James Owen
National Geographic News
May 29, 2008
Stonehenge stood as giant tombstones to the dead for centuries, new radiocarbon dating suggests.
The site appears to have been intended as a cemetery from the very start, around 5,000 years ago—centuries before the giant sandstone blocks were erected—the new study says.
Sad news.
Prolific and influential American artist Robert Rauschenberg died Monday, May 12th at the age of 82.
A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.
Building on the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he helped obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art — not to mention between art and life.
Mr. Rauschenberg was also instrumental in pushing American art onward from Abstract Expressionism, the dominant movement when he emerged, during the early 1950s. He became a transformative link between artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and those who came next, artists identified with Pop, Conceptualism, Happenings, Process Art and other new kinds of art in which he played a signal role.
No American artist, Jasper Johns once said, invented more than Mr. Rauschenberg. Mr. Johns, John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Mr. Rauschenberg, without sharing exactly the same point of view, collectively defined this new era of experimentation in American culture.
Graffiti has been a symbol of urban cities across the United States for over three decades now. The work has always been shunned down as vandalism, or just meaningless junk put on walls by gang members; but if you actually take a long hard look at what most of these individuals do, you would appreciate this amazing art form. Ok, yes, there are those bad apples who mark things up just because, or do it for street gang purposes, but there are hosts of individuals who have a passion for the artistic manner of graffiti. The colors, lines and compositions in these works are amazing. These people are using paint, many times out of a spray can, and applying it to large unpredictable canvasses. That is not by any means easy. It takes skill and hardwork to do one of these extrodanary pieces that range from simple dimension letters that have very impressive color schemes, techniques and mixes, to extremely intricate three-dimensional figures that impress and drop the jaws of the most conservative art critics.
THERE IS THE MOST INTERESTING EXHIBIT AT BOWERS MUSEUM OF CULTURAL ART IN SANTA ANA!!! The Terracotta Army meaning "soldier and horse funerary statues" is an eclectic group of statues ranging from warriors, chariots, horses, officials, acrobats, strongmen, and musicians created in 210 BCE. These statues that were made to serve and protect the first Chinese emperor Shi Huang Di of the Quinn empire in his after-life were only recently discovered in 1974 by a group of local farmers who were looking for a water hole around Mt.Li in China (interesting enough the material used for the sculptures was gathered from the same area).
According to some historians it is believed over 700,000 government laborers and craftsman were used to create the sculptures, neo-acropolis, and burial (which has been excavated but unopened). The life-size sculptures which vary in size, hairstyle, and armor according to rank were put together with an incredibly advanced "production line" system that assembled the separate pieces including hands, torso, face, and feet into one mold. The sculpture are within four different pits that were constructed with solid dirt and concrete!
The best thing about this Terracotta army, we Chaffey students don't have to go to China to view the sculptures because the Santa Ana Bowers museum will be having them on display
I read a very interesting article in the Los Angeles Times on a San Quentin State Prison convict turned artist in the 1950's. In 1953 Alberto Santos was incarcerated in San Quentin, during this time an opportunity for inmates to submit mural sketches to cover the cafeteria's wall was administered. Santos submitted his sketches, won the contest, and was commissioned to paint the mural.
The area where the mural was to be painted was originally only one side of the cafeteria but soon after the warden saw his work, he ordered Santos to paint all three side of the room. The 12 by 100 foot mural Santos created is a chronological time line of California history. Depictions of the State's history in a Diego Rivera and Expressionism style includes images of the golden state bridge, Groucho Marx, WWII bombers, and Fransiscan missonaries.
The mural which was done with a sienna raw oil paint in the color red was completed in a two year span and still remains today. Recently Santos was recognized as the artist after years of the murals anomynity. After Santos was recognized as the painter of the mural his paintings which once sold for 50 cents at a garage sell are going for more than 2000 dollars. Sadly this documented history of San Quentin prison and American cultures have endured defacing from younger inmates who have entered the prison and don't feel a connection to the murals, although for decades the mural was highly protected.
QUINTON BEMILLER paintings
MERIEL STERN installation/sculpture
Opening Reception Sat. May 10, 6p-8p
LouWe Gallery, 306 Hawthorne St.
South Pasadena, CA 91030
626 799 5551
Gallery Hours: Thurs., Fri., Sat. 3p-6p;
Sun., 2p-5p; and by appointment.
Please stop by if you can!
Quinton teaches art and art history courses at Chaffey College.
I wanted to take a moment to respond to this story that has been circulating since about October of 2007. In many ways it is a non-story, but it continues to grow and spread and now over the last couple of weeks has made it through my campus.
Here is a link to one account.
The reason I say this is a non-story is not because the topic is not important, but because it appears to have not happened. The dog was not actually starved to death.
The artist exhibited a stray dog in an exhibition to bring people's attention to something that outside of a gallery context they would normally ignore. The rumors that the dog was starved (rather than a dog that was starving on the streets was brought into the gallery) spread from an inaccurate (sensationalist) news report and then through the internet. The gallery owner reported that the dog was cared for and fed. There has been no evidence uncovered that the dog was starved.
In some ways this reaction to the exhibit seems to support the artist's intent. The general public is not outraged on a regular basis in this way about the fact that many dogs and cats are abandoned on the streets and may starve to death, but rather the actual exhibit that was designed to bring this situation to the attention of the public is what people have become upset about.
This may ironically turn out to be a powerful example of how art may still be able to raise both public awareness and expose public hypocrisy.
This article on my former professor Linda Schele was in the Austin Chronicle yesterday. I still miss her.
Austin becomes a hotbed of past and future Maya knowledge
BY ROB D'AMICO
Linda Schele was always quite a show.
A towering figure, both physically and intellectually, she strode across the stages and workshop rooms at the annual University of Texas Maya Meetings, often peppering her language with curses and enthusiastic exclamations at moments of discovery. She liked the attention she commanded, and it fed her enjoyment in being at the forefront of research on the ancient Maya. And unlike many of her counterparts in academia, who zealously defend their findings from competing scholars, Schele encouraged lively discussion and revision of her theories, not only among the elite ranks of archaeologists, epigraphers, and art historians of Harvard, Yale, and the like, but also among those with no formal training. "She had a guru quality about her, and people would come from all over the world to Austin to hear her pronouncements," said David Stuart, a longtime Schele friend and protégé who now heads the UT-Austin Mesoamerica Center.
Schele died in 1998, of pancreatic cancer, at the age of 55. Her continuing intellectual and cultural legacy, in terms of her contributions to the reading and interpretation of Maya hieroglyphs, remains enormous. She also put UT-Austin on the map as a leading center for Mesoamerican research. Today, UT researchers continue to be at the center of groundbreaking discoveries in the world of Maya archaeology. But they also are leading a movement to bring the world of the ancient Maya into the lives of the living Maya and are engaging in new debates over archaeological discoveries of ecological destruction and its relevance to our planet today.
I hadn't even considered or thought about taking an Art History class here at Chaffey College when I first witnessed a Frank Lloyd Wright home. I was in a department store when I picked up a book with the "coolest" looking modern home I'd ever seen on its cover.
The picture was actually a photo of Frank Lloyd Wright's "Robie House" which was from what I have recently learned was built in 1910?? Yes, to my disbelief and extreme shock, 1910 a year when the Ford's model T along with other ancient steam cars were roaming around undeveloped, skyscraperless cities. The television came over a decade later than the "Robie House" a building which to me resembled a concept car coming out in 2010 not 1910.
Looking through the book I noticed many more of these similar homes and was so intrigued and astonished I purchased it. I even told my girlfriend I wanted to by a house created by this man when I got older. To find out that these aesthetic, innovative and futuristic structures were created before a computer, microwave, and even a television, the very objects that make houses into homes in present day America was just completely astonishing.
Frank Lloyd Wright has impressed me the most out of any artist we have covered in class from Michaelangelo to Picasso. This man was definitely 100 years ahead of his time in the way he structured these homes, incorporated nature, and the use of functionality first was simply amazing. In fact his works might never be of "time" they might always be a step ahead of the rest. Simply some of the best and most amazing architecture I've seen in my life.
