"Practice what you preach" that is what I take away from these pages.and the search for meaningful context for your work...
This section begins with a discussion about a year on a farm in a project called Overlay. Lippard's essay discusses about how she always wanted to be an archaeologist and she decided to leave out politics in this project and to create a difficult problem for herself,making her go outside her "comfort zone".She says that as she now looks back about this experience she approached it from an artist point of view,but she does say that this project OVERLAY..marked the beginning and the end of her artistic career as after this experience she came farther away from art criticism and began becoming a cultural critic.Now she is doing fieldwork all around New Mexico listening to archaeologists and she says the only art discussed in her new book is rock art.In this essay she discusses the common ground between artist and anthropologists is their ethics.This topic is rarely discussed in the art world,she says but is constantly discussed in the world of anthropologists. Her interest is finding out how each artist functions in society and how they choose their audience and social effects.She concludes that it is the "quest for meaningful context,and for meaning itself,has led these artists towards anthropology,which,even when it's trapped in it's own self-fulfilling prophecies,does offer significant contextual models."Page 25
Echoes and Parallels "makes connections between both artists'personal ill health and their interest in shamanism;..."page 37. Coates' interest in shamanism is attributed basically to his ill health,severe eczema which he had asa child Beuys apparently had experience any "psychic"and near death experiences with three traumas in his life making an impact on him as an artist and Beuys life once he was rescued by Tatars in Crimea during WWII and he was wrapped in felt and fat to keep him warm.37.Now Coates also had an interest in shamanism as he says growing up in suburbia one dreamed of an exotic wildlife ..Marcus coates..Dawn Chorus 2007 is a video installation and there is a clear engagement with anthropology in both these artists' work as Coates even mentions his preparatory work for this installation as".There is a photo of Beuy's I like America likes Me...where all you se is a blanket wrapped around a person and a cane sticking out...in Coates Journey to the Lower World,2004...you see him as a shaman dressed in" Field Work".However the author does say that there is similar interest in the "therapeutic aspect"of the shaman's role which is reflected in both Coates and Beuys work. The author raises the question about ethical issues in their work.Both these artists engage the audience in a dialogue "with a figure that has been conceived of as having been a victim of destruction".page 45.It is concluded that both their work reflect self identity issues with the shaman's role within western art.
Artist Ken Gonzalez also did a series informed by the lynchings in California (see link below)
http://kengonzalesday.com/projects/hangtrees/index.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment