nevertheless, she persisted.: December 2017

Saturday, December 23, 2017

Dec. 17 - Dec. 23 | Week Vlog.

sam's holiday/winter songs

i don't know if you guys know this yet but i'm basically the grinch. i hate when people listen to christmas music before december & i don't like to listen to it until it's really close to christmas. my sister hates that bc she loves christmas songs but i dunno, it's just not my thing

however, there are a couple of winter/holiday songs here & there that i don't mind listening to. most of these are the same ones from the last year's christmas music list (click here to check it out) but i've added a few new songs for this year (don't worry, still posting a december playlist for non-christmas songs):

Baby It's Cold Outside- Ariana Grande ft. Mac Miller

Santa Baby (Cover)- Ariana Grande & Liz Gillies

Fool's Holiday- All Time Low

Merry Christmas, Kiss My A**- All Time Low

Christmases When You Were Mine- Taylor Swift

Christmas Must Be Something More- Taylor Swift

You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch (Cover)- Alessia Cara

Nothing For Christmas (Cover)- New Found Glory

What's This- The Nightmare Before Christmas Soundtrack

circa 1960: postmodernism | origins of contemporary art

shift: modernism being challenged, signaling of end of modernism & start of post-modernism

reasons for shift: trauma of WWII
-marks 20th century as century of global warfare
-creating divisions & interlinking across nations

artists become skeptical of modernism as unifying project bc it seems to just be bringing war
abstract expressionism in U.S. gets wrapped up in cold war cultural politics

post-WWII sectors of germany (germany divided)
west germany: international contemporary art founded

informel movement emerging from france:

-informal = "unformed"

-sense of disembodied drips

-no sense of sublime

volonte de puissance (will to power)- jean dubuffet 1946
humorous response to post-WWII
interest in low, base, bodily
paint mixed w mud/dirt/sand
nude man, pinned down/flattened

olympia- dubuffet
commentary on manet's olympia
literal flatness

outsider/visionary art= art made by people who aren't trained professionally

-dubuffet believed it to be the most original
-anti-modernist gesture on it's attack of self-improvement, actually learning how to art

champigny blue- wols 1951

head of a hostage no. 22- jean fautrier 1944
responding to experiences of WWII
flicker btwn abstraction & figuration
suggests vision of mutilated flesh
anonymous victims & bodies

foyer d'art brut
galerie rene drouin, paris, 1947

_____________________________________

U.S. provides promising vision after the war: capitalist democracy, higher standard of living, advanced, powerful nation

life magazine, 1952
consumer culture
self-betterment through consumption
knock-off mondrian & pollock

the connoisseur- norman rockwell 1962
old man enthralled by abstract expressionist painting

pollock = bohemian artist --> tool of consumerism

the legacy of jackson pollock- allan kapow:

taught abstract expressionism but can't work in the mode

pollock "destroyed" painting

texture of pollock's canvases = not exactly flat

multi-media = not exactly medium specific

an apple shrine- allan kaprow 1960
happenings= participatory events
static spaces that you can enter
multi-sensory experience
response to pollock paintings bc he felt sucked in by them (?)

1960s:

-civil rights movement

-second wave feminism

-student movements

-assassination of JFK & MLK

-man on the moon

-VN war

-first televised presidential debate btwn kennedy & nixon

artists cannot look away/not respond to these conditions/problems --> re-emergence of avant-garde = neo-avant-garde in the 1960s-70s in aftermath of WWII

artists trying to engage reality as way to comment on the world around them

-challenging in conventional notions of painting- don't follow medium specificity
-turn to the things that are related to the "every day," familiar materials & objects
-work against art as transcendent & apart from the every day
-more performative & affordable work

cultural turn: image culture + mass media

delayed reception of duchamp

-participation + dimension of every day

"the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact w the external world by deciphering & interpreting its inner qualifications & thus adds his contribution to the creative act" -the creative act, duchamp

the name neo-dada circulates in the 1960s as well

black market- robert rauschenberg 1961
piece that needed viewer participation
paint & assemblage

marilyn diptych- andy warhol 1962
popart
mass culture elevated to fine art
modification of the self
repeated & deteriorating silkscreen image
face looks robotic & loses color throughout repetition

lavender disaster- warhol 1963

birmingham race riot- warhol 1964

emergence of minimalism:

untitled (three L-beams)- robert morris 1965
austere, colorless
simplicity = easily understandable
sit directly on the floor
confronted viewer & activated the whole space

untitled (mirror cubes)- morris 1965
austere, colorless
simplicity = easily understandable
sit directly on the floor
confronted viewer & activated the whole space
reflect body of viewer
forced to walk all around it & notice subtle shifts that happen depending on the angle
viewer completes the work of art

Thursday, December 21, 2017

downtown photoventures

ad·ven·ture
adˈven(t)SHər,ədˈven(t)SHər/ (noun)

"an unusual and exciting, typically hazardous, experience or activity,
especially through the exploration of unknown territory."

maybe my downtown adventures aren't that unusual or hazardous, but they're definitely exciting & an exploration of unknown territory. every time i go downtown w allison, she takes me somewhere new

anthony, allison, & i planned to head downtown to take anthony's senior pictures (he's finally graduating + going to the same college as me: the university of houston- go coogs!)

we talked about several locations we wanted to hit up & even though it rained a bit, we didn't let that stop us (i'm the only one that complained about the rain but i really hate rain & i didn't wanna get my camera wet)

location #1: the kitchen at the dunlavy

(3422 Allen Pkwy, Houston, TX 77019)