Srsly awesome

I have recently seen too much art and too many vids.  Here are the highlights relevant to my research:

Hennesy Youngman: Art Thoughtz new video:

“IM ON THE INTERNET BITCH IM ON THE INTERNET BITCH IM FUCKING FAMOUS”

I am so obsessed.  Hennesy is a persona created by Jayson Musson.  Visit Jayson’s site here. Visit Hennesy’s youtube here.

MFA Student work: J.R. Uretsky

I recently saw an exhibit of mfa student work.  I was especially interested in work by J.R. Uretsky.  I checked out the website when I got home.  It is a weird, engaging mix of excessive materials, family stuffs, gender, pop culture, etc..  I definitely felt some art kinship to the work.  Here is one video I rocked hard to:

Nicki Minaj’s new video:

Here is a link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks3_kuRAzHs

Not my most favorite song, kind of cliche, not so much edge, but I like the part in the beginning when she goes in to some of her characters.

Damali Abrams:

This weekend I went to the lecture Sonic Art and Activism: Exploring the ties between feminist art and popular music. The entire panel was great.  Particularly relevant to my own research was panelist Damali Abrams .  Her work deals with identity, culture, gender, race, more things, etc…  She uses self-help videos, vlogging, popular (and un-popular) music, stickers, and more things in the work I have seen of hers.  On her youtube, I found this video of her on the MTV show “Say What Karaoke” from the late 90′s and early 2000′s.

In the context of the rest of her work, this video is so poignant and complicated.  It is almost hard to believe it is real.  The racial undertones, sexualized comments, and over-all reality of the whole situation has left me curious.  I used to watch and dance to this show all the time when I was a kid.  I am still kind of in awe at how the mere re-contextualization of this clip changed the reading of this situation to one of extreme criticality.

Jill Miller “I am making art too”

I am Making Art Too, 2003
single-channel video, 3 minutes (looped)

Jill Miller

Description from the Artist’s website:

“This video addresses John Baldessari’s 1971 video-performance piece, I am Making Art, with humor and scrutiny. The younger artist, Miller, brings Baldessari’s tai chi-esque movements into contemporary times by transforming his original meditative gestures into breakdancing moves. Miller then inserts herself into the new video footage and dances around Baldessari. Missy Elliott’s Work It backs up the new Baldessari-Miller collaborative dance. The three artists (Baldessari, Elliott, and Miller) form a new collaboration. The video approaches a variety of questions relating to:  women’s roles in art history, artistic authorship, younger artists’ attempts at appropriation/homage, the nature of the artistic gesture in video art.”

I think this piece is a great example of sincere art.  I don’t have much to say about it.  Rather I posted it to put it in context with everything else I am looking at.

Links

Original piece by John Baldessari

Another interesting remaking of “I am making art” by Dima Hourani

“Manly Crafts: Mike Kelley’s (Oxy)Moronic Gender Bending”

 

Mike Kelley, "More love hours than can ever be repaid" 1987

Article:

Levine, Cary. “Manly Crafts: Mike Kelley’s (Oxy)Moronic Gender Bending.” Art Journal May 2010: 74-91. Print.

Link to the article

This article starts by describing the piece pictured above, “More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid”, a wall hanging made up of handmade toys, dolls, blankets, pot holders, and stuff animals sewn together.  The objects were found, abandoning in thrift store, not made by the artist.  Levine writes “The work highlights the gift-giving, in which pieces of thread and fabric are invested with deep emotional content- affection, adoration, sympathy, appreciation- to be passed on to friends, family members, and acquaintances, who are indebted to return the favor.”   She compares the piece to Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings.  While Pollock represents a safe co-optation of the feminine by a male artist, Kelley, says Levine, is an awkward, grotesque mixture of genders.

She continues the article in defense of Kelley against the claims that his work is “casual sexism”.  Cited in the article, Faith Wilding, a feminists artist/crafter key in the feminist art movement in the 70′s, “characterized his craft works as ‘a mere reversal of gender signifiers’ that does more to reaffirm his masculinity and his mastery of ‘the feminine’ than to disrupt gender stereotypes.”

This seems to be an issue of sincerity.  Wilding believes Kelly is being ironic.  Levine, the author, appears to avoid Kelly’s actual content and instead focuses on other reads of the work.  I, on the other hand, think I believe that Kelly actually is insisting a kind of literal honesty, that these craft items hold more love hours than can ever be repaid.  I am basing this read on my (limited) knowledge of Kelly’s other artworks and writings.  Irony is definitely a tool of his, but not the only one.  Kelly is an interesting artist.  After he had gained some success, he became unsatisfied with how people were perceiving and writing about his work.  In order to overcome issues conerning sincerity and irony, he started writing about the work himself; ”I decided I had to write about my own work if my concerns were to be properly conveyed,” (Welchman).  His works and writings will be revisited throughout my posts in a variety of contexts.

Works Cited

Kelley, Mike, and John C. Welchman. Foul Perfection: Essays and Criticism. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2003. Print.