A few weeks ago, a friend and I went to First Friday on Broad. It was pretty cold that night so we didn't do much walking around, but I did get to see some really cool art. Some of the stuff that stuck out in particular was this one gallery that had a bunch of black and white photos of different things. Despite this having been done a million times before, the subjects included things such as strangely organized groups of people which was really interesting to me. In another gallery, the artist used certain chemicals on photo paper to distort images and create patterns. This exhibit was very cool as well because I had never really seen photography materials being used like that. One final gallery that we visited had this piece in the middle with little pieces of paper on it. The directions on the side of it said to write what we wanted to make. Being who we are my friend and I said orange juice, but some of the answers were quite incredible. It was strange but informative in a way to see what everyone else had put up there, some things silly and some too deep to understand, From this experience, I've learned that I'd like to get more involved with photography and elements of it as well as interactive works of art.
For this connection post, I read about the 1913 Armory show and the ism that isn't. Both of these articles contain an underlying theme: the public being confused about art. In the article about the Armory show, the people did not understand the new avant-garde work that was being shown. In the other article, the public did not support the "New Neurotic Realism." What I find particularly interesting about these two articles is how negatively the general people react to changes in the art world. This really shows how there are popular opinions about art in the world and when we stray away from those, nobody, besides artists, really know how to react to the situation. People don't like change and these new ways of creating art baffled them. Since the olden days, there have been types and styles of art that are seen as more "professional" or "better." But what is this based upon? In my opinion, people see art as "better" if it looks like more time and thought has gone into it. These new "styles" of art does not appeal as much because it looks messier or it looks like it does not require as much effort as previous styles. This can especially be seen in "Nude Descending a Staircase" by Marcel Duchamp. Everyone was so used to how nudes were typically portrayed so this more abstract way of presenting them angered people. Even if it is not a change from photorealism to abstract expressionism, little changes in art scare people (especially during the times when these things happened).
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AuthorGrace Barron Archives
June 2018
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