iona college scoundrel time exhib joywar lecture apr 2 2008 final
TRANSCRIPT
************* “Joywar”
painting, appropriation
and the myth of “originality”
*************
“Scoundrel Time”paintings and source imagery ca. 2000-2006
Originality?
Sources for Paintings?
other paintings
• Borrowing
• Copying
• Reference
• Resemblance
• Riffs• Development of ideas
History of Painting
Poussin: A Bacchanalian Revel… (1632-3)
Cézanne: Les Grandes Baigneuses (1900-6)
Painting from Photographs?
Painters have been using photographs
and cameras ever since modern photography
came to into existence, and earlier…
"Officer & a Laughing Girl"Vermeer(1657-1659)Frick Collection, NY
Vermeer and other Dutch and Flemish painters of the period used the camera obscura...
"Bathers, Dieppe" 1902Walter Richard Sickert (1860 - 1942) Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK
The English Impressionist painter Walter Sickert developed a method of painting scenes of modern life from photographs.
This off-center composition, which features no horizon line, is an immediate, "snap-shot" moment, much like a photograph..
Marcel Duchamp established the concept of the "found object.”
Picasso produced extraordinary collages that incorporated "found" newspaper images.
John Heartfield (1891-1968) was a master of photomontage. A Communist German, he produced montages of appropriated Nazi symbols in order to subvert and undermine their power as propaganda.
“Adolph, the Superman: Swallows Gold and Spouts Junk.” 1932Photomontage
A contemporary example…
Interview, Greater Boston Arts TV series and website: Artists & Violence (2002)
“I’m nuts on images. I cut them out of books and newspapers, mostly books and magazines. And this is absolutely crucial to me, because this is one of the ways I tap into the world.
“I see the world because it comes to me through media. Through film, through newspapers. Through TV.”
“I see the world because it comes to me through media. Through film, through newspapers. Through TV.”
For these artists and many others, the photograph was not merely an efficient tool, but part of an inquiry into how we see, how we look at the world, and how the world affects us through our vision.
Our source material
gives us insight into our subject.
Painting + Photography:
conscious and unconscious “borrowing”
between different mediums between painters and photographers
across centuries
Che Guevera’s corpse (ca. 1967)
Rembrandt : The Anatomy Lesson of Dr NicholaesTulp (1632)
Freddy Alborta, Che Guevera’s Death, 1967
Giovanni Antonio Bazzi “il Sodoma”: Lamentation Over the Dead Christ (1503)
The Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Andrea Mantegna (c.1490)
My Sources for Paintings…
Painting the Mediated Image
re-inventing ‘found images’ from the public sphere
(images that document real events)
Science photographs
"Trinity" July 16, 1945the first nuclear test
Alamogordo Test Range Jornada del Muerte Desert
(“Journey of Death”) New Mexico
Declassified government files
"Dog“, November 1, 1951Operation Buster-Jangle, Nevada Test Site, Area 7
1417 Foot Airdrop from B-50
“Castle Bravo”High yield thermonuclear weapons test (H-bomb) detonated on an artificial
island at Bikini Atoll February 28, 1954 (GMT)
Public military documents
Television: Night vision / Tracer fire : The First Gulf War (CNN)
QuickTime clips: Kosovo Gun camera imagery
Painting from
News + Documentary Images
a new context
The Media Narrative…
The Media Narrative: Photojournalism
“Scoundrel Time”paintings and source imagery ca. 2000-2006
“Riot”
a solo show in the spring of 2004…
Susan Meiselas: NICARAGUA, Esteli (1979).
“Cease & Desist”
Piracy!
Susan Meiselas: NICARAGUA, Esteli (1979).
• Borrowing
• Copying
• Reference
• Resemblance
• Riffs• Development of ideas
History of Painting
Internet Culture
speeds up:
• Borrowing
• Copying
• Reference
• Resemblance
• Riffs• Development of ideas
In the meantime, online, in a discussion with net artists, coders and
musicians…
Artist Tim Whidden mirrored the image on his own site…
Artist Mark River created a “derivative” work based on Molotov:
Artist Ryan Griffis declares “Joywar”( a reference to “Toywar” c. 1999)
Jess Loseby
Joseph + Donna McElroyhttp://electrichands.com/shanghai-pepsi.jpg
Michael Szpakowski : Solidarity webpage
Ottokin.com:
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 16:33:22 +0100Re: tshirt
Produce this shirt an fuck the Pepsi!
Bye from ItalyPaolo
“Spook” site
Quicktime movie: “Art not Crime”
Kate Southworth: Pirates of Penzancehttp://www.gloriousninth.com/piratesofpenzance.html
Molotov Remix - consists od a jpg of Joy Garnett's painting "Molotov" sliced into 121 43px X 52px images. Each sliced image is randomly loaded via java script into one of 121 cells of an html table.
Users may click on the "Recompose" link to achieve a new randomly generated recomposition each time. The chances of users hitting upon a perfect realignment of image slices is less than winning the lottery, but just in case I have a "fair use" argument ready.
http://art-design.smsu.edu/cooley/molotov/
mark cooley
Edward Tang: “Molotov Landscapes” created using a custom software in Windows C++ using Visual C++ .NET and OpenGL for graphics.http://antiexperience.com
Pau Waelder: http://www.sicplacitum.com/arte/molotov.htm
(the end)