The Constant Struggle to Fight the Museum

For my last review I wanted to explore artwork that was not necessarily found in a museum or gallery. We spent a major part of our class examining artist’s struggle to fight against institutions of the museum and against the commodification of art. This sole goal or battle was one of the main driving forces behind many art movements. However, I was disappointed to see that artists, at least the ones we studied, chose to do this within the museum. As time went on their work ended perpetuating the same problems. Their art work could be sold and bought just as any of the work they were fighting against. There were some exceptions such as Krysztof Wodiczko and Richard Serra, but the majority of artists we covered chose the gallery to work within the system in order to change it. I wanted to focus on art that chose the public domain rather than art institutions to portray their message. This, to me, is much more interesting.
By exploring the walls of East Los Angeles, a great deal of history and political consciousness can be seen. The mural above utilizes different symbols from the past and the present to create a hint of the Chicano presence in East L.A. Beginning on the left side, indigenous symbols are used alongside the Whittier boulevard sign, which has become a famous symbol representing East L.A. It continues this dichotomy of old and new portraying a woman who kneels in front of ancient ruins and the Los Angeles skyline. This imagery represents the hybrid identities that Latinos have come to embody due to a history of immigration. Continuing to the right, the flag of the United Farm Worker’s Union is included with protesters next to it.
I use this mural as an example of many due to its aesthetic and political aspects. The fact that these works are located in the public and not in a museum brings much more life to the artwork. Due to its content portraying bits and pieces of Chicano identity the mural works as a reminder, to any by-passer, of what Chicanos have accomplished. Its location is important in the creation of culture in this marginalized and unincorporated section of Los Angeles. Murals, such as this, work in harmony with other murals, to create a presence of the community through paint. The mural is given a life that would be lost if placed in a museum.
Graffiti was barely mentioned when speaking of artists attempt to rebel against the museum. How can this be when graffiti is based on solely this fact and essence? Graffiti writers forget the museum and paint in public spaces, regardless of the laws against it. Graffiti, however, has fallen in the same trap as many other radical art movements in that it has infiltrated the world of the museum and has widely been turned into a commodity. Anything from video games, purses, markers and toys have been sold under the umbrella of graffiti products. While some artists may have entered the mainstream art and business markets graffiti still exists as a staple of urban life.
This type of art represents what many artists were attempting to do since the 70’s and before. Graffiti allows anyone not be an artist. It allows members of any community to pick up a spray paint can and express themselves in the midst of claiming their presence. Artists dealt with the museum’s exclusion of any artists that wasn’t a white straight male. While some worked to change this from the inside graffiti writers took it upon themselves to invent a new form of expression with rules defying those of the museum.
Muralists and graffiti writers deserve a place in art history books. These forms of art are essential to the construction of culture. In confronting institutions of art and its market, these artworks are successful in giving marginalized voices a place to express themselves freely.

MOCA's 30 Year Celebration

The MOCA is hosting one of its largest shows in celebration of its 30 years as an arts institution. The show is taking place at both their Grant location and at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Each of these locations focus on a specific window of time; the Grant location holds art from 1940-1980 while the Geffen holds art from the 80’s to the present. Since our class will be going to the Geffen exhibit I chose to visit the works that preceded the art we would see.

The first major section of the exhibit focuses on painter Mark Rothko and Piet Mondrian. Both these artists set the backbone to what the rest of the exhibit holds through their goals and styles of painting. Both artists’ work that is displayed rebels against the importance of form and rather focused on shape, line and color. Rothko’s multiple paintings make use of rectangular shapes adopting minimalist traditions. Piet Mondrian’s work strictly uses lines and 90 degree angles to portray his message. Both Rothko and Mondrian were good choices to begin the headline both chronologically and philosophically. It sets the tone for the sort of constant redefinition and rebellion that took place in this time to keep redefining art.

Following these artists, Pollock’s Number 1 stands out from the rest of the art surrounding it. Following in the same strategies to rebel against established notions of what is art, Pollock’s work was seen as a radical new way of painting. Pollock gained fame as the rebel not just in the art world, but in mainstream media as well. From this new abstract form of painting and the celebrity artist came about 50’s pop art. The exhibit did not include much work that specifically exemplified this time period and art style. However, it did present another artist and medium that gained popularity during this time: Robert Frank and photography.

Robert Frank’s collection does an outstanding job at documenting American life during the 1950’s. His photographs are full of content and character and are craftily composed. Frank’s photographs are interesting to look at and study. Of course this is during the time when photographers were using this medium as an artful way to document real life. Conceptual photography and a step beyond aesthetic beauty were still not popular methods.

Several other photographers earned the spotlight during the MOCA exhibit such as Nan Goldin, Helen Levitt, Judy Fiskin, Diane Arbus and my personal favorite of these, Lewis Baltz. What all these photographers have in common is their attempt at recording or documenting a certain niche of life. Goldin focuses on many characters that she interacts with exposing very interesting moments of their lives. Diane Arbus additionally focuses on personalities and stylized portraits that communicate character in many interesting ways. Her photography has its very own aesthetic look. Following the same strategies as Robert Frank, Helen Levitt ‘s photography falls best under documentarian. Her work in the streets of New York captures a place and time very specific and important to the creation of an American identity during the early 40’s.

Juddy Fiskin and Lewis Baltz also document, but instead of people their main focus is landscape. Jussy Fiskin’s miniature prints revolve around architecture and place in Southern California. Working in the 1970’s her work is not necessarily attempting to create a beautiful image, but call out to these peculiar places and place the viewer as close to her viewfinder by creating tiny prints. Lewis Baltz, who was somehow forgotten from the MOCA website, deals with landscape as well in his very unique way. His work can be seen as influenced by much of the minimalist traditions in the way he deals with line and shape. Baltz uses perpendicular and parallel lines often creating harmonies between many individual shapes that we take for granted as we walk down a sidewalk or down an alley way.

Here we can see much of the similarity between Baltz’s work and Mondrian. Even though Baltz’s photographs are black and white they still utilize the same sorts of shapes and lines as Mondrian’s paintings.

Throughout the whole exhibition there are many examples of works that directly address each other and build upon the concept of art that artists thrive to understand. The gallery was well worth a visit and a great complement to the following section at the Geffen. MOCA has pulled off a great show in its celebration of 30 years in service.

The Hummingbird Collective: A Cooperative Effort

Located on York Blvd between Ave 50 and 51st in Highland Park the Hummingbird Collective functions as both a medicinal marijuana club and an art gallery. The space is divided into two halves: the first half, open to the public, is their art gallery and front desk while the walled off second part is open to patients looking for medicine. In their own words, the Hummingbird Collective “is a community service oriented premoratorium collective and art gallery that is dedicated to promoting kindness and wellbeing.” T.H.C. opens their gallery wall space to any artist in the community who would like a place to expose their work. An artist must first give a sample of their work and if approved the artist receives wall space for an average of two weeks. Currently, T.H.C. is focusing on paintings.
The paintings are mostly done on non-traditional materials. Materials range from wooden window sills, free hanging canvas, paper mache and found wooden pieces instead of canvas bordered with wood. The works cover a diversity of themes and aesthetic endeavors. One artist focuses on painting cartoon skeletons, perhaps in the spirit of Day of the Dead celebrations that will take place shortly. Others have painted realist landscapes and portraits. T.H.C. has one permanent piece situated right at the entrance to the clinic. This portrait was done using spray paint and adapts certain graffiti aesthetics. The portrait is a mix between surrealist and realist strategies. The actual features on the woman are close to reality, however the colors utilized to paint her skin and hair are blue and a bright orange. And of course a small hummingbird is featured flying right above her flower decorated hair curls.
As much as T.H.C. wants to promote community and give everyone a chance to show their work, not every painter gets so lucky. With business in mind T.H.C. chose to deny one specific artist their wall space. These paintings were stacked behind several wooden planks lying on the floor. When I began asking the workers about their favorite works they immediately showed me these censored and hidden paintings. Highly critical and political these three paintings were too offensive for the customers at Hummingbird. The paintings Diet of a Celebrity, The Surgeon General’s Wife and Still Beautiful are all gorgeous paintings done using very unique brush strokes and color palettes. With strong images that are sure to get your attention and get gears grinding in your head perhaps they were too serious for the patients exiting the clinic. T.H.C.’s motto “it’s always a beautiful day at the Hummingbird Collective” overpowered the intentions of this specific artist. To T.H.C.’s respect they still showed them to me. They were very honest about their motives for taking them down, but still communicated a deep respect for both the aesthetics of the paintings and their critical message.


Still Beautiful
Diet of a Celebrity

Every two weeks the Hummingbird Collective will change their artwork by theme, materials, medium or special events. On October 24th they will be opening a new show featuring graffiti artists from Los Angeles. They will be hosting an official gallery opening with graffiti works on canvas and wood. Their motive behind this project is to promote an appreciation for graffiti artwork which is often times forgotten and regarded as “low-brow” art. T.H.C. believes graffiti is one of the freest and most fundamental pieces of urban life and would like to celebrate its existence and its artists.
The Hummingbird Collective pleases its customers with the community’s artwork presented on their walls. In addition to medicinal marijuana their artwork is sure to serve as medicine as well.

Twenty Eight: Claremont Graduate University Exhibition

“Twenty Eight” featured twenty eight second year MFA students’ work ranging from painting, installations, performance, video and sculptural art. There was a huge diversity in the types of subject matter and approaches that each artist focused on, creating an exciting and intriguing collective exhibition. In the context of art movements since 1975, specifically the return of painting in the 80’s, one artist’s work stood out as an interesting subject matter. Artist, Justin Bower, painted Blue Boy using oil on canvas. This piece seems to embody what many painters were reaching for post the conceptual art movement of the 1970’s.

During the 1970’s painting had been completely forgotten and abandoned by the majority of the art community. Video, photography and performance art had taken over as the preferred mediums during the years of the avant-garde and conceptual art. However, as the 70’s reached an end painters began to strike back and revolt to this “‘narrow, puritan approach, devoid of all joy in the senses’” (Taylor, 67) and returned to the form. That is to say, that painters witnessed art reach such extremes that it could no longer be taken any further and the only way forward was to return to the basics.

Artists wanted to free themselves from the overtly political ramifications of the conceptual artists’ work and create art that could just exist as a beautiful expression of the artist through whatever medium was chosen. One specific artist that stands out from this group is Georg Baselitz. His work returned to figurative art, but also included abstract features. His painting Elke is a perfect example of his strategies and the return to the form with a progressive sense to the painting. Justin Bower’s Blue Boy seemed to embody the same sort of characteristics as many of Baselitz paintings and efforts.

Blue Boy is an aesthetically interesting and pleasurable piece of work that definitely functions towards pleasing the senses. It is a portrait traditionally framed with the face facing the audience. The ratio and form of the head works within traditional rules as well. However, the face is abstracted through wild brush strokes and faded duplications of certain body parts. The brush strokes are closely similar to those that Baselitz used in his Elke painting. The abstraction of the boys face can assert to the tension and arguments between traditional and abstract forms of expression that were taking place during the 80’s. This piece with its perfectly chosen colors embodies much of what painters were reaching for in reaction to conceptual artists. However, there was another group fighting against this arguing that a piece of art could not possibly escape political significance and that art should be more than something nice to look at.

The gallery did include few works that attempted to involve themselves politically and socially. Nevertheless the majority of the artists practiced the freedom of expression that painters were hungry for as the decade of the 1970’s closed out. The work was pleasing to look at, but the majority was dry of any sort of sociological statement. These artists are nonetheless talented and hopefully will leave school to keep developing their skills professionally in the Los Angeles art scene or wherever they chose to work.

Work Cited:
Taylor, Brandon. Contemporary Art: Art Since 1970. Laurence King Publishing, London 2005.