23 November 2011
21 November 2011
Exhibition... By Lucile, Alice & Alexandre
Zefrey
Throwell is
an artist
living and
working in
New York
City. His
aim is “honest
communication”
and he
works with
video, radio,
paint and...
people. He
explores the
“connecting
points of
social
discourse”. He
became famous
thanks to
his project
“Ocularpation :
Wall Street”,
a critique
of Wall
Street, which
featured in
the New York
Times and
on various TV channels (and foreshadowed the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations).
"I'll
Raise You One...” is Throwell's latest idea. He says : “I will be
playing a seven day long continuous strip poker game in the windows
of Art In General. Not to be missed!” Each day for a week, from
10:30am-6:00pm, seven players will gather around a white table in the
storefront Project Space of Art In General to gamble away their
clothes. At the end of each round, the players will get dressed and
begin again, creating a meditative repetitious action that continues
over the course of a workday.
In
a world
where money
has supreme
importance and
all aspects of
life are
mere commodities,
“I’ll
Raise You
One…” is
a project
where clothing,
charisma and
bluff are
the only
currency. Using
the language
of small
stakes capitalism
mixed with
America’s
favorite gambling
pass-time,
and the
flirtatious
teenage party
game of
strip poker,
Throwell draws
a fluxus
parallel between
what we
consider winning
and losing
in the
world today.
The
photo above
was taken
during the artistic strip poker
game "happening". The
players seem
to be having
fun and
throw their
clothes in a
way that
makes us
think they
don’t
care about
clothes, that
all of
that is
superficial. The
real sense
of this
picture, we think,
is that
people don’t
care about
what they
win or
lose today.
The photo above is a photo of a municipal employee. He does his job in front
of the Wall Street Stock Exchange, but totally nude as part of the “Ocularpation :
Wall Street” artistic "happening" bt Throwell. Dozens of people stripped on Wall Street, for no apparent reason, during the course of their working day. The fact that
this picture was taken at this place denounces capitalism and the too
big importance of money today in our societies. Ordinary people have literally and symbolically had their clothes taken off their backs...
We
think Zefrey
Throwell might
be a crank,
but he
uses his
art for the
purpose of
sharing his
political ideas,
and to
our mind,
that's a good
thing. His slogans are pretty
catchy and
the way
he stages
his work is
really amazing,
and even
if it
may shock
some people,
at least
it draws
people’s
attention to a worthy cause. We
don’t
know if this kind of art would
be well
accepted here,
in France,
but… why
not ?!
20 November 2011
Art, who needs it?! By Laure de Boisgelin
“To
send light into the darkness of men’s hearts, such is the duty of
the artist...” wrote the 19th
century composer Robert Schumann. Indeed, from
cave paintings to digital art, art has held an essential place in our
everyday lives. Art,
in its many forms, has existed in every community and every culture
since time began, but why is it so indispensable to human beings ?
But,
what is art? It is, according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary : “the
expression or application of creative skill and imagination,
especially through a visual medium such as painting or sculpture.”
Do we
realise that art is present in your everyday lives? Do we really pay
any attention to it? In my opinion, I would say not. Nevertheless,
art is a part of our lives; we “live” it, all the time and every
day! From the vase in our living room to the song we are listening
to, from the drawing we made on a piece of paper to a museum we
visited, from the essay we did in class to the poem we are reading...
Art is omnipresent. Paul Strand, the 20th
century American photographer, said : “The
artist’s world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from
where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.”
Art, then, surrounds us, but we can’t see it if we aren’t aware
that someone, for example, has drawn the lamp we have in our bedroom.
This someone has been careful of every detail of this lamp, and
someone else has created it: it’s design, it’s art.
Although
art is mostly created by one person, it is also a shared experience ;
a painting is made to be admired, a song to be listened to, theatre
and dance to be watched, etc… It then becomes a silent dialogue
between the artist and the spectator ; do
we see the same thing that another person sees ? Do we understand
what message the artist has tried to transmit to us ? We
will take a famous example, “La Gioconda” by Leonardo da Vinci.
People come to the Louvre from the entire world to admire this work
of art. People share thoughts and feelings about the painting, but
they also have their individual experience of its mystery...
In
what ways does art help us ? First of all, art allows people to
express themselves; it's a mean of
expressing what an artist feels and thinks.
For example: the bombing of Guernica in
1937 inspired Picasso to create his famous painting in order to
squeeze out the horror and the anger he felt. This painting denounces
barbarity, violence and war. Art allows people to share a point of
view or a political opinion, to oppose something, to suggest, to
stimulate thought, to provoke, to encourage... During the Second
World War, “Liberté”,
a poem by Paul Eluard, was parachuted to the members of the French
Resistance, who were hiding in the “maquis”, to encourage them in
their fight against Nazism. As Van Gogh said : “How
rich art is; if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never
without food for thought or truly lonely, never alone”.
Art is
also used in a religious way, to glorify a god, or during rituals
like the Egyptians in their funeral ceremonies, to ensure an
afterlife for the dead person.
Art is
used in healing too. The process of
creating art engages both the body and the mind and provides us with
time to look inward and reflect. It is used to make our lives better
and used too in psychological tests.
Art is
present everywhere and all the time, we can’t deny it or reject it.
We all need it. I agree with John Lubbock, the 19th
century British historian and biologist, when he says : “Art
is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human
happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through
the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.”
11 November 2011
Video games are art! By Jenguiz
People usually see video
games as a simple “new generation” distraction, or even as
something bad... Those people, who mostly haven't grown up with
video games, and don't even play them, certainly would deny it the
status of art.
Is this point of view
legitimate ? Or can video games in fact be considered as an art ?
In my opinion, which many
“gamers” share, video games are an art. There is a plethora of
arguments that can support this.
First, what is art ?
According to the Penguin English dictionary, art is the conscious use
of skill and creative imagination, especially in the production of
aesthetic objects. Let's see if this definition fits video games.
"The conscious use of
skill" ; does making a video game require skill? Yes, in fact it
requires several skills. There are designers, programmers,
music composers, and even sometimes actors. Cinema, which is also
the sum total of many arts, is said to be the seventh art, therefore
video games are the tenth
art !
Let's continue with the
definition : "creative imagination"... This fits perfectly the video
game ! Effectively, the most way-out video games are generally the
most creative ones. Here is an example : Super Mario Bros. Nowadays,
this game has a worldwide reputation, and a lot of people know the eponymous heroes. But who could have imagined, before it was
released, that a plumber with a moustache was about to become an
international star ? I think that Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator, has
an amazing imagination. He created an entirely new universe ; people
were used to see fantasy worlds with elves, dwarves and other nice
creatures of that kind. But there is nothing like Super Mario Bros : walking mushrooms, magic pipes, and so on...
Finally, are video games
"aesthetic objects" ? Yes, they obviously are. Video games have been
aesthetic objects since their beginning, even when they were full of
big pixels, when High Definition did not yet exist. Maybe they were
even more beautiful, because developers had to be really imaginative
to make people recognize what's actually on the screen !
I think that we can add
something we find in several other definitions of art : art is
producing works to be appreciated primarily for their emotional
power. Once again, this is the case for video games. The graphic
design, the stories, and, very important, the music, create a whole
new imaginary world in which lots of different emotions are
experienced...
Another thing, which is
not obligatory for art, but which is present in a lot of works of
art, is the fact that it carries a message. This is true for most
video games which promote certain values, such as tolerance, or even
sometimes a political message.
Video games are art,
then, but why isn't it recognized as such ? I think this is normal ;
it is still in its infancy. Over time, it will be better accepted as
a cultural object, mostly because people who have grown up with video
games are becoming today's adults. Sometimes, people argue that it is
mainly an industry, that video games are made to be sold, so it is
not an art. This is absurd, of course : movies and books are
industries as well, and yet they're considered as works of art.
There is an other
interesting thing to notice : recognized artists are involved in
video game creation. For example, Hayao Miyazaki and his studio, who
made several well-known animation films, have realized the animated
scenes of a video game (Ninokuni : Another
World), and Steven Spielberg has also been involved in the
creation of several video games (like Boom Blox).
Like every form of art, video
games have their famous artists. Shigeru Miyamoto, with two others
video game creators, have even been knighted under France's Order of
Arts and Letters.
As it says above the
entrance of the Secession building in Vienna : "To
every age its
art and to
art its freedom". The
video
game
is
the
new
art
of
our
era...
06 November 2011
Ce n'est pas de l'art à la louche! By Benedicte, Lucile & Alice (aka BLA!)
Dove
Allouche is a Parisian photographer born in 1972. His work can be
seen from the 15th of October until the 30th of December 2011 at the
FRAC in Clermont-Ferrand.
This exhibition is of the
work he has done during the last decade, about time and image. There
are one hundred and forty short exposure photos. He captures the instant which
normally we cannot see.
In the
poetically named “Le diamant d’une étoile a rayé le fond du
ciel” ("The diamond of a star has scratched the back of the sky"), the artist shows off his virtuosity. Five years were
needed to finally achieve this picture.
Allouche's work is
impressive... Not to go and see it would be "louche" (this is a pun on the artist's name; "louche" means "equivocal" but also "to squint" in French)!
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