Exploring Art Today:

[stlukesguild]

As a counterpart to the thread, Adventures in Art History, I thought I'd start a thread exploring the art of "today". A lot of my posts will come from my blog... sometimes edited... but I certainly welcome and enjoin others to participate and post their own discoveries in the art of here and now.

London Fieldworks was formed in 2000 by artists Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson for creative research and collaboration at the art, science and technology intersection. Typically, their projects engage with the notion of ecology as a complex inter-working of social, natural, and technological worlds.

London Fieldworks’ Spontaneous City in the Tree of Heaven is a sculptural installation drawing on the ecology and biodiversity of two sites on opposite sides of London: Duncan Terrace Gardens in the East and Cremorne Gardens in the West. The installations are constructed from several hundred bespoke bird boxes mounted in two trees of heaven (Ailanthus altissima) and reflect the forms of the surrounding architecture; a combination of Georgian town houses, and 60’s social housing around Duncan Terrace Gardens, and the World’s End Estate adjacent to Cremorne Gardens. Spontaneous City in the Tree of Heaven has developed out of a recent London Fieldworks project, Super Kingdom, commissioned by Stour Valley Arts for Kings Wood in Kent, where ‘show homes’ for animals were constructed based on the architecture of despot’s palaces.

The installations have been commissioned for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and Islington Council by up projects as part of their Secret Garden Project ; a new programme of artists commissions and events for secret gardens, lesser known green spaces, and urban corners across London.
Spontaneous City has also been commissioned by the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, May 2011, across three of the city’s public gardens, lesser known green spaces and urban corners. and also in May for the Clerkenwell Design Week, as a their 2011 legacy project. The Spontaneous Cities are temporary interventions in the trees reflecting the local architecture, a metaphorical interplay between the condition of the animal and the human. As well as being open to occupation by urban birds and insects, Spontaneous City can also be read as an allegory of population crash and dwindling biodiversity.























http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/post/...don-fieldworks

http://www.londonfieldworks.com/

[mortalterror]

And for those of you with no interest in beehives and birdhouses, there's a pretty good sculptor in Bali named Nyoman Nuarta. He's making some monumental sculpture of Lord Vishnu riding his mount Garuda.

At least he was. This thing's supposed to be about as tall as the Statue of Liberty but I think he ran out of funding midway like the Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse monuments. Completed it would look something like this:

or this

Anyway, you can find a lot of his work at Garuda Wisnu Kencana Cultural Park in Bali.

[stlukesguild]

The only problem with an artist like Nyoman Nuarta (much as I may admire his skill) is that the work comes off like a pastiche of a rather dated work of classic Asian art. It's rather like a contemporary composer writing a Baroque concerti grossi or a contemporary writer writing a suite of sonnets in a Shakespearean/Petrarch-an language.

Or a contemporary painter painting as if it were still the late 19th century:

[mortalterror]

It could be that he embraces traditional artistic styles. It also could be that contemporary representational artists in Asia don't feel the need to create in Western fashions, and being a modern artist means something quite different in that area of the world. Perhaps, they simply haven't given up on representational art like the west to some extant has, or they don't embrace the same ideologies, methods, or styles. You are assuming that just because North American and European sculptors are following in the footsteps of Henry Moore, Marcel Duchamp, Robert Smithson, or Alberto Giacometti that Asian artists share their influences. Let's recall that just in 1965 China still embraced social realism and it's finest sculptors were working on things like Rent Collection Courtyard:

And after all, there are some places where modernity doesn't mean Picasso. It means Zhang Daqian:

Besides, I see nothing wrong with a contemporary artist employing the styles and compositional methods of an earlier better time. I rather wish that modern rock musicians would play like the Beatles and the Stones from the sixties and seventies, that modern classical composers chose Mozart or Bach for their model instead of Schoenberg, and painters went back to the fifteenth through seventeenth century styles. Not all artistic eras are equal any more than all artists are equal, nor are their ideologies and methodologies equally sound. A good artist shouldn't be constrained to create in the most modern styles. He should pick the best one he can and then work in that if his genius is complementary. Just living in this era is influence enough to make whatever a body may turn out modern.

Aren't you the champion of outsider art, art that doesn't derive from the popular tradition? And haven't you written that there is no monolithic artworld but rather a plurality of niche markets? And haven't you yourself praised Stelios Faitakis for his style which is reminiscent of Byzantine art?

But nevermind all that. Nyoman Nuarta is plenty modern, even for your taste.

[cacian]

As a counterpart to the thread, Adventures in Art History, I thought I'd start a thread exploring the art of "today". A lot of my posts will come from my blog... sometimes edited... but I certainly welcome and enjoin others to participate and post their own discoveries in the art of here and now.

London Fieldworks was formed in 2000 by artists Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson for creative research and collaboration at the art, science and technology intersection. Typically, their projects engage with the notion of ecology as a complex inter-working of social, natural, and technological worlds.

London Fieldworks’ Spontaneous City in the Tree of Heaven is a sculptural installation drawing on the ecology and biodiversity of two sites on opposite sides of London: Duncan Terrace Gardens in the East and Cremorne Gardens in the West. The installations are constructed from several hundred bespoke bird boxes mounted in two trees of heaven (Ailanthus altissima) and reflect the forms of the surrounding architecture; a combination of Georgian town houses, and 60’s social housing around Duncan Terrace Gardens, and the World’s End Estate adjacent to Cremorne Gardens. Spontaneous City in the Tree of Heaven has developed out of a recent London Fieldworks project, Super Kingdom, commissioned by Stour Valley Arts for Kings Wood in Kent, where ‘show homes’ for animals were constructed based on the architecture of despot’s palaces.

The installations have been commissioned for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and Islington Council by up projects as part of their Secret Garden Project ; a new programme of artists commissions and events for secret gardens, lesser known green spaces, and urban corners across London.
Spontaneous City has also been commissioned by the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, May 2011, across three of the city’s public gardens, lesser known green spaces and urban corners. and also in May for the Clerkenwell Design Week, as a their 2011 legacy project. The Spontaneous Cities are temporary interventions in the trees reflecting the local architecture, a metaphorical interplay between the condition of the animal and the human. As well as being open to occupation by urban birds and insects, Spontaneous City can also be read as an allegory of population crash and dwindling biodiversity.























http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/post/...don-fieldworks

http://www.londonfieldworks.com/

these art impressions are slightly claustrophobic. the impressions on the trees look like a block of flats for birds which is a rather horrifying thought.
I am not a fan of art that interfers with nature or its natural habitats. it spoils it rather then enhances it.
i'd rather look at the tree as nature intended then look at that.
art at the expense of nature cautiously broils disintegration so one is to be careful about what one plots on it. already there are birdy thinking their habitat is block of wooden match boxes.
nature is a canvas upon which an artist gazes in order to inspire.
to cover it up with manmade ideas spoils the idea.

Or a contemporary painter painting as if it were still the late 19th century:

is one supposed not to? is pretense in art is not a good idea?

[Lokasenna]

Installations like the one you've posted, Luke, do rather raise the issue of the extent to which art should be sympathetic to the surroundings in which it was placed.

There's been a bit of a brouhaha in Durham recently over one particular statue, Fenwick Lawson's The Journey:



Durham city and universeity have a major thing for Lawson's works - there are literally dozens of his statues spread across the city. I must admit, I find them uniformly ugly, but he clearly has his fans. Anyway, The Journey was comissioned for the millenium and has been placed in the so-called 'Millenium Square', a new square designed in modern style. Following repeated vandalism, however, it has now been decided that the statue will be moved up onto Palace Green, the 12th century heart of the city where the Cathedral and Castle may be found, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site - a move that some people, myself included, are apt to resist, if only because it will be rather out-of-place in that context.

That, I suppose, is my main issue with 'Art Today', and I would be interested to hear your opinions on how art should interact with its surroundings.

[stlukesguild]

It could be that he embraces traditional artistic styles.

That's fine. So did Andrew Wyeth.



And so do a great many contemporary painters. The difference is that Wyeth (and the better contemporaries employing a traditional style) do not create works that look like a pastiche of the past. Wyeth (for example) is clearly of his time in spite of rejecting most of the innovations of Modernism.

It also could be that contemporary representational artists in Asia don't feel the need to create in Western fashions...

The same could be said for a great many of the more reactionary realists of the West:



There are endless skilled academicians whose work doesn't reveal the least recognition of the here and now.





And there are any number of academicians whose works all appear as interchangeable with that of any number of other artists. In other words... it lacks any real originality or vision that makes it stand out from the pack. This is just as true of a majority of Modernists/Post-Modernists.

...and being a modern artist means something quite different in that area of the world. Perhaps, they simply haven't given up on representational art like the west to some extant has...

I don't recall the West ever abandoning representational art. Of course Clement Greenberg might have wished for such... but even at the height of Abstract Expressionism we has Giacometti, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Andrew Wyeth, George Tooker, Diego Rivera, Paul Cadmus, Fairfield Porter, the so-called California/San Francisco School of Figurative Art, Paul Delavaux, Morandi, Avigdor Arikha, Antonio Lopez-Garcia, John Koch, Rico Lebrun, Jane Freilacher, and endless other painters/sculptors. Leading members of the Abstract Expressionist movement, including Pollock, DeKooning, and Guston all returned to figurative art... and all rejected Greenberg's notion that figuration was outdated. During his stint in teaching at Black Mountain College, DeKooning demanded students master the ability to draw from life before they gave any thought to expressive distortions or abstraction.

...or they don't embrace the same ideologies, methods, or styles.

Surely, you know your Asian Art History better than this. Eastern art rarely ever approached the art of the West in terms of visual illusionism. Lacking oil paint and never mastering linear perspective, Eastern Art was long considered crude and amateurish by Western standards. As trade between East and West began to include Art in the mid-19th century, Western artists such as Degas, Van Gogh, and Mary Cassatt were profoundly influenced by elements of Eastern art. The resulting work, however, never looked Asian:



Asian artists, however, seem to have fallen under the spell of what Robert Hughes termed "the cultural cringe"... the sense that one's own culture is provincial and inferior... and a desire to repudiate it and embrace/imitate the work of a greater culture. Japanese art suffered from this for a period of time, but have largely pulled away from a dominance of Western examples and developed their own art with some elements drawn from Western art... but largely rooted in Japanese traditions. Chinese artists seem stuck imitating the West... either in terms of pastiches of 19th century Academicism:





or Western Pop/Neo-Pop:





The strongest Chinese art that I have seen hold firm to Chinese traditions... while not ossifying into mere pastiche:

Cai Guo Qiang:



Yun Fei Ji:



Ax Jian:



Li Xubai:



Chang Dai-chien:



Quite honestly, our knowledge of what is happening in art in China and other non-Western nations is often limited.

You are assuming that just because North American and European sculptors are following in the footsteps of Henry Moore, Marcel Duchamp, Robert Smithson, or Alberto Giacometti that Asian artists share their influences.

Nonsense. Certainly there are Western sculptors following in the footsteps of the major Modernists... and there are sculptors of great merit that have almost wholly rejected such influences:

Artists like Anna maria Pacheco ow more to folk art, Expressionism, Elie Nadelman, and medieval sculptors:





Gerard mas builds upon 15th century Italian sculpture:





Chris Antemann builds upon Rococo ceramic figurines:





Igor Mitoraj, Robert Graham, and Manfred Kielnhofer build upon the Western classical traditions:









If anything, Western painting and sculpture are all over the spectrum. Modernism opened up new possibilities... but did not eliminate the possibility of continuing to explore and build upon older traditions. It has long been recognized that one need not build solely upon the art of one's immediate predecessors. J.L. David and Ingres built upon Raphael and not the Rococo or even the Baroque. The Renaissance built upon the examples of Rome. Rodin owed far more to Michelangelo and Donatello than to any artist of the 250+ years after the Renaissance.

I see nothing wrong with a contemporary artist employing the styles and compositional methods of an earlier better time. I rather wish that modern rock musicians would play like the Beatles and the Stones from the sixties and seventies, that modern classical composers chose Mozart or Bach for their model instead of Schoenberg, and painters went back to the fifteenth through seventeenth century styles.

Yes... one can build upon older traditions... but the result must still speak of the present. Most artists recognize this. They cannot compose like Mozart or paint like Vermeer because the world they live in... their experiences... including that of art... is not the same.

Not all artistic eras are equal any more than all artists are equal, nor are their ideologies and methodologies equally sound.

Perhaps some artistic eras produced more artists of real genius than others... should we then seek to merely imitate that art... or create something that speaks of our experiences?

A good artist shouldn't be constrained to create in the most modern styles. He should pick the best one he can and then work in that if his genius is complementary.

And is this not what we now have? Of course there will always be those artists lacking in vision or fortitude who will churn out that which they think they "should" be doing... because it's the latest thing... because that's what the "art world wants"... because that's what they think will sell... or gain them a cushy academic position. Every year art schools and art departments churn out thousands of hip young artists working in the latest "flavor of the month". Most will disappear in no short time because they lack the real passion and vision to create that which they love.

Aren't you the champion of outsider art, art that doesn't derive from the popular tradition?

I am a champion of the best of "outsider art". The vast majority (like any art) is mediocre... and often far worse.

And haven't you written that there is no monolithic artworld but rather a plurality of niche markets?

And yes, there is a market for pastiches of 19th century academicism, and niches for pseudo-19th century paintings of cowboys and Indians, and niches for cheesy sci-fi/horror illustrations, etc... but not all of these markets produce art of the same merit (although certainly an artist of real genius may come from any of them).

But nevermind all that. Nyoman Nuarta is plenty modern, even for your taste.

I actually think I prefer his Lord Vishnu.

[stlukesguild]

I would be interested to hear your opinions on how art should interact with its surroundings.

It was Duchamp who first argued that "context is everything". Thus if he took a urinal and placed it in a gallery or museum it became ART... just as any other artifact placed in a museum. Robert Hughes disagreed. He suggested that if you took Duchamp's urinal...



or Carl Andre's pile of bricks...



or Tracey Emin's bed...



...out of the museum they lose any semblance to ART.

On the other hand... if you remove Michelangelo's David...



or Rodin's Kiss...



... from their original context, they still remain clearly ART... even if placed within a parking lot or a scrap heap.

Having said that, I do think that "context" is important and impacts how we view a work of art. If we take a painting like this:



or this...



... we should recognize that these were created as personal objects of veneration... an aid, as it were, in spiritual meditation.

Clearly the purpose of these works was far different from that of this...



... which was a personal memento of the artist's ardor for his wife...

... or this...



... which was clearly a bit of erotica... likely hidden away in a cabinet and accessible only to the eyes of the owner and his select group of friends.

But placed within the context of the museum, they all become ART... works intended for the consumption and aesthetic pleasure of the public. The Giotto Madonna... intended as a personal object of contemplation becomes just one more Madonna to be compared with all the others. The Ruben's portrait of his wife... painted for his own pleasure... takes on a somewhat shocking element as an image of such personal experience placed upon public display.

Many artists have sought to mitigate the impact of context by seeking to gain commissions for works to be placed permanently within a given context or environment. Mark Rothko strove for years to be afforded a small gallery space within which he might display a body of works that could be seen in a meditative manner.

Of course the wrong context can clearly be problematic. An Andy Warhol Painting placed within a gallery of paintings by Rembrandt would likely overwhelm the works by the Dutch master... not as a result of artistic merit... but rather in the manner in which a screeching number by Metalica would likely drown out a Prelude by Debussy by sheer volume.

Unfortunately, those in charge of city planning and public arts are often clueless chimpanzees lacking any aesthetic eye. The Louvre is a magnificent Baroque/Neo-Classical work of architecture. I have no idea what the morons who thought a steel and glass pyramid by I.M. Pei (Mr. one-trick pony) would look good next to it. Rather like Led Zeppelin at a concert of Mozart.

One of the most famous instances in which the issue of artistic context arose was that of Richard Serra's "Tilted Arc":





Serra was awarded the commission to create a work of public art to be placed in the plaza of a government building in New York. The resulting work was a vast, rusted slab of steel placed in such a manner as to cut the plaza in half. Workers filed complaints stating that the work was "ugly", ruined the plaza aesthetically and practically, and was dangerous (a great place for muggers to hide and jump unsuspecting victims). Eventually the city agreed and asked the artist for ideas as to where else to place the work. Serra was outraged and insisted that the work was site-specific... and any change in the context would ruin the work to such an extent that he would deny any authorship. The dispute went to court where Serra lost. It was pointed out that the addition of new building within the vicinity of the "Tilted Arc" would essentially result in a change in context. The artist couldn't expect NYC to remain static so as to retain the appropriate context for the work of art as Serra envisioned it.

Of course part of the problem lies in the hostility that exists in the mind of many artists between the artist and the audience... especially the bourgeois public. From the late 1960s through the late 1980s there were many works of public art that were erected by artists with the clear intention of outraging... even insulting the very public who were paying for it through their taxes.

It seems to me that one walks a difficult line when accepting public financing for the creation of a work of public art... a balancing act between the artist's vision and the needs/wants of the audience.

[mortalterror]

I dig those busts of Ah Xian. Imagine if we could repaint all the classical sculptures from history! But he needs to do more than painted busts. He should show us what he can do with a full figure or multiple figures. But it's an excellent start.

Also, I like Luang Pu's Buddha Park sculptures in Laos:


And another park he built a few miles away in Thailand called Sala Keoku:


I also love Stanislav Szukalski

[mortalterror]

Couple more 20th-21st century sculptors:
Paul Day





Gustinus Ambrosi

Avard Fairbanks


Matteo Pugliese


Frederick Hart


Bill Reid

[mortalterror]

A few good painters. Shepard Fairey

Roberto Ferri

Gottfried Helnwein

Sterling Hundley

James Jean

Mac

Michael Triegel

Mario Toral

[stlukesguild]

I'm far more comfortable... interested... and informed when it comes to painters. There are literally hundreds of living painters that I find of real merit:

Santiago Carbonell:











Daniel Galieote:









Ennoki Toshiyuki:









Evan B. Harris (Interesting 19th century Folk-Americana look):







Fuyuko Matsui (Master of traditional Japanese painting techniques. Combines exquisite beauty of traditional Japanese paintings with garishness and horror of later Japanese print artists and Japanese tradition of horror stories):







She's not a bad looker herself, either. Quite up Emil's alley:



The street artist, El Mac (that Mortal posted) is also quite interesting:













The artist/illustrator Masaaki Sasamoto marries elements of Arthur Rackham, Gustav Klimt and the Preraphaelites:







Ray Ceasar employs computer painting programs to create his unsettling images which bring together elements of the Rococo and Victorian dress with often disturbing... even horrific details:















Ron English began as a member of the guerilla street art group Art Fux, who worked in and around NYC. He has since evolved into one of the strongest of the so-called "lowbrow artists", bringing a sarcastic and critical eye to bear on modern culture:









Stelios Faitakis is a Greek artist who has taken to murals and "street art" as a means of reaching a broader audience. While his paintings employ elements suggestive of MAD Magazine, his work is anything but "lowbrow". He also utilizes elements of Greek Byzantine art as well as German Expressionism ala Otto Dix and George Grosz in his brutal critique of social inequities:















Masami Teraoka has spent most of his career focused upon the issue of sex and society. His earliest works explored the cultural clash between traditional Japanese values and open American sexuality. He employed elements of Japanese "Shunga" prints... which often displayed an almost pornographic eroticism beyond almost anything seen in the West:









After the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky debacle, Teraoka turned his eye toward the hypocrisy of sex and the Church, the media, and politics:









Undoubtedly, Anselm Kiefer is one of the most important living artists. His paintings build upon Jackson Pollock's "all-over" field paintings and Romantic landscapes... but landscapes charred and forever scarred by the horrors of history... especially WWII:







With their immense scale (often 20 and 30 feet across) and tactile physicality, Kiefer's paintings are among those that truly demand to be seen in person to be properly appreciated.

More to follow...

[cacian]

great pics Stlukes. the impression I get from these is busyniess. it is and art that is very busy in that subtlety is lacking or less evident.
the execution is phenomenal the talent is exuberant but the subject is less.

[stlukesguild]

Samuel Bak is a Polish-Jewish survivor of the Holocaust known for his beautifully rendered Surrealistic paintings of the Wasteland of history:













David Bates, who has lived and worked in Texas and New Orleans employs a style that employs elements of American folk art, as well as nods to Henri Rousseau and Max Beckmann. Most of his paintings deal with life on the bayou... fishing, hunting, boating... but more recent works look at the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:












Aron Wiesenfeld began his career as a highly acclaimed comic book artist before moving into the realm of the "fine arts" as a painter of often unsettling paintings. His paintings often convey a strong emotional content and suggest an open-ended narrative... quite commonly employing adolescent characters on the cusp of adulthood:





















Paul Fenniak is a Canadian painter from a generation before Wiesenfeld who explores a similar turf of unsettling narratives of an uncertain nature. His early works suggest the distortions and dead-pan realism of the early paintings by Lucian Freud, while later works recall Andrew Wyeth and Mark Greenwold:



















Speaking of Mark Greenwold...

















Even more disturbing than Mark Greenwold are the paintings of Michael Kirkham whose works focus on a desperate jaded underworld in which humanity has been reduced to a sleazy world of sex, pornography, alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs... all portrayed through a Romantic haziness with elements of Surrealism... and an intentional crude amateurishness. (A good many of Kirkhams paintings can't even be shown here).











Perhaps the current leading "bad boy" of painting is John Currin... who wed 1950s pin-ups with elements borrowed from Norman Rockwell and the German Mannerist, Lucas Cranach the Elder in order to flip the finger to the militant Feminists of the mid-1980s who insisted that it was sexist for any male artist to paint the female nude. Currin's recent works have included a body of explicit pornographic images... which again cannot be shown here:













A far less disturbing painter is Bo Bartlett... whose works speak of an Americana... with slightly unsettling undercurrents... just as one might expect of an artist mentored by Andrew Wyeth:



















More to come...

[stlukesguild]

great pics Stlukes. the impression I get from these is busyniess. it is and art that is very busy in that subtlety is lacking or less evident.
the execution is phenomenal the talent is exuberant but the subject is less.

Some of the painters do indeed produce a very busy imagery. In some cases this may be a reaction against the Minimalism that dominated art prior to the return of a dominance of figurative painting in the late 1980s/90s. There is also the fact that a number of the artists in the post in question come from an illustration... or "lowbrow" background and have an obsession with rendering details. Of course not all the works are "busy". Even a painting like this:



is not actually "busy" in spite of the decorative details. The image breaks down visually into a couple of big shapes based upon color.

Other paintings such as this...



... are actually quite simply constructed.

As for subtlety... It would seem that the painting above and others by Santiago Carbonell... as well as those by Toshiyuki... are quite subtle and sensitive... while Matsui plays with the contrast between traditional Japanese subtlety and the shocking image. Of course those artists like Ron English and Ray Ceasar... coming from a "low-brow" background lean more toward the image that is "in your face" while Teraoka and Faitakis employ similar raucous imagery in order to reinforce the fury behind their social critiques.

As for subject matter... that's all personal preference. Undoubtedly you may dislike some artists and like others who nevertheless may be of equal talent and merit.