I get it now...

Week 5

Rikrit Tiravanija was a hard pill to swallow for me. My introduction to him was in class from the movie clip about him. I thought his work was uninteresting and his defense of his work was weak. However, after looking into his work a bit more I feel better about his art. His work in museums is fantastic. He combines the elegant, etiquette based setting with the most casual of activities like football and sleep. I think its amazing how he uses people in his art. In a sense he is an artist turned host. In another way he is a giver. he allows people to practice music or share a meal with him. I still think he would have defended his work a little better though.

Gillian Wearing is like a psychologist performing a social experiment. She looks into the deepest depths of human emotions and is able to appropriatly display them. She invites others into her art by letting them dance along side her. For me she has been my favorite so far.

Reading the biography of Jan Harrison lends an understanding of where she is coming from. It sounded like a lot of her companionship was with animals when she was growing up. This definately comes out in her work. It is of no surprise that she would make up another tongue to “speak” to the animals with in an effort to communicate with them. I think her paintings are beautiful and thought that her speaking to them was kinda crazy. That being said, it also made the paintings come alive.

Week 4

Personally I am a big fan of Charles Ray. I think life should be approached with a sense of humor and that fundemental human behavior should be mocked. The problem with this approach is that it might not be appreciated by a rather large portion of the art community, the serious art observer. The element of erotism could be too much for some and ultimatly blinding to the message. As far as Will Schade goes, I can appreciate his sense of humor as well, but parts of it seem a bit cheap. Coming from a christian background I realize there is tons to make fun of  and that making light of a religious figure is easy shock. I guess I feel like its making fat jokes at a fat kid. With Arnaldo Morales, I feel like by taking such a complex mechanical approach he places a barrier between himself and the majority of his viewers. There are not many people that can relate the robot building and the art presents itself as monster truck entertainment.

It seems that Charles Rays objective is to take normative society and step outside of it. He seems to deal with opposites, taking literal unliterally, turning unliteral into literally. Not to mention incorporating nudity and sexually explicit subjects in his art is definately anti-social.  Will Shade, as presented in the appove paragraph, gets under people’s skin by using christian themes in his art in a satirical manner. His art is beautiful in an unclassic way. The images he produces are choppy and unpolished which go against what most people expect out of art. Lets face it. I would love to get philosophical about Arnaldo Morales’ work but when it comes down to it…it punches people. Enough said.