Travels with Isabella 1 (2008), Luisa Rabbia—“
Predicting the Present”—an interview with science fiction writer Cory Doctorow in the
Harvard Business Review.
His answer:
I believe that from the artist’s perspective, today’s art must presuppose copying. If you are making art that you expect people not to copy, then you are not making contemporary art.
A bold claim; it places the activity of copying at the center of contemporary art-making. I struggled with this at first. Maybe I was in denial, but I didn’t want to believe that “copying” could be the prevailing zeitgeist. After several days researching and writing this essay, I’m coming to see the light of our Xerox-infatuated culture . . .
Let’s resurrect that boogie of a concept, “postmodernism”. After John Barth, famed contemporary novelist, first condemned postmodernism as the “literature of exhaustion”, he later recanted and saw the possibility for a “replenishment” and a transcendent “synthesis” in literature. He wrote:
The ideal postmodernist novel will somehow rise above the quarrel between realism and irrealism, formalism and ‘contentism’, pure and committed literature” to combine the most vital aspects of past literatures.(1)
The exact terms that Barth uses are not as important as his idea of synthesis.
I believe contemporary art, and specifically contemporary fiction, sees itself as a synthesis of genres, styles, approaches, materials, and modes. This has to do with the tendency in contemporary art to distrust “totalizing mechanisms” and “grand narratives”, and instead to employ ironic juxtaposition, pastiche (mixing high and low art), and imbuing works with a naïve sense of playfulness.
(2)Novelists aren’t the only ones recycling outmoded genres and repackaging them, musicians are too. Portland band, the Decembrists, loosely based their fourth album,
The Crane Wife, on a Japanese folk tale; but listening to the album, you’re more likely to attribute the lyrics to 19th century Irish literature. While combining many styles, baroque pop, progressive rock, and folk music, the
transcendent,
replenishing synthesis John Barth refers to becomes increasingly self-evident.
We are living in the age of the re-mix; where the creative act of re-mixing and combining styles and vignettes claims an originality of its own. This may be scary to some, but to others it means unfettered creative freedom.
One musician and producer from Israel, known as Kutiman, rose to fame almost over night with his music video project
ThruYOU. Kutiman created a seven track wonder from video material exclusively found on YouTube. Each track mixes samples, such as drumbeats and base lines, to produce seamless melodies and elaborate compositions. The tracks employ a variety of instruments (guitars, pianos, drums, harps, synthesizers), and reflect a variety of influences (R&B, Funk, Reggae, Jungle, Afro and Jazz).
(3)
Under the same sky 5 (2009), Luisa Rabbia A parallel to Kutiman is Luisa Rabbia in the art world. Recently I read an interview with Rabbia in
Art in America (June-July 2009). Rabbia’s range of works include drawings, collages, video art, porcelain and paper-mache sculptures. In her most recent project, she uses images on the web that have been made by someone else, much like Kutiman uses video clips from YouTube, and integrates these images into a “non-existent landscape”.
The collagist impulse in contemporary art is more than merely combining images, sounds, or pieces of text. I see it as
inherently social and global—a departure from the artist’s role as private and alienated from society. With technology that knits us together in a million different ways, there is now an augmented awareness of each other.
Local issues become more prominent and so do seemingly random intersections between different parts of the world. Along with the freedom implicit in new technologies and mediums, artists embrace a mixture of narratives and feel comfortable (and liberated) creating their own story from the varicolored cloth of the many.
Rabbia writes, “What is different now is the fact that the images are not mine, but come from the experiences of other people. I stare at the images a long time, and try to bring my own journey into their journey.”
A la Guerre comme a la Guerre #1, Michael Cheval, I also use the term “collage” as a metaphor for combining disparate elements into a singular tableau. Michael Cheval, a Russian artist
who I’ve written about before, borrows the style and technique of 17th century Dutch art and combines them with his own surrealistic dreamscapes. The historical elements in Cheval’s paintings, 17th century dress, courtly figures, jesters are
not historical references; but instead part of an inventive and original assemblage.
Sendai Mediatheque, Sendai-shi, Japan (2001), Toyo Ito
I’ve always felt that architecture, more so than any of the other arts, presages the future. There may not be any truth to this, but it has served me as a guide. Toyo Ito is the Japanese architect who was commissioned to design the Berkley Museum of Art in California. His buildings evoke the complexity, maddening paradoxes, and transcendent, replenishing synthesis of contemporary art.
To begin with, none of his buildings look alike.(4) They are independent of a dominant mode or aesthetic style. Furthermore, Ito experiments with reversing expectations in modern architecture and design. The Sendai Mediatheque, a library and exhibition space, has the trappings of a Modernist building—from the distance, the building looks like a conventional glass box—but upon closer investigation, one notices “white latticework tubes that pierce the top of the structure”.(5) The juxtaposition of Modernist rigidity and outlandish, outer-space tubes extending “down through the entire structure” imbues the building with a lavish sense of freedom.
Kaohsiung Stadium, Kaohsiung, Taiwan (2009), Toyo Ito
The 44,000-seat Kaohsiung stadium designed by Ito goes even further with pushing the boundaries of contradiction. A stadium that resembles a giant coiled snake combines the expansiveness of a super-stadium while maintaining a transparency and openness between inner and outer worlds. Nicolai Ouroussoff, from the
New York Times, writes, “Mr. Ito’s stadium seeks to maximize our awareness of it while still creating a sense of enclosure.”
I love how Ito describes his architecture. “I am looking for something more primitive, a kind of abstraction that still has a sense of the body. The in between is more interesting to me.”
Contemporary art revels in the spaces
in between. In between materials, styles, stories, histories, and techniques. Contemporary art is the art of
perpetual discovery, an art without a destination, only entry points and possibilities. And if it is true what Corey Doctorow says about today’s art presupposing copying, then it is only because copying is merely a first step towards something greater and less recognizable.
More essays are available at Escape into LifeImage Credits:
Travels with Isabella 1 (2008), Luisa RabbiaUnder the same sky 5 (2009), Luisa RabbiaA la Guerre comme a la Guerre #1, Michael ChevalSendai Mediatheque, Sendai-shi, Japan (2001), Toyo ItoKaohsiung Stadium, Kaohsiung, Taiwan (2009), Toyo Ito
I was a little bummed two years ago when Marvel Comics killed off the original Captain America, Steve Rogers. However, as you may know, this month Marvel is bringing Rogers back in a five issue limited series entitled Captain America: Reborn. To celebrate, I did a recolor of my Tron Disc template to create a papercraft model that represents the good Captain's shield set in a stone base. Hope you enjoy it.
I enjoy nicely detailed architecture papercraft. I am not sure why I don't post more of it, especially since I am an architect by trade. I will have to do better in the future.^^ This papercraft saloon is a free sample from Whitewash City which produces scale model building templates for use in Old West tabletop RPG games. All the models at Whitewash City were designed by Eric Hotz and are 30mm scale (also known as "S scale" or 1:64 scale). The PDF template for the saloon may be downloaded here.
Last week was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon mission, so the thoughts of some papercrafters (like myself) have been turned towards papercraft models of spacecraft. Here is one of the best crafted models I have seen in the spacecraft category. This 1:48 scale Apollo 11 Lunar Module was created by Japanese designer U-Don. If you would like to attempt his ultra-detailed papercraft yourself, U-Don has provided a 13 page template along with 14 pages of photographic instructions on his web page here.
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This is a full size papercraft model of the helmet that the character Alan Bradley wears after he is teleported inside a computer in the Tron 2.0 video game. Alan is the computer programmer who wrote the Tron program. The Alan Bradley character was played by actor Bruce Boxleitner in the Tron movie and voiced by Boxleitner in the video game. Except for the more elaborate decorative pattern, this helmet is very similar to helmets seen in the original movie. I was very pleased with how well the parts of this model fit together when I was building it. The finished model is sturdy enough to be worn, but it may require some padding inside to get it to fit correctly. Here is the template info:
Their starting price is only $125 so I may just have to see what they can do with a Scottie. I really do adore their use of unexpected materials and their playful style. Check out RonandJoe.com and tell them Art Paw sent ya.
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Hopefuly, this cube, and tens of other artcubes, can make a difference. Yet for the moment its futuristic, mirror-like shape seems all but ironic.
Cover Art By Jill Beninato
"Make A Wish"
As I have said before, monkeys always make me smile, and this one is no exception. This colorful monkey is the work of Belgian artist "Fossfor" and may be downloaded from her Flickr page here. As if you couldn't tell, the title of this paper toy is "Monkeyking".^^
