Optical Art

Viewer Participation

Bridget Riley, To a summer's day, 1980

Unlike Conceptual Art, Optical Art, or Op Art, is really concerned about engaging the viewer. Various straight, concentric and undulating lines are used to create various types of illusions, the most important of which is movement. Color is also often used to manipulate these illusions.

A. Kitaoka, Brownian Motion, 2004

I don't think Op Art creators are as pretentious as Conceptual Artists. Firstly, there is quite a high degree of skill and knowledge required to make Op Art. Secondly, the goal is really to amuse, or at least to engage, the viewer. Unlike Conceptual Artists, who really work in their own vacuum and dogged seriousness, an Op Art piece only works if the viewer responds accordingly, and usually with surprise and pleasure.

The charm of Op Art is that it also is used often in fabrics.


Success has a real concrete definition.

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Conceptual Art II

Getting one's own hands dirty

I recently went to see a "video installation" by the up-and-coming Lida Abdul, free courtesy of the Toronot Arts Council.

Adbul’s biography makes it clear that she is a refugee of the Soviet-Afghani war of the 1970s, and she’s traveled the world in that capacity. In the program notes, not her website, she is described as a "permanent resident of Kabul" and "lives in Chicago." Globe-trotters can never be really sure – to themselves or to others – exactly where their feet are planted.

This brings me back to conceptual art. It is this very sense of displacement, I believe, that feeds the work.

Abdul’s work tries to deal with rebuilding the worn-torn Afghani landscape. Yet, she cannot even offer concrete artistic projects to fulfill this yearning.

Her three video pieces deal with her own obsessions, and often at the expense of the real residents of that land.

White House – (also pun on the real White House? Probably) – shows her painting a rubble of stones with white paint. Along comes a male, who submissively stands facing a wall, whom she also paints over in this white mortar.



War Games (What I Saw) has two Afghani men on horse back, with ropes tied around the horses and a bombed out building, trying to pull down the structure. They never making a dent in the demolition, but endlessly circle it.



Brick Sellers of Kabul is a long line of young boys waiting to reach the front to hand over the bricks – for money.



All three have a heavy element of cynicism in them. Is it the woman who is the ultimate builder of Afghanistan? Are the two horsemen really doing anything? What hope is there for youngsters who wait endlessly in line to get a few coins for the building blocks of their country?

Abdul, in her Chicago office, and her Italian Gallery (where this work appears to be on permanent display), is offering nothing. Her work is neither a lamentation nor a spark of hope. She would have been better off getting her own hands dirty and really build something.

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Conceptual Art I

An arrogant snub



Conceptual Art is art where the idea matters more than the actual piece of work. The artist doesn't require any skill in the traditions of drawing, painting or sculpting, and rearranges objects to fit a concept - or an idea.

My whole critique of conceptual art would be too long for a blog posting. Suffice to say that it irritates me endlessly. Although I "get" it each and every time, I can never make art (or design) with such criteria, because really, my mind doesn't work that way. I feel that I would be cheating myself, and whomever sees my humble efforts, by using mental jig-saw puzzles to put my artistic projects across.

I also find contemporary conceptual artists to be cold and indifferent to the public despite the inordinate amount of time they spend to come up with "public art". This is very clear to me with a contemporary "artist" Gwen MacGregor, who recently used giant jello cubes to fill up a "public space" - a fountain, in this case.

There is something creepy about wading through jello cubes, of the very type that you might eat as dessert one of these days. I'm quite sure that the young children walked through it with trepidation, and it is only the adults who were gleefully amused.



The shortcoming is of course that MacGregor can never design a real fountain, either as a two-dimensional painting or drawing, or as an architectural piece. So, her "concept" becomes the art of the gimmick. And an arrogant snub.

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More 300

Details

I hope soon to write a long piece (perhaps put it in my "essays" column) on the film 300, and how it follows many of the traditions of fine art making.

It is an important film, both as a story (history) and as cinematographical art.

In the meantime, I should add that Leonidas’ St. Sebastian-like pose at the end is actually combined with his outstretched arms in the form of a crucified Christ.

There are lots of small details like this which convinces me that this film does consciously pick up on many art, historical and cultural references.

Very unusual, and very brave, for a film which also aimed at being a blockbuster.

I think it won on all those counts.

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Easter

Mysteries of nature

"...study nature diligently. Be guided by nature and do not depart from it, thinking you can do better yourself. You will be misguided, for truly art is hidden in nature..." Albrecht Dürer

Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Lis Blanc (Madonna Lily)


From Les Liliacees, Published: Paris 1802-1816
Medium: Stipple engravings with original hand color

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Christian Imagery in "300"

A cultural inevitablity

I had said earlier that I would write an entry on the film 300 and some of the Christian imagery that I recognized.

I'm not sure what the backgrounds of the movie team are. But it is not surprising that some elements of the surrounding culture would permeate into works of art. And I do consider 300 to be a work of art, visually and cinematographically. Any serious visual artist would therefore spend large amounts of time assessing and reviewing the hundreds of examples and records available from a long tradition of art.

Perhaps the most compelling moment of Christian imagery is when a tree hung with corpses is first introduced to us in the form a cross.


Later on, the camera zooms out to show us the whole tree, and later zooms in to show us the hundreds of corpses haphazardly on it. The bodies are of the Spartans' fellow Greeks, hung there by the Persian enemy.



Near the end, when Leonidas and his men are finally slaughtered with Persian arrows, we have a close-up of Leonidas, with his arms outstretched, very much in the crucifixion pose. Since there is no spatial focus point, we are not sure if we are seeing an upright Leonidas. In fact, he is lying down, in the middle of the crimson robes that metaphorically delineate blood.

On further analogy, Leonidas’ arrow-pierced body is reminiscent of Saint Sebastian, himself pierced by arrows of the pagan Romans while tied to a tree. In fact, St. Sebastian was also a leader, in the Roman military, and converted many soldiers into Christianity.


Saint Sebastian by Il Sodoma

Leonidas is tempted three times. Firstly when the Persian messenger threatens him, Leonidas temporarily wavers. Second, the Persian King Xerxes stands softly behind him, promising Leonidas all kinds of powers if he succumbs to the Persians. And finally when Leonidas falls to his knees before the superior Persian army (by the thousands, to his few men) to seemingly avoid death.



And Xerxes as the idol, and as the devil incarnate, also has his own golden calves which adorn his throne.

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