WEEK 6-Anish Kapoor Sculpture Anish Kapoor

Celebrated for his gigantic, stainless steel Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago’s Millennium Park, Anish Kapoor is changing the cultural environment with his public works.

Research Kapoor's work in order to discuss whether it is conceptual art or not. Explain your answer, using a definition of conceptual art.
Conceptual art is art in which the concepts or ideas involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions.”In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.”(Sol LeWitt.).Kapoor's sculptures are frequently simple, curved forms, usually monochromatic and brightly coloured.

Research 3 quite different works by Kapoor from countries outside New Zealand to discuss the ideas behind the work. Include images of each work on your blog.
The sculpture is called “Sky Mirror,” and it’s essentially a large, convex piece of highly polished stainless steel, roughly in the shape of a contact lens. In my opinion, Kapoor use reflection of the light to made a different visual effect, it’s like the water, and I have a feeling this piece is going to be a bit of a tourist sensation.What I like about the “Sky Mirror” piece and a related piece now installed at Millenium Park in Chicago called “Cloud Gate” is the way they present a kind of prism through which to view the world.
 
Where is the Kapoor's work in New Zealand? What are its form and materials? What are the ideas behind the work?
This art work by Kapoor is on Alan Gibbs’ sculpture park at The Farm.  Anish Kapoor’s amazing, 84m-long, twisted, red cone. It cuts through a ridge like some celestial megaphone. It was created and designed to withstand the high winds that blow off the cliffs of the North-West cost of the North Island and the Tasman Sea. Its design is similar to the Turbine Hall exhibited in the Tate Modern Gallery in London.
Comment on which work by Kapoor is your favourite, and explain why. Are you personally attracted more by the ideas or the aesthetics of the work?
Tall Tree & the Eye, 2009
Stainless steel and carbon steel
14 x 6 m
Courtesy the artist
Installation: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2010
Photo: Erika Ede © FMGB Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa, 2010
A new sculpture by Anish Kapoor 'Tall Tree and the Eye' is displayed in the courtyard of The Royal Academy on September 22, 2009 in London. Each sphere simultaneously reflects itself, its neighbours and all the components that make up the tower. We see our own repeated reflection and that of the architecture that surrounds us. The angle of the images changes as our gaze moves up the sculpture.Tall Tree and the Eye conveys the transient nature of how things appear. Through its complex use of light and shade, volume and space, it makes us aware of the instability of the visible world. Time and place are suspended and altered. Though it is a very large piece of sculpture it comes across as somehow weightless and ephemeral.
 
http://www.whosjack.org/anish-kapoor-public-sculptor/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_art
http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/003711.html
http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/microsites/anish_kapoor/secciones/galeria_imagenes/galeria_imagenes_detalle.php?idioma=en&id_imagen=29

WEEK 5-Pluralism and the Treat of Waitangi

Define the term 'pluralism' using APA referencing.
Pluralism is used, often in different ways, across a wide range of topics to denote a diversity of views, and stands in opposition to one single approach or method of interpretation.Pluralism in art refers to the nature of artforms and artists as diverse. The cultural context of art is all encompassing in its respect for the art of the world's cultures.
How would you describe New Zealand's current dominant culture?
The current New Zealand is  dominated mostly by kiwi culture. In other words, European or white culture. This mainly because the majority of population living is kiwi people. New Zealand is a multicultural country and i think there is a mixture of all kinds of culture which makes this country so colourful. Both European and Maori culture blend together with Asian and other cultures to make a beautiful taste of living.
Before 1840, what was New Zealand's dominant culture?
Before 1840, the New Zealand’s dominant culture is Maori culture.Māori culture is the culture of the Māori of New Zealand, an Eastern Polynesian people, and forms a distinctive part of New Zealand culture. Within the Māori community, and to a lesser extent throughout New Zealand as a whole, the word Māoritanga is often used as an approximate synonym for Māori culture, theMāori suffix -tanga being roughly equivalent to the qualitative noun ending "-ness" in English.

How does the Treaty of Waitangi relate to us all as artists and designers working in New Zealand?
As we all know The Treaty of Waitangi is a treaty first signed on 6 February 1840 by representatives of the British Crown and various Māorichiefs from the North Island of New Zealand. I believe Treaty of Waitangi led to the the mixture of European culture which in turn led to the mixture of European and Maori arts. European got inspiration from Maori people and Maori people got inspiration from European, and in my opinion, art is all about sharing ideas and thoughts.
How can globalization be seen as having a negative effect on regional diversity in New Zealand in particular?
In my opinion, globalization having a negative effect on regional diversity because it can make people loose a lot of culture like Maori culture. Artists need have different ideas to share, everyone's art is unique. If everything is same and we loose the regional diversity, we won’t have anything to share.
  Shane Cotton's paintings are said to examine the cultural landscape. Research Cotton's work 'Welcome'(2004) and 'Forked Tongue' (2011) to analyze what he is saying about colonialization and the Treaty of Waitangi. 
Cotton's work evocatively includes both Maori iconography and culture, such as shrunken heads, mokomokai, and native birds such as tui, and European symbols and items. His paintings have explored questions of colonialism, cultural identity, Maori spirituality, and life and death. Many of his paintings go into depth of primitive ideas especially through Maori whakapapa.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Waitangi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_Cotton

WEEK 4-Kehinde Wiley and inter-textuality

Kahinde Wiley is a Gay American based painter born in Los Angeles, who has an international reputation. Wiley lives and practices between Beijing and Brooklyn.
Find a clear definition of Intertextuality and quote it accurately on your blog using the APA referencing system. Use your own words to explain the definition more thoroughly.
Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can include an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. I think an artist will have got his/her ideas from a piece of work that already exists or an idea that another artist has already presented.
Kehinde Wiley Support Army and Look after People, 2007 oil on canvas, 258.4 x 227.3cm
Kehinde Wiley Count Potocki, 2008 oil on canvas, 274.3 x 274.3cm
Research Wiley's work and write a paragraph that analyzes how we might make sense of his work. Identify intertextuality in Wiley's work.
His work seems to be on a remix tip, cutting and scratching the Masters in perfect rhythm to insert the Hip Hop generation into the pocket.. Per his bio, "Wiley's figurative paintings and sculptures quote historical sources and position young black men within the field of power." The detail was as real as one could achieve and Wiley makes historical intertextual references and transforms it into a more contemporary version for the now post-modern world.

Wiley's work relates to next weeks Postmodern theme "PLURALISM" . Read page 46 and discuss how the work relates to this theme.
The cultural context of art is all encompassing in its respect of the art of the world's cultures. Inclusion of individuals of differing ethnicities , genders, ideologies, abilities, ages, religions, economic status and educational levels is valued. Pluralism honours differences within and between equitable groups while seeing their commonalities.(para1) --That relates to Wiley's work through his stock theme of a "black man" being an equal to all others,Apart from alluding to historic paintings, Wiley makes referrals to issue of the ‘white man vs the black man’, and he does this so easily because one of the first things that occurs in the mind of the viewer is the idea of him glorifying coloured men in his paintings.
Comment on how Wiley's work raises questions around social/cultural hierarchies , colonisation, globalisation, stereotypes and the politics which govern a western worldview.
Wiley's work raises questions around social/cultural hierarchies, colonization, globalization, stereotypes and the politics which govern a western worldview. His paintings refer to these issues by showing the idea that the coloured man also has a lot of power and demands his respect back. In my opinion, Wiley may also be speaking for the rest of the races and using his characters as a symbolism for the men who were not part of the Western hierarchy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertextuality

AUT (2011), Achademic Literacies in Visual Communication 2. Auckland. Printsprint.

http://native-star.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertextuality

http://www.artnet.com/awc/kehinde-wiley.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralism

WEEK 3-Hussein Chalayan

Chalayan’s works in clothing, like Afterwords (2000) and Burka (1996) , are often challenging to both the viewer and the wearer. What are your personal responses to these works? Are Afterwords and Burka fashion, or are they art? What is the difference?
In my point of view,  Chalayan is a really interesting person, his works full of creatively, and these works broadened my horizon. His every work shows his exhibition, and also can catch people’s eyes at first time.
The relationship between fashion and art is always so subtle differences between the nature of the use of Rei Kawakubo's words: "Fashion is actively involved in the arts is a passive acceptance." However, once out of their clothes, deep into the fashion system, we can easily find, communicate with the media which designers fashion show had not previously "commodity promotion." Actor 、 audience 、 scenery, are a lot of designers and models together with the final "curtain call", both suggesting that the fashion show and stage art does not exist between the nature of the difference. When the audience passively accept the T stage of the "drama", it does not hinder their future aggressively to fashion wore.

 

 

Chalayan has strong links to industry. Pieces like The Level Tunnel (2006) and Repose(2006) are made in collaboration with, and paid for by, commercial business; in these cases, a vodka company and a crystal manufacturer.  Does the meaning of art change when it is used to sell products? Is it still art?
Merchandise and atmosphere of artistic ideas, by no means the essence of art and soul, the arts may be high-end commodities, only in the arts of influence and potential in the artistic ideas, but can not always carry the essence of art..
I don't think the meaning of art changes when it is used to sell products. It is still art.. If art is used to sell something it is still art..
Chalayan’s film Absent Presence screened at the 2005 Venice Biennale. It features the process of caring for worn clothes, and retrieving and analysing the traces of the wearer, in the form of DNA. This work has been influenced by many different art movements; can you think of some, and in what ways they might have inspired Chalayan’s approach?

Absent Presene, a video installation telling a story based on identity, geography, genetics, biology and anthropology. It opens the argument on how certain identities can or cannot adapt to new environments and generates a research based narration for Hussein's cross-disciplined installation with filmic images and sculptures. In my opinion, The film questions whether the extent to which identities can adapt to new environments.

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Many of Chalayan’s pieces are physically designed and constructed by someone else; for example, sculptor Lone Sigurdsson made some works from Chalayan’s Echoform (1999) and Before Minus Now (2000) fashion ranges. In fashion design this is standard practice, but in art it remains unexpected. Work by artists such as Jackson Pollock hold their value in the fact that he personally made the painting. Contrastingly, Andy Warhol’s pop art was largely produced in a New York collective called The Factory, and many of his silk-screened works were produced by assistants. Contemporarily, Damien Hirst doesn’t personally build his vitrines or preserve the sharks himself. So when and why is it important that the artist personally made the piece?
I think it is really important for artist to make their work personally. if a artist make his or her work personally, he or she must be know the work which going to be made better.





http://www.egodesign.ca/en/article_print.php?article_id=385
http://luxury.qq.com/a/20110316/000038.htm
http://art100.wikispaces.com/Hussein+Chalayan