The Albany International Airport Gallery

The Albany International Airport Gallery has existed since 1998. Its exhibits have attracted over one hundred and fifty thousand visitors annually with a wide range of thematic content and visual display. This particular gallery is composed of a two thousand five hundred foot space, and it overlooks the busy airport below creating for a somber and isolated environment that hovers over a hectic environment. The Albany International Art Gallery is one of the premier exhibitions in the capital region, and is highly regarded by travelers and the regional arts community.
Upon my visit to the Albany International Airport Gallery, my attention was grabbed before I even entered the exhibit by a wall of folded scarves. These scarves were of all different colors and were definitely eye catching. I took a picture with the scarves behind me, and stuffed my own scarf in between the scarves to make it appear as if the one scarf was jumping out of the sculpture around my neck. Unfortunately, by the time I visited this gallery, the previous exhibit had already been dismantled. On the bright side, I was able to go in and talk to the individuals who are responsible for setting up the next exhibit. By talking to these experts about the exhibits, it was clear to see that deciding how to present the art in the exhibit is one of the hardest parts of the showing. They had to take into account what would match, which pieces would complement the others and the practicality of the placement of each of the installations’ effect on the viewer. They seemed to be having a hard time trying to measure everything perfectly in order to get it to fit where they wanted it, and the stress of this seemed to be getting to them. Nevertheless, they explained to me the basis for the next exhibit, and proceeded to show me the different installations.
The exhibits for the upcoming show at the Albany International Art Gallery are mostly architectural. Some of these architectural pieces are drawings that have three dimensional looks to them, and are shaded in a way that deceives the viewer. It seems that the drawings are coming off of the paper and are actual three dimensional objects. The other exhibits are made of recycled products such as beer cans, soda cans, water bottles, cardboard rolls, straws, duct tape and other plastics and fabrics. I believe the theme of the next show is recyclable products. One of my favorite things in the show was the sculpture that was made of plastic bottles. The bottled were all intertwined forming a sort of web chain. What was particular interesting about this piece is the way that the bottles were connected. There were no sticking agents on the bottles, yet the bottles had small slits in them in which pieces of another bottle were weaved into it, connecting them all together without using anything other than the bottles themselves. I appreciate the difficulty of this because it would have been easy to tape or glue these bottles together, but instead the artist decided to use only one material and weave it together to form a sculpture. Another exhibit I liked was displayed in a glass case right at the entrance of the show. It was a bunch of straws all woven together in a way that made a very unique sculpture. To me it resembled an abstract bicycle. I am not sure if that is what it was meant to be, but it was a unique sculpture nonetheless. There were many other interesting and colorful exhibits in the show, each of them with a recyclable and architectural theme to them.
Going to the Albany International Art Gallery was a very exciting experience. I hope to visit again in the future to see an exhibit when it is complete. Although I did not get to see the exhibit after its completion, by watching the work that goes into setting it up and by talking to the experts who were in charge of arranging the show, I was able to conclude that half of the art is the actual piece of art and the other half is how it is presented. The dedication of certain installations to certain areas definitely has an impact on the viewer and is the reason for such an intricate development process. The exhibits themselves were very intriguing and astonished me with their craftsmanship. Seeing this exhibition in progress was a new and enlightening experience for me.

Use of the Public in Art

Gillian Wearing is notorious for using the public in her work. Many of her works have a similar concern with discovering details about individuals. This concern can be seen in one of her best known pieces and her first major work entitled: Signs That Say What You Want Them to Say and Not Signs That Say What Someone Else Wants You to Say. This piece is made up of a series of photographs of random people holding up pieces of paper in which they were asked to write something on. Wearing got them to spontaneously write words on a piece of paper expressing some kind of thought or emotion. This piece became extremely well known and essentially helped establish Wearing’s career. Many of Gillian Wearing’s other works include similar uses of the public, such as video taping people’s confessions, video taping drunk men in a studio and making a video that documented the typical behavior of British teenagers who go out at night to various clubs and consume a large amount of alcohol. Wearing states that a great deal of her work is “about questioning handed-down truths.” In her working with the public, Gillian Wearing is trying to discover new things about people, and in the process she claims to learn discover a great deal about herself.
Beecroft's work is a fusion of conceptual issues and aesthetic concerns, focusing on large-scale performance art, usually involving live female models. Her work combines classical Italian tradition, radical performance art and fashion show theatrics. In many of her works, the live female is the primary material. The women are usually nude, and stand motionless and are unapproachable to the viewers. One of her exhibitions brings together 13 new wax and gesso sculptures cast from live models, lying on coffin-like bases, beside 20 live naked female models in white body make-up. Beecroft’s women are meant to be virtually indistinguishable from the sculpted casts. The primary material in Beecroft’s work is the live figure, which remains ephemeral, separate and unmediated by any device we normally accept as artform, such as painting or photography. In her performance VB16, Vanessa Beecroft sets a group of characters, a homogenous selection of almost nude young women, in a tableau vivant. All the components of the installation, the number and look of the girls, what they wear and how they pose, have been meticulously chosen by the artist to mirror her concerns, usually about her own body. In these exhibitions, the underlying reason for these nude women is to address her own internal conflicts with food and her body. Fashion is used by Beecroft not to individuate but to homogenize, and even nudity is exploited not as an expression of sexuality but rather as a way of reducing the models to an appearance of sameness. After all, nudity is our original uniform from birth. In her more recent works, Beecroft has used men dressed in military uniform to portray other ideas. In most of her works, Beecroft uses the public, particularly nude women and uniformed men, in order to abstract from the sculpture and turn it into a living model that is no longer timeless.

The Mona Lisa Curse - Custodians of Culture: Schoolyard Art: Playing Fair without the Referee

The podcast entitled Custodians of Culture: Schoolyard Art: Playing Fair without the Referee, by David Hickey, holds similar views to Robert Hughes’ Curse of the Mona Lisa. Each of these pieces by each of these critics is presented in different ways but convey a similar message. Named best documentary at the 2009 Banff International Television Festival, The Mona Lisa Curse is a thought provoking look at the art market revolution. This documentary gives Hughes’ highly opinioned take on the matter; it reveals how art superstars are made. Hickey’s podcast supports Hughes’ assertions, and further paints the picture of the effects of money, greed and commodities in the art world.

In the Custodians of Culture: Schoolyard Art: Playing Fair without the Referee piece, David Hickey talks about the transformation of the way art is created, priced and sold. The transformation in the art market occurred in the 1970’s, and changed the way art is valued to this day. Hickey explains that the reasons for this transition came from the death of installation art, the escalation of available capital and the collapse of institutional authority. The art fair embodies all of these changes. Today, arts value is now based on how much someone is willing to pay for it. There is no one left in the modern art market that offers a fair price for art. People are too focused on making the most amount of money possible, and this takes away from the actual art. Art should be admired and collected for its meaning and the message it presents or the emotion it evokes. He compares the way the art market works to a conversation between his wife and a movie director. His wife stated that she liked the movie for its good values and the movie director replied “Good values. Is that coming back?” This is relative to the way art dealers price and sell art in the modern art market. They are not interested in the actual art itself, or its message. All the dealers care about is selling the most products for the most amount of money possible. The art itself seems to have no internal value to the dealers or the purchasers anymore. Instead, the value of art is determined by how much it can be sold for. This is a greedy way to deal with art, and Hickey does not believe that this is the way it should be done. His podcast asserts his negative opinions of the modern art market in a comical way, yet they still convey the important message that art is no longer properly valued. Artists, dealers, and even the buyers are selling out.

Robert Hughes has a similar view of the art market to David Hickey’s. His documentary entitled The Mona Lisa Curse presents an unfortunate relationship between art and money. It seems that many people consider art a business and are more interested in the money than the artwork. Of course artists need income to support themselves and their families, but the problem with the way the art market sells art is that it victimizes the actual art and causes the creation of art to be a materialistic practice. There is no balance between the pursuit of money and the creation and selling of meaningful art. Art is simply a commodity to many artists and dealers these days and is more valuable according to the price it may be sold at. There is no question that greed has taken over aspects of art, more specifically the art market. Art should be created and valued in a way that embraces the underlying message or the issue that it portrays. It should be admired for its evocation of emotion and intellect. The evolution of the art market to a money hungry business is only detrimental to art, true artists who do not care about money, and the buyers. It is important that art eventually returns to a state in which the work is valued more than its price.

Beauty in Contemporary Art/ I Like America and America Likes Me

In the article “Beauty in Contemporary Art,” there were several discussions and ideas about what defines art, and what should actually be considered art. Also, the question of an artist’s responsibility and impact on society induced many different points of view. Some artists don’t believe that they have any social responsibility and that the only responsibility they have is to the attitude in which they create their art. Artists like Georg Baselitz have even said things like “art does not change the world.” He says this because society as a whole could go on without the artist. In this light, art is a world in which the artist’s only incentives are the goals of attaining commodities and money. The main focus is to achieve a level of power and prestige from their works through selling and showing their creations.

In another light, art can be seen through actions, as opposed to an actual product. Many feel that it is important for artists and art to reflect the times in which they have been created or done, and to be socially aware. It is wrong to ignore society’s problems, and to not incorporate them into their art. Art can be expressed by doing things such as cleaning up the environment, and becoming a friend of nature. Producing an actual tangible piece of work is not the only way to create art. Furthermore, art does not have to be recognized and boasted about. It doesn’t have to be publicized, or shown in exhibits or museums and sold. The direction that only few artists seem to be taking is an art in action. They are taking a more socially aware approach on problems that currently exist in society, such as environmental safety, pollution, and being involved in the beauty of true nature. The argument for art in action is centered around the fact that something does not have to be produced to be considered art, such as paintings, drawings, sculptures etc. The view of art is in desperate need of more artists understanding that art can change the world, and by taking action, the beauty of the world and nature may be preserved.

Art can exist in other actions other than servicing nature. Another form of art as action is the servicing of humanity. The most important things existence are nature, the environment, and the existence of the beings whom live in the environment. It is imperative that action be taken to preserve these things. Until art is reconnected with life, it is going to continue to be marginal and play no part in the bigger picture. From now on, art should not be created for the sole purpose of the pursuit of money and commodities, but rather to play a role in changing the world.

In Bueys’ Coyote action, he stays in a room with a coyote with nothing but newspaper, felt blankets, and a cane. The coyote itself is an animal that represents action, and is the most adaptable mammal in existence other than Homo sapiens. Mythologically and biologically, the coyote is exemplary of evolutionary change. In the article, Bueys recognizes that our society is in major need of social change. He describes it as a “wounded traumatized body in need of treatment.” He says that he is not against materialism as it is necessary in some forms, yet if we do not let it stop consuming our lives we will not be able to accordingly evolve to survive. Bueys states that “Everything begins with art,” and “Art alone makes life.” So is his point of view, art can change the world, and the form of art that could most successfully do this is an art that involves action and evolution. The coyote action was overall an attempt to get America to understand that all of the elements in the world as a whole are greater than the individual elements. All things work together to produce a larger and much greater effect. To further change life, and art, each of these components must evolve and become active in our social

transformation.

Walking to the Sky

"Walking to the Sky" is a public sculpture created by Johnathan Borofsky. The sculpture is located in Rockefeller Center, and is made of stainless steel with fiberglass figures. I remember seeing this sculpture in person when I was a child, and being amazed at it's size and realistic features, (other than the fact that people are walking on a pole on a 75 degree angle). As I study it now it perplexes me as to why this was so special as to have it placed in the middle of such a main city as New York City. Obviously the artist had a purpose or message in mind that motivated him to create such a sculpture. It obviously is not trying to encourage people to try doing this because this would be physically impossible. After revieiwing it further, and reading the background of the artist and of this sculpture, I can now appreciate the beauty in the purpose of this art, as I already admired it's physical presence simply because of it's overwhelming size. (100 feet tall)


The reason why I can now appreciate this work of art is because it has sentimental meaning to the artist. It reflects a time in his life when he was a child, and his father used to tell him a story of a friendly giant who lived in the sky. In these stories, the father and his son would meet the giant in the sky, and the giant would give them advice about what everyone needed to do back on earth to live better lives and to enjoy them to the fullest. It was a way for Borofsky's father to intrigue his son with a compelling unrealistic story that would teach his son positive underlying messages and instill important values in him. From these memories, Borofsky created a sculpture resembling a similar story of people traveling to the sky. It portrays what he derived from these childhood stories.


When asked about his sculpture, the artist described it as being a "celebration of the human potential for discovering who we are and where we need to go." With a message so pure, it makes it hard not to appreciate the artist's work. It is such an inspirational piece of art, but may not be admired upon forst encounter. Now understanding what the motivation and message behind this sculpture is, I admire it and support the message it gives to it's viewers.

Towards a Newer Laocoon

The essay titled "Towards a Newer Laocoon," explains the author's view of his time period. In he majority of this essay, Clement Greenberg is summarizing the history of art in the past century, and trying to explain what he thinks happened to it. Art was changing during this time period, and he was trying to make sense of it all by producing some of his own theories.

During this time period, art was going through cycles of imitation. This immitation was occuring in painting, literature and music. The reason for this imitation was driven by the desire to combine all of the appealing elements of each type of art into the others. They each took something from each other and incorporated it into themselves.

Greenberg describes these art forms as trying to find themselves outside of themselves. This was a losing battle, and only after they had no other option did they return to their true nature. He believed that that these art forms made unnecessary attempts to try to go "outside the box," if you will. He believes that they didn't have to deny their fundamental values for such a period of time just to arrive at their true recognition. Painting took the steepest fall of all of the art forms in his eyes. It was no longer fundamentally sound. The fundamentals of painting are canvas and paint. It started as a fight against the medium, working to be categorized as an illusion, an imitation. This soon subsided and it returned to its true fundamental state with the help of some admirable painters.

Greenbergs argument that the "prensent supremacy" of abstract art had to do with music being the dominant form of art during this period. Previously, the dominance of literature caused painting to closely relate to literary characteristics. During the 19th century, literature reigned as the dominant form of art. During this time literature was influenced by the Romantic Revolution. The Romantic theory of art was "that the artist feels something and passes on this feeling-not the situation or thing which stimulated it-to his audience." During this period, painters lost respect for their mediums, and for the first time academicism was born. Greenberg describes painting as being at an "all time low" during this period. Greenberg's opinion for art during this period is shown in the quote, " the fate of our particular tradition of art depends upon that into which abstract art develops." He believed that a good painting does not have to be successful. Rather it should be "stimulating," "interesting," "original," and "creative."

Despite his criticisms, Clement Greenberg did have a few excpetions to his dismay. He approved of some artists who held true to the virtue, and rather than imitating, expressed emotion and character in their pieces. He was fond of the work of such artists as Miró, Léger and Kandinsky.

Clement Greenberg outlined the course of art for the future. After this essay was written, Abstract Expressionist paintings were produced and became extremely popular. The purpose of this type of art parallels the way Greenberg felt art needed to be, and how it needed to change. Greenberg wrote this essay about the natural course of change in art, and the outburst of Abstract Expressionsim exemplifies a natural course of change.