Show, don’t tell: Round 1 9 July 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Art and faith, Christianity, Criticism, Illustration, Painting.add a comment
Round 1 in the Show, don’t tell showdown: Patty Wickman versus ubiquitous Christian painting hanging in most every American baptist church.
Above is Patty Wickman’s surreal A Thief in the Night. Wickman, an art professor at UCLA, is a master (in my opinion) of turning beautifully simple subjects into powerful metaphors.
Which do you think is more powerful imagery? Which is more likely to cause the viewer to more deeply engage the subject matter? Which one employs imagination? Which one tells and which one shows? And (ironically) which one is more likely to change a person’s attitude or worldview?
Christians in the past 100 years seem to have forgotten how to be creative, use our imaginations, when communicating visually. For some reason we feel the need to reduce the Gospel (and any other theological tenets we hold dear) to what is more or less propaganda. We obviously aren’t reading our Gospels very closely. The parables are a prime example of using art — storytelling — to show people an idea or principle rather than just saying it out loud. Granted, the culture was different then than now, and we may not be able to do exactly as Jesus did, but the point remains: People won’t respond to a direct statement in the same manner as they will to something that is illustrated, painted, drawn out.
And, for what it’s worth, the painting of Jesus knocking at the door (of your heart as so many mistakenly believe) is based on a verse, as far as I know, that’s almost always taken out of context. The imagery is generally used to appeal to non-believers. In reality, the verse is speaking to the church of Laodicea in the context of repentance.
When it comes to art, show, don’t tell 8 July 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Criticism.add a comment
Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.
- Mark Twain (via my wife’s blog)
One of the things attendees to IAM Encounter 09 received in the obligatory bag of conference goodies was an audio CD with an interview of Steve Turner. Turner wrote a book titled Imagine: A vision for Christians in the arts. The interview is a stellar listen.
I can’t find the CD at the moment — in the chaos that is packing up a house — so can’t quote Turner, but the crux of what caught my attention in the interview is summed up in three words: Show, don’t tell. This is apparently a maxim of the theater world in particular.
In one sense, the idea is very simple. At the same time it’s probably worthy of a thesis. I tried and tried again over the past two weeks to turn this post into an essay worthy of this topic, to no avail. Instead, I’m going to follow up with a series of posts comparing images. One image will show, the other will tell.
Plastic as artistic medium, won’t last 7 July 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Sculpture.7 comments
Plastic is not an enduring artistic medium. Remember this image from a month ago?
I’ve always wondered about the use of plastic in sculptures. It didn’t seem like a very good idea to me. Slate recently published an article, Does plastic art last forever?, confirming my suspicions. Museums are currently scrambling to preserve plastic objects and artworks that are yellowing, peeling, crumbling in their cases. Works by the likes of Duane Hanson are beginning to look like zombies (and were so even before his death in 1996). Slate also warns that modern works which contain plastics by artists such as Jeff Koonz and Damien Hirst will inevitably face a similar fate, unless research finds a way to preserve them. So far it has not. The research is being funded mainly by companies insuring the galleries.
I’ve been amazed at the polymer clay rage of the past few years. The popularity of this media has been driven home lately when I search Twitter for “clay sculpture.” Probably 1/3 of the tweets in the search results refer to polymer clay. I asked the Twitter community a few months ago why this product is so popular, and someone responded by suggesting it was an easy way for women to get their foot into a traditionally male-driven art market. That didn’t really make sense to me, but I didn’t know how to argue my sentiment.
Last week I followed a link in one of these tweets to an Ebay auction of a polymer clay sculpture, of a faerie (not a very modest faerie, FYI). I don’t understand people’s fascination with faeries, but that’s beside the point. This particular sculpture, about eight inches tall, was well-crafted. It sold for $2,683. I was very surprised. The artist seems to be fairly prolific, and sells quite a bit of her work on Ebay, although that’s about all I know. The “About the artist” section of her website is “under construction.”
Polymer clay is, coincidentally, plastic clay. The Slate article teaches us a little bit about plastic:
At a molecular level, plastics are long chains of a single molecule repeated over and over. Such long chains would be uselessly brittle on their own, but chemists realized they could add chemicals, called “plasticizers,” whose molecules work their way between the chains and soften the plastics up. This greatly increased malleability, and virtually all plastics today employ plasticizers. Unfortunately, plastics will squeeze the plasticizers out over time. This process pushes the chemicals to the surface of the object, leaving the underlying plastic fragile. Different plastics deteriorate in different ways under different conditions, depending on what plasticizers or dyes were added. But the end result tends to be forms of matter rarely seen outside the reject piles of industrial chemistry labs. You can recognize “bleeding” or “weeping” plastics by the slimy plasticizers pooling on their surfaces. Other plastics push powder to their surfaces and feel sugary to the touch.
Just because plastic degrades over time does not make it a poor medium for sculptures. I prefer more natural and enduring materials in general, partly because they are more natural and enduring. The use of more temporary materials such as plastics can add meaning to an artwork, but I wonder if sculptors who use polymer, or plastic of any kind, realize their works have a fairly short life-span.
A human’s first “non-need” 4 July 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Interior design, Northwest Arkansas, Personal reflection, Siloam Springs.1 comment so far
In my first college design class, as an architecture student, one of our projects involved researching of and writing about chairs. We read about designs by Eames, Bertoia, Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and so forth. Our professor pointed out that a chair, or somewhere to sit our sorry plebian butts after a long day in the field, is the first thing we will think of to buy or build assuming all of our other needs are met.
And I think she was right.
As we pack up the house we’re selling some things we won’t need in the foreseeable future, or won’t have room for in our upcoming living space. I used Craigslist, which I’m pretty new to, and easily sold our guest bed and couch.
We really miss the couch.
We own other comfortable chairs, but apparently they aren’t comfortable in the same way. The plan was to replace it with a svelte black leather couch that wouldn’t aggravate my allergies like the whimsical, eight year old model we just sold. However, I was looking forward to one less large piece of furniture to move.
So the past few days I’ve been on a hunt to find a cheap and temporary replacement, most likely a comfy chair for the wife to read in. There are a couple places in town that sell used, and I’ve been to a few garage sales as well. So far everything I’ve seen has been dirty or overpriced — or entirely hideous. The one exception was a blue recliner at a friend’s yard sale; unfortunately it formerly lived with cats, which I’m quite allergic too. Another vintage store in town, Amandromeda, purveys a number of well designed seats, though none are suitable for extended periods of time with a book in your lap. I’ve also inquired via Craigslist and the Facebook Marketplace to no avail.
Next up I plan to hit a vintage spot in Fayetteville called the Flying Dog. Moving is stressful enough without a decent place to rest your rump, so I hope I can come up with a chair on this holiday weekend!
Intentional Observation: Mennonites in flip-flops 1 July 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Color, Handmade, Intentional observation, Northwest Arkansas, Siloam Springs.add a comment
“A little bit of dissonance is really required to have something
that will hold our attention for a longer period of time.”
- Pete Pinnell
Two things in the past few months prompted me to ponder the idea of contrast.
First off, I’ve taken note this year of the mennonites (at least that’s what we assume they are) shopping at our local Walmart. I’ve long had a fascination with Amish (and old order Mennonite, thus) cultures, probably in large part because of what seems to be their slower paced, more relationship and community based lifestyles. Another part of my interest almost certainly stems from the culture’s seeming affirmation of working with your hands.
There are two observations I’ve made with respect to contrast in observing the local mennonites. First of all, the men dress in such a way that you can’t pick them out of a crowd: Boots, jeans and t-shirts, but you know they are mennonite because of the lady on their arm in a very modest handmade dress, with a bonnet or cap in her hair.
Secondly, the women’s more conservative dress is often at odds with their footwear. I’ve seen them wearing tennis shoes for years now, but it was only a few months ago I saw some of them wearing flip-flops for the first time. This wonderfully jarring discrepancy scrawled a grin on my face that lasted all the way into the parking lot. The bright, nearly neon flip-flops next to pale blue, floral handmade dresses worked for me, and apparently work for mennonites too.
I wanted to take a picture with my cameraphone, but abstained from bothering the young ladies. Instead I searched through Flickr and found the fantastic image above, taken by Jizzon, showing a group of mennonite women, some in bright colored flip-flops (click on the image to go to the Flickr page where you can enlarge it). The clothing contrast in Jizzon’s photograph isn’t as stark as it usually is in the Siloam Springs’ Walmart. The girls in his capture are wearing much brighter handmade dresses than I’ve ever seen the group in Northwest Arkansas don.
If you’re craving even more paradox, look at this image of two mennonites in dresses and bonnets on a jet ski.
Secondly, after looking through an album posted by a photographer friend, Aus10, on Facebook I commented as follows:
Interesting to me how so much portraiture (including wedding photography) in the past five years or so has been about creating contrast — or so it seems to me as an observer. The well-groomed subjects are placed in rough and rustic environments: Against decrepit buildings with peeling paint, along derelict railway tracks covered in weeds etc. Seems to me this is a new trend for the media, and one that I like (unlike this everybody jump up in the air phenomenon). Is my observation correct in your professional opinion? And can you talk about why you think this is the case, if you think my assessment is correct?
The photographer’s reply was more or less to say that the high school seniors, in the case of the album I responded to, see their friends’ photos or advertisements for Urban Outfitters and want the same thing. Regardless of these teen’s, um, less than intellectual desire for this aesthetic, I must reiterate that I think it works and works well.
My own senior picture was from one of those gimmicky old-time photo rooms (which is what I wanted it to be, although mom had me submit a color image from a $10 Sears sitting for the actual yearbook.) However, I would have liked something akin to this popular contrasty style if I would have thought it was worth it for my parents to spend $400 (I’m sure it’s much more nowadays) for proper senior photographs.
LinkLuv: On beauty and art 30 June 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Abstract art, Beauty, Modern culture.4 comments
I’m pretty caught up in the logistics of moving/selling the house and don’t have much time to be blogging right now, but a few things in an article titled Beauty and Desecration: We must rescue art from the modern intoxication with ugliness seemed to be worth excerpting.
At any time between 1750 and 1930, if you had asked an educated person to describe the goal of poetry, art, or music, “beauty” would have been the answer. And if you had asked what the point of that was, you would have learned that beauty is a value, as important in its way as truth and goodness, and indeed hardly distinguishable from them. Philosophers of the Enlightenment saw beauty as a way in which lasting moral and spiritual values acquire sensuous form.
At some time during the aftermath of modernism, beauty ceased to receive those tributes. Art increasingly aimed to disturb, subvert, or transgress moral certainties, and it was not beauty but originality—however achieved and at whatever moral cost—that won the prizes.
In a seminal essay—“Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” published in Partisan Review in 1939—critic Clement Greenberg starkly contrasted the avant-garde of his day with the figurative painting that competed with it, dismissing the latter (not just Norman Rockwell, but greats like Edward Hopper) as derivative and without lasting significance. The avant-garde, for Greenberg, promoted the disturbing and the provocative over the soothing and the decorative, and that was why we should admire it.
This last quote is interesting to me mainly on account of many previous bloggy discussions with friend and artist Timothy Jones, who finds abstract (or, more specifically, non-objective or non-representational) art to be decorative. Read the article in it’s entirety via this link.
I haven’t finished the article, but printed it off in hopes of doing so later this week.
Pete Pinnell on fine art that functions 26 June 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Art education, Art for art's sake, Art vs Craft, Ceramics, Craft, Handmade.1 comment so far
Pete Pinnell was one of my professors at the University of Nebraska, one of three very strong individuals in a fantastic ceramics program. The following video (external link) is a stellar talk about fine art and function.
Pete is a very good speaker and draws a number of simple but very powerful metaphors as he discusses cups, drinking vessels, in this video. Below I’ve paraphrased some of the portions that really caught my attention:
Art acknowledges and actually talks about life, but there is one great taboo still in the art world, and that is that art still does not take part in life. Art thinks about life, but it does so from the role of the critic, from the observer, from the outsider. I like to joke that art will peek in our windows and rummage through our closets but it won’t sit down at the dinner table with us.
The fine arts world has chosen to forgo touch, but it’s a very powerful means of human expression.
Does having to deal with function limit creativity?
A little bit of dissonance is really required to have something that will hold our attention for a longer period of time.
For the most part I think he hits the nail squarely on the head, but I’d love to hear other’s responses to this 30 minute talk.
Rust, restore 26 June 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Found objects, Mixed media, Painting.add a comment
The following is an entry to a show at Fort Drum titled Reflections of Generosity. This is an older work, probably done in 2006.
Entropy and restoration are two recurring themes in my process, and thus my sculptures. When I use the word entropy I’m referring to the inevitable deterioration of both the physical and social world around us. I most often observe this phenomenon in the built environment. Buildings crumble, mailboxes rust, roadways buckle and gape with potholes.
Restoration, conversely, implies the ability to rectify or reverse impending decay. In my sculptures this usually takes the form of found objects, repurposed as a canvas (as with Rust, restore) or sculpture. Some of the time these salvaged items serve as raw materials, sometime as accessories so to speak.
Rust, restore comments directly on both entropy and restoration. Whlie the use of text seems, at first, very blunt, symbolism remains. My hope is for the viewer to begin considering both the inevitability of decay and hope with the possibility of restoration.
Models as muse to a generation? 25 June 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Aesthetics, Beauty, Feminine aesthetics.add a comment
The current exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art examines the supposed ideal of the feminine physique from 1947-1997. Molly Young reviews the show for More Intelligent Life. The follow paragraphs caught my attention in particular:
The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion, an exhibition organized by the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (and sponsored by Marc Jacobs), features photographs and works of haute couture dating from 1947 to 1997. The aim is to demonstrate the way “a truly stellar model can sum up the attitude of her time–becoming not only a muse to designers or photographers, but a muse to a generation,” explains Harold Koda, the institute’s head curator.
As the curatorial notes put it, models are those “whose elegant poses and gestures” evoke the attitudes of the day. The show makes clear that this is partly something a model can control and partly something she is simply, ineffably, born with. In a sense, all top models are naturals.
Are such models (the article goes on to note how models in the 80s and 90s essentially became their own brands) actually muses to entire generations? Or even most of a generation?
That claim is a bit hard for me to stomach, although — like I’ve said already on the blog — I’ve never been attracted to any of the models which supposedly represent the attitudes of my lifetime. Is this just a difference in personal aesthetic, or is the claim that a “top model” represents a generation just a stretch?
Image from Wikipedia.
The value of working with your hands 25 June 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Handmade, Modern culture.3 comments
(external link) Stephen Colbert interviews Matthew Crawford. Crawford, a philosopher and a mechanic, holds a PHD in political philosophy and recently wrote a book titled Shop class as soulcraft.
Along similar lines, I shared an article with my wife earlier in the week titled The Manly Art of Knitting. From that post:
My wife, LeAnna and I have been thinking a lot lately about work. We’ve been wondering if perhaps we’ve been mis-educated to believe that avoidance of manual labor is the pinnacle of education and evolution — that to prove that we’ve arrived in the world, we should work with our heads and not our hands. What we’re wondering is whether that system has steered us wrong, disconnecting us not even so much from our heritage, but from some essential part of who we are as people. That as people, we were made to create. That on some level people were meant to work for their food. And that, similarly, part of our care not just for ourselves but for each other involves a physical act of creating.
Of course we were made to create! “In the beginning, God created . . . so God created man in His own image . . . “
