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situation now is a reaction against much of the art that I was very involved in during the late 1960s and again in the '70s. There is a kind of separation at the moment. I think the point at which art skirts in and out of artifice and illusion is in fact a key issue here. I'll try to talk about it as much as possible. The kind of entrance that would make one interested in what I refer to as the mechanics of art-making, a kind of mechanistic, mental, interrogational activity that hopefully would underline what would come after it, was a product of the belief system generated, by and large, during Conceptual Art. Conceptual Art was a multifold carriage of interests. It was a family of uses. Part of these uses depended on a continued, almost detective-like curiosity, almost a Sherlock Holmes quality of interrogation, of surgically uprooting, of asking constantly for the motive behind the act. A lot of these questions were asked because of the suspicion about virtuosity. There was a certain suspicion that you could become an artist, evolve and develop and you still might never come into contact with the motives behind the act. This could become a problem. I knew it could be a problem as I began to think about how I was going to survive as an artist, and that survival is a multifaceted stream of connections that has a lot to do with what you think you could live with, and not only with your virtuosity. So based on an assessment of what one thinks they could evolve through, comes a hierarchy, an estimation of what things they think will fight away the nightmares of compromise that may challenge any kind of evolutionary impulse. So on these journeys to discover a rationale to use to make art, I constantly found things referring to the process of thinking. It occurred to me that thought was a most mysterious thing to consider. It seems to me that an inquiry into the anatomy of thought has capabilities of visually unleashing the very mechanics of the thought process itself. Not what it results in, but what thinking looks like could become a product of inquiry in an artistic setting. Again, this is a belief system. We proceed based on inclinations and desires. They aren't necessarily true. There is a true and false mind-set that's common and parallel in these motives and ambitions. But every time I challenge a work that was simply a product of virtuosity on my part, a product of being in art school for years and picking up abilities to execute things in a facile, direct, easily orchestrated, visually seductive manner, I invariably found them missing the mark. In other words, the virtuosity, the object that was always the residue of a rather traditional method of execution, always appeared to be compromised. So everything I'm showing you today is inquiry: wanting to believe that there might be a way to use art in the arena in which it functions as a kind of surgical scalpel, some kind of interrogative device to cast some light into these subterranean mental sheds that constitute a direct lineage to motivational substrata, something underneath the act. Scan (1979; fig. 1) is a work in Stuttgart, Germany. It uses an electric skeet machine behind shields. These electric skeets hurl themselves at the same time—there's one on each wall—through a twelve-foot diameter ring. So it's like this perpetual domestic quarrel, throwing plates back and forth that collect in the thousands at the end of the day. This work wants to believe that the art idea can be separated from its armature and literally loaded into a magazine and fired almost like a projectile. It wants to believe that the problem of really exteriorizing the mind may be in the approach to art, that there is a built-in entropy, so that as you approach the final solidification of the object you are, in fact, further and further away from the point of origin, when in fact, the approach might be better afforded, by moving toward that kind of plasma state of origin. Most of these works are pursuing that belief, that in the ovulation, in the generating of the mental energy that makes art, there is a twilight zone that exists between the cerebral, spiritual, sensual zone, and the sterilized, cooled-down, rigid, 101
Object Description
Title | Allen Memorial Art Museum bulletin |
Description | volume 41, number 2 |
Alternate Title | Bulletin of the Allen Memorial Art Museum of Oberlin College |
Creator | Allen Memorial Art Museum |
Subject | Museum exhibits -- Ohio -- Oberlin |
Museum Director/Acting Director | Olander, William |
Contributors |
Goldberg, Marcia, 1925- Joll, Evelyn, 1925- Oppenheim, Dennis, 1938-2011 Paul, Anne |
Contents | Turner's 'View of Venice: Ducal Palace, Dogana, with Part of San Giorgio'; Washington Allston and Barriere's Villa Aldobrandini; A Study of Two Paracas Fragments; 'And the Mind Grew Fingers'; Notes; Friends of the Museum; Oberlin Friends of Art; Staff |
Artists |
Allston, Washington (American, 1779-1843) Barrière, Dominique (French, 1618-1678) Turner, Joseph Mallord William (English, 1775-1851) |
List of Illustrations | J. M. W. Turner, View of Venice: Ducal Palace, Dogana, with Part of San Giorgio, 1841 or earlier; Turner, View of Venice. After cleaning; Turner, The Giudecca, 1841 or earlier, Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago; J . M. W. Turner, The Campo Santo, Venice, 1842, The Toledo Museum of Art; Title page, Dominique Barriere, Villa Aldobrandini; Hasty Pudding Club Secretary's Records, I (1795-1801), p. 63; The Flaying of Marsyas; Allston, Man's head in profile; Allston, Half-figure of a bearded man; Allston, Portrait of a Man's Head in Profile; Fragment of Paracas mantle border, 400-250 B.C.; Detail of tunic border, Paracas bundle 410; Detail of tunic border, Paracas bundle 410; Detail of tunic border, Paracas bundle 157; Detail of mantle border, Parcas bundle 421; Detail of turban border, Paracas bundle 290; Ubiquitous Being, from turban border, Paracas bundle 91; Ubiquitous Being, from turban border, Paracas bundle 310; Ubiquitous Being, from turban border, Paracas bundle 190; Ubiquitous Being, from poncho border, Paracas bundle 375; Fragment of mantle border (detail); Fragment of Paracas border; Detail of Paracas border; Detail of mantle border, Paracas bundle 190; Detail of mantle border, Paracas bundle 190; Scan, 1979, installation at Kunstverein; Way Station Launching an Obsolete Power; An Operation for Mining, Elevating and Converting Underground Memories of a Fifth Season. An Around the Clock Activity; Assembly Line. (With By-Products from a Mechanical Trance), 1980; Occasion for Expansion�A Combat of Structural Projections, 1981; Launching Structure #2. An Armature for Projection; J. M. W. Turner, View of Venice: Ducal Palace, Dogana, with Part of San Giorgio, 1841 or earlier,; Turner, View of Venice. After cleaning; Turner, The Giudecca, 1841 or earlier, Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago; J . M. W. Turner, The Campo Santo, Venice, 1842, The Toledo Museum of Art |
Year | 1983; 1984 |
Type | Journal |
Format | text; image |
Publisher | Oberlin College. Library |
Language | English |
Relation | http://obis.oberlin.edu/record=b1749012~S4 |
Rights | For research and educational use only. For all other uses please contact Allen Memorial Art Museum |
Description
Title | page 101 |
Transcript | situation now is a reaction against much of the art that I was very involved in during the late 1960s and again in the '70s. There is a kind of separation at the moment. I think the point at which art skirts in and out of artifice and illusion is in fact a key issue here. I'll try to talk about it as much as possible. The kind of entrance that would make one interested in what I refer to as the mechanics of art-making, a kind of mechanistic, mental, interrogational activity that hopefully would underline what would come after it, was a product of the belief system generated, by and large, during Conceptual Art. Conceptual Art was a multifold carriage of interests. It was a family of uses. Part of these uses depended on a continued, almost detective-like curiosity, almost a Sherlock Holmes quality of interrogation, of surgically uprooting, of asking constantly for the motive behind the act. A lot of these questions were asked because of the suspicion about virtuosity. There was a certain suspicion that you could become an artist, evolve and develop and you still might never come into contact with the motives behind the act. This could become a problem. I knew it could be a problem as I began to think about how I was going to survive as an artist, and that survival is a multifaceted stream of connections that has a lot to do with what you think you could live with, and not only with your virtuosity. So based on an assessment of what one thinks they could evolve through, comes a hierarchy, an estimation of what things they think will fight away the nightmares of compromise that may challenge any kind of evolutionary impulse. So on these journeys to discover a rationale to use to make art, I constantly found things referring to the process of thinking. It occurred to me that thought was a most mysterious thing to consider. It seems to me that an inquiry into the anatomy of thought has capabilities of visually unleashing the very mechanics of the thought process itself. Not what it results in, but what thinking looks like could become a product of inquiry in an artistic setting. Again, this is a belief system. We proceed based on inclinations and desires. They aren't necessarily true. There is a true and false mind-set that's common and parallel in these motives and ambitions. But every time I challenge a work that was simply a product of virtuosity on my part, a product of being in art school for years and picking up abilities to execute things in a facile, direct, easily orchestrated, visually seductive manner, I invariably found them missing the mark. In other words, the virtuosity, the object that was always the residue of a rather traditional method of execution, always appeared to be compromised. So everything I'm showing you today is inquiry: wanting to believe that there might be a way to use art in the arena in which it functions as a kind of surgical scalpel, some kind of interrogative device to cast some light into these subterranean mental sheds that constitute a direct lineage to motivational substrata, something underneath the act. Scan (1979; fig. 1) is a work in Stuttgart, Germany. It uses an electric skeet machine behind shields. These electric skeets hurl themselves at the same time—there's one on each wall—through a twelve-foot diameter ring. So it's like this perpetual domestic quarrel, throwing plates back and forth that collect in the thousands at the end of the day. This work wants to believe that the art idea can be separated from its armature and literally loaded into a magazine and fired almost like a projectile. It wants to believe that the problem of really exteriorizing the mind may be in the approach to art, that there is a built-in entropy, so that as you approach the final solidification of the object you are, in fact, further and further away from the point of origin, when in fact, the approach might be better afforded, by moving toward that kind of plasma state of origin. Most of these works are pursuing that belief, that in the ovulation, in the generating of the mental energy that makes art, there is a twilight zone that exists between the cerebral, spiritual, sensual zone, and the sterilized, cooled-down, rigid, 101 |
Identifier | AMAM_Bulletin_041_002_0031.tif |
Rights | For research and educational use only. For all other uses please contact Allen Memorial Art Museum |
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