ARTH3101/5101 Critical Issues (Fall 2023)

Blog Post #1 Ayuka Shichinohe The article from Vanity Fair, “What Should a Museum Look Like in 2020?” by Kimberly Drew, talks about social issues museums and museum workers are trying to promote. For example, one trend is showing art by an African American artist with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. But is doing this enough? Are museums doing this to be relevant? Are they doing this because they feel forced to? The article argues that genuine change needs to be observable not only through social media but also within the institution in all aspects. These institutions need to commit to a long term change such as diversifying their workforce, greater representation in executive leadership, divesting from police collaborations, improving accessibility, and practicing a zero-tolerance policy for racism among staff and visitors. For example, Walker Art Center decided to discontinue contracts with local police for public events. Social media posts or public letters alone can not undo museums...

BLOG 2  1 Nazi Era Looted Art Charles Doyle CCAD ARTH31001 - Critical Issues Contemporary Art Joanne Kesten October 31, 2023 2 Nazi Era Looted Art To fully comprehend the appropriation of the property and art works of private citizens, I am going to trace the origin of the person who created the environment and gathered the people around him to make this possible – Adolf Hitler. “Among the German wounded in the Ypres Salient in Belgium on October 14, 1918, is Corporal Adolf Hitler” according to Onion et al (2009, p. 2). Hitler was a dedicated soldier, seeing heavy action during World War I (WWI). He was wounded in the leg by a shell blast in October 1916, returning to his old unit by February 1917 (Onion et al., 2009). He was given to dissertations on the dismal state of morale and dedication to the cause on the home front in Germany. He thought despite Germany’s big guns, victory would be denied because he felt the German people were a greater danger than the biggest cannon of the...

  I listened to an episode of the podcast, The Lonely Palette. I chose the episode about artist Barbara Kruger because I have a strong interest in feminism/activism in art. The episode gave a brief summary of her life and the impacts of her work, specifically her 1989 piece, “Your Body is a Battleground.” Kruger attributed her art style to her background in graphic design. In this piece, she mirrors the face of a woman from a 1950s magazine, half beautiful, half frightening. In bold, highlighted red text the phrase “Your body is a battleground.” Kruger made this work for a pro-choice rally march on Washington, and it blew up as a symbol for protesters across the country. This piece is so simple and yet packs a punch to the viewer. So, what makes this work so impactful? She uses specific and curated language to deliver her message to the viewer. Kruger uses language to her advantage, commenting “I think I developed language skills to deal with the threat. It’s the girl thing to do –...

  For my first post I wanted to start out with something that everyone has probably thought at some point, “what is art good for”. This is the title of the first episode of the Lonely Palette podcast. I choose this podcast because I was intrigued not only by the cover image of somebody’s face pasted onto the Mona Lisa, but also simply by the profoundness of the question itself and how it mattered and what it meant to me. I’m sure this question will mean many different things to many different people and I’m excited to see what everyone thinks. The podcast starts out with various interviews with random people at an art museum, asking questions such as “why are you here, did you study art when you were younger” and such. It's interesting how everyone has a different answer to the same question, and it's interesting to really think about that and how its influenced differently by the person who gives their answer. An artist is obviously going to say something different than a p...

State of the Art (2019) is a documentary that follows curators from the Crystal Bridges Museum, Don and Chad, as they embark on a journey to curate an exhibition that features artists across the United States. Beginning in northwest Arkansas, in 10 months the two traveled more than 100,000 miles for the exhibition, visiting over 1,000 artists. Their goal, according to the documentary, was to “bring contemporary art to life again.” They felt that prior to this, there was a misconception that contemporary art in America was only being made in major urban cities, like New York City and Los Angeles. Unfortunately, a lot of it made elsewhere goes unnoticed, especially the towns in each state far from where artists are most expected to work. Not only did Don and Chad want to meet a diverse group of artists, they also wanted to explore new cities across the country to see what those communities has to offer, or what makes them unique.  Example of one artist’s studio Cities like New York...

 Haley Bentley Article by Anja Shortland Lost artworks that have been stolen based on the Arts Loss Register that has been discovered and explored. retrieving art work can be quite expensive. Some of the art negotiations and the parties involved with the art negotiations could possibly end up ultimately in prison. The first people that was involved are the Bakwins, their from Massachusetts who has problems at there residents with thieves that has stolen multiple pieces of art from there residence in 1978.  “The Bakwins had tried many avenues to attempt to find the artworks, including police, the FBI, private detectives, and alerting the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAL).”(O’Hare1) which turns out that the ALR has already been looking for their piece of Art before the missing alert even came in to the ALR’s hands. In this they have discovered that there was a group of unknown that has sought the insurance for one of the paintings called (Cezanne’s Bouilloire et F...

 Bauhaus: The Face of the 20th Century Summary: The Bauhaus school, was an art and design school established in Weimar Germany in the early 20th century that, according to the thesis of the documentary, defined and codified the aesthetic and philosophical underpinnings of art and art academia of the 20th century and into the contemporary world. The Bauhaus School was situated as an Avant Garde model to the established pedagogical and aesthetic ideas of the previously established art academy. Instead of learning a cannon and participating in rote tasks; students would learn the building blocks of art and design as a "grammar to visual language." Paired with the workshop structure of teaching, the school was an obvious break from tradition. On a more philosophical and ideological level, the students and teachers had broken down conventional power relations, with students pursuing personal projects within the school. However, despite the radical break in hierarchical structure, ...

In his lecture for the Smithsonian's "Clarice Smith Distinguished Lecture" series, art critic Christopher Knight explores why Andy Warhol chose the subject matter of many of his paintings. Warhol’s pop art paintings are typically considered commentary on American commercialism, mass production, and celebrity and commodity culture. However, Knight sees Warhol’s art differently– he proposes, “There is an iconography to Warhol’s art [...] The subject of Warhol’s classic pop art paintings is not popular culture, as it is usually made out to be; neither is the subject commodity culture nor celebrity culture. Instead, the subject of Warhol’s paintings is art culture; the myths, values, stories, and artists that populate the history of Western art– and especially the post-war American art of the New York school.” (1) Knight provides several specific examples, including Warhol’s famous Campbell soup cans paintings. Fig. 1 Andy Warhol,  Campbell's Soup Cans , 1962, acrylic and...

  When it was announced in April this year that Sotheby’s was planning to auction off the personal collection of Freddie Mercury,  the late lead-singer of Queen, it drew the attention of the global audience. Nearly 1,500 items of Mercury’s possessions, including musical instruments, stage costuming, jewelry, purchased artwork, and other personal effects, were provided to the auction house to be sold in six auctions held in September. Sotheby’s displayed a plethora of items at their Bond St headquarters the month prior to the auctions, drawing in lines of curious spectators that filled the nearby blocks for days. The auctions began on Wednesday, September 6, and will conclude this week.  When auction houses deal with items of a famous individual, much of the items sold start their bidding price at what they would be valued at when divorced from the star in question (1). Bidders, enticed by obtaining memorabilia from the star, inflate the value of these items well beyond th...