Justin Bieber talks about abortion, sex, and politics in new Rolling Stone

This post comes as a good follow-up on my post concerning the Justin Bieber “Pray” video.  I think the headlines and the articles below speak for themselves:

Justin Bieber Talks Sex, Politics, Music and Puberty In New ‘Rolling Stone’ Cover Story

Tween evangelist? Justin Bieber film packed with prayer

Justin Bieber Says He’s Pro-Life on Abortion, Wait for Sex: Apparently he wasn’t quite assertive enough for the pro-lifer’s.

A question of empathy: Justin Bieber and the difference between anti-abortion and anti-choice.

While I do think that a clear political agenda is beginning to emerge with force from the Bieber icon, a view presented in the second article, I was swayed by the last article in the Huffington Post to be slightly more understanding and read further into the situation.  Maybe Bieber, still only 16, is just trying to do and say what he thinks it right.

Never the less, the structures of sentimentality surrounding his pop empire and agenda deserve a critical engagement.

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

Sincerity: New Sincerity, Neo- Sincerity, and Irony

My interest in sincerity came from trying to understand seemingly sincere moments that came out of cliches, tropes, and popular culture.  Yea, these things are ironic, but what happens when an honest moment of understanding comes out of them?  My thoughts on sincerity are not fully formed at the moment, so I will rely on what I have read.

In an article in Wired magazine titled Sincerely Ours: Glee’s Success Cements Age of Geeky ‘New Sincerity’ author Angela Watercutter claims that “Irony is out; Sincerity is in.”  Although the TV show, Glee (about a high school show choir) is the start and end point of her arguement, she covers a broad range of theory and culture to provide a context and examples for her argument.  Like many others writing about sincerity, she mentions the September 11th attacks as a possible start of the end of irony saying “Following the Sept. 11 terror attacks, there was a brief period during which the detached, sarcastic smartass stance just didn’t seem appropriate.”  Again similar to other authors writing about new sincerity, she said irony did not end there, but it planted the seeds for a new “engaged irony”.   Theories about New Sincerity seem to rely not so much on irony verse sincerity, but on the two working together, sincerity built out of irony.  Watercutter says “ Looking for irony in everything makes the ironist see nothing at face value…Neo-sincerity is a move away this brand of irony — a mindset that can just say, ‘Well it was a catchy song’ and move on.”

In 2006 an exhibit titled “Neo Sincerity: The Difference Between the Comic and the Cosmic is a Single Letter” was shown atthe Axpeart Gallery in New York.  The exhibition text has been especially useful in my consideration of sincerity in art:

“Irony as it has been practiced in art and popular culture in the last half-century has been a distancing device. Unless you want to be taken for a born-again or a talk show host, forget about wearing your heart, let alone your principles, anywhere visible.”

This statement gets right to the point of my conquest: What, then, does it mean now to make sincere art?  What is sincere art?

Throughout my next blog post, I will explore a variety of examples that present interesting questions in regards to Neo-Sincerity or New Sincerity.  In doing so, I hope to discover further exactly what New Sincerity is.

Future Blog topics that have been spamming my mind with sincerity concerns:

You-tube Personas

The Daily Show and the Rally for Sanity

Musicals, specifically Spring Awakening

Artist, Mike Kelly

Fox News mis-posting an article from the Onion as news

Sarah Palin

Representational painting

Drake, Nicki Minaj, and other pop singers

Links

New Sincerity wikipedia page

A Manifesto for The New Sincerity

Sincerity Now!

Irony is dead! Long live irony!

 

“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.