Denmark Vesey said ...
"Brother Gee! What in the art world has your attention now?"Gee Chee said ...
"Demetrius Oliver,Leslie Hewitt,
William Cordova,
Jamal Cyrus,
Torkwase' Dyson"
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Advanced Concepts In Art • Professor Gee Chee • DV University • Spring 2010 • 3 Credits • $4898
Denmark Vesey said ..."Brother Gee! What in the art world has your attention now?"Gee Chee said ...
"Demetrius Oliver,Leslie Hewitt,
William Cordova,
Jamal Cyrus,
Torkwase' Dyson"
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4 comments:
From the other thread
Gee Chee said:
Yeah, Kara Walker on some other stuff. Now she's pimp'n out her divorce from her ex into her work. She understands her audience though, especially with that MacArthur fellowship in her pocket.
Wardell, Titus and Demetrius are in a collective together as a matter of fact. Titus is hot right now.
I saw Jamal Cyrus and Kara Walker's work a month ago-KW
Really? Where was this?
Soldat Senegalais. I couldn't even find it mentioned in my books. Not that I have the illest collection of art books. There are pretty good books I'm sure you'll like of contemporary artists. One is Vitamin D (Drawing) the other is Vitamin P (Painting). I only have Vitamin D. It has the artists your interested in and more.
Cordova gets mad respect. He's like Floyd Mayweather with these Museums.
I'll ask about the painting this week.
Gee Chee,
I saw something in the NY Times a while back about the three of them having a collective exhibition, I already knew abt Titus and got to know of Wardell Milan that way.
Kara Walker and Jamal Cyrus were at an exhibition at the Liverpool Slavery Museum over 5 rooms of art from the modernist to contemporary period - Kara Walker had a series of *disturbing* presentations. How's she representing her divorce in her art?
The piece I asked about is an ol' school painting by James A Porter done in 1935. Its thought to be a representation of Feral Benga, the Senegalese dancer who lived in France. Maybe you know James Barthes sculpture with the same name. I'm trying to find out stuff about him cos I think there's something unsettling about the way he's talked abt as a homoerotic icon. Not that there's much out there on him, but from what I've read and the representations of Benga at the time.
The erotic obsession with the naked Black form really bugs me - it not always the mark of 'resistance' and 'high art' that the Plantation celebrates. This mass consumption extends to all areas, not just art - and even when we as Black people represent outselves some still operate within the Plantation paradigm. I'm not an artist so my interpretation is as a prudish observer (not to say I don't get naked art, I do - but it's a thin line) so as an expert y'might hip me to something I'm failing to appreciate.
Kay Double-U (but one Kay is deep enough),
I only an expert in what I have certainty of knowledge of, that one day I'll disclose once I'm certain of it, lol. I do appreciate the compliment though. On that note, I like what Roy Lichtenstein said when asked how he defines art, he said, “I don’t know anymore.” An artist to me is always interested in what’s behind the backdrop. More interested in the “how” of an audience being charmed by the play as oppose to being charmed by the play themselves…and documenting that as the most significant aspect of one's experience. Most of the time at my own art shows I slip in to be left alone to watch the viewer as if they are a film. I can stand right next to someone and front like I'm experiencing the work for the first time. Most of the time someone recognizes you and "eff it up like a blind look-out."
The artist articulates nuances in culture, exposes the emperors nudity, able to exploit the primal, intrinsic qualities of people or society. The title artist is also a protection from being accused of reading too much into things. LOL. But they are the ones that are the creators as oppose to being the consumer.
Anyway, I understand what some artists are doing with nudes. Conversation surrounding ethnic group’s historical status as property. I read somewhere someone explaining it as segregated black bodies, "well-behaved," resisting bodily constraint in a public discourse.
Arguing their precipitously attempt of a therapeutic gesture. Reasoning that you can’t disclose any embarrassing imperfections of a subject if it has already made those embarrassments public with an even more incendiary gesture. Which is what’s interesting about the strategies through out Prince’s career (influencing the parental advisory label) and even today the thug image in rappers. Prince was never an artist that media could unearth any dirt on because with his imagery he could always say, “Oh you didn’t know.” Likewise with the “gansta rapper” you can’t reduce someone’s sainthood if they never claimed it from the start. Like the line in the Spook who Sat by the Door, that you can’t fall out of bed if you are sleeping on the floor. I understand nude work used in that way, but in my opinion the “thug” image articulates that narrative more efficiently. In that is also a conversation about Bruce Lee and the influence on black males in the 70’s, another conversation.
Also some acknowledge the flesh (by nude art) as but a coating for the skeleton that we’re all destined to become. The conversation of post-coital tristesse surrounding the erotic drawings of Egon Schiele. Decay of physical pleasures, vanishing realities. Those are several of the positions that stand out in my mind. Sometimes I tend to be suspect of some artists that come out of graduate school and haven’t really worked out a direction in their mind, sometimes nude art, which has always contributed to the romanticism and the mystique of the artist, is at times their starting pistol.
Anything at La Luz De Jesus gallery in LA is interesting.
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