"I have proof here!" Photography is the new painting. /Angelynn

My bibliography-making skills came in handy this week. Hurrah for all those tedious English papers and their bibliographies! I've been compiling books for the upcoming Collector's Series (which has, unfortunately, been cancelled this coming Saturday). And of course, naturally, I've been browsing and reading some of them as well. I am starting to realise that I'm really not a fan of the business and accounting parts of the museum work, but am interested instead in the intellectual and philosophical parts (discussions in Art Now! and etc.). But..we'll see where this experience will lead me.

So this week, we had Photography as our topic, and it's amazing: "Photography is the new painting." Photography was under a lot of scrutiny before the 1980s and it was difficult for society to accept it as a form of high art. The "new painting" (photography), taken through a machine with a click and printed out from another machine, was being compared with the conventional painting, laboured with hours of paint-brushes and strokes and colours and its textures and authenticity. It seemed far from right with people. Where are the art in photography? Some photographers tried to test the limits of the camera and would literally throw their cameras up in the air while leaving the shutters to automatically click with every f-stop: all about what the camera can and cannot do. Photographers really tried to make photography art in the code of paintings, such as composition and contrast. One even emphasised on making everything by his own: he would take a mugshot of a person, print that portrait in a gigantic scale, make another canvas (yes, he made the canvas), and paint the exact large-scale mugshot as he had printed. There, he would have one made by machines and another made by his own hands. And these large-scale portraits were really daunting not just in their size, but also the identity it photographs; the picture almost is the person. Audience would feel that natural personal bubble and uneasiness when they stepped too closely to these portraits; it's almost too intimate, being that close to someone so vulnerable.

We always think that pictures should be a really quick snapshot of our lives, exactly as it is, no lies. But actually, we all have this for-the-picture smile! A good majority of the pictures taken are actually quite laboured over. At a party, you hear Smile!, and someone will be fidgeting with their hair or checking their teeth, but everyone will be donning that same artificial smile. You think pictures are proofs of moment in life, that they actually happened. You hear The Photo Never Lies (this applies more heavily back when Photoshop wasn't the crazy phenomenon that it is now), but in fact, it doesn't depict the actual reality either. Pictures were usually seen as a snapshot showing a story, like a painting would.

A photographer we gnawed on for a good amount of time was Tina Barney, who was a photographer who teased the notion of "the picture is a story." She's famous for her on-going large-scale portraits of the relationships of her family and close friends. Her works often instilled a sense of ambiguity paired with aestheticism. Instead of "the picture is a story," her photographs were intimate and almost accidental, and most importantly, part of a narrative. For example, instead of "Ah, the woman is setting supper on the table for the banquet," Barney inspired uncertainty: what are they talking about that would make her look so defensive, why is he posed so strangely, why is the man behind turning over when there's no action happening in the foreground, etc. Artificial naturalness and accidentalness. Some of the audience didn't understand how this could be art, as the composition was not complete or balanced (a leg or an arm could be out of the frame), and there was no clear subject or plot.

Photography was a difficult art to invest in by collectors and investors, as ink was fugitive back before the 1980s. And by the 80s, red was almost gone. Furthermore, photography could be so easily reprinted, and the medium was more volatile (compared with an oil painting that can last up to thousands of years with proper maintenance and management). So how can this be a safe field to invest in? When technology stepped up, artists were able to have more reliable machines, materials, and licences. Production and reproduction was more convenient. Once photography gained more faith, it opened the doors to the art that made contemporary art possible today.

Sadly, that is all I can reproduce here for you, as the discussion ran far too lengthy to be pasted exactly onto this post. We covered so much more, and I wish I could share everything with you (if only). Anne-Marie said we'll have subsequent Photography sessions since we opened up many other issues by the end of the Art Now! session; I really hope so! Also, keep in mind that you can always join us on select Wednesdays from 5:30 to 6:30 with a small fee. Check out MoCA's website for more information.

For now, I am running a bit late for MoCA today; I got too carried away and wrote too much for too long for you!

Until the next,

Axk.

Too much in too little. /Angelynn.

Before I start, I want to apologise for my delayed post, as I usually post near the beginning of the week. However, I have fallen miserably ill this week, and haven't been awake long enough to write for you! So here I go.. (Disclaimer: For any glaring errors here, I blame my fever.)

This week's Art Now! session is my favourite of the series so far: Identity Politics & The Culture Wars.

Censorship, freedom, and the right of access. It seems that censorship actually gives more attention to the work in question than if it were left alone, as the media coverage raises awareness. Does this censorship hinder our freedom to information? What does cloaking actually do? We talked about how there were "I-can-see-this-because-it-does-not-apply-to-me-but-no-one-else-can" situations where there is this awkward and ridiculous idea of who is allowed to see/know what. People would protest something that they have no idea what it's about (like in the case of Saatchi's Sensation Show), and this would help fuel the wars.

Take David Wojnarowicz's A Fire In My Belly (click through link for video), for example.. There's a segment of the film that shows ants crawling over Jesus and his crucifix. After protests from a right-wing Catholic group and members of Congress over the aforementioned scene, the video was removed from an exhibition of gay portraiture at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture." So Dr. Ivey asked us to look at a screenshot of the ants over crucifix, then asked for our thoughts. How and why is this so offensive? One suggested that ants are considered disgusting creatures, and could be seen as desecrating the religious figure. Or perhaps it is because the raw image explicitly shows that Jesus is a corpse, a dead worldly figure of the past? Maybe we see ourselves as the tiny ants (from atop a building, "we look like ants")? On the other hand, ants are creatures that live in a complex and harmonious community, so the segment could be perceived as humbling and paying tribute.

We continued and talked about the museum's curatorial department. It is crucial that the museum choose works to display not only because they are "great works of art," but also because they have significant implications. It's not enough that the department pick a piece that is important; it must package the work in a manner in which the public is able to comprehend when seeing it on display. This responsibility weighs heavily on museums. This part of MOCA was put to the test in 2009, when MOCA Tucson was under fire for having an art work that features phallic shapes (Big Dicks by Jaime Scholnick). Republican politicians created a stir about the piece, demonizing it as "pornographic." The series of newspaper and billboard attacks were funded by the group, Tucson Vision Committee, which was supported by Bruce Ash, a Republican national committeeman. They pushed on and attacked MOCA for using tax-payers' money to subsidize the dirty Big Dicks exhibition. However, MOCA is not funded by the city, as it receives its funds by grants (free money, essentially), and Big Dicks was a title for one particular work of art (not a whole exhibition). MOCA's curator Anne-Marie Russell defended the value of Scholnick's work by stating the fact that "there are penises in art" from Praxiteles to Michelangelo. And it's true, many works of art sanctioned by the Catholic Church are far more violent and explicit than several semi-abstract Wharhol-colored phallic shapes on a canvas.

Overall, our topics spanned across so many works and artists that I wish our lectures could carry on for a few more hours, to allow us the opportunity of a tad more in-depth study. It's just so dense! Aside from the lecture and discussions, I learned more about how receipts and some funds are handled in MOCA (invoices, donations, memberships, etc.), as I worked mainly with Rachelle this week. Things are going smoothly so far. I'm trying to direct my thoughts towards my final product more heavily, now that I realise my initial idea might not work out as I had imagined it would...but we'll see! (Need to speak with Mr. Ramirez and Anne-Marie!)

Until next time,
Angelynn.

P.S.: There's my boring title, ruined by the obvious labeling of my name. Bah.

There was a section in the kitchen shelf entirely for tea. /Angelynn.

Originally, I didn't think I would be writing one day after another. I had planned to update this SRP blog twice a week or so, but I thought of how drastic is the change from my first day to my second in MOCA.. and I realise there's no way I can wait until Saturday to write about the fill I had today.

I had my first curating experience. Immediately after I entered the building, Anne-Marie asked what I thought about physical museum work, something off the desk. "I'm down with it!" was my reply. She warned me that I'll have a day of bureaucratic and physical museum work; I had no objections whatsoever. I like a good workout. In fact, I welcome it.

Moments later, I was introduced to Aili Schmeltz and Jocko Weyland, both artists whom I will be working with to curate her exhibition (that will open to the public by next Saturday). We went on a hunt for scissors so that we may start unwrapping her art piecees' parts. All the parts came in to MOCA from Los Angeles around two in the morning of Wednesday. During this unpackaging process, four other colleagues joined: Marcie (another intern), Christian (a volunteer), Candace (assistant curator), and Ashley (another intern). I was the newbie, haha.

For the rest of the day, we ran back and forth around the building, cleaning the room of all furniture and pre-existing miscellaneous items. Then once all the art pieces were unwrapped, we assembled what soon became looming styrofoam giants. Some of the parts didn't fit together perfectly, and we had to try and find ways to remedy the gaps. After toiling over "Does it fit?"s, we had to decided what goes where. This was extremely important because not only did we have to keep in mind the flow of the audience's path, but as well as the exhibition's first impression (when you step into the museum and take the first sweep into the exhibit's room), the harmony of everything and their positions, the noise of the atmosphere around each object, etc. Frankly, I didn't think it would be as complex as it was. But it was complex in all the right ways, as the results yielded great satisfaction! Not only was it pleasing to the eye and mind, it was enlightening, with all the new information absorbed. After the exhibition was set, I removed more unwanted things from the previous Gala in the hall, such as floaty balls, large styrofoam boards, and plastic wraps.

By the time I finished the tidy-up, it was time for my first Art Now! session. Art Now! is a series of lectures on a certain area of art. This series is about 1980s art, taught by a University of Arizona professor named Paul (I wasn't able to catch his last name, apologies). Before we begin, we can help ourselves to some healthy snacks, like carrots, broccolis, grape tomatoes, celery sticks, and pretzel sticks, and some wine. The lecture starts and finishes. Then after each lecture is a meaty discussion, followed by more snacks and wine. Today, Paul spoke about Postmodernism, Appropriation, and Signification. What is 'originality'? Is there such as a set notion of originality? If one took a picture of a picture of a picture (third generation), would it still be representing what the first generation's work represented? Would it signify the same thing? We talked about how postmodernism artists focused not on creating their art, but taking parts of things and assembling them together to give them a new meaning and signify a new notion. If one took a billboard advertisement and stripped the picture of it's advertisement text, is the remainder art? Is it original? What about the reference? Context is key; everything depends on context and juxtaposition. We talked about the so-called "nature" that was weaved by the culture to guard the female sex into this realm of the private and spiritual, and how this limited the women in every aspect. Women, the private and spiritual and impulsive and emotional. Men, the public, the physical, the rough, the steady. We talked about how artists believed that if one were to copy a work of art perfectly, then one could create the same essence of the original art piece. This was only a random sample of what was covered..

I was fascinated by the depth of his lecture and the heavy atmosphere of genuine curiousity and eagerness for art knowledge. This was the best part of my day. And then I said my thank-you's and goodbye's for the day.

Overall, today's activities were great learning experiences, from how to install an exhibition to how has mass media helped the art culture. The difference between yesterday's and today's agenda kept me on my toes and has fueled my excitement for my internship. I'm very fortunate to be working with such chill, passionate, and amazing people!

Oh yeah, and you've no idea how elated I was to find the tea section. They have Japanese tea. Good authentic Japanese tea. What's up with that? They know where it's at, that's what's up.
(Pardon my lazy language; it's two in the morning, and I am slacking and lacking.)

Until the next,
Axk.