Thursday, May 19, 2011

Cacophony Society

The Cacophony Society was started in 1986. It is a group of randomly fitted individuals who are joined together by a common, natural appreciation of the worlds cultural capacities that include belief systems, aesthetics, and ways of living that strike an opposition in the harmonious conformity that a society is accepting
The whole idea behind this group is to not have the people in this society, or any society for that matter, be part of the "mainstream" of the cultural ad shay that is typically viewed. this could include influences from the media, pop culture, the trends of the week, or even to follow what the "cool kids" are wearing and doing. The Cacophony Society appreciates indivualism ! and to this, to BREAK OUT of the mainstream, they use "pranks, art, fringe explorations and meaningless madness." these people are very "out there" to say the least; these are what people refer to as weirdos, not the norm.
i would personally consider this group a flash mob because they are all getting to gether to preform this prank or action, rather then a preformance piece.
this group usually dresses up in costumes and preforms pranks in public places; the public places that are actually off limits to the public.Come to find out some of the organizers of the The Cacophony Society are part of the same group who were at and associated with the first Burning Man.
besides the point, though the public may at times see this group as a disruption,they are just trying to show people that disruption is ok in life because it stops and gets you out your "zombie" routine and to them thats out of mainstream.
they are mostly known for their pranks with Santa Claus such as singing retarded christmas carols or bringing strippers on Santas Lap.
although i might think that some of their pranks might be a little extreme or pass the point of respect, i do believe in their message and what they convey about not conforming to the mainstream ideals society might hold for us.

there is a movie coming out soon about this Cacophony Society that gets more in depth; but here is the trailer so a visual of these "weirdos" who stand for more then being part of the norm (yet sometimes WAY to extreme).


finished :)

so i did. complete.
module four :::
1.FarmLab. [[DONE]]
2.My artist research. [[DONE]]
3. Earth/Land project. [[DONE]]
4. Eight other artists researched. [[DONE]]

well, i might of had a hard time with this whole blog thing (just cuz its not my thing i suppose; but i tried!), but i finished module four and im feeling good. i really hope i did good on this because i did not know i had such a low grade :[
im really stressing out, cuz if my GPA drops cuz of a failed class i could lose my enrollment to Humboldt :/ so hopefully i did enough and did good. i think im going to do some extra artists to hopefully boost my grade to at least a passing C.

keeping  my fingers crossed! overall, this class was really cool though and opened not only my eyes, but my mind as well. basically taught me a life lesson; about getting to know whats beyond what i see in life, but what else is in front of me as well. i need to consider others and what they might see.

gotta love it when you have ephinanys of things you KNOW you should already be doing, although u arent.
who would of thought an art class would make me realize myself :)
i guess we are all pieces of art; perfect in our bizarre imperfections.

Improv Everywhere !

"Improv Everywhere is a New York City-based prank collective that causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places." improv means to do things on the spot. you just go with what pops in your mind and make it work. Improv Everywhere was created in August of 2001 by a man named Charlie Todd. Improv Everywhere carries out "missions" in public places. the groups main goal is to cause a scene of joy. its randomness at its best !
there are hundreds of people that show up to conduct these missions, and this resemebles a flash mob. However in great strength Improv Everywhere wants the public to know that they do not associate themselves as a flash mob at all; since flash mobs were created after their group was.
this group is amazing! i cant believe this many ppl get together to actually do these acts of awesomesness!

Improv everywhere has been seen on many news reports (in a good way) and its popularity continues to grow.


Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp is an artist who is best known for introducing the ready-made object into visual art, co-founding Dada and being a contributor with the Surrealists art movement. He also worked with cubism in paintings.  A ready-made object is something like where he might take a toilet and place it on pedastal and call it art. or some already made tangiable object and do something new with it.
Perhaps his greatest contribution, though, is that he helped transform the focus of art away from just being viewed visual but with using ones mind as well. He had a huge impact on the contemporary art world as well.
Like mentioned above though his most popular work besides dada/avant-garde is his ready mades which can be considered kinetic works. his famous pieces were The Large Glass and The Bicycle Wheel.
he was so influential to so many art movements and he gave the world so much more then we could of asked for. his work to me was inspiring because nobody had done anything remotely close to what he brought forth.






Alexander McQueen

Lee Alexander McQueen is a fashion designer best known for his in-depth tailoring and his clothes always showing sensuality with frailty in his collections, as well as the emotional power and raw energy of his provocative repoir. His interest in fashion started at an early age. He used to sew with his sisters. At the age of 16, McQueen landed an apprenticeship with Anderson & Sheppard, tailors for Savile Row and from there moved to Milan at the age of 20 where his career bloosomed.  He got to become cheif designer at Givenchy (a well known fashion company) from 1996 to 2001 and for founding his own label under the name Alexander McQueen.

he was an openly gay man who lived his life. His design of fashion are some what at times obscure and outrageous. yet there are eloquent and starstriking. His clothes are worn by such stars as Lady GaGa, Rhianna, Nicole Kidman, and Sarah Jessica Parker.

He had great success; however he hung and killed himself in Feb. 2010. it was said he was doing alot of drugs and very unhappy at the time of his death.




Vivienne Westwood

Vivienne Westwood is one of the most recognized and influential designers for fashion in this era of consumerism. She was 25 years old, married, and went to church and taught in a local primary school. she lived in England. she met Malcolm Mclaren, and he led her into the underground of the late 1960’s street. He talked to her on the political power of art and liberated her creative desires from their bondage in working class conformity. After hearing this she could no longer keep quiet in her daily life routine. she started to become a streamtress for the subculture of pop/punk.
she opened a store called LET IT ROCK and it sold ripped T-shirts, chains and assorted bondage gear that she herself designed and wore. She even became the dress coordinator for the Sex Pistols!
The early 1980s was the time of the New Romantics,she changed to a new vision of Pirates. this collection had lots of buckles, boots, etc, this collection was shown in a show at Paris and it secured her fame for good. shes been designing clothes ever since, now with a somewhat victorian feel to it. she is also a global activist for saving the earth! :)


Westwood in her clothing from her store LET IT ROCK


Vivian Westwood now





from her recent line

isamu noguchi

isamu noguchi was a Japanese sculptor, designer, architect, and craftsman. he believed that through sculpture and architecture, one could better understand the struggle with nature. later in his life after moving from Japan, to the US, to Japan he finally returned to the US.  he went back to new york in 1932, where he made his name as
a sculptor and portrait artist, as well as winning commissions for memorials, monuments and industrial designs. his work takes a somewhat futuristic insight. it looked some what like objects you would see in the "jetsons" episode for there houses, buildings, or funiture. also, i suppose his work is more geometrice then anything, with spirals/circles.
one of the greatest things about some of his work is he enjoyed the outdoors and made art pieces that could go outside and function with its environment. as a landscape architect, noguchi created a large number of playgrounds, parks and gardens. There are examples of these parks mainly in Japan. he also designed a big red cube building that is in NYC.
his work was very inspiring because he wanted to design and give back to the cities. he did what he loved in designing and help the public all at the same time.
he died in 1988.



    

Yoko Ono

so yoko ono was a Japanese musician, artist, author and activist for peace. Yoko is known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking. If you didnt already know, which i could understand if you dont is that Yoko was famously known for being married to the great beatles legend, John Lennon. she has other accomplishments such as being a collaborater/somewhat creator of New Wave music; she also brought feminism to the eyes of people through her music and work. her activism consists of many attributes, however she is the biggest supporter in gay rights, peace, and AIDS research.
when she is remembered for her avant-garde art it simply means art that pushes (or pushed) the limit that people expect, what many call the norm. one of her most famous pieces was her contribution into the preformance art world. the piece was called "cut piece" and what she did was go up on a stage and she cut a piece of her sweater off and sat down and she had told the people to feel free to come up and do the same. then she was silent until the audience had cut everything off and she was left completly naked on stage.
her art preformances touched people and made them open their eyes to social tendancies that the public has. although her art was touching i just think generally who she is as a person so good and open to the world just radiates power and change.
Add caption

"Cut Piece"
Yoko && John Lennon

Ana Mendieta

Cuban-born Ana Mendieta produced work in the seventies in which she used her own body as a medium. she used the female body as a vehicle for personal and social expression and wanted to  challenge the male traditional roles. thats why in some pictures of her she actually has a beard or mustasche.
Alot of her work is within or part of nature. whether its her being part of a tree or river. all her work is like a performance piece since her body is the artwork within the scenery its in which is another art medium. she utilizies the whole area in which she stands or lays in; she holds your eyes to the picture tryishe stated that she wanted to use the her body and get the point across in her work of a "dialog between the landscape and the female body returning to the maternal source." i think what she meant was that the femal body was the most important being and that it is the source of life. i can kinda understand since women do give birth.
she is considered to be a earth-body artist. her fame continued to grow until her death in 1985. i personally like her art, although somewhat disturbing at times, catches your attention and makes you take a sencond glance to interpret.


Her most famous piece "Tree of Life"

 
Ana naked fixing a skeleton

 











it says: "there is a devil inside of me.


the burning man

okay so i have heard the name burning man before, whether refrenced in movies, books, or just ive heard somebody mention. and like always i would just nod and act like i knew. but I DIDNT! so heres my chance to learn.

so basically once a year, tens of thousands of people gather in Nevada's Black Rock Desert to create Black Rock City, a temporarily made community that prides itself on art, self-expression, and self-reliance. the people who attend these gatherings depart one week later, having left no trace that they were even there before.
it started in 1986 when this guy Larry Harvey, and a couple of his friends burned a 9 ft man and a small wooden dog in San Fran. he did this to express himself in a different way. it was his self expression.  this event only started with this small group of people and now today has 48,000 people at times. it relocated to nevada in 1990.
the whole point of this event is to bring a community together and show life in the artful aspect. to basically express yourself in ANY way possible. there is no certain manner in which to behave there and freewill is in gear. and at times this manner can be and is at times radical!
to me i kind of saw this as Harveys traditions being appreciated enough to be re-created every year, but with more recent and up to date mediums of display going on. so its not just a burning man every year (although that is included n "the man" get s taller and taller every year!), but also others perspective on the event.


the burning man

a aerial view of the people who come from all over the US to this event

my EARTH art

so for module four art project we had to do something that would represent alternative media in some way. this could have been done by doing a performance art, earth or land art, flashmobs, or a happening.
first off, i like to preform and show meaning behind the way presentations are shown, however, i was not inclined to do so this time because i didnt have the time to preform such a great feat; and secondly i couldnt figure out a way to incorporate the meaning i wanted to get across in a way that i thought it made sense. never the less, i went with the project idea that i felt more comfortable with, and since i am a ecological restoration major/ botany minor, i thought i would do the earth art.

so the point i wanted to convey here is that the items i used to create this art were all "pre-owned", naturally made things that i found in my front and back yard, and that everything was free of charge. in this usage of not buying things, i wanted to convey the message that borrowed, found, sometimes rubbish can be made into art.
in the pictures that will be below will also show the second message that i wish to convey and that is to turn something unappealing into something beautiful; something that could be on display and attracts people. something that will make ppl look and ask what is that? whered you get that? the answer simply remain: "i made it"

first i borrowed my nieghbors pot that he hadnt used in years. i filled it full of dirt from my backyards garden. i put this heavy pot in the corner of my backyard by the pool where there was nothing, just the white wall and a lawn chair.
then i dug a hole and stuck this branch i found on my front lawn. it must of fallen from the tree, but either way it hooked my attention.

 after that i added white rocks around the stem of the branch so hold it in the dirt but to also give it more depth. i had these rocks laying around the side of my house cuz we have a rock walk way.

i also added dried shredded greeen leaves around that to cover up the dirt. i suppose i did this to give the art more texture and color.

next i added rose petals that i found in the trash cuz my dad had just got done trimming his rose bushes. i also grabbed four big leaves i found in the trash as well, that my dad had cut off our grapevine. i placed them on the side of the pot but still within the dirt for  decoration at first.


then i decided i didnt really like that so i took them and stuck them on the edges of the branches. literally, i just ripped into the leave to stick it on there. its part of the branch, but still free to blow in the wind.


Overall, i really enjoyed my ending piece of work. i made it for free. i made a blank space more desired and i re-used the earth in its abundance. life is full of these beautys and i hope people can appreciate them.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Maurizio Cattelan



Maurizio Cattelan is an Italian artist who is mostly known for his saitrical sculptures which at times can be preformances as well. Some of his most famous works were his masterpieces where he makes fun of not only the Pope but of Hitler as well. He is an artist who does not take himself to seriously when creating his works of art. Maurizio Cattelan did not attend any type of art school, but taught himself his talents. he held many various jobs before he decided he wanted to try art. at first he designed functional furniture and then moved onto other things that hes more known for today. He is the best-known italian artist to have
emerged internationally and his fame continues to grow.  Maurizio Cattelan work 'has provoked and challenged the limits of contemporary value systems through its use of irony and humor.' his work shows strange paradoxes and is caught somewhere between reality and fiction. his work is really strange at first glance, but if you take s closer look the art actually makes you laugh at times or think super hard on another.


He has shown his work in exhibitions such as MOMA and the museum of contemporary art in los angeles. His pieces are located around the globe and are part of the most important public and private collections worldwide.  In his work, contradicts political power structures, from notions of nationalism or the authorities of organized religion. he pushes the limits to what people think as normal; and even makes things that are never funny, something to laugh at. my favorite piece is the one with a squirrel who commited suicide. i think its strange and quite a riot.



Maurizio Cattelan is still alive today and still creating masterpieces. he lives in italy and the usa. i really enjoy his work because it is not typical sculptures. it pushes the boundaries of what i would of considered art, but after seeing these pieces and justifying my own interpretation, i really love this artist. Also, the fact that he seems like a jokester like me makes it easier to relate to his work.