Confessions of a Contemporary Art Student

“Dear Tutor”

“It has been 32 days since my last successful artwork was completed.”

“I have sinned, tutor. I have been having negative thoughts about my art practice. I have been doubting my artistic ability and have thought about giving up, I no longer know where my future lies. I can no longer express my concepts successfully and I do not know where to turn.”

“Oh Dear Duchamp, I am sorry that I have sinned, please forgive me. I know you want me to learn, I want to learn from you, and to be good to all artkind. Help me make up for my sins. I will try to do better from now on.”

Guilt and confession

More experiments along the theme of confession and Guilt. I like the use of pattern and it seems to be the main focus in all my experiments. I wanted to build something that was both anonymous but yet drew people toward it, the holes are there so people can spy on you, someone is always watching over you. I like this development although I think it still resembles a confession booth too much and it’s all too obvious still, I tried to make something similar but on a much smaller scale and think it works better. It still has the feeling of confession, the pattern and people automatically want to look inside it, the curiosity gets the better of them. I haven’t yet figured out what to put inside the box but am getting there…

After working on a much smaller scale I started to think about guilt being something that is constantly with you and wondered if I could take it down even further. I began cutting the pattern out of things I carried with me such as credit cards, handbags etc but then realised if the pattern was on my body, it would be constantly there as a reminder of guilt, as a punishment and as a mark of confession.

( Its not a real tattoo by the way, it’s just pen!!!! )

How art replaced religion…

I found this really interesting article about art and religion when I was researching my ideas about this latest project…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/artblog/2007/may/30/howartreplacedreligion

Ghada Amer

Confession

My new brief is titled confession, I am particularly interested in the notion of Guilt. What is guilt, why do we feel it? I feel it is a very negative emotion but also feeling guilt reminds us of our conscience and the fact that we are human. Guilt is kind of an emotional self – punishment and I am interested in this idea that we as humans feel the need to punish ourslves so I have done a few experiments…

Sacrifice (Modern Woman?)

 Modern Woman?, 2009

These are my 3 final works for the brief Sacrifice. I was looking at aspects of feminism and the sacrifices that have been made by women throughout the 20th century. The idea of the ‘modern woman’ came about in the 50’s, they were thought to be good housewifes and mothers and magaines advertised household products as ‘everything the modern woman will need’. Today, the media portrays the ‘modern woman’ as one who has high success in their carreers, is beautiful, sexy, smart and has gone out and achieved something in the ‘mans world’. So where is the balance? Women suffered and sacrificed everything so we could get out of the domestic role and work, have our own money and be equal to men but now a woman who chooses to stay at home with children is looked down upon by society. We cannot escape the fact that it is generally women who take care of the running of the household, do the majority of the childcare etc but this is simply expected of us as well as having careers, having a life, and keeping a man! So by trying to do it all, have everything a man has, are we sacrificing our roles as good mothers? If you look at statisitcs of family life in Britain today, we can certainly find evidence that family life has suffered since the 50’s. So, I will let you all draw your own conclusions, I don’t have an answer but I’m certainly going to keep on making art and questioning these issues.

looking at photomontage/collage

paul citroen, metropolis, 1923

Jonathen Owen, collage

Philosophical Aesthetics

The nature of a work of art

Aristotle believed the nature of art to be one of mass emotion and experience with a deep meaning and communal experience. Plato however believed the arts to have no validity and this was a dividing point between the two philosophers. Between 13th c and 17th c art began to have a religious and ethical nature where it was seen that art must have a moral nature in order for it to be valid. During this time the idea of beauty was looked at through the divine representation where artists were trying to represent this divine beauty through religion and art. Neither Plato nor Aristotle however saw beauty as a worthy subject to dispute. The nature of art began to change in the 18th c where art began to lose it’s religious meaning and was made for sensuous pleasure, the distinction between ‘usefull art’ and ‘fine art’ was made.

The value of a work of art

Plato greatly undervalued art in his philosophy, writing that only through actual knowledge can we progress and saw the ‘arts’ as seductive, mimetic or imitative, promoting deceptive views of the gods and an unsuitable model of behaviour. He believed that painting takes away from reality, it is a poor copy of the truth. In his Republic, he banned all artists believing art deals only in appearance and makes no contribution in making people good. Joseph Kosuth’s one and three chairs illustrates Plato’s point here, The photo of the chair is mimetic, the chair is but an impression and the only real chair is the description of the chair.

Aristotle  was a student of Plato and he began to question the teachings of Plato through his writings. Aristotle recognised validity in the arts and in his writing, The Poetics he wrote, the arts evoke emotions that are real but they are in response to experiences that are unreal. He recognised the ability to distinguish between real life and fiction. He believed that the arts can act as a cathartic experience or a mass catharsis and can be a cleansing experience for those who view the arts. Aristotle recognised that the arts played a crucial role in society. The Italian Renaissance enabled the value of art to increase with the expansion of the capitalist market. Artists could start to profit from their work, have assistants and became known as celebrities and so the value of artists and art greatly increased.

The meaning of a work of art

Aristotle gave significant meaning to art saying that it enabled us to experience deep emotion on a mass scale and act as an intense cleansing experience. The meaning of art was also heavily based on religion and morals between 13th – 17th century where art must be made with significant religious concept behind it. The 18th century however saw a change in this where it rethinks aesthetics in terms of sensuous experience rather than experience that comes from knowledge. Art shifts from its social value ( through knowledge) to individual experience. Art is made for art’s sake for the first time and is made to please the senses rather than for religious or moral experience.

Sacrifice

Martha Rosler , Semiotics of the kitchen.

Final piece on the plinth!!

So, here is my final piece for inside/outside on the 4th plinth in Trafalgar square, 19th September 0400 – 0500.

http://www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Lauren_M

It was pretty scary up there and there were a lot of drunken people shouting horrible things at me which was making me rather uncomfortable but i managed to keep calm and composed and get on with what I was doing!

My aim was to show that we can express ourselves through art, without talking or interacting you can use art to express your inner thoughts and share these thoughts with the outside world.  Initially after coming off the plinth I felt like I had failed my brief and didn’t think anyone got what I was doing but since then I’ve had a lot of positive feedback from people. My partner Phil was in the crowd when I was up there and told me that during my hour, some of the people in the crowd were having a big debate about anger, sparked off by me smashing up my sculptures. They were all talking about how everyone expresses anger in different ways and that mabye instead of going out fighting on a weekend, more people should look at other ways of expression. Hearing this made me feel like mabye my performance was successful after all, it made people think about emotion and expression and mabye not everyone liked what I was doing but at least it made them think and that is exactly what I wanted!!!

Thanks for all the people who watched me up there and supported me and left me lovely comments!! And for those who were being immature and horrible to me, I feel sorry for you for not having an open mind……grow up!!!