Art on the Go

". . . because biennial curating , trust me, is not a big deal.  It's a skill set.  Like art criticism, it's a support system in the service of contemporary art, which is not that big a deal, either.  Contemporary art is a goody bag of  what's fashionable tonight, local 'cultural production' auditioning to become history.  You can argue for it but you cannot argue from it, since contemporary art lacks the sustained track record that invests art with historical authority." - Dave Hickey from July/August's Art in America

I read this article today, early, and it reconfirmed some things for me.  However, I think so many things that today's belief that is reconfirmed will be tomorrow debunked.  Doesn't matter though, today I will live by this principle and it will guide my actions, and today looks like an art making day, so the quote will serve me well.

I am an art teacher, and as of next semester, a philosophy teacher as well.  I am taking the summer not to make extra money, but to think and relax and paint and study and get a little preparation work done for next semester.  I go into my art classroom two or three times a week to get a handle on the printmaking materials.  I studied printmaking at a local small museum last week and let my normal themes of light and smoke and clouds to guide my imagery for the experimental print.  Today I will go in and print it.  Since we have textile ink I thought I would pick up a cheap t shirt and have a go at printing my image on a t shirt as well.  It is part experiment but given the above quote and my belief that contemporary post modern art should transcend boundaries of the painting plane and gallery, printing on a t shirt is also a way of forcing contemporary art to exist in the real world.  Jenny Holzer did this with her t shirt that I reproduced above.  I have a good friend who is a tattoo artist and he makes a similar comment about tattoos.  They are personal art, art for the person who has them and no one else.  A tattoo cannot be bought or sold, it is forever with the wearer as a decoration for others to enjoy and as a piece of art the wearer can enjoy whenever the mood strikes him or her.  A tattoo is a work of art that cannot possible be present in the gallery (well it can and I had an idea for this once), a tattoo embodies a principle of post modern art.  I noticed that even tattoo magazines are calling people who are series about having tattoos collectors.

Since contemporary art is striving to become history, but it cannot because history is long and the contemporary period is short, let us not worry about the art we make.  Just make it and put it in as many places as you can, let history decide if its worth remembering.  It won't really matter to us by the time history has decided, at the very least we'll be too old to care.

Truth is LIghtweight

Knowledge is light, or is like light, it helps you to see things more clearly. I have been reading the TOK materials in preparation for my course that I am teaching this fall and have decided that to begin with I will write a little bit for myself in order to get my thoughts together.
I was thinking about simplicity and how in some circumstances I would need to simplify things so that sixteen year olds would be able to understand it. However, I question whether or not this would be a corruption of the original. The author didn’t intend for people to understand in simple terms, they wrote so that they would be best understood in their terms.
I like this question, it entertains me because it is a subject that I try to live. Simple is good. Be direct, be understood, make it efficient and get the point across so that many can understand what is being said. My painting is like that, it takes a form, it simplifies it, it abstracts it because in the abstraction we can see a truer form, we no longer question the idea of what it is, we appreciate the object for its color and lines and shapes and we lose the attachment to it being sunlight or leaves or the moon or what have you.
Recently I was visiting my parents in the USA and I was struck with the amount of stuff they had lying about their homes. My mother was more akin to the useful situation, the stuff littering the table tops and shelves were functional; a can for cat treats and dog treats for example. Even the walls, over-filled with photographs, are functional because her husband is photographer. Nonetheless there are thousands of things everywhere. My father’s house was even more intense albeit slightly different. His house contains even more bric-a-brac but it is largely decorative. Things for looking at and filling up shelves. A teddy bear that has different costumes which him and his wife change with the seasons. Photos, posters, sculptures all designed for entertainment of one form or another. Both of them are intense gardeners and their small plot of land requires constant attention. Good thing both of them work part time, it allow for the daily necessities of taking care of the land and house. Just now while reflecting on it I am wondering who keeps up with the dusting. The end result is a fine view, especially in regards to their lawn and flower beds, it blooms from late February to November.
But for some reason I am put off by all of this. When I first met my wife I was similar to my parents and being profoundly interested in art history and stories and culture and what not, my apartment was equally as cluttered as my parents’ houses. China was a dream come true for me with its dirt markets and antiques: Really the antiques are all fake but who cares, I am not collecting for value I am collecting for pleasure and entertainment. And I picked up loads of things of all shapes and sizes. When my girlfriend (now my wife) moved in she was very anti-clutter though she said little, until we decided upon moving from my apartment to one we shared, and then the hatchet came down cutting away loads of great stuff I had collected. I resisted and fought and whined and cried but over time I cam to see something very valuable about anti-stuff. It’s clean, it’s easy and the true essence of a room is revealed, kind of. I could never be in a totally sterile anti-stuff sort of place. I place out one things or two and the lack of other things calls attention to those that are out. A small tableau of a Guan Yin statue and two Tara figures (female Buddhas to put it simply). I still have a minor collection of things but it rotates around the house. I find this preferable because when everything is out, then you notice nothing (unless you’ve been smoking marijuana) but when things change and there is only a thing or two about, then you appreciate those things while they are in your presence , knowing that they won’t be there forever and it may be a full year before I look upon them again. I was studying Japanese Tea Houses and I came upon a story of a tea master that cut down all the flowers from all the trees and shrubs around the tea house so that the visitor would notice the lone flower in a vase on the table.
This is what I am thinking about when it comes to presenting material for the Theory of Knowledge course. How can I cut away the flowers so that my students are seeing the one lone flower in the vase and appreciating it for what it is. From teaching English I have had this problem, there is so much that needs to be understood in a given article that the casual English learner will miss the point due to the effort it takes to understand the article. There is a point of view exercise that is not entirely formulated in my head but I can make work. In a recent edition of the Wall Street Journal there is an article about the recent unrest in western China along with an Op-Ed piece from the leader of one of the organizations. I need now to find a Chinese point of view article to complete the circle. Then break the students into groups each reading one aspect of the piece and reporting to the class what is going on. The students can see the difference and also realize it is a point of view question. The real question is how to do this simply.
Knowledge is like this, philosophers are either vague or very thick. “The one comes from the void and the two comes from the one” we understand yet we cannot pinpoint what it means. Or “We may and must, therefore, consider all the trials heretofore made as not having taken place for establishing metaphysics dogmatically - for what in one or other in them is analytical, namely mere autonomy of conceptions which dwell in our reason a priori, is not at all an end but simply a preliminary . . . “ and so on which we understand while we read it but are pains to explain it five minutes later. Both of these methods don’t create a knowledge of literature, they create a knowledge of understanding. We know because at some point it was exposed to us and the idea stays deeply embedded in our thinking and influences our decision making, though we may not be able to locate where the thinking came from.
How do we make this simple and clear and direct and understandable at the same time? I believe this is what my life has been about really, why I am so quiet, and rarely go on and on about philosophical issues, even though I love to. I limit myself to certain subjects. Also I am tired of talking about the same old shit and my quietness may be interpreted as shyness or ignorance or social ineptness, which it all probably is. I walk the life, not talk the life. But that is no longer acceptable because now it is my job to teach it, to embody it and get my students to understand in a few words and inspire them to write many. When I sort it out, I will let you know.

LIght on the Street

Several weeks ago I was walking to the subway from school, I was feeling pretty fine about things, even a little bit important for one reason or another (I forget now). I left my school a early and happened across the public secondary school just as classes were ending and students were milling about before going home to eat dinner and do homework. Crossing the bridge I spied four high school boys in their jogging suit uniforms eating ice cream and generally being high school boys and I knew they could see me because I could hear the disrespectful and annoying “halooo” that naturally comes out of about half of the Chinese population’s mouth every time they see a foreigner. I have lived in China for nearly six years now and I have gone through various phases of how to deal with this. I have inwardly gotten angry about it and taken it out on the general population by refusing to be polite, especially when buying something, I have ignored it, I have refused to associate with Chinese people. The easiest method, and the one I have gotten the most satisfaction from; is to say hello back. People are normally surprised because they are used to being ignored and either get sheepish or sometimes become friendly. Normally they can’t really speak English but I can speak Chinese and this reaction has even led to drinking rice wine and joy rides in police cars (with police officers of course). My farther-in-law, who is Chinese, almost got into a fight because someone said something like that when we were walking down the street. I have always had a negative side (that no one believes that I have) and this particular day I wasn’t in the mood for that kind of behavior. I was tired and busy and a couple of rude high school kids was not in my plan for making myself feel better. As I passed they said “halooo” a mocking and insidious sound to hear, and I ignored it. Another one said it and without reaction I flipped them the middle finger and didn’t break my stride as I walked away. They responded with laughter and a “fuck your mother”. At this point I felt like punching at least one of them in the teeth, I refrained, but for the rest of the walk down the street I was angry and then some. I thought of how I could tell them they were stupid, vendor’s children and they should continue to talk like that because it is appropriate for their future employment. I wanted to shame them by telling them that I had been here for six years, had helped to better the education system to give boys like them a better chance and that is how they treat people. For the rest of the evening really I was debating on the best way to handle it and it still just bothered me so much to be treated so disrespectfully. I have actually been trying to deal with my negative side properly since the new year and while I have been a Buddhist in certain practices I have wanted to take the next step and have been applying myself to mediation and study. Reciting the Buddha of Peace’s name, and questioning exactly who I am and thereby who it was that is offended. At the time of this occurrence nothing was doing me much good. Until I remembered a passage I read from a Korean monk who wrote about dealing with those that offend you. Kim Jae Woong instructs us to pray for those who offend. Ask that they become more intelligent so that they may serve the Buddha well. This will not only give one peace, it will also help develop a sense of compassion and actually help those who act in rude, help them to become intelligent enough not to be so rude. This is precisely what I did and honestly I had to do it about one hundred times before I truly felt that any good had become of it. I have been hoping to see those boys again. I have been hoping that the next time they can do it I can joke with them and tease them (in a friendly way) about their behavior. They have given me light and I wish one day to also give them some.

Photo credit: Claralastair's flickr

Newest Cartoon

LIght in the Temple

The above photo was taken during the Buddha's birthday in Seoul about six years ago. It was quite a big deal that day and I am fond of this photo because it seems to capture the actual moment. Often times a photo captures a moment but it is not characteristic of what was happening when the photo was taken, take Cindy Sherman's movie stills as an example. However, this photo does, I feel it captures the event, there simultaneously solemnity and festivity. The temple was overcrowded with people but it was not the normal gawkers that turn up for a high holiday, it was an accumulation of all the people who go to the temple as a matter of lifestyle arriving on the same day. At that point of my life I was going to the temple several times a week to meditate, and my life, despite being totally out of control, had a simultaneous sense of peace. That is why I like this photo so much perhaps, the day it was taken, what is happening in the photo, and what my life was then are all the same.

Several time I attempted to make a painting of this photo, and it only worked once, then I tried to add black to my spheres and ruined it. So from here on in I will leave it a photo.

I went to a Lama temple today, in part because it is nearest to my home. In Northern China there are not so many temples and in China I have been somewhat turned off by the Buddhists. It is far more supersticious and most people are praying for things, normally money. I find the most devote Buddhists are old people (like any religion) followed by business men and then recent college grads looking for jobs. But I am bitching here and I really shouldn't, it is not my point.

Part of my reason for going to the Lama temple is because in meditation I felt I needed to go. Also Since I am ever on a quest for light I thought I might find some light, or enlight if I was really lucky. Sad to say I brought my distaste for Chinese Buddhism with me and in the end I didn't find any light, but I did find what I had been missing many times out of the year, and that was a sense of peace. Going through the inscense burning and kowtows quarantined my mind from distractions. I didn't notice the BMW's or the tourists or the college kids, I only noticed peace, my thoughts were quieted and to paraphrase David Lynch, the pool of my mind was deepened. And for the rest of the day I have been in a fine mood.

Seing as my visual art has been about light and its effects, I had the idea to look through the Bible, The Quran and other sacred texts for the word light, cut them out, and then paste them onto a canvas. My trip to the Lama temple today was a ploy to gather material and more ideas. However, God/Buddha or whoever it is calling the shots had thought otherwise.

The Universerse in the City

I took it upon myself to carry a school camera around last week in my ever widening effort to look for the way light shines. Thus I walked home from work with this and other locations on my mind. This is The Place (in capital because that is its name) just north of the Silk Market in east central Beijing. There is this long video screen and for sometime I watched and snapped photos of it. When I returned how and was sorting through what I took, I came across this one and thought "How delicious, this city is so big that the universe itself will fit inside of it".

In China one of the ideas I got from her (Tracy, who was visiting my school yesterday) was that artists are arguing about globalization in art and retaining Chinese-ness. There is a question about whether or not China should stick to its old way of doing things, teaching art making skills, so as not to loose it Chinese-ness. I think China is also feeling like someone is trying to take it over (China has been terrified of that since WWII) the Chinese, always very, very nationalistic, don’t want to be accused of toadying or copying other powers. I told her that China has a good system because it teaches skills but it lacks because they don’t teach anyone how to think. This is a big problem in China. This is why I am excited about punk rock here because that is the group of people in China that have had it with being told how to do things and are expressive, they may lack skills but they make up for it in creativity. The trick is how to get these programmers (computer programmers are a very avant garde group here), punk rockers and hip-hop-pers into the visual arts fold; or extend visual arts beyond, what it is right now in China, an elitist club. The articles I’ve studied about post-modernism have argued such a shift, even Andy Warhol was getting away from that as far back as the sixties, and since in China visual arts is still a select group, it is very difficult to do. We need more exhibitions like the Fuck Off exhibition at Li Liang’s gallery in 2000. This isn’t to say things have to be extreme, but they can be anything so long as its researched, expressive and done on purpose. And if we could blur the distinctions between who gets to participate in high art and who doesn't then I feel that we in China would really be creating a new idea.

Above photo is from Eastlink Gallery's Fuck Off exhibition. There is some really wild stuff there and while very little of it is salable, the exhibition was a visual success.
http://www.eastlinkgallery.cn

Day After Valentines

Not even sure what to write about but felt that it has been too much time since I've written. The students have been making collages to explore Pop Art recently and this photo comes from that, it's nice doing this stuff with them because there are some fun things that come about as a result. Andy Warhol, when asked what he does when he doesn't have ideas said he waits. I have been doing this lately, just waiting. I created a couple of drawings for play, thinking an idea will come and while I have produced a simple thing or two, nothing interesting has come about. To pass the time I've researched Japanese prints, worked on my school blog and finished carving a signature chop that I am actually pleased with. I wrote a bit about deliberate abstraction and I feel that this is where I should be moving at least I think it will break my block. There are a bunch of photographs I have wanted to return to to explore see if there is something I can abstract from there.

A building in Beijing caught fire last week. I saw some intersting fotage from the internet and I can see the biulding from my classroom. Have snapped a couple of shots of it, would have been something to actually see burn.

Well I have had an on again/off again productive week। I really think that I have gotten some creativity back lost through my long exposure to that big painting. I have completed some small things, mostly traditional Chinese painting stuff, crabs, and flowers and what not and it has been a good experience for me. I remember some techniques, and while calligraphy is still absolute shit I am getting better. I have picked up where I left off which I find somewhat off course because usually my skills deteriorate without practice and I have have not practiced in easily a year. I completed a traditional/modern piece where what I did was take an illustration of a very famous Japanese painting and recreated it on a small scale. The painting is of a section of a pine tree and the negative space is covered in gold leaf. I had complete forgotten about this style in Japanese work and had taken my gold section from some Ai Weiwei paintings I saw a few years ago. In hindsight I am remembering my trips to Japan and how the gold leaf behind the paintings and also reflect on my recent preoccupation with gold tempra paint. Perhaps it is a sign, a direction calling out to me, I think that creativity calls one in different directions and I am beginning to interpret those directions better than before. I could not say that I have my finger on it just yet, rather I cannot put into words what it is saying to me but I am beginning to understand the signs better.

That brings me to something else interesting। I was studying up on architecture last night, better to say that I was reading that huge book I brought home from school and taking notes. At first I was most interested in noting things I thought relevant or important to the field but as time progressed my reasoning went from things I found interesting and then to ways I found myself interpreting it, things that were akin my my method of thinking. This is where I realized I needed to interpret my thinking/personality style and work with my strong points. The NPR Remembrance on Andrew Wythe described him as someone who liked tough people. They then defined tough people as those who lived by their strengths and in in understanding of their weaknesses and limitations. I was taking a short, non-sleeping nap brought on by smoking a cigarette too early in the day at the time, as the words drifted through my mind and my mind wandered about I thought about that personality test I took while I was laid up. It described my personality as a scientist; a person who studies and understands situations impartially. That is really what lead to my venture into Chinese painting last week and also dropped that enormous architecture book on my lap.

Back to that; I question myself “What kind of architecture do I want to create?” I have not formed the concise answer to this yet but my general leanings are: Green - architecture that is made of local materials, allows to the occupant to adjust climate control (in northern China we do not have control), is insulated for better retention of energy, maybe some device that recycles washing machine water into the toilet - I am already doing this with shaving and washing my face। I use water in a tub and then pour it into the toilet. Also I want the architecture to reflect design styles of old and new. I am in love with the Chinese Si He Yuan a courtyard/garden house, for lack of a better description. Its main idea is that a house is not one building with rooms, it is several small buildings maybe with only one or two rooms each. How can this idea be included into new buildings? I made a poor drawing of a skyscraper enclosing a Si He Yuan last night. but that will not really work, well I guess it could but enclosing large parts of a city under other large parts of the city is kind of a novelty. It cold be done like R. Buckminster Fuller’s idea of a bubble over Manhattan. What would work is designing apartments to work in this way. Apartments that have a courtyard so to speak. An atrium where the living space, a kitchen, living room, receiving room are on the first floor an are opened to a small clutch of bedrooms. The windows could face the north and south so that adequate but not excessive light gets in. Of course one last thought is sprawl. Separated homes that accentuate the natural surroundings (which there is precious little of in Beijing but lots outside Beijing and allow for gardens and natural space. Despite the ample space outside the city the homes there are very much like the ones inside the city, all crammed together with very little personal space inside the home. But then that takes away from the green idea because there is completely insufficient infrastructure to move large amounts of people in and out of the city which would result in everyone getting cars which then would detract from the whole green aspect.

Well I suppose I have gone one long enough for today. This has been one of my better writings because instead of just telling myself what to do I have actually sharpened ideas and thought up new ones while writing. Let us hope it carries on through the rest of the day.

Mode of Expression

Just wrote a lesson plan I think is great about different art styles and how artists use their language to express their view of the world. The idea is to have the students :

1. Understand their view of the world
2. Learn about painting techniques Ab/EX, Realism, Impressionism and Pop Art
3. Create a painting that reflects their view of the world/situation in one of those styles

It is helpful for me as well because it allows me to explore these since personally I have been working in the Cold Abstraction vein the last year or so.

I did some personal brainstorming today about my work because I have been focusing on finishing a larger painting and haven't done any deep creative work lately. While sketching/writing out ideas about the moon a news report came on the BBC about telescope makers and reflective qualities. This really intrigued me and I learned about the spook fish (if I heard that correct) that has eyes that have a strong reflective surface in their eyes used to catch more light. The get this by layers of protein and cytoplasm. This immediately calls to mind Chris Offili's paintings which are so thick with varnish that the painting has several layers that are all translucent. This effect is something that I've been going for in my own work. I did accidentally twice but despite experimenting with layers of varnish and supports I haven't been able to deliberately reproduce it.

I've always been drawn to the work of Wolfgang Laib, James Turrel, Anish Kapoor because I feel their work all has that other-worldly sensation to it and I want that same kind of experience from my own. I have not yet succeeded.

Conceptualization of Personal Expression

A quick note about what follows: This is a unit I am creating for a Visual Arts class. In order to better focus the content I take the concept that I will be teaching and running it through four different criteria for understanding, or as we say at BCIS "Areas of Interaction". There is a some education vocabulary in here but it is accessible to everyone and I would like anyone to have a look and add opinoins.

Method of expression is an indication of how the artist sees the world

I.Community and Service
Different types of art art accepted and understood differently. Islam for example more or less only accepts things that are abstracted, no images of anything, it’s pattern and design. In the west and the new east the visual structure of popular culture is dominate. International students in China are in a very unique position. Chinese culture is simultaneously taking a large hold in the world and absorbing cultures from outside. China is very happy to show its ancient culture and it is interested in taking things from outside its boarders that are of scientific or cultural value. Students now are bringing their culture here to open recipients as well as being asked to accept the existing culture.

II.Health and Social Education
Visual art is generally scene as the philosophy of sight. Contemporary artists are conceptualizing and expressing what it is that we as humanity think of the world through visual mean. Art in its present tense has always done this and the students should be looking the view of the world an how that is reflected in expression. Visual arts has by and large taken a philosophical view but it has, as in the case of Dadaism and the rise of journalistic art, contemplated social issues, think of the photo journalist that captured the ship breaking series, these were simultaneously a bookmark in history, a social comment on the lives of Bangladeshis and visually appealing photos. A student’s expression could very well be a comment on not only prevailing attitudes but also the state of the world in all its complexities

Environments
The significant concept as it relates to the Environments AOI can be multi-leveled. I think particularly in the realm of time frames. As human thought has progressed, so has its means of expression. Most acute now is the difference between the previous modern view that there is angst about the blurred distinction between order and disorder, and the postmodern view that there is no difference between order and disorder and thus no angst. The students would be understanding that the modes of expression are in relation to the world view. However in the unit what I want the students to be thinking about is their own place in the world and how they can vary their expression in a way that is particular to their own environment

Human Ingenuity
Knowingly or not artists use their mode of personal expression to present what they think of the world, normally a small corner of it, what it is they see. This expression is then normally translated to the rest of the world through historians (in contemporary times gallerists and collectors). If the artist is making strong enough of an expression, then the message gets spread world wide and over time as well. It is the artist’s bold or new thought that is now influencing our behavior. In a more global sense it isn’t just one artist but the sum of what all artists are producing that influence our thinking

I found this still functioning elevator in Shanghai this past summer. It takes one up to probably one of the older contemporary galleries in Shanghai. I first visited in 2004. At the time I expected Shanghai to be country's art center. I spoke with Li Liang who is the proprietor and he assured me that it was Beijing. I a lot of good it did me since I lived in Tianjin at the time

This gallery is still there although I didn't think it was as impressive as it was the first time I saw it. Now that art makes money in China, artists are being less experimental. Fair enough, everyone want to eat and artists are no different. Perhaps it's the buyers who are at fault. If the buyers are more interested in experimental work, then the artists would produce it. Supply and demand. Ai Wei Wei has got it right, use design and architecture, functional things for money. Leave art as expression.

I've often thought that through one's expression they will have ideas and concepts that are applicable in the real world. I have realized that market economies are good for the world as a whole. As ideal as I think communism is, it won't ever be practical because no one person or group of people can know the entire story and thereby make decisions that are good for the whole. So we need to supply what is needed. It is creativity that allows us to see what is needed, or beyond that, what will be needed. I look to design most particularly because I see that it's design that will make life more efficient. It will save us time and resources, make work more enjoyable and easier. Good design will only come from good creative thought, e.g. good art.

Transportation Blues

Kind of at a loss at the moment. I spent the last day and a half in a foul mood, all stemming from public transportation. It’s not that it is was bad, it just wears me out and yesterday I spent as much time traveling as I did working which was quite frustrating. Yesterday was the complete argument for buying a car. Or move somewhere where it’s warm year round so I can ride the motorcycle. Then to make things a more of a pain in the ass I found out that some of my reports did not save on the server so on my day off when I was looking forward to working from home, I had to go in and resubmit reports. Needless to say I was in the mother of all pissed off moods. However, I am away from work now and I have accomplished a bit of what I intended to today and I am in a better mood. But my mind is a little brain dead and that just won’t do today, not is the time for forward thinking.
Qiqi took me to a planning meeting with her company the other night. I was already tired but I put what I could towards thinking of a story for their advertising scheme. I was listening to them talk and employing the brainstorming techniques we teach in school for ideas. I had one or two but I thought Qiqi was being a bit rude to me by cutting me off, but I know that is how she is. She was affectionate from time to time as well. I wish my Chinese was better, I couldn’t keep up with some times and while I knew they were telling stories it was hard to catch the nuances of them. It didn’t help that I had already worked a full day. Last night I was annoyed when Qiqi called me for more ideas and my mind was just spent, mostly from fuming about spending four hours on public transportation all day and I just couldn’t think of anything good, I just couldn’t think really. When I got home I relayed to her to think about romantic stories from our past, why not? they’re funny.
Wang Jing called me earlier in the day to ask help for an english title for his newest film. Nothing yet
A self critique; I need to make my mind work and I need to make my creativity and ability to work, work for me. This is a post modern age and it’s about what you can do with what you have, not what you know.

Getting started

I've been interested in the way we experience color through the sensation of light. I have also been interested in post modernism and I am putting the two together.