Advantage: Process
2009-01-15 13:32:00 Adminstrator's Note: I am sharing my first contribution for The Microwave Project, a blog-community experiment organized by Washington, D.C. artist, Rachel Fick. This post was in response to an earlier one on ?Loss Creation? by photographer, Victoria F. Gaitán, in which she wrote about how ?Not knowing can be a creative blessing.? My ?Microwave? posts will be monthly on the 13th - - - so bookmark ?Microwave Project? and visit for daily postings from painters, photographers, filmmakers, writers and critical thinkers.?Some inventors have a goal in mind and work persistently toward it. Others stumble across solutions to problems they weren?t trying to solve.?- - sign in children?s area of National Museum of American History.In past work, I have used a ?kitchen sink? approach and ?found objects? to make art. Possibly it?s a creative phase that every visual artist goes through, although the improvisational aspect of this methodology suggests allegiances to music, particularly to jaz...
By: Theory NOW
Advantage: Process
2009-01-15 13:32:00 Adminstrator's Note: I am sharing my first contribution for The Microwave Project, a blog-community experiment organized by Washington, D.C. artist, Rachel Fick. This post was in response to an earlier one on ?Loss Creation? by photographer, Victoria F. Gaitán, in which she wrote about how ?Not knowing can be a creative blessing.? My ?Microwave? posts will be monthly on the 13th - - - so bookmark ?Microwave Project? and visit for daily postings from painters, photographers, filmmakers, writers and critical thinkers.?Some inventors have a goal in mind and work persistently toward it. Others stumble across solutions to problems they weren?t trying to solve.?- - sign in children?s area of National Museum of American History.In past work, I have used a ?kitchen sink? approach and ?found objects? to make art. Possibly it?s a creative phase that every visual artist goes through, although the improvisational aspect of this methodology suggests allegiances to music, particularly to jaz...
By: Theory NOW
Report on the Infinite
2008-11-02 02:43:00 Roman Opalka?s artistic practice is either an undertaking of resolute heroism or an obsession bordering on insanity. Since 1965, Opalka has been inscribing a progression of numbers on canvas. The canvas size is always the same (196 x 135 cm), as is the brush (size 0) and the pigment (white acrylic). There is anecdotal evidence suggesting that the idea came to Opalka while waiting for his wife in a café. If true, this story attests to the fact that the most ?successful? ideas are ?ludicrously simple? or, at the very least, simply ?inevitable.?(1)I want to discuss Opalka?s work from three theoretical vantages, two of which have to my knowledge not been previously suggested as ways to interpret his project. The one theory universally addressed is the idea that Opalka?s counting represents his comprehension of his mortality, that this is his way or ?marking? his time on earth. I would add to this that his work ought to then be considered as truly time-based. This term has become ...
By: Theory NOW
Report on the Infinite
2008-11-02 02:43:00 Roman Opalka?s artistic practice is either an undertaking of resolute heroism or an obsession bordering on insanity. Since 1965, Opalka has been inscribing a progression of numbers on canvas. The canvas size is always the same (196 x 135 cm), as is the brush (size 0) and the pigment (white acrylic). There is anecdotal evidence suggesting that the idea came to Opalka while waiting for his wife in a café. If true, this story attests to the fact that the most ?successful? ideas are ?ludicrously simple? or, at the very least, simply ?inevitable.?(1)I want to discuss Opalka?s work from three theoretical vantages, two of which have to my knowledge not been previously suggested as ways to interpret his project. The one theory universally addressed is the idea that Opalka?s counting represents his comprehension of his mortality, that this is his way of ?marking? his time on earth. I would add to this that his work ought to then be considered as truly time-based. This term has become ...
By: Theory NOW
Sign-Painter
2008-10-06 22:18:00 The text paintings ?by? John Baldessari are both Modernist critique and a primer of conceptual art. Executed by a ?sign-painter? from Baldessari?s instructions, these works fulfill the basic tenets espoused by Sol Lewitt [?The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.?(1)] and Lawrence Weiner [?The artist may construct the piece ? The piece need not to be built.?(2)] in that they effectively focus our attention on the idea behind the work.For example, if we consider the physical aspects of Baldessari?s ?Exhibiting Paintings?, we can see that it consists of words painted in acrylic on stretched canvas. The work then exists within the realm of painting both through its use of traditional painting materials (paint and canvas) and its address of basic pictorial elements. Thus, Baldessari?s work embodies subtle allusions to Modernism and disjunctive relationships like ?figure-ground? that would become standard terminology in 20th Century discourse about painting, causing ?modern? pai...
By: Theory NOW
Sign-Painter
2008-10-06 22:18:00 The text paintings ?by? John Baldessari are both Modernist critique and a primer of conceptual art. Executed by a ?sign-painter? from Baldessari?s instructions, these works fulfill the basic tenets espoused by Sol Lewitt [?The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.?(1)] and Lawrence Weiner [?The artist may construct the piece ? The piece need not to be built.?(2)] in that they effectively focus our attention on the idea behind the work.For example, if we consider the physical aspects of Baldessari?s ?Exhibiting Paintings?, we can see that it consists of words painted in acrylic on stretched canvas. The work then exists within the realm of painting both through its use of traditional painting materials (paint and canvas) and its address of basic pictorial elements. Thus, Baldessari?s work embodies subtle allusions to Modernism and disjunctive relationships like ?figure-ground? that would become standard terminology in 20th Century discourse about painting, causing ?modern? pai...
By: Theory NOW
The Matter of Immateriality
2007-10-04 16:13:00 The focus on materiality and the form an art object would or could take underwent a transformative period during the late 1960?s. The work of Robert Barry, Lawrence Weiner and Bernard Venet each would explore the tendency of matter to transmit both determinate and indeterminate meanings.Robert Barry?s experiments with gases like argon and helium reveal his evident fascination with the idea that the use of certain materials as ?art? can show us that art need not be visible. If the Modernist ideology suggested that art should be reduced to its materials, its medium specificity (see Clement Greenberg), then artists like Barry were engaging the conceptual dimension of materiality. In creating actions like Inert Gas Series (1969) where he released 2 cubic feet of helium (?a material that is imperceivable?) in the Mojave Desert to ?infinite expansion?(1), Barry points out that visuality is irrelevant to art and art could be as much about invisible physio-chemical constituents. Interes...
By: Theory NOW
Artist Sol LeWitt Dies
2007-04-22 03:00:00 The American-born artist Sol LeWitt died from complications of cancer in New York on April 8. He was 78.
By: Geeks of Doom
Sol LeWitt 9 September 1928 - 8 April 2007 and Kurt Vonnegut 11 November 1
2007-04-12 12:31:00 This week marks the passing of American minimalist artist Sol LeWitt, and cult novellist Kurt Vonnegut. LeWitt is best known for his wall drawings, complex grids of lines originating in simple rules and formulae, whilst Vonnegut is known both in literary circles for his innovative use of pop novel conventions (like time travel) and by ...
Sol LeWitt, Great American Artist, Dies
2007-04-09 07:09:00 Sol LeWitt, one of America's pre-eminent visual artists, passed away Sunday at the age of 78. Sol, you will be missed.Mr. LeWitt's work, described as playful, simple and full of logic and essential esthetic, lives on indeed.AP photo courtesy of Keystone, Walter Bieri
By: GirlPaint
Artist Sol LeWitt dies at 78
(AP)
2007-04-09 06:01:00 AP - Sol LeWitt, an artist known for his dynamic wall paintings and as a founder of minimal and conceptual art styles, died Sunday in New York, according to published reports. |
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