Fluxus and Commercialism
Dana M. Osburn
Eng101 Writing for Artists and Designers

In 1966, Yoko Ono placed an apple, a real-live market fresh apple, on a pedestal and called it art. To all but a narrow group of artists known as the “fluxists,” this was an act of indescribable ridiculousness. The fluxists, members of the artistic movement called “Fluxus”, did this sort of thing all the time. The word “fluxus,” derived from the Latin word for change, as applied to art, denotes an art aimed at capturing the essence of change. The connotation, of course, was much more political. All of a sudden, so-called artists were doing things like pushing lawn-mowers in basements, playing musical instruments grossly incorrectly, displaying store-bought tea-cups in galleries, and drawing red circles around nearly everything and deeming it art. Despite its senseless façade, a common denominator lies in the focus on breaking away from Eurocentric values about art and the progressively more commercialized world. Fluxus, like Pop Art and Dada before it, was an art movement aimed at criticizing a materialistic society.

If Dick Higgins’ “A Child’s History of Fluxus” is to be trusted, Fluxus began with the idea that “a kiss in the morning can be more dramatic than a drama by Mr. Fancypants”[1]. A group of artists in the 1950s cropped up in Germany and New York who believed that the mundane can be more beautiful than the grandiose, or, more specifically, what the institution believed to be the grandiose. These artists included: in New York, John Cage, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, Al Hansen, among others, and in Europe Nam June Paik, Museo Vostell, Emmett Williams, and Ben Patterson, among others.[2] These artists operated in a vast myriad of media ranging from very large scale sculptures, to small scale ‘sculptures’, to performance, to poetry, to philosophy, often crossing or obscuring the boundaries between media, “occupying ecological border zones between existing forms and media, only some of which were art forms. Fluxus successfully and somewhat problematically erased all distinctions between art, philosophy, design and daily life.”[3]

The fluxists were, above all, idea people; hence they focused on the ideas behind the art that they were producing. One such idea was that no one person or group (or institution) could dictate what constituted art and to “establish artists’ nonprofessional, nonparasitic, nonelite status in society.”[4] Believing that existence itself was art, naturally Fluxus was unfriendly to the elevation of artists to elite status. They refuted the notion of art as quasi-religion and the worship of artists and exchanged it for love of experimentation. Traditional media could not encompass fluxus, as by nature it constantly changed and expanded. This presented the need for a means of seamlessly bridging the gaps between established media to both create new media and use some very effective existing media. Dick Higgins solved this problem with his idea of the intermedia, or a “space between media”[5]. Higgins used the term “to describe the ineffable, often confusing, inter-disciplinary activities that occur between genres that became prevalent [in Fluxus].”[6] Within the intermedia, new genres arose, such as concrete poetry and action music.

Fluxus artists, loosed from the restrictive boundaries of traditional media, used their experimental spirit to express disdain for the world’s hunger for the next new wonder-product. Drawing on the “anti-art sensibility”[7] of Pop Art, the objective was “to make the territory of art contested and difficult and is therefore a locus of class struggle in bourgeois culture.”[8]

Though the bulk of the work created by fluxus artists fell somewhere in the greyer realms of the intermedia, some artists expressed the fluxus spirit through the experimental use of traditional media. Sculpture was a popular medium for these particular fluxists, the most famous of which was Nam June Paik. Nam June Paik, born in Seoul, Korea, met John Cage in 1958 after studying art and music history, and composition (respectively) at the University of Tokyo, Munich University, and the Freidburg Conservatory. In 1963, he began using television monitors in his sculptures for the “Fluxus. Internationale Festspiele neuester Musik" (Fluxus. International festivals of newest music). He is known today for his use of monitors in sculpture for both large scale works, such as The More the Better, (1988), a “three channel video installation with 1,003 monitors and steel structure; color, sound; approximately 60 feet high,”[9] and for smaller scale, closed circuit installations such as TV Buddha (1974), a “closed circuit video installation with bronze sculpture.”[10] Unlike in many works of Fluxus, the anti-commercialist imagery in Paik’s sculptures is more than blatant. It blares through the huge, bright television screens made grotesque through their seemingly-unending repetition.

Fluxists also employed and distorted music as a means of expressing their ideas. John Cage, seen as one of the founders of Fluxus, worked chiefly in music. He invented the prepared piano, “a piano that has been adjusted in certain ways so that the sound produced is altered. Usually this is done by placing objects between certain piano strings altering the loudness, pitch, and tone color.”[11] Cage was also the first to record music on magnetic tape.[12] His works of fluxus music remain as the best surviving examples of the auditory experimentation done by the fluxists. The music was not music in the sense that it was meant to be pleasant-sounding, or listened-to as part of recreation, but it was for the most part harsh, foreign, distorted, disorienting sound combinations meant to confuse the senses. Often, fluxus musicians were untrained, and rarely was the objective of fluxus music to exhibit the technical skill of the musician. Most likely, the atrocious sounds produced by the fluxus musicians were meant to mock the growing use of music as a commodity.

Despite a continued use of traditional media such as sculpture and music, fluxus was most noted for its use of experimental, nontraditional media. One such form is the happening, or event. Though the work of John Cage is considered a precursor to the happening, Allan Kaprow was credited to bringing the happening to the surface of artistic activity of the 1960s. A somewhat theatrical piece, the happening redefined performance art. The key characteristic of the happening was the ambiguous relationship between spectator and performer, and often, the two became indistinguishable. A happening was not a traditional theatre in that happenings “may occur at a supermarket, driving along a highway, under a pile of rags, and in a friend's kitchen, either at once or sequentially…. The Happening is performed according to a plan without rehearsal, audience, or repetition."[13] Often, a happening occurred in public places “where the artist breaks in suddenly with his performance.”[14] The obscurity of time and place in a happening led to sequential happenings, a series of happenings taking place over a period of time. Some sequential happenings lasted as long as a year! Like other works of fluxism, the happening was meant to emphasize the artistry in the every day, and consequently defy the elitism of traditional theatre and art.

The fluxkit or fluxus box was another medium unique to fluxus. The fluxus box, a descendant of Marcel Duchamp’s Green Box, was a small, compartmentalized plastic box in which fluxus artists collected small items of interest. The practice was started, allegedly, by George Maciunas “who would gather collections of his printed cards, games, and ideas, and put them into small plastic boxes.”[15] This practice inspired the magazine, Aspen, which was published in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Aspen was essentially a monthly fluxkit, a box containing loosely arranged records of whatever was the focus of that particular issue. The records ranged from unbound pamphlets and written works, to post cards, to audio recordings. The appeal of the fluxkit was the nonexistent timeline of the work inside. The order of the objects, since they were unbound and loosely arranged in a box, constantly changed, therefore fulfilling the interest of fluxus.

Fluxus, because it was not merely an art movement, but a way of looking at the world, underwent its share of political struggle. The main problems arose when George Maciunas, now known as the leader of the fluxus movement, began to fancy himself the boss of fluxus. Maciunas’s attempts to define what fluxus was and was not, and to decide who could and could not be considered fluxus, angered many of the other fluxus artists. Dick Higgins founded his own publishing house, Something Else Press, and this “was interpreted by Maciunas as an act of rivalry”[16] as Maciunas’s publishing house was commonly accepted as the definitive publishing house of fluxus. Maciunas also read intentions of rivalry in the organization of the “New York Avant-Garde Festival” by Charlotte Moorman. Maciunas urged his fluxus friends not to attend in a desperate act to regain the control he believed he was loosing over fluxus, which he, in fact, never had in the first place. Dick Higgins and Nam June Paik ignored this request, further angering Maciunas. Finally, a major split occurred in fluxus when Maciunas organized a picketed protest against the performance of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Originale in the mid 1960s. The split occurred between “those who were more sensitive to the political implications of cultural activities… and those who were mainly interested in artistic creation”[17] and ultimately led to Maciunas’s resignation as Chairman.

Following the tension and embarrassment resulting from the events surrounding Originale, fluxus artists remained in contact and, surprisingly, continued to do fluxus things. The golden age had ended, but fluxus was not dead. In fact, fluxus activity was heightened in the 1970s with the occurrence of “The Rainbow Staircase,” “Fluxmass,” “FluxDivorce,” and “Fluxshoe.” However, the fluxus events of the seventies had become kitchy and commercial in themselves, being far too glamorized. “Fluxmass,” for example, a mock mass held in the Episcopal Church at Douglass College, featured choirboys dressed as gorillas and howling dogs in place of antiphonies. Fluxists lost sight of what fluxus really meant, and strayed into the realms of cultural elitism. Fluxus was on the decline, and in 1978, less than a year after his “FluxWedding” to Billie Hutchins, George Maciunus died and was sent off with a “FluxFuneral.”

The death of Maciunas marked another historically significant split in fluxus. The historical sector believed that fluxus died with Maciunas, and after 1978 “such central Fluxus artists as Dick Higgins and Nam June Paik could no longer label themselves as active Fluxus artists….”[18] This view was mainly perpetuated by curator Jon Hendricks, who controlled the Gilbert and Lila Silverman collection, the foremost historical fluxus collection. However, some artists, Dick Higgins and Allen Bukoff, for example, continued to practice fluxus despite Hendricks’ efforts to capitalize on the historicization of fluxus.

The development of fluxus incurred an interesting array of deviations and offshoots such as Mail Art and Midwestern Fluxus. Mail Art was the practice of using the postal system as a medium for artistic expression. Mail artists sent illustrated letters, and even three dimensional objects through the mail as works of art. Mail art now supplements the collections of many galleries throughout the world, and even some museums. The use of mail, being one of the more commonplace aspects of life in society, and the constant movement and passing on thereof relates directly back to Higgins’ “kiss in the morning” idea. Mail art says that there is nothing special about the huge museum when even the postal system can exhibit beautiful art.

Midwestern Fluxus was a sort of outsider fluxus movement, as fluxus primarily existed in New York and Germany. The Midwestern Fluxists are most noted for their creation of the Fluxus Indian Museum, a museum in Coon Rapids, Iowa devoted to a non-existent tribe of Native Americans. Exhibits in the museum include “artefacts” from the tribe such as balloons with holes through the center and “the eyeball headdress.”[19] The museum has created a story behind these so-called Indians relating their inventive nature and affinity for ideas to that of Thomas Edison. The museum is so ambiguous regarding the factual basis of the Fluxus Indians that Edison Elementary School in Minot, North Dakota included the “Fluxus Indian Story” in its biography of Thomas Edison.[20] The Fluxus Indians’ quest to constantly invent shiny new ‘things’ mirrors the consumerist movement in capitalist society. The Fluxus Indians were always making new things, constantly chasing the novelty, a similar phenomenon to the never-quite-enough attitude of consumers.

The advent of digital technology and the internet beginning in the 1990s allowed Fluxus to make a grass-roots, underground come-back of sorts. The “Fluxus Homepage” created by Allan Bukoff, PhD., contains “An open letter to the remaining 1st and 2nd generation Fluxus,” written by Bukoff in 2005 in order to explain why fluxus is not and cannot be dead.[21] Other websites, such as Digital Salon, Fluxlist and the Fluxus Blog allow current artists operating in fluxus to communicate and exhibit their creations and ideas. Digital Fluxus, however, is a paradox. The internet, because of its extreme accessibility, like the postal system of yesterday, constantly changes from the influence of the massive daily growth of individual user input. Because change is, on the surface at least, the essence of fluxus, the internet seems to be an ideal medium for fluxus. However, because the internet is a product of technology, it is subject to the same never-quite-enough attitude, in that the technology never seems to be fast or reliable enough, so it is constantly being adjusted and tweaked. The internet is a market, and in this market, sellers attempt to peddle their fleeting, novelty wares. Hence, digital fluxus runs the risk of succumbing to the very commercialism which it criticizes.

Fluxus was neither short-lived nor truly ongoing, as “true” fluxus ended in the sixties during the Maciunas power-struggle, but fluxus activities still continue today. Fluxus artists created new media by breaking the boundaries between the existing traditional media, always striving to break new ground by revisiting the old, perhaps overlooked ground on which we walk everyday as human beings. In its many quirky offshoots and its wry, ironic anti-commercialism, Fluxus held center stage in the sixties and seventies as the next new big thing, and thus by nature contradicted itself.

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[1] Dick Higgins, “A Child’s History of Fluxus”

[2] Fluxlist Faq

[3] Ken Friedman, Fluxlist Faq

[4] George Maciunas, “Fluxmanifesto on Art Amusement” fluxus debris

[5] Stephen Perkins, Flux FAQ

[6] http://experts.about.com/e/i/in/intermedia.htm

[7] http://experts.about.com/e/f/fl/fluxus.htm

[8] http://experts.about.com/e/a/an/anti-art.htm

[9] http://www.paikstudios.com/gallery/6.html

[10] http://www.paikstudios.com/gallery/1.html

[11] http://www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary/textp/Preparedpiano.html

[12] http://www.lovely.com/bios/cage.html

[13] Allan Kaprow, Assemblage, Environments and Happenings

[14] Michael Kirby, Happening

[15] http://experts.about.com/e/f/fl/fluxus.htm

[16] http://www.fluxusgenova.org/riconeng.html

[17] http://www.fluxusgenova.org/riconeng.html

[18] http://experts.about.com/e/f/fl/fluxus.htm

[19] http://www.fluxus.org/museum/

[20] http://aporee.org/fluxus/archive2/0079.html

[21] http://www.nutscape.com/fluxus/homepage/

Appropriated Images













The source of this image is: http://www.mk-richardson.com/images.htm

The citation information is as follows:

Figure 1 from: Richardson MK Hanken J Selwood L Wright GM Richards RJ Pieau C & Raynaud A (1998) Haeckel, Embryos and Evolution. Science, 280: 983-986

The original intent of the image seems to be simply to illustrate the stages of embryonic development in various species of animals for a science textbook.


First, I used the crop tool to cut some of the superfluous collumns of animals out of the image. Then, I used the magic wand tool to select the black background, and I used the gradient tool, with the black area still selected, to apply a purple gradient to the center of the image. Then, with the area still selected, I used the 'texturizer' filter to create the canvas-like texture.
I then, in another window, used the lasso tools to remove the head of a picture of myself from myspace. I went into Image>Mode>Greyscale to make the face black and white. I copied and pasted the head into the embryo image, dragged it ontop of the last embryo, and used the transform tools to position it to the desired location. Then, with only the head layer selected, I went into Image>adjustments>brightness contrast and moved the sliders until the brightness and contrast matched the embryo image.
Then, I used the text tool, the shape tool, the layer opacity function and the invert function to create the 'text labels'.

The new image intends to illustrate change and development through time, showing a confused picture of me at the end. This is meant to show that the changes of time have resulted in a person who is very confused, ME, by the movement that intends to capture this change, FLUXUS. I also thought it might be absurd to see my head on an embryonic body, and, afterall, my research is about the absurd!

Fluxus Zine

I have decided to focus my zine project on fluxus because I think that actually doing something 'fluxist' might help me understand it better. I think I have the general idea, but... it's still a bit obscure. (Maybe that's the idea?)

Anyhow, here's my outline.

Computer Applications Presentation:

This makes no sense!
The continuous reincarnation of the pioneer spirit through absurd, impractical art.

This presentation focuses on how the use of absurdity and senselessness in artwork has pushed the boundaries of art beyond their accepted limits. I will discuss several art movements that have sought to reinvent the rules of art, or rather our perception of those rules, thus exhibiting a pioneer spirit that has manifested itself in modern art.

My research began with the assigned topic: “the practicality of the impractical: artists who wear the shoes of the senseless and the absurd” and has since evolved into a study of the philosophy of the absurd as a mode of artistic expression. In the beginning stages, I began browsing through the computer apps del.icio.us site with the recommended websites, including > The Museum of Jurassic Technology . However, I was not truly satisfied with this, and my research turned in a different direction when I foundBrandon Bird's Bird-o-Rama, an artist’s online portfolio consisting of some very silly, senseless artworks that fall into a sort of modern quasi-pop art category. I studied this artist’s portfolio extensively, and his merger of striking realism and cartoon or popular culture subjects lent a great deal to my research. However, I could not build an entire presentation about Brandon Bird’s Bird-o-Rama, so my research continued with the study of some more well-known art movements.

I drew from artists and movements I was already aware of to build the bulk of my research. This end of my research drew me away from the internet and into the stacks of the Moore Library. Here I found the following books: The Graphic Work of M.C. Escher, translated from the Dutch by John E. Brigham; Wings Books, New York, 1996 ed;
Max Ernst: Dada and the Dawn of Surrealism, William A. Camfield; Prestel, Munich, 1993;Off the Wall: Robert Rauschenberg and the At World of Our Time, Calvin Tomkin; p 177. Doubleday and Company, Inc., Garden City, New York; 1980. These books discussed Max Ernst and M.C. Escher as well as several art movements including Dada and Pop Art. To define these movements in a more concise manner, I turned to an old favorite, ArtLex.com. This website offers an extensive collection of definitions and descriptions of art terminology.

At the recommendation of our professor, I also began to research the fluxus movement, which furthered my knowledge of the scope of the use of senseless or impractical imagery in art. My main research for this was on ArtLex.com, on which I found Aspen, a multi-media magazine published in the sixties and early seventies. The eighth issue of this magazine, linked above, was the Fluxus issue, and served as an excellent primary source of information on the nature of this movement which is, as predicted, senseless.

My research did not narrow my topic, however, but rather it broadened it, and I did not decide upon the Pioneer Spirit topic until after sitting down to specifically do so.

My topic, the continuous reincarnation of the pioneer spirit through absurd, impractical art, means basically that my aim is to describe what I find to be an interesting phenomenon in modern art. In modern art, artists have chosen to break away from what they consider the bourgeois rules of aesthetics and acceptable imagery in art. In doing so, with each wave of invention and style, this spirit of carving out new frontiers in visual imagery has reincarnated, often using the absurd and impractical as the main modes of expression for these new ideals. As mentioned above, I will focus on three art movements: Dada, Fluxus and Pop Art. All of these movements rely heavily on the impractical and the senseless in their search for disconnection from Eurocentric mandates.

Dada was an art form that scoffed at traditional art. This movement represented abandonment from traditional artistic values. One of its chief contributors, Max Ernst, used his absurd imagery and innovative style to bridge two genres: Dada and Surrealism.

Dada Gaugin, Max Ernst, gauche on printed paper 1920. Source: http://www.artstor.org

Fluxus aimed to capture the spirit of change in its work, producing some questionable pieces. Yoko Ono was a part of this movement, as well as many others who scavenged their environment for scraps with which to assemble their rebellious works.

Apple, Yoko Ono, performance 1966. Source: http://www.artstor.org

The rise of Pop Art was more a spontaneous combustion than an organized movement. A nearly grass-roots movement, artists produced images of the mass produced as a commentary on society at their time. By far the most well known pop artist is Andy Warhol, whose Campbell’s Soup Cans have given him an iconic status in the world of art.

Chicken Noodle from Campbell’s Soup I, Andy Warhol, color screen print 1968. Source: http://www.artstor.org

More on Fluxus

Aspen Multimedia Magazine, Issue 8, The Fluxus Issue

The preceeding link will lead you to the Fluxus issue of a multimedia magazine published in the late sixties and early seventies. The magazine in itself is an example of an innovative use of the impractical, however it is in this context being used strictly as a publication pertinent to my research. The 'magazine' was actually a box containing several pamphlets, postcards, audio recordings (phonograph) and in one issue, a spool of super 8 video film.

I stumbled upon this publication through my (as you can see) favorite art history quick reference tool, artlex.com while beginning my research on the Fluxus movement.

The magazine contains the explainations and plans of contemporary artists' upcoming projects. These artists included : Richard Serra, Steve Reich, Jackson Macklow, and Dennis Oppenheim.

It also contains a peculiar text entitled, "In Place of a Lecture, Three Musics for Two Voices." by Eleanor Antin and David Antin. In short, this text seems to be thus: the story of a farmer is told by a speaker (I shall here refer to as "A ") while this story is simultaneously analyzed by speakers "B" and "C". It seems to explore the thoughts that run through our minds as we listen to a prolongued lecture or story, but this is just a guess on my part. (Knowing the fluxists, it could have been anything.)

Also included are the photographs, "Parking Lot" by Ed Ruscha. One is simply an arial view of a parking lot in Los Angeles, while the other is a detail of the surface of the lot. It is not specified whether Ruscha considered the photograph of the lot to be his work of art or that he used the parking lot itself as the work of art and used the photograph as a means of recording the work of art, but the piece is said to be part of his major work Thirtyfour Parking Lots.

Fluxus

The following works are part of a movement called Fluxus which rejected every 'bourgeois' rule of art and produced works that have been constantly under scrutiny as to whether or not to consider them art.


Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986), Infiltration homogen für Konzertflügel (Homogeneous Infiltration for Piano), 1966, piano covered with felt and leather, 100 x 152 x 240 cm, Georges Pompidou Center, Paris.
source: artlex.com









Erik Dietman (Swedish, 1937-), The Unwell Saw, 1961, saw and bandage, 5 x 51 x 12 x 0 cm, Georges Pompidou Center, Paris. source: artlex.com

From Escher to Dada, the scope of the absurd in modern art

I have become thoroughly consumed by the world of the absurd in art. Especially in modern art, the impractical becomes a dominating theme. I have discovered, or rather, rediscovered artists like M.C. Escher and Max Ernst whose impractical imagery has become nearly iconic.










In the piece above, Concave and Convexby M.C. Escher , impracticality reigns supreme. It is one of many 'impossible building' images produced by the artist, who was particularly fascinated by geometric forms. His imaginitive assignment of geometry to the organic and visa versa create a playful starkness, a delightful impossibility that has rendered his work timeless.

Depth, M.C. Escher

Flatworms, M.C. Escher

The photo at the right, Marcel Duchamp's Readymades is an example of the movement of the impractical in pop art and the art of the 1960's. This movement was unusual as it focused on the use of consumerism to create actual works of art.

"What astonished [art dealers] was that none of these people knew what the others were doing. Out of the blue, it seemed, and simultaneously, they had broken with the whole modern abstract tradition and adopted a realistic subject matter of the most unexpected kind. they were not using real objects as their models, but pictures of real objects- pictures from the crassest, most banal commercial sources, from the mass media that all truly cultured persons despised....Tom Wesselmann had already begun to paint his "Great American Nudes" in up-to-date bathrooms, often with real bathroom fixtures as part of the decor. Robert Indiana was painting iconic canvases of what looked like road signs, lettered "EAT" or "DIE." Jim Dine was doing men's neckties and bathrobes. George Segal (the chicken farmer) had hit on a process for making ghostly plaster casts of his friends, which he placed in real-life settings such as doorways or telephone booths.

Claes Oldenburg...had even opened a "Store" down on ast Second Street, a real storefront that he stocked with painted plaster and papier-mache replicas of food, clothing, and the sort of cheap household goods available in cut-rate shops on Fourteenth Street." (Tomkins, 177.)



In addition to the pop art movement, another predominantly absurd artistic movement was Dada. The name for this movement arguably chosen at random from a dictionary, dada is defined by artlex.com as "An early twentieth century art movement which ridiculed contemporary culture and traditional art forms. The movement was formed to prove the bankruptcy of existing style of artistic expression rather than to promote a particular style itself. It was born as a consequence of the collapse during World War I of social and moral values which had developed to that time." Despite its heavy reliance on symbolism, Dadaist works are immensely visually absurd.










Max Ernst was a card-carrying Dadaist, as is evident in the above drawing (Untitled, 1919), but his work also grew out of the Dada category. Ernst is often accredited as being the link between Dada and Surrealism, as many of his works are considered to be part of the early surrealist movement. Surrealist images are also representative of the absurd, impractical element in the visual arts, as is illustrated by the image below.

Woman, Old Man, and Flower, Max Ernst


Sources

ArtLex Art Dictionary, http://www.artlex.com

The Graphic Work of M.C. Escher, translated from the Dutch by John E. Brigham; Wings Books, New York, 1996 ed.

Max Ernst: Dada and the Dawn of Surrealism, William A. Camfield; Prestel, Munich, 1993.

Off the Wall: Robert Rauschenberg and the At World of Our Time, Calvin Tomkin; p 177. Doubleday and Company, Inc., Garden City, New York; 1980.

My Research Topic

My research topic is 'The practicality of the impractical: artists who wear the shoes of the senseless and the absurd'. In essence, I will be researching artists and possibly art movements that don't seem to make any sense. (Hence, Brandon's Bird-o-Rama). I particularly like this topic because this is the kind of art I like to create - art for art's sake: no strings attached.

With this topic, it is necessary to have a sense of humor, because I have found that many people take senseless art way too seriously (as maybe I have with the slo-mo video). Sometimes artists just do things to be funny, and this simple quality is very refreshing for me to encounter.

I will be on the look-out for artists who don't seem to follow 'the rules', artists who could never hope to make a living with their work, and art that simply doesn't make any sense whatsoever, so if anyone finds anything interesting, please fill me in!

Driving your own studies and the benefits of research.

An artist is both a tactile and mental creator. The tactile aspect of art comes from a combination of talent and training, but the mental aspect can only come from an active mind searching hungrily for knowledge. The mind of an artist must be a dense archive of insights and observations for the artist to ever be successful beyond the bounds of mere commercialism. To gain this insight, an artist must constantly dig through the heap of human experiences and read the products of their labors. Essentially, a visionary artist is also an active researcher.

This need for personal research becomes especially pressing for college art students, as we attempt to learn more about not only our own artwork, but how to navigate the vast realms of 'the art world.' Because thousands of years of history (and prehistory) have created a tremendous wealth of human artworks and movements, and, what we now refer to as 'the art industry', it is beyond necessery for art students to have a steady compass to guide us through this boundless expanse of art. This compass can be attained through constant research.

Interesting Websites

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I found the following websites to be interesting:

Brandon Bird's Bird-o-Rama


This website is Brandon Bird's online portfolio. It showcases his strange paintings and drawings that combine traditional painting and drawing styles with contemporary pop culture icons. This website is interesting to me because I find that his paintings are not only funny on a very simple level, but they laugh at the seriousness of traditional paintings.

Slow Motion Challenge


The video on this website is done entirely in slow motion. It was the winner of a contest for the best slow-motion video. I found this video interesting because I was surprised by the actual skill that must have gone into making it. The quality of the picture is superb, and it is not only an attempt to capture things falling in slow motion, but it is a well thought out and fully assembled package. The film has a dominant style which is that it uses a strong frontal light source (most likely the built in light on the camera) in an otherwise low-light situation to create the sense of the surreal. This atmosphere is further established through the choice of subject. The filmmaker abstracts regular occurances through the use of slow motion to put forth a startling presentation.