive “Superflat” style and ethos, which employs highly refined classical Japanese painting techniques to depict a super-charged mix of Pop, animé and otaku content within a flattened representational picture-plane, he moves freely within an ever-expanding field of aesthetic issues and cultural inspirations." (Gagosian, 2016).

In terms of context, his links between consumerism and art seem to have paved the way for other artists. "Not stopping with the production of artworks, Murakami shocked the world with his entrepreneurial collaboration with Louis Vuitton, when he challenged the divide between art and commerce." Kaikai Kiki, 2016).

Superflat style

Murakami coined a style of art which was a mixture of anime and traditional Japanese block print influences (Hyperallergic, 2010).

Murakami x Louis Vuitton

how much does his work sell for?

Takashi Murakami’s diptych The World of Sphere (2003)

Of course, I am most intrigued by the selling price of his art work. Above, Murakami's piece 'The world of Sphere' "sold for $2 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in fall 2013" (Artnet News, 2014). His other works seem so sell for that and more.

materials

Takashi Murakami, Invoking the Vitality of a Universe Beyond Imagination, 2014, mixed media, 32 5/16 × 78 3/4 × 37 inches (82 × 200 × 94 cm) © 2014 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd.

While browsing Artnews I read Murakami uses acrylic, gold leaf, platinum leaf, and that is what I am planning to experiment with now. The above piece of artwork is platinum plated (Artnews, 2015) to again, it has a strong connection with luxury materials.

Bibliography

Gagosian (2016) Takashi Murakami. Gagosian Gallery Online. Available from http://www.gagosian.com/artists/takashi-murakami [Accessed 25/10/16]. 

Kaikai Kiki (2016) Artists Takashi Murakami. Kaikai Kiki Online. Available from http://english.kaikaikiki.co.jp/artists/list/C4/ [Accessed 25/10/16]. 

Art News 2015. Image of Murakami x Louis Vuitton Bag. http://www.artnews.com/2015/07/21/louis-vuitton-ends-its-13-year-relationship-with-takashi-murakami/

Hyperallergic (2010). WTF... is superflat? http://hyperallergic.com/11659/wtf-is-superflat/

Artnews (2015) http://www.artnews.com/2015/01/29/takashi-murakami-at-gagosian/ 

Artnet News (2014) https://news.artnet.com/market/art-market-analysis-why-collectors-love-takashi-murakami-part-2-162123.
This article contains lots of references to the art market and prices of artworks including comments on Koons and Hirst. 

Book - Art Incorporated by Julian Stallabrass

After recommendations from Cath I started reading this book.

Key Points:

• "The wealthy buy themselves participation in this free zone through ownership and patronage, and they are buying something genuinely valuable; the state ensures that a wider public can inhale at least fir a while the scent of freedom that works of art emit." (Stallabrass, 2004, 4)

• "The economy of art closely reflects the economy of finance capital" (Stallabrass, 2004, 4) This means that art could be a representation of a successful economy and therefore buy owning art it is a reflection of this wealth. 

Reflections:

• This book may be good to come back to in the future, but as for now, it doesn't provide me with any key contextual information. 

Reflective Log: Article: Art Money, a New Startup, Is Offering Collectors Free Money to Buy Art

Online article by Isaac Kaplan for Artsy, published 25th October 2016, available from https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-this-new-startup-is-offering-collectors-free-money-to-buy-art [Accessed 26/10/16]. 

Key points:

• This company makes art more affordable for people who want to buy art, offering them interest free loans from $1000 to $30000. "Art Money offers buyers interest-free loans, allowing art buyers to pay off the price of a work over the course of 10 monthly installments rather than shell out the full price tag of the piece in one fell swoop."(Kaplan, 2016) 
• "With Art Money, galleries are paid within two weeks."(Kaplan, 2016)
“It’s not about the money, it’s about the psychology of it, it’s about feeling responsible." (Kaplan, 2016)
• "And ultimately, the company’s goal is a simple one, said Becker: “We want more people to buy art.”" (Kaplan, 2016)

Reflections:

• A utopian approach to the buying of art? Especially considering the companies goal it seems utilitarian and like they care about making art more accessible. 
• Maybe the fact people need help to buy art is a comment in itself? Is the art market getting out of control with their prices?

Reflective Log/ Artist Connection: Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons has been a strong influence throughout my work, and his Balloon Dog Orange is one of the main reasons I am most interested with the art market and the price and selling of artwork.

This is an article by Emma Brockes for the Guardian, published 05/07/15. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jul/05/jeff-koons-people-respond-to-banal-things-they-dont-accept-their-own-history [Accessed 25/07/15]

Key points of this article & my reflections:

• "When it sold for $58m, his Balloon Dog became the most expensive artwork by a living artist. Are the critics right to dismiss his work as ‘smug’ and ‘baloney’, or is he justified in saying it teaches us a vital lesson about materialism?" (Brockes, 2015). The comment about teaching us a lesson about materialism is one I agree with. I think Koons' work critiques consumer culture and that is why I am so intrigued by his work, and want to make work that also critiques consumer culture.

• "Balloon Dog, the 10ft-tall steel sculpture that sold for $58m two years ago, is, depending on your view, either a brilliant and playful portal to the infinite, or a work of utter pointlessness, but either way, Koons is assumed to have profited from a certain credulousness that entered the art world along with all that money"(Brockes, 2015). 

• "A lot of Koons’ works is big; he uses size to defamiliarise everyday objects"(Brockes, 2015). This is a good point, we feel more attracted to these everyday objects when they are coated in high shine chromium finish on a larger scale than we could ever imagine. This could be a point for me to consider, perhaps to make larger artwork. 

• "One of his first important works, The New, was a series of box-fresh vacuum cleaners suspended in perspex boxes, a commentary on the fetishistic appeal of consumer culture that he would deepen over the years. The fact that his critique of materialism has, since then, itself become a valuable commodity either proves the artist’s point or entirely demolishes the work’s symbolic integrity. Koons himself will not be drawn on the issue of money and those insane sums his work goes for are, he says, in the secondary art market and nothing to do with him." (Brockes, 2015) A comment on his involvement (or non involvement) within the market or perhaps denial, especially as it states he was a stock broker before hand, perhaps he now knows how to condition the market? 

Further Research

Rabbit, 1986, stainless steel, 41 x 19 x 12 inches , 104.1 x 48.3 x 30.5 cm, © Jeff Koons, Edition of 3 plus AP

• Jeff Koons Rabbit is chrome cast just like his Balloon Dog sculptures, using the same seductive techniques. 

Made in 'Eaven, 2004, Mark Leckey

• Koon's Rabbit has also been featured in Mark Leckey's appropriation titled 'Made in 'Eaven', 2004, which shows a CGI highly reflective room, again commenting on this reflective quality that is so seductive to the viewer and consumer. This perhaps is an even more ironic critique of consumerism through critiquing a piece of art that comments on consumerism. 

Studio Work: Plaster

• In this piece I have experimented using plaster rather than acrylic paint for texture, as this allows me to build a more sculptural surface at a much lower cost. 
• By working with the plaster as it sets, I have created a surface texture similar to previous silver samples and also continuing with the red 'sale' colour theme. 

Developments:

• I intend to put silver leaf over the top of this piece as Cath recommended, to see how it differs from spray paint. 

Studio Work: Update with Silver Samples

Sample 1

Sample 1

Sample 2

Sample 2

The silver samples I did a couple of weeks ago have now fully dried. The metal has some strong detailing in certain areas that has crumpled and fallen in as the acrylic paint has dried underneath. Also the finger marks from where people have poked it while it was still drying work really well to show an engagement with the material, and this intrigue between viewer and artwork I am so interested in is clear. 

• Three silver paintings layered on one another. I applied the sold sticker to the sample which I had actually sold during a group critique to another student. 
• I liked the addition of the sold signage as it helps to communicate this frantic, generic tone of sales and selling, and then applied it to the other canvas (which has not actually been sold yet) however, the concept of a piece of art being sold amuses me. 
• This bright red colour compliments the silver and it's the same tone i've used underneath the silver spray paint in the samples. This helps to connect the work with the sale. 

Book - The Value of Things by Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska

Key Points & Reflections:

• "Through the process of narration, people were able to comprehend an individual object in all its sumptuousness and freakish wonder" (Cummings and Lewandowska, 2000, 25). This quote talks about the museum, as a place to induce wonder, and could be relative to the modern day gallery too.

• "In this context, the expert wielded the power to bestow the label 'authentic' - certifying provenance, age and authorship - and benefited from the resulting effect on objects' desirability and price."  (Cummings and Lewandowska, 2000, 36) This is taking about the context of the souvenir before the time of public museums, it was wealthy collectors that could provide this label. 

• "New retail stores mimicked the museums with their promise to supply everything that could be produced, and as a result many things - in the form of serial reproductions, machine-standard products, casts, copies, replicas and limited and signed editions - became torn from their context and cast a drift in a sea of other extremely similar artefacts. " (Cummings and Lewandowska, 2000, 37)

• The shopping chapter from page 131 has some relative points that can translate into the world of art and the gallery. 

• "Born into the era of a replicating promotional media, contemporary customers are made the restless casualties of their desires." (Cummings and Lewandowska, 2000, 131) This point  states a fact about the society we live in currently and I believe this contemporary customer is also a customer of art and the same point can be applied to the gallery. 

• "Rather than merely 'buying' something, we are now encouraged to use every object or image to imaginatively extend ourselves; rather than making a purchase, in a sense, purchase now 'makes' us."  (Cummings and Lewandowska, 2000, 131) I feel as though this quote extends to the contemporary commercial gallery, in the way the gallery is curated for its atmosphere, to make the viewer feel a certain way. People identify themselves through their possessions and owning art can be one of those possessions.  

• A paragraph on the contemporary store is very similar to the gallery display: "Goods cascade through display fixtures on varying heights: wall-mounted shelving spills things down into the low open cupboards, out onto tables or low plinths, or into buckets and bins." (Cummings and Lewandowska, 2000, 142). This quote could translate into the way the gallery is displayed.

Reflections & developments for work:

• I could exploit this gallery as a shop situation and play into the details of the shop aspect, play on consumers desires

Reflective Log: Cath Tutorial - Research Methods

Key Points:

During a recent tutorial Cath recommended the following books, and to also check the bibliography's of those books for further reading:

- Sweet Dreams - Johanna Drucker

- Art Incorporated - Jullian Stallabrass

- High Art Lite - - Jullian Stallabrass

- The Value of Things - Neil Cummings + Marysia Lewandowska

- Art + Economics - Springer

Further Research:

Young British Artists (YBAs).

"The label Young British Artists (YBAs) is applied to a loose group of British artists who began to exhibit together in 1988 and who became known for their openness to materials and processes, shock tactics and entrepreneurial attitude" e.g. Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin.

http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/y/young-british-artists 

Question to explore with regard to my research:

What does it mean to be complicit within the market?

Technique/ Practise

Also contact Anne Povey in the makers lab to experiment using silver leaf or other leaf instead of silver spray paint to see if that makes a difference and furthers my practise.

Reflections:

Practise and research can be slightly separate at this stage. As long as I am making work and reading, the research will influence the work. 

Silver Paint Cracks: Studio Work

Initial experiment.

 When drying the silver paint recedes and leaves some of the red paint showing in the cracks. I wanted to continue with this and do something on a larger scale as I was intrigued by the details within the materials, and received positive feedback about how the cracks that form look really interesting. 

The red colour connects with sold stickers and other sale signage which is why I chose to use red underneath, to symbolise the works true intention - to be sold. In my larger piece below I had to use yellow and blue as well as red underneath as I ran out of red paint. The blue paint I used had gone off however, this created the best texture (the most bumpy). 

Before spray paint

New experiment - acrylic paint on canvas with silver spray paint over the top

Detail.

The more bumpy area is blue acrylic paint that had gone off, so it has been exposed to air for a couple of years and that's what caused this effect. I think it worked better than I expected and the intricate details cause the viewer to stare and be engaged with it. 

Before poking the other side of the canvas

Detail of ripples/ cracks which were made by the process shown in video below:

Reflections on the Video shot in the studio, above: 

This process was made by me poking the back of the canvas which causes the wet coloured paint underneath to appear and the silver spray paint to ripple. I found this video immersive and abstract, perhaps more so than the piece alone. 

In terms of the consumer and the consumed the video is mesmerising. I believe making the painting move is much more visually stimulating than if it was just a flat painting, and this can be achieved using canvas to paint on. 

Developments & reflections:

• I want to see what the painting will look like once it is fully dry as my previous experimentations changed entirely - and looked more appealing. 

• I want to experiment trying to create this same effect but using an xbox Kinect software and the viewers movements in front of the projection, so the viewer can be in control and interact with the piece. I also think this painting can be projected on, and will form part of the commercial gallery I am hoping to create. 

Reflection: Artwork Connection: Frequency Festival 2015: Squidsoup Review

"Immerse yourself in this walkthrough array of responsive LED lights and alter your perceptions of space, place and each other. Find yourself within an expansive hybrid reality space that promises to beguile and disorient."

As you walked through the installation the lights changed colour, and either turned on or off depending on viewer interaction. This motion sensor aspect  really engages the viewer and in a way, manipulates the audience response to the installation. It has been an environment that has been created specifically for the viewer to experience, and in this sense it is similar to what I am exploring. 

The placement of the installation, in an old large open space really works for it. There is so much room around the object and as you walk into the dark space you can admire it from a distance. You don't realise what is is at first and the viewer questions 'can I touch it? can I walk into it?' I wouldn't have if I hadn't seen other do it first. This illusionist approach to art is definitely captivating. The object itself is quite minimal - hanging lines of equal length and shape circular light bulbs. But it is the motion sensor and viewer interaction aspect that really works for me. It makes the piece much more than an aesthetic piece to admire, but a piece the viewer can really become immersed with and I think that is what I need to make clear in my work.

Reflection & Development Notes

As a viewer, I was immersed in the experience and certainly in awe of the beauty and slickness of the installation, For this project I hope to achieve the same result through a similar audience based experience, altering or consuming perceptions. Again, an important aspect I have taken from this piece is the incorporation of my viewer - allowing them to become immersed with the art - making it more of an experience for them. 

Reflective Log: Group Critique in the Studio with Andrew

Key points:

• My silver experimental piece with red cracks underneath – the group was more interested with the details within the materials. 
• I should make a bigger piece and focus on making work rather than the context behind it.

• I could be making a gallery that is the opposite of the Gagosian? A commercial gallery that juxtaposes the normal commercial gallery. Pound shop gallery featuring art work that is worth a pound

• Does value add a seriousness to art? I believe so. 

• More on the value of artwork – I could have itemised billing that goes along side pieces of work within this gallery, for example material costs and hourly wage costs that makes the value of the art work

Further Artist research: 

Rafael Tapoelski -  minimum wage paintings. I googled this artist however nothing came up at all. 

Maurizio Cattelan – An Italian artist famous for his Stolen art work, and other outrageous moves such as alloting his space within the Venice Biennale to an advertising agency: "while his response to the pressure of exhibiting at the Venice Biennale was to lease his allotted space to an advertising agency, which installed a billboard promoting a new perfume (Working Is a Bad Job, 1993)." (Gugenheim, 2012, https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/maurizio-cattelan-all ) Perhaps this is a covert comment on art, advertising and consumerism. 

Susan Collins – an artist who uses material value literally, like using diamonds for the heads of screws, mother of pearl on a ladder in an installation, where the materials work to be contradictory. "You wouldn't look twice at a row of screws in a gallery wall - until you read the label and find that they are made of diamonds, topaz, turquoise, gold and platinum." (Telegraph, 2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/donotmigrate/3669553/Exhibition-Out-of-the-Ordinary.html) 

Andrea Fraser – critique – doesn’t want her work to move within the art market

Reflections:
Keep making work in relation to the materiality I am interested with (silver, luxury goods, details within materials) and focus on the context later. 

Reflective Log: Book ; Understanding Art Markets: Inside the World of Art and Business by Iain Robertson

Key points & Reflections:

• "The art market specialises in selling desires to those whose senses need pricking. At the core of any meaningful analysis of this industry , aside from the interpretation of collector and dealer opinion and the application of data into an intelligible overview, is an understanding of taste." (Robertson, 2015, 1).

• 'Selling desires', and 'an understanding of taste'. Maybe researching taste of the art buyers/ current trends within the art world would be a good starting point for the basis of my art to include in the gallery. The text goes on to state how when people get richer they want to 'adorn their houses with pineapples in frames' and that tastes can change dramatically according to shifts in 'global wealth... geo-political and economical transitions'.

• Consumerism is currently one of the strongest forces at work within society, "It's perhaps too simple to say that there are three cultural forces at work in todays world - consumerism, cultural nationalism and historicism", (Robertson, 2015, 2).

• "Western culture flourishes on materialism, intellectualism and individualism, and that this breeds healthy competition but also obsessive material concerns and great economic inequality"  (Robertson, 2015, 2).

• "Gallery and museum visitors now consume art, one could say, in the same antiseptic fashion they digest food and information."  (Robertson, 2015, 2) Although this quote does embody what I want to say through my work, the word antiseptic here doesn't fit and I feel this book leaning towards a negative view of the gallery or the art market.  My stance is slightly more neutral or positive about the gallery. My work is more a comment on consumerism and how galleries can be good for art, or an ironic lighthearted view of the relationship between the consumed and consumer.

• "The art market, with art as its totem, has become an absolute reflection of society at large."  (Robertson, 2015, 5). I think this quote is what draws me most to the art market.

• "Today's market for the global commodity of contemporary art performs so well because of this transition in consumer taste brought about as much by plutonomy as the careful packaging of desires that typifies the abilities of the finest traders. It is extraordinary the degree of sophistication in this market, capable of gift-wrapping the most varied and unsympathetic materials and ideology."  (Robertson, 2015, 5). 

• "What makes someone decide to become an art dealer or broker? Trimarchi suggests that the motivation lies somewhere between altruistic mission and greed (Trimarchi 2003)",  (Robertson, 2015, 28)

• Forbes estimates David Zwirner's business makes $225 million a year (Robertson, 2015, 29)

• Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and "in a different respect, Takashi Murakami, has profited handsomely by subverting taste" (Robertson, 2015, 30)

If you fail at the top - you ruin your reputation and work will be hard to sell.

• "Alpha dealers have a disproportionate influence on the value and future importance of International Contemporary Art"  (Robertson, 2015, 24) 

• Dealers influence value of art? 

• However, "exceptional events like the three auctions held by Damien Hirst (b.1965) and the artist-driven art fair, Geisai, organised by Takashi Murakami (b.1962) appear to subvert this system" (Robertson, 2015, 24).