Arts Appropriations Disputes: The Musical!

By Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts
Washington Post, Friday, April 18, 2008; Page C03

If you followed the culture wars circa 1990 -- the angry battles over federal funding for sexually charged works by artists like Robert Mapplethorpe and Karen Finley-- you probably thought at some point, "Hey, this would make a great musical comedy!"

Well, so did the man at the center of it all -- John Frohnmayer, the National Endowment for the Arts chairman forced to quit in 1992 in the crossfire between conservative pols like Sen. Jesse Helms and liberal-learning arts advocates.

And the retired lawyer actually wrote that musical, a fictionalized and heavily satirical take called "Spin," which debuts at Oregon State University next month. It features a Helmsian senator (played by David Ogden Stiers, Maj. Winchester from "M*A*S*H") and a wacky performance artist-provocateur whose flash-point artwork is "a vomit flag" on the Mall. ...

Read more here.

New Crayola Crayon "Colors"

The Irascible Professor's commentary on the new names given to the Crayola crayon colors.

Color Me Ishmael.
Guest commentary by Carolyn Foster Segal.

Color me annoyed. Color me exasperated. Or despairing. Or frustrated. Just don't -- even though it would be the most precise description--color me blue.

Crayola, in honor of the 50th anniversary of its 64-box, recently sponsored a contest inviting children to send in their ideas for new names for eight of its crayons.

The company supposedly received over 20,000 entries. So, color me baffled -- I just can't figure out why, out of all those entries, the judges chose the eight new names announced last Wednesday. Color me confused -- because I can't find a single color mentioned. ...

Click here for the rest of the article.

Blank Canvas

From the April 21, 2008 edition of The Breeze.

Works of art graced the campus in March
by Jodie Cavalier

"March Madness" has got nothing on the art scene at Chaffey this past month. March highlighted three well coordinated art events as part of the Cucamonga Peak/Art Avalanche during the two weeks after spring break. These were truly unmissable, unless you simply didn't go to school. Public artwork was displayed all over campus in the Temporary Art Park (TAP), from down south near the Breeze office to hidden niches on the Wignall patio and even unexpectedly in the Student Services and Administration building. In addition, the Wignall Museum presented a group show curated by Andi Campognone that featured former Student Invitational participants, while the Chaffey Art Organization (CAO) unveiled reNEW/reSTORE, a shop selling original art objects based on the theme of renewal, inside the Wignall project space.

The Chaffey College Art Committee and Art Department sponsored the Temporary Art Park. After the 125th Anniversary celebration on March 29th, many gathered at the Wignall Museum to attend the much anticipated art walk and artists reception. Viewers had the opportunity to take a guided tour around the campus with the TAP subcommittee chair Stan Hunter, co-chair Misty Burruel, and several of the artists to learn about the artworks.

One piece in particular, Filings by Matthew Hebert, encouraged viewers to touch and interact with the work. The piece requires you to look through peepholes in the drawers of a file cabinet and to trigger dioramas playing inside by unlocking the drawer using the button next to the handle. The dioramas, powered by solar panels, critique the cultivation and over-consumption of fossil fuels. Without knowing how to use it, many people looked at the work on the grassy hill near the Social Science building and never approached and experienced the artwork fully. Luckily, many caught on to the abundance of work presented on campus and went to the Wignall Museum for a TAP map to guide them.

Number 27 on the TAP map directs you to the Wignall Museum's exhibition and art sale 30 Years: Student Invitational Exhibition Artists Revisited. This group show invited former participants of the Student Invitational from several decades to come back to display and sell their work in the Museum. All of the artwork in the museum were for sale, and a portion of the proceeds went toward future events planned by the Wignall and the Chaffey Art Organization. One of the most talked about works in the show was the towering sculpture of cement spray paint cans titled UEC (P) #1 by David Delgado. The piece was equipped with over 200 molded cement cans that hung from the rafters down to an asphalted section of the floor.

Observers of all ages were fascinated and thoroughly enjoyed the great variety of artwork on campus.

[click for images]

The Old Guitarist

I was looking through my World Book Enciclopedia DVD doing some research for school when i came across this painting. The Old Guitarist by Pablo Piccasso. It made me realize the huge role that color plays on emotions when looking at a painting. Here, the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso uses blues to create contrasting moods. Picasso evokes a sense of sadness and loneliness in the painting. It makes you feel extremely sad for the old and lonely man.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. What do you guys think?

Carolingian miniatures - Medieval art

The left miniature is from the gospel of Ebbo: Saint Mathew(before 823 A.D.) The right miniature is from the Four gospels (845-882 A.D.) I encountered these online at http://www.hp.uab.edu/image_archive/cr-03/index.html

I find it is very interesting to compare how the art has evolved during Medieval period using these two images. The left image is very dramatic, even theatrical I should say. All the lines sketched on the dress and background, his hair... shows as if the wind blows so hard that St. Mathew is just seconds from being blown away from his chair. His face expression shows a bit of fear, and also deep concentration, look how big his eyes are.. His fingers are portrayed in such awkwardness, but keep the same fluent movement of waves, probably from the strong wind. Even from looking at the frame alone, the waves on the frame created a feeling as if the wind blows out of the picture.. On both, there is a small angel flying on the upper right corner. Only on the left, the angel is less detailed, but I assume that here, the religious experience is so powerful and well presented that there is no need in so much detail.

On the right picture, I am not sure about who this figure represent, but the individual is sited at the same position, only he seem to be reading instead of writing. Here, the scene is less dramatic, bit I think it is also powerful because now, instead of using lines or sketches, the artist is using the power of the light, or Ora, that surrounds the figure to show its religious greatness. But itself, I found the background to be more calm, more detailed.

What do you think??

The Color of Life - at The Getty Villa

Has anyone checked out this exhibition yet? I went to the Getty Villa two weeks ago and just about had a heart attack. Unfortunetely, I didn't get to The Color of Life collection until about 20 minutes before the museum closed. For those of you who gag at the thought of ancient art, have no fear! There was a nice variety of different time periods (statues dating from Egypt's Old Kingdom to Contemporary).

Some artists took ancient Roman statues and painted replicas of them (there were a few examples for each piece) to get an idea of what they may have looked like at that time. The majority of them were pretty bright and gaudy, but it was amazing to see the existing pigment on the originals. There were a few polychromy (the use of multiple colors) statues in the exhibition, a reconstruction of the Augustus of Prima Porta (most definetely worth driving out there to see, lol), and an interesting wax sculpture called Anatomical Venus. I guess it was originally used for scientific study (it was like those HeShe plastic bodies you had in Jr. High science classes, you know, where you could take out all the organs?) and it was insanely realistic, and rather gruesome.



The exhibition continues on until the 23rd of June, so go see it!

What is art?

Okay, this made me laugh.

Phantom Sightings

For those of you taking my contemporary art course you might enjoy this exhibition opening tomorrow at LACMA. You might also recognize this artwork by Christina Fernandez (Lavanderia #1, 2002). It was exhibited at Chaffey College in the Wignall Museum's Leaving Aztlan in 2006.


Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement

April 6, 2008–September 1, 2008

Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement is the largest exhibition of cutting-edge Chicano art ever presented at LACMA. Chicano art, traditionally described as work created by Americans of Mexican descent, was established as a politically and culturally inspired movement during the counterculture revolutions of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This exhibition explores the more experimental tendencies within the Chicano art movement—ones oriented less toward painting and declarative polemical assertion than toward conceptual art, performance, film, photo- and media-based art, and "stealthy" artistic interventions in urban spaces. The exhibition includes approximately 125 works in all media, including painting and sculpture as well as installation, conceptual, video, performance art, and intermedia works that incorporate film, digital, and sound art. Artists featured are photographer Christina Fernandez, who documents the poetic and “phantom” in the urban landscape; Mario Ybarra Jr., who creates performances, site-specific installations and intermedia works; the “intermedia synaesthesia” of the seminal conceptual art group Asco; and the New York-based artist Nicola Lopez, who creates dramatic installations with drawings that extend from the wall into the gallery.