Facing the Abject With Justin Novak

The human body has been an age-old subject in the art world for centuries, but artists such as Justin Novak have taken the human form and used it in a contemporary way to further the study of us. Novak is a ceramic artist best known for his series Disfigurines, which is a body of work he developed from 1997 to 2006. The series is made up of small-scale porcelain and raku-fired figurines that play on the traditional porcelain figures of the Rococo period, which is considered the golden age of European porcelain. 

Novak says, “the ceramic figurine has historically embodied a mainstream, bourgeois ideology, and for this reason, I have employed it in the presentation of an alternative vision, an ironic anti-figurine or disfigurine” (JustinNovak.com, pg. 1) The figurine has historically represented the ideals and norms of our dominate culture, but Novak’s savage and visceral figures are expressly for the opposite purpose. “ The graphic physical wounds of his Disfigurine series are a metaphor for the psychological damage inflicted by a dominant ideology that stifles difference” (Breaking the Mould, pg. 84)

In Terry Barrett’s article Approaches to Postmodern Artmaking he talks about the principle of Facing the Abject.  The abject refers to unsavory aspects in life; it is a concept that accounts for many “ugly” representations in art (Barrett, pg. 8). Novak’s grotesque Disfigurines fit right into this principle, his figurines are hauntingly beautiful, the starkness of them both intrigue the viewer and also makes them want to look away in distaste.

“ If beauty is truth, then it may dare to be grotesque too, for truth may be harsh or horrific. Beauty does not suggest something beautiful in the actual sense of the term, but that, which comes closer to the true expressions of the self and the vision of a generation's psyche, that is fragmented, kitsch-like, complex and beyond the metanarratives of a suffocating conformity.”(Keats, pg. 1). 

CritCards with Tom Anderson

"The purpose of student critiques, whether to focus on the technical, compositional, or conceptual, is solely to improve that work or future projects. Art criticism is the examination of the work of others to find what they can tell us about being human." (Anderson, pg. 24)

            This is a quote from the article Talking With Kids About Art by Tom Anderson, which I recently read for my Theory and Practice class. Andersons article concentrates on a way of structuring a critique in the art classroom, which is a subject that can be very hard to involve students in. Now that I think about it, I never had a class critique of each other’s work in my middle school or high school art classes. We may have discussed famous artists work but the discussion were not very engaging. The major tool in this article is the use of Crit Cards. Teachers are to use these cards to guide the discussion with their students. There are 4 critcards: Reaction, Description, Interpretation, and Evaluation.

CritCard #1 Reactions:

            With this card students are to talk about their first reactions to the artwork they are critiquing.  Students should be looking at formal principles and elements first such as color, shapes and textures. In order for students to look more deeply into the work you as the teacher should consider some guideline questions like: Do you think you know how the artist made his work? Does this piece remind you of anything else? Do you see any repeating themes or topics in the artists work?

CritCard# 2 Description:

            This card is based on the descriptive factors of the artwork. Some guiding questions to address the students with are what feeling do you get from the artwork? What mood does it portray? Has this artwork changed or influenced society somehow? Do you know who made the work? Do you know what time period it was made during?            

CritCard# 3 Interpretation:

            This card concentrates on subject matter of the work, and what the student thinks the work means. Essentially the student’s interpretations should stem from their reactions and descriptions of the artwork being critiqued.

CritCard# 4 Evaluation:

            This is the last and final card that brings all the ideas from the entire discussion together.  This is card gives the teacher the opportunity to ask the students if their views about the artist and there work had changed from when they first started the discussion. Do the students like the work better or worst since the start of the discussion?

Discussing Art With Students

    I was reading Terry Barrett's book Interpreting Art the other day, and he created a formula of topics that could ultimately add up to an art students understanding of the meaning a work or art is conveying. The formula looks something like this
                                                             
                                                                     Subject Matter
                                                                               +
                                                                         Medium
                                                                               +
                                                                           Form
                                                                               +
                                                                          Context
                                                                               =
                                                                         Meaning
   
    These specific areas are where teachers can pull some questions that can get their students thinking about different types of artwork. The subject matter encompasses the content, the narrative aspects of the piece (ex: how would one describe it?). The medium is what the work has made out of (paint, clay, found objects, ect.). The form is the listing descriptors of what the work is, how does it exist in the world? The context is talking about the work in time and space, where does it fit in historically, does it have a design purpose? All of these areas of questioning will help further explain the meaning of the artwork. This formula is very much an extension of Bloom's Taxonomy.
    Bloom's Taxonomy is a hierarchy of question stems that teachers use to guide their students through the learning process. It is broken down into six categories: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Each of the above mentioned areas of Barrett's formula can fall under the categories of Bloom's Taxonomy, for example subject matter, medium, and form can all fall under the category of knowledge. The further along we go the more abstract we get, for example form and context can fall under the category of analysis.
    I think that these formula's are a great way to get students thinking. I have been stuck in many a critique or discussion were no one has any thought or idea of where to start when talking about a work of art. It is a very awkward situation that nobody likes to be in, this list of question starters can help some light bulbs go off in the classroom, if you know what I mean. So the next time you are doing a discussion think of this formula, and maybe you will start a wild fire of ideas!

Approaches to Postmodern Art-making

Terry Barrett proposes a new list of principles in his article Approaches to Postmodern Art-making that should shape an art education curriculum besides the standard elements and principles of design like line, shape, texture, ect. Some of the principles or themes that Barrett mentions are escaping the confines of museums, high and low art: kitsch, rejecting originality, jouissance, working collaboratively, appropriation, rejecting originality, simulating, mixing media, mixing codes, recontextualization, layering, hybridity, gazing, facing the abject, constructing identities, narratives, metaphors, and irony, parody, and dissonance. Below are some examples I found to be interesting.

Appropriation: " To appropriate is to possess, borrow, steal, copy, or excerpt images that already exist, made by other artists or available in the public domain and general culture". (Barrett, pg. 5)

Yasumasa Morimura

Recontextualization: " A means of constructing meaning by positioning a familiar image in a new and unexpected relationship to words". (Barrett, pg. 8)

Michael Ray Charles

Layering: " Some artists pile images on top of each other, thus changing the meanings of the images in their original uses" (Barrett, pg. 7)

David Salle

Hybridity: " Is mixing diverse cultural influences in a single artwork". (Barrett, pg. 6)

Pipilotti Rist

Gazing: "The tendency to represent women in ways that heightened the sexual or erotic aspects of women's bodies". (Barrett, pg. 9)

Vanessa Beecroft

PRINCIPLES AND POSSIBILITY: CONSIDERATIONS FOR A 21ST CENTURY ART & CULTURE CURRICULUM

     I recently read Olivia Gude's article Principles and Possibility: Considerations for a 21st Century Art & Culture Curriculum which is about how teachers and students are not really motivated to make art that is controlled by standards and principles. Gude says, 

    " The essential contribution that arts education can make to our students and to our communities is to teach skills and concepts while creating opportunities to investigate one's own experiences generating personal and shared meaning". (pg. 1)

     I agree with this statement, not that the elements and principles of design are not important, its just art curriculum's should not be based solely around them any more. There are so many other ideas that an art lesson should touch upon such as self-investigation, community, diversity, and deconstructing culture just to name a few. The standards for the visual arts may be should include these new ideas Gude proposes.

Developing A Living Curriculum

     I recently read the article A Middle School Curriculum From Rhetoric To Reality by James Bean. In this article Bean discusses a new way of thinking in art education which focuses on the social values and concerns that face us everyday, specifically early adolescents. When I read this I thought it was a great idea to build the lessons that we art educators make around the concerns of our students.
    Middle school students are at a climactic stage in their development, they are mid way between childhood and being an adult. Have you ever heard of the phrase " we don't live in a vaccum", well we don't and early adolescents don't. The world around these students influence their lives and develop some deep concerns. When they go to school they can't just leave these concerns at the door, they are with them wherever they go. Having a curriculum that integrates the students concerns whether they be social or personal, can be an outlet of sorts for them.
    Through the use of connecting themes students can focus in on some major skills like reflective thinking, valuing, self- esteem, and social advocacy. One may ask how do we find these connecting themes that would interest these early adolescents? One way is to discuss with the students what issues they are dealing with currently that they would like to concentrate on. Thinking about this idea of asking the students what topics they are interested in is awesome, I honestly wish my teachers did that when I was in middle school.
    A found that reading this article helped me understand what I need to bring to the table when I become a teacher. I need to be the teacher that is connected with their students, the current teacher, the one that is tapped into the world and the popular culture that makes it buzz.

Surrealist Games

     When a person mentions Surrealism the first person who pops into their minds is Salvador Dali and his famous painting The Persistence of Memory. Have you ever thought about how he came up with the idea for such a painting? Well, Dali and many other Surrealist artists including Max Ernst and poet Andre Breton all used games to help fuel their creativity. These games gave artists opportunities that used chance and the ridiculous in art making.
 

Some the most popular games are chain games, specifically the Exquisite Corpse. The Exquisite Corpse first started as a word game, players would sit around a table and write down an
-adjective
-noun
-adverb
-verb
-adjective
-noun
     on a piece of paper folding over the word to make sure the other players could not see what they wrote, they would unfold their paper and read the sentence aloud. Here is an example my friends and I did:
         " The boyish toad longingly crashed early Leah".
 
    Another way of creating the Exquisite Corpse is through drawing. It is the same as the word game but instead of dividing the corpse up into words, it is divided into body parts heads, torsos, and legs. Again all of this is done without letting the other players see what you drew.

   A game that I like to play is inkblot pictures. These are the same thing as doing a Rorschach test and it is a simple procedure. All you need to do is take ink or diluted paint and spread it or let it drip onto a piece of paper. While the ink is still wet take your piece of paper and fold it in half pressing down firmly. When you open up the paper you have a symmetrical image. See what visuals you can find in the inkblots and then draw what you see on top of the blot! Here are some examples I did:

 I saw a bulldog in this inkblot test that I did, I think it might have been because I think there so cute!

I did this inkblot test on the funnies section of the Sunday newspaper because I thought it might add some nice layering and color. When I looked at this inkblot I immediately saw a Chinese Dragon.

This is an example of an original Roschach Test. More information about these tests can be found on this wikipedia page



 

Here is a video I found of changing inkblot tests, how many images can you see?