Visiting Artists
I recently entered my seventh decade. For over fifty years I have produced visual art---prints, drawings, paintings, three-dimensional works and video pieces that I refer to as “Motion Images”. I consider myself an artist.
I have lived and/or worked in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales, Papua New Guinea and France, and have travelled extensively. I’ve experienced a lot of art---a great variety---art that has been humbling, overwhelming, complex, simple, modest, extravagant, and I have also experienced art that is vacuous, embarrassing, terrible, and so on.
The best art can stop you in your tracks with a malady known as the Stendhal Syndrome where you have a kind of mini breakdown after encountering an artwork that is so exquisite and accomplished that your mind has trouble processing it. I experienced that myself when I first saw Michelangelo’s Pieta. I simply couldn’t comprehend how the figures of Jesus and Mary had been coaxed out of a block of marble, the consummate skill involved in producing it, the overall poignancy of the piece. I had to sit down and literally catch my breath. And yet, ultimately it was comforting to know I was part of a “nation” of artists worldwide that included someone like Michelangelo. At the same time I felt liberated from any perceived notion that I was in the same league as he. From that time on I could work comfortably while experimenting with ideas and techniques, and strive to master various media with whatever talent I did possess.
On the other end of the artistic spectrum sits artwork that I find “unsuccessful”---tasteless, preachy, poorly made, produced using childish or badly researched ideas, etc.---utterly without merit.
Most art departments at universities and art schools have a budget for visitors and regularly pay artists a fee to present artwork or lecture. This includes funding for their travel, accommodation and per diems for meals to cover as many days as the visit involves. It can be pretty costly. I’ve seen dozens of artists present at various art schools where I have taught or have visited myself. The quality is all over the map.
Many years ago the department I worked in invited three artists for that particular academic year. Here’s what we got from two of them:
Artist 1: A performance art exhibition that addressed, amongst other things, stay-at-home moms. It involved a young woman purposely dressed like a cross between a Barbie Doll and Little Bo Peep. Her mouth was taped shut to indicate she couldn’t speak for herself. She knelt inside a flimsy open structure that represented her home. Attached to her wrists were two strings that were then attached to three-foot wooden poles. These were held by the artist. As the performance began the artist manipulated the poles and the young woman pogoed like a puppet, trapped in the home---presumably by a husband or partner---or “burdened” with a child.
Artist 2: This artist presented three video works in a public forum, all performances by the artist herself.
The first one involved a well-endowed young woman moving through a darkly-lit disco dressed in a translucent tunic made from a shower curtain. Attached to the tunic were razor blades. The young woman proceeded to coax young men, some clearly drunk, to dance with her and this was filmed candidly as they groped at the razor-laden tunic.
The second video included secretly filming a young woman and a middle-aged man sitting at a café chatting. The young woman had propositioned the man for sex and so a rendezvous was arranged. Although they discussed the hook-up at length and in detail, the young woman had no intention of engaging in an intimate liaison, and instead was interested only in capturing him in an embarrassing trap after baiting him online. She then posted the video to the Internet. The man was married and had young children.
The third video that was shown involved the artist masturbating with a carrot.
© Kent Jones 2018
I recently entered my seventh decade. For over fifty years I have produced visual art---prints, drawings, paintings, three-dimensional works and video pieces that I refer to as “Motion Images”. I consider myself an artist.
I have lived and/or worked in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales, Papua New Guinea and France, and have travelled extensively. I’ve experienced a lot of art---a great variety---art that has been humbling, overwhelming, complex, simple, modest, extravagant, and I have also experienced art that is vacuous, embarrassing, terrible, and so on.
The best art can stop you in your tracks with a malady known as the Stendhal Syndrome where you have a kind of mini breakdown after encountering an artwork that is so exquisite and accomplished that your mind has trouble processing it. I experienced that myself when I first saw Michelangelo’s Pieta. I simply couldn’t comprehend how the figures of Jesus and Mary had been coaxed out of a block of marble, the consummate skill involved in producing it, the overall poignancy of the piece. I had to sit down and literally catch my breath. And yet, ultimately it was comforting to know I was part of a “nation” of artists worldwide that included someone like Michelangelo. At the same time I felt liberated from any perceived notion that I was in the same league as he. From that time on I could work comfortably while experimenting with ideas and techniques, and strive to master various media with whatever talent I did possess.
On the other end of the artistic spectrum sits artwork that I find “unsuccessful”---tasteless, preachy, poorly made, produced using childish or badly researched ideas, etc.---utterly without merit.
Most art departments at universities and art schools have a budget for visitors and regularly pay artists a fee to present artwork or lecture. This includes funding for their travel, accommodation and per diems for meals to cover as many days as the visit involves. It can be pretty costly. I’ve seen dozens of artists present at various art schools where I have taught or have visited myself. The quality is all over the map.
Many years ago the department I worked in invited three artists for that particular academic year. Here’s what we got from two of them:
Artist 1: A performance art exhibition that addressed, amongst other things, stay-at-home moms. It involved a young woman purposely dressed like a cross between a Barbie Doll and Little Bo Peep. Her mouth was taped shut to indicate she couldn’t speak for herself. She knelt inside a flimsy open structure that represented her home. Attached to her wrists were two strings that were then attached to three-foot wooden poles. These were held by the artist. As the performance began the artist manipulated the poles and the young woman pogoed like a puppet, trapped in the home---presumably by a husband or partner---or “burdened” with a child.
Artist 2: This artist presented three video works in a public forum, all performances by the artist herself.
The first one involved a well-endowed young woman moving through a darkly-lit disco dressed in a translucent tunic made from a shower curtain. Attached to the tunic were razor blades. The young woman proceeded to coax young men, some clearly drunk, to dance with her and this was filmed candidly as they groped at the razor-laden tunic.
The second video included secretly filming a young woman and a middle-aged man sitting at a café chatting. The young woman had propositioned the man for sex and so a rendezvous was arranged. Although they discussed the hook-up at length and in detail, the young woman had no intention of engaging in an intimate liaison, and instead was interested only in capturing him in an embarrassing trap after baiting him online. She then posted the video to the Internet. The man was married and had young children.
The third video that was shown involved the artist masturbating with a carrot.
© Kent Jones 2018