Hi Folks
Okay, so read the excerpt called Kerry James Marshall.
Here is a link to the video we'll watch on Tuesday:
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/marshall/index.html
His comic strips are amazing. So are his charcoal figure drawings, which I've seen in a drawing show in Chicago. Don't do the reading without looking at his images so you have a reference point.
http://www.cmoa.org/international/html/art/marshall.htm
Any comments about tonight's lecture? I thought the guy was interesting, but I wish he had done more than say, "and then we made this, and then we made this...." You know?
I used to use "Das" as a kid in Australia. I think I'll go out and buy some.
-Shannon
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9 comments:
yes, I agree. The visiting lecturer was interesting, but I wish he went more into his design approach and thinking instead of listing all his projects. I liked his advice on pricing and time management. "Don't waste time." That was funny.
KJM
It really gets me how focused he seems to have been during his development. Do you think he really was or is he just saying that now? And what kind of parents let their teenager cut holes in the roof? This whole thing is just a little suspect.
The lecture form Tue, 2/12 started out a little slow but then got better when it was clear that he has done a lot of different jobs. Some behind the scene info would have been nice. I too liked the pricing and time management advice. As for the reading Kerry James Marshall's emphasis on process is the key point for me. His 4th grade story about toilet paper used as tracing paper is great.-" it was all about the process and what that material allowed you to do."p.114
I thinks this text reflects what Trevor's talking about with the 'conduit'. All of KJM experience
and skill was a process of growth and development which is channeled his work and his period of history. "Instead of representing an event in history, they stand for a period of history."pg 123 -Mike Risch
The Tuesday nights lecture was interesting from a business of art point of view. I would have liked to see more of his own personal work. To see the differences between the commercially motivated and the personal.
As for the Kerry James Marshall bio, what really interested me was reading about the motivation KJM had developed at as a young adult.
I really admired the fact that KJM held on to his interest in the old masters and folded them into his own style and narrative, using African symbols and imagery in a contemporary graphic novel and comic book style.
I started to think about fictionalizing my own life, drawing inspiration for new work from fabricated life experiences.
Regarding the work or Kerry James Marshall..I really like the comic style artwork, but I am more gravitated to other work like the painting "our town", especially how he paints black people. he paints them darker than most artist i have seen do and with almost no variation of color intensity or highlights, yet everything else in the painting has that variation of color and intensity.
I think what makes KJM stand out as a person and as an artist is his highly developed sense of self. This sense of self is something that, I believe, many successful artists share. For some it is developed early in life and effects everything they do. Others only gain this understanding after years of struggle. Others;never. Though a fictionalized or romanticized version of one's self may play a part in this level of understanding, it is not always necessary. I think what is really required is the ability to see yourself from a distance; as a character in a play or movie, and to realize that you are in control of your reaction to any given situation. Many authors use this device to write fiction. A character, complete with personality quirks and an elaborate history, is created and then put in a situation. All the author has to do then is decide how the character would react in a given situation based on the level of understanding the author has of his/her character. As artists our level of success in the understanding, execution, and communication of our work and our ideas is in direct correlation to our understanding of who we are and why we do what we do. KJM seems to have this level of self-understanding; whether it is a result of hind-sight or if it is something he always possessed is hard to say but I believe it is essential to the understanding of the "how and why" of what you create. Nosce te ipsum!
KJM's connection to his past is such a driving force in his work. I must admit that he seems to have been in the right place at the right time for most of his life in terms of being so connected to so many important black events in the 1960-70's. One of the things I respect about him is his desire to make his own way; he bows to the past pictorial traditions of narrative, history, portrait paintings, but somehow accepts the challenge of making these ancient ideas fresh. I liked his comment about how he wants to make everything in his paintings very obvious, but make sure that transparency doesn't create boredom, but makes for engagement. He wants us to see how he did things, but remained astonished even though we get it. I like the way he uses the structural formats and conventions of the past, but constantly makes them his own.
I was also intrigued by his discussion of the invisibility of blacks in our society and especially the amivalence many of them feel in regards to the fully participating in the American dream...this is something I really haven't considered before. Why would you really believe you could have it all when you see so many unfair situations around you in your daily life?
KJM
After seeing the draftsmanship in his comic book pieces, I'm inclined to believe he was pretty focused about learning to draw. I admire his process of hearing about a method/technique and immediately doing it himself, like how he started painting still lifes because he read that that was the best way to learn to paint. He wants a skill, he studies and works for it. He tries anything that sounds cool to him. He takes good ideas from a rich artistic heritage and makes them his own. For real or not, I like this spirit of experimentation and innovation. He's not the first person to go about things this way, but he's made the process help him develop his own personal form and content. I think I should start to "KJM" my own studies.
I think a good piece of work should be based on its unique cultural background to make itself attractive and moving, that is also what I am considering how to connect my work with where I come from. The Chinese culture not only facilitates me to find objects which are familiar and attentive, but also attracts people from different backgrounds. In Hiroshi Sugimoto's biography, he iterated his own artist career. He studied the western philosophy in Japan in his early age. After he moved to California, he started to learn Zen and Buddhism, which is a part of the oriental philosophy. Thus he got lots of inspirations from his "new" study for his works. He believes his own cultural background is indispensable to his success. I think for every contemporary artist, one needs to learn the art in such a loop: understand his/her own culture first; then absorb the concepts and art skills from other cultures; then focus the objects from his/her own culture by using new knowledge and with the new perspectives, or with the combination of both cultures. In this way, one is able to find the connections between different cultures and endow his/her works with new life. From James Marshall's work, we also can see and learn how he connects the contemporary art and the traditional art.
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