week 7

I feel so ignorant whenever a new guest speaker comes to present to our class. Art and environment? Never really thought about it. But through Karla’s presentation, I realized that art and environment are closely related and in some cases, the same. In the Romantic Era, beautiful  environmental landscapes made very popular paintings. People even went to nature destinations, brought “cloud lenses” to frame a particular place and gazed through it as if it was a physical work of art. Karla asked us if humans are different from nature or the same. It’s obvious we observe and interact with nature but I came to the conclusion she was suggesting we were basically opposites. But later Karla showed us some ways in which artists have attempted to become a part of nature like the artist who painted herself to camouflage in with a tree or the hand sculpture that remained attached to a tree so long it made an indentation. Culture is what largely defines the human, manmade aspect and these artists try and make a relationship out of nature and culture. An interesting quote Karla showed us was: “If culture is always with us when we are in nature, is nature always with us when we’re in culture?” This question is something to think about not only for artistic purposes, but in life at large. Nature has a lot to do physically with objects we interact with everyday. Whether directly, or indirectly nature is prevalent in culture. I think because nature literally surrounds culture it has influence, even if it is inadvertently. Karla transitioned to Modernism and pointed out an interesting connection between the artistic movement and architectural design. She said architects were influenced by the clean, perfectionist image of a boxy, sterile room and then mentioned that some elementary schools were based off this idea. And while mine wasn’t, some classrooms in my high school were—four stark, white, bare walls. It was so ominous and I hated it. Karla said that human beings were not meant to inhabit boring rooms which relates to how nature is never this “perfect” image.

To summarize Roland Barthes “The Death of the Author,” I would say he feels that in order for a reader to be able to search for multiple meanings, have a truly analytical, self-propelled experience, there must be no trace of the author for the reader to be aware of because it would influence the meaning of the text to one end. He has a good point. I never read up on the author before I read a novel, poem or essay unless it is provided for me. Often times it is not and I end up coming up with vastly different conclusions that what the teacher has because she knows the “right” conclusions to draw based on her knowledge of the author’s history and personal life. The same concept can be applied to art. If you don’t have context or a history of the artist, there are myriad of ways to analyze it. In a sense, by remaining “dead,” the author or artist lets the reader or viewer become the creative one because they have control over the meaning of what they’re seeing. It’s kind of powerful what Barthes is suggesting.

Kiki Smith is truly one of a kind. I read her interviews but it is not the same as seeing her in person and you can kind of get a sense of her eccentricities. She is a very interesting person and artist who works with sculptures and printmaking. The art21 video showed her and her team creating miniature sculptures of saints that she was inspired to make from nurses handing out tissues at Baptist funeral. While she was working on a sculpture, the arm broke off and everyone gasped but she shrugged it off like it wasn’t a big deal and said “it’s fine,” and kept going. She also talked about how even if she’s working on a piece that she feels might be embarrassing or pointless she’ll keep going because it will evolve into something. I think in these two instances she shows great faith and endurance. She was raised Catholic, and whether or not her persistence has anything to do with her religious ties it is a great characteristic to retain. Her parents also always pleaded her to trust her intuition so it’s inspiring to see that she’s taken their advice and even when she’s unsure about something she sticks with it and it ends up being something incredible.

When Karla was talking about Romantic paintings she used a quote that said, “Landscape paintings breed landscape paintings.” This relates to Barthes “The Death of the Author” because the quote suggests that there is no originality, only a combination of past work. Barthes puts it like this: “We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single theological meaning but a multidimensional space in which a verity of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.” In the case of the quote Karla showed us, the “text” is the painting and the “multidimensional space” refers to a variety of past art. From Barthes perspective, Romanticism is the death of the author. After Romanticism, Modernism emerged, which is very original and “author-like.” This is ironic because from his point of view and from common logic, the author should be alive before he is dead. From learning about Kiki Smith, I noticed she had some “author-like” tendencies. She talked about she was in a sculpting competition but she “decided she didn’t want to make public sculpture that was of other people’s agendas. I couldn’t do that. I can only do things that come from my necessity.” She ended up creating sculptures of witches because there aren’t any commemoratives for them anywhere. It’s a very original idea. So you’ve got this idea of being an author and then I thought that it’s kind of authoritative. Taking matters into your own hands, being controlling, which is exactly what an author is—an omniscient creator. Kiki made these witch sculptures and I thought well that’s neat. But later she described her childhood as the Addams Family. She and her sisters were looked at as strange and were teased as witches and there was this sense of morbidity throughout her household. After learning the identity of the “author” I came to understand her witch sculptures more. Barthes thinks of the author as a selfish person because it reserves the meaning a text to the identity of the author but Kiki said that she would rather have an open ended meaning, one for her and multiple meanings for other people. She revolutionizes the divide between the author and the reader and makes it a worthwhile experience for both parties.  I don’t think in this case, learning about her past experience with oddities and witches, really inhibited my analysis, but actually made it stronger.

These stacked rocks are all over the place in Ashland, OR

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vwmang/3946995060/