Reading Response:
In Catherine Soussloff’s “Michel Foucault and the Point of Paint” she uses Foucault as a lens to speak on the essence of painting. In the first half of the reading she emphasizes Foucault’s heavy investment in the history of art and cites texts from Foucault and names older Philosophers whom Foucault aligned with. Soussloff touches on the historical significance of painting as the highest field of art. Historically (from a Western perspective) painting has always been about translating a story or idea into a visual form, with the most valued being historical paintings.
The second half touches on the idea of painting as form of knowledge building and expression parallel to writing. Painting and art in general is always done with a set of ideas inspiring the chosen subject. A painting is a culmination of ideas surrounding the space and time it was painted, and rest of the world’s discourse, as well as all work that has come before. By analyzing an artist’s work over time you can see their progression in knowledge and perspective. In painting knowledge and technique are both equally essential. An artist’s masterpiece is their peak in technique, ideas, and innovation in their career span.
Narrative:
What do I want to know more about and discuss in my work? What knowledge would I like to gain?
I don’t know exactly what I want to know but I am interested in value systems/morals and attached value, entitlement/expectations and incentives. There has always been a gap in what I learned to be right as I grew up and what I was experiencing. We have built up the comfort of our lives from a long and layered foundation of attached values where there is a basis for nothing, like the stock market. As a graphic designer it is important for me in part to understand why people want things. I was never an open space to express or discover myself, I had to accommodate to others expectations and entitlements. Now that I am older I have difficulty discerning how I really feel about something. I don’t feel true want. I feel my mature emotions are dull after an intense upbringing, it all feels superficial.
People want things to make them feel comfortable. Either socially or physically. People will sacrifice one comfort for the other.
Indifference.
Commodity-sign
Self censorship Pantopticism.
When you see an object you see the physical thing as well as all the social and emotional experiences you attach to it. impossible to get away from.
visual methodologies gillian rose
mythologies rolan barthes
destabilize comfortability and reason of the viewer
Artists:
Fernando Botero: I appreciate his rounded, blob like depictions of people. His political humor is witty and dry.
Amedeo Modigiliani: His portraits are captivating. Seem very indifferent. His rejection of the art establishment of his time is interesting considering how pivotal it of a moment he lived, no matter how brief.
Christian Rex van Minnen: His organic grotesque forms are easy to get lost in. I like how he uses very historical references for his compositions like dutch still lives and portraits.