Final Podcast

Here it is..Thank you Mr. Yost-Miller for all of your hardwork this year--it really has been an awesome and very unique course

FINAL PODCAST

"End of Year" Reflection

---THE FOUNTAIN...art?

What is art and who decides? It is a question that this course has revolved around, and it is a question that I feel my answer really hasn’t changed. In the beginning of this course, I saw art as whatever the artist wanted it to be, or, in turn, whatever the observer interpreted to be. But, as Mr. Yost just mentioned, this course has given me the knowledge to back me up. When we first started watching the films, Jason Pollock was a fine example of art being for the artist; he was unaffected by the criticism he received, and because of that confidence his work became somewhat accepted later in his years. Even in Spongebob, we learned art ‘rules’ often make us too focused on trying to fit a stereotype that in the end, only frustrates and inhibits our natural abilities. Then, we began reading about post-modernism (where readymades were considered art by the artist) and modernism (where machinery and mainstream culture were considered over-exposed by the artist)—where perception made art what it is. And with these final readings, we see art being broken down through multiple lenses: Does the broken triangle symbolism the repression of women? Does the color red invoke community opinion? Does the wood of Christ have a deeper level? It’s all about perception.

Methodologies of Art

After reading this passage, it was quite interesting to compare to our knowledge of PoMo and Mod. Alot of this passage deals with the ideas of Artistotle and Plato, who had rather definitive rules and regulations for what art is; however, in our post-modernism and modernism texts, such stipulations were thinning and almost non-existent.

I also really enjoyed the Magritte pipe, and the notion that words and images are lost in translation (ie, taking a french classic and translating into English can demystify the original work of art).

Mimesis is something talked about in this piece as well. In Plato's view, perfection and representation were more important than creating something new and fusing your own ideas. Aristotle, however, is not so restricting in his thought. He feels art is not a copy of the real world, but an essence. I agree more with Aristotle, in the sense that more modern art is focused on conceptualism rather than reproduction. And, I feel Aristotle's philosophy is much more creative in nature.

They also discussed how animals build art in nature, but for function only. Humans, however, must learn to create, and then therefore they are able to create more creative pieces.

Finally, I liked how they mentioned that people recognize description based on natural association (I.e., flowing hair reminds us of flowing water--and through this image associated with the word, we can imagine through written word). But, at the same time, as noted in our post-modernism and modern passages, words are merely words that have become accepted and in essence have no meaning until they were put into a context.

Post Mod v. Mod

Podcast

A Modernist View of What Art is

I think page 136 says it well "The art that ensued from this interpretation (avant agarde) of modernization could be seen as elitist, anti-demoratic, and at odds with mass culture". Modernists are in my opinion very anti-mainstream. They attempt to create art and masterpieces that later become mainstream, at which point they redesign and reconfigure to fabricate a new modern genre. On page 47, it mentions that things that used to be modern are now sitting on shelves in university libraries as 'classic'. Society as a whole are modernists in loose interpretation, because they welcome modernism into their sphere, however, modernists as a whole are more removed from their art. I get the sense that modernists create a piece and walk away from it--almost sensing public mass production and exploitation. These artists don't revel in their works, they move on to the next piece without looking back.

Modernists would think that each individual decides what art is for themselves. They would say that art is a personal matter, and that, interpretation and conceptual-ism all aid art's definition. Modernists are self-proclaimed exiles who choose to be out of the mainstream, whereas post-modernists were so far from society that they weren't ever apart of the bigger world. Modernists also reject modernity, the industrial side of modernism, because modernity is about fusing form and function, and most modernists care more about the emotion of a piece, rather than the use of it.

Part Two of Modernism

In this section of the book, a part that stood out to me was the idea of there being a connection between primitivism and modernism. Primitivism, as defined by the book, as a deep link to 'feelings and ideas'--a sort of fancy way to say that they take root from the past and what we consider 'primitive' or 'third world'. But when you think that the book has suddenly shifted to an ignorance, you flip the page to find that primitivism has received controversy over the notion of ethnocentrism (or bigotry judging based on the values from one's own world view). So, is primitivism, while a crucial part of redefining art to create modernism (because most anything new takes its foundation from something in its past), could it possibly be the wrong way to go about creating modernism? The whole primitivism section delves not only in art in the typical canvas form, but also in literary and expressionistic form.

I also liked the way that the novel blended together Dadaism into surrealism, which in turn refers back to Freud and the idea of the 'mental world' and psychology being used to express the real world in rather abstract ways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EDdCjtzcw8&feature=PlayList&p=BEB03A62FE28FFD3&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=18

^ primitivism reminded me of "Why Man Creates", because of this idea of an evolution of creation and how some things never change

Why Man Creates

Love Song..?

In this poem, you hear a cynicism and satirical nature with his choice of words. The last line especially , "Till human voices wake us, and we drown", is very eerie. His use of stream of consciousness may at first confuse the listener, causing them to focus on his scatter-brained style of poetry rather than the words themselves--but this stream is eerie because of this. Hearing someone's true, uncensored, raw emotions put on paper can be the scariest thing on this planet--because I am a firm believer that with the dark comes the light, and everyone is capable of writing "dark and twisty" things, even if in reality the writer is far from dark. Hearing/reading his mind on paper really shows this side of him.

He does thread the whole poem together with the question of "Do I dare?"--the idea that people often question whether or not they should do something (either pre, during, or post an event). In this way, he makes you connect his stream of consciousness and create a work of art that makes you question yourself and others.

It is post-modern for all of the reasons mentioned above. By having a natural flow, the author allows for a poem to be created that in itself is unorthodox. It has no constant rhythmic pattern, nor constant rhyme scheme or even tone. It has imagery (the yellow fog) and it has description, but any other ties to poetry are seemingly gone from the text.