Post, the thirteenth -- Norman Rockwell

it would be difficult to argue that Norman Rockwell wasn't an important artist.

he made the cover images for the Saturday Evening Post for almost 50 years and had a huge influence on the hyper-realist art movement.

his style of staging a scene to photograph and then making a painting or drawing from it is so Simulations; on page 38 Baudrillard says "Of the same order as the impossibility of rediscovering an absolute level of the real. is the impossibility of staging an illusion.  Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible."

it's interesting because i don't even think that Rockwell was trying to stage an illusion, i think that he was trying to stage the real.

"After the prom" 1957

this is an example of a Rockwell work that was done after a staged photograph.

another thing that he was known for was his realistic portraits. 

there is a portrait of JFK that is just dripping in nostalgia and that's really not so different from the rest of Rockwell's work.

he seems to be a master of nostalgia.

John F Kennedy, 1960

"Rameses means nothing to us: only the mummy is of inestimable worth since it is what guarantees that accumulation means something.  Our entire linear and accumulative culture would collapse if we could not stockpile the past in plain view" (pg 19).

i think that the way Rockwell most relates to Simulations is with his "Triple self portrait".

in this piece, Rockwell is painting himself looking in a mirror painting himself.

is there any 'real' in that??

Rockwell really makes you question what's going on and what everything means especially with this work.

"Triple self portrait" 1960

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Post, the twelfth -- a visible past, a continuation of unmasked realness

photo 2 of 12 of a visible past

this series of photos is a continuation of unmasked realness and to be honest, for a while that's absolutely all they were.

people suggested to keep going with the lip thing, so i moved up my face, tried to do the whole eye makeup thing, and took photos of it.

i think some of the images are kind of beautiful, but i'm not entirely sure what they mean, but i'm not entirely sure what this book is talking about half the time either.

they say that our eyes are the interpreters of our souls, but what if they're tongue tied and they say that our eyes are the windows to our souls, but what if they're foggy?

what do made-up eyes tell us that naked ones can't?

photo 10 of 12 of a visible past

maybe all of the glitter, black smudges and mascara are just a distraction, a way of keeping what our souls are a secret; if people just look at your eyes and not past them, you're safe, right?

but, again, i think of why and what we want to hide or why we want to change how we look.

maybe you have some deep, dark secret, or maybe you just want another form of creative expression.

maybe you're trying to impress someone, or maybe you're trying to impress yourself.

Jean Baudrillard said "it is no longer a question of a false representation of reality, but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real" (pg 25).

when someone puts makeup on, they are still themselves, maybe they become more self assured, but that doesn't mean that the tube of Too Faced mascara they bought at Sephora is magic.

it means that they had it in them all along; they just needed a little help; and maybe they're more confident now, but maybe their eyes are streaky and their mascara is flaky and maybe if you saw that, you'd know that they weren't having a great day.

photo 9 of 12 of a visible past

maybe you'd know more if you really looked at what's going on instead of just seeing that someone took the time to touch their face up that morning and making an assumption about them.

i think this goes for a lot of things in life.

we have reasons for what we do, conscious or not, we have reasons and again, i think those reasons are so important.

i think that people are inherently beautiful and i wish that everyone could see what i see when i look at people and i really wish they could see it when they look at themselves.

i guess what i'm trying to say (maybe?) is don't judge; look and don't judge, but think are care and love.

wonder about the people around you and their reasons for what they do, like, wear, read, draw.

i know i just took some pictures of my eyes so this might seem like a stretch, but this is what i got from it, so this is what i can give you.

you can see the rest of the (unedited) photos from a visible past here.




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Post, the eleventh -- "an unnamed need"

right now, the Wriston Gallery features an exhibit with work by Anila Quayyum Agha, Jennifer Angus, Michelle Grabner, Heather McGill and Tony Orrico.

although i couldn't make it to the opening, i just checked it out and it was pretty cool.

the description inside the gallery reads:

"We desire beautiful things, and yet we discount them.  

Beauty has been so exploited as a means of manipulation 

in contemporary society that we have learned to mistrust it.  

Consequently, we denigrate qualities that create the experience of beauty: 

pattern and ornament are scoffed at as mindless; carefully crafted 

objects are dismissed as elitist; lush and pristine surfaces are considered superficial.  

We have allowed the abuse of beauty to blind us to its richness of meaning.

The works assembled here bring that richness back before our eyes, 

and compel us to contemplate all that beauty can encompass: the fluid 

boundaries among natural and artificial; eye, mind, and body; 

self and other; form and nothingness."

the first room of the exhibit was a series of beautiful patterns on the walls but, unfortunately, i couldn't really look at them because they were made of giant bugs so it was pretty much my worst nightmare; Miriam Beerman was a walk in the park compared to this.

the room that i really enjoyed was the third and final room with Tony Orrico's work that i'm really disappointed i didn't get to see in action.

images of work by Tony Orrico in the Wriston Gallery

his work is extremely active but at the same time looks totally controlled because of the repetition.  

in a way i think that his work really relates, in a very literal way, to the idea of production in Simulations.

i wonder, though, how Tony's intentional production of one (master) piece at a time relates to Baudrillard's idea that "what society seeks through production, and overproduction, is the restoration of the real which escapes it." (pg 44)

are Orrico's works anything less than real if they can never truly be duplicated, not in the same way with the same people feeling and thinking the same things.

maybe Tony Orrico's works are some of the only real works i or we have ever seen.

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Post, the tenth -- unmasked realness

new year, new, crazy book to draw inspiration from.

our first project of the term is inspired by some of the first pages of the book, "Simulations" by Jean Baudrillard.

we're supposed to talk about realness and being unmasked and representation and what it all means.

i don't know what it means.

any of it.

i think this book might be easier to read in french.

anyway, i started thinking about makeup.

i started thinking about all the work we go through to put makeup on and then to make it look perfect when in reality, at least for me, there's usually lipstick all over my teeth and face by the time i'm ready to walk out the door.

photo 11 of 12 from unmasked realness

then, i started thinking about why we even wear makeup; what we get out of changing our physical appearances and i thought that maybe our made-up selves are more real than the natural, naked-faced selves we wake up with.

maybe how i want to look to other people, or even to myself, can explain to you more about the real me and maybe the things i try to hide are actually more revealing than the things themselves because maybe if you saw my lipstick stained face, cracked lips and unbleached teeth, you'd wonder what other parts of me are rushed, broken or dirty.

as Baudrillard says "to dissimulate is to feign not to have what one has" (pg 5).

photo 8 of 12 from unmasked realness

maybe when i wear a headband, it's not only to get my flyaways under control, but it's also because i've seen every episode of Gossip Girl ever and Blair always wears a headband and she's a powerful, respected woman and imitating her makes me feel good about myself.

who knows, maybe i just like red lipstick and maybe that's because i think that Marilyn Monroe is iconic and beautiful or maybe it's because i think it looks polished and put together and maybe i think these things without ever having consciously thought them and it has nothing to do with my cracked lips at all.

there's a reason for the choices we make, whether its biking or driving to work, buying skinny jeans or bellbottoms, reading Stephen King or Jane Austen, and those reasons are the things that show the real us even if we're using these things to draw attention away from something we see as unfavorable.

why we see them as unfavorable is more telling and revealing than the things themselves.

you can see the other 10 (unedited) photos from unmasked realness by clicking here.



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Post, the ninth -- je ne sais quoi

still from je ne sais quoi 

my final project for new media in art is a video called je ne sais quoi - translation: i don't know what.

it's about beauty.

it's about the beauty of human beings (all humus an beings, think Marshall McLuhan's "global village"); beauty that has nothing to do with the common standards but beauty that comes from the subtle little things that we all do; a nervous glance, a conversation about a passion, a smile, a stare.

in times like these, times when 129 people can be killed overnight for no apparent reason, it can be difficult to believe in or even remember the beauty in the world.

when i heard about the attacks in Paris, i really wanted to change my project, to make something that "mattered".

it wasn't until i finally calmed down a little and thought about it, though, that i realized that this project does matter.

it's so easy to feel hate and fear and despair when tragedy strikes, and that's exactly what they want you to feel.

this video is in loving memory of the 129 souls taken from us in Paris on the evening of the 13th of November, 2015, those taken before that, and those that will be taken in the future.

a lot of my Wednesday nights in Paris were spent at a Scottish pub called the Highlander, listening to strangers sing at open mic night.

the audio is from one of those nights.

a youngish man from Ireland was performing for his last time before going home after 2 years in Paris and his performance really struck me.

he was tall and lanky with an air of someone who doesn't quite know how to keep their limbs in line, but when he stood behind his guitar and the microphone, you knew he was supposed to be there; he is meant to make music.

i wanted to give to you this little piece of Paris, one of my favorite times.

my hope is that if you see this video, you will concentrate your energy on the beauty of the world; that you'll realize that even if you didn't know anyone who was killed, you shared things with them; that they were beautiful and that you're beautiful and that this beauty can and will get us through.

here's a link to je ne sais quoi.



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Post, the eight -- Something happened

last week, my class got to exhibit our work in a gallery in our school's library.

we each printed 2, 11x14 inkjet prints and made/ordered a book of the images from our photo project inspired by Robert Frank and Bob Dylan.

it was fun to see everyone's work together and i think that books are a really effective way to display images and i hope that one day, my name will appear next to the likes of Robert Frank, Jack Kerouac and Walker Evans on more bookshelves than just my own.

my book, Appleton, WI.  In Living Color

our show was pretty successful, but now it's over and honestly, i'll probably never think about it again.

something else happened last week, though, that i can't stop thinking about.

i was informed of the attacks in Paris simultaneously by two people on friday night.

i turned on a live feed of what was happening on the streets and i cried; for hours.

i texted my host family, messaged my friends in Paris and talked to my friends that i spent last year with.

when 9/11 happened, i was only 7, i'd lived in Wisconsin my whole life and my family didn't know anyone in New York, so this is the first time that a disaster has had such a strong and disabling effect on me.

written and drawn reactions to the events of 13/11/15

since last friday, the 13th of november, i've felt like i've been in a daze or a haze or a stupor.

when i hear people talk about the attacks or see the news or photos, my head gets fuzzy and foggy and i shut down a little.

we talked in class today about The Medium is the Massage.

on page 154 it says "i -- i hardly know, sir, just at present -- at least i know who i was when i got up this morning, but i think i must have been changed several times since then."

i changed on friday when i learned about the attacks.

i changed on saturday as more and more details were coming out.

i changed on sunday when i realized that my friend and i had gone to a party at the Bataclan club.

i changed this morning at the start of class when i learned that one of my friend's friends had been killed in the attack; that's probably the case with more of my friends that just this one.

i guess i just don't really know what to do other than write this.

my friends are probably tired of me talking about it and it's probably difficult for them to understand where i'm coming from; it just doesn't feel the same if it didn't happen in a place you fell in love with, to people you admire and care for.

"love is stronger than hatred"

at the Place de la République, you can see this and other expressions from French people put there after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in January, the deadliest terror attack on French soil before last week.

these people are brave and strong and i know that they will make it through this, i just wish they didn't have to.



LOVE
LOVE
LOVE, please

Post, the seventh -- Lucy and Marshall in the Sky with Diamonds

this week, i presented a report on The Beatles and why Marshall McLuhan included them in his book The Medium is the Massage.

it turns out, The Beatles were pretty experimental in their day.

The Beatles courtesy Google image search

McLuhan mentions The Beatles three times in his book and said of them on a separate occasion, “The Beatles are…using some of the very oldest forms of Anglo-Saxon, and some of the very oldest forms of philosophy as a basis for their music.  One of the peculiarities of new forms, electric forms, of retrieval is that they reach back for many centuries to grab things that man had forgotten long ago”.

much of The Beatles success comes from the fact that they were around during the electric age.

for example, their American debut was made on the Ed Sullivan Show where they were introduced to some 70 million people overnight. 

they took advantage of this and other things like the magnetic tape recorder.

The Beatles liked trying new things and when they realized that their new work didn't translate on a live stage, decided to spend the rest of their time in the recording studio.

George Harrison explains, “that was the key—we’d had success.  Then it was “ oh, great.  Come in lads”  and as we got more and more success, we were able to try some far out ideas.  Then you’d have success with a far out idea, and people would say “wow, that’s great”!  We’d come back again and George Martin would be keen to try other ideas.  So, it became like a free house—whatever idea we wanted, we’d try it.”

 

even though they're pretty mainstream today and it's probably "cooler" not to like The Beatles now than to like them, they really did their own thing.

i think that's probably a big reason why they were so successful.

they were unapologetically themselves. 

The Beatles courtesy Google image search

all you need is...

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