a diptych featuring portraits of the same person 15 years apart and with a brief text entry by the person at each age

7 Ideas about Art

Hello, everyone!
We’ve now done:

A. a week of Sculpture (plaster casting)
B. a month of Curating (your art galleries)
C. and a week of Painting (graffiti writing)

Now it’s time for the "D" part of the class: 7 Ideas about Art.

For the next 7 weeks we’ll do 3 things each week:

  1. Have Presentations on your Art Galleries on Mondays – schedule here
  2. Have Conversations with Living Artists – your peers from the School of Art – template for conversations
  3. Try Making art with different media

7 Ideas about Art

In addition to trying different media, each of the next 7 weeks we’ll be thinking about different ideas:

1st Idea: Abstraction is Powerful
2nd Idea: Art is a lot about Identity
3rd Idea: Art is a lot about Speech
4th Idea: Free Speech is more important than Free Beer
5th Idea: Architecture Affords Activity
6th Idea: Cameras Tell Stories
7th Idea: Remix is the Art of Your Time!

1st Idea: Abstraction is Powerful

Mark Rothko:Jackson Pollock:Ellsworth Kelly:
a person viewing two Mark Rothko paintings Autumn Rhythm, Jackson Pollock a person viewing the Ellsworth Kelly installation in the lobby of the Dallas Symphony hall
  1. Let’s discuss your feelings about Abstraction in class
  2. Here are some ideas about the power of abstraction
  3. Here’s our abstraction activity for this week

2nd Idea: Art is a lot about Identity

Adrian Piper:Nikki S. Lee:Victorine Meurent:
artwork by Adrian Piper featuring a dark figure with a speech bubble stating, I embody everything you most hate and fear. Nikki S. Lee Projects Olympia by Victorine Meurent and Edouard Manet, 1863
  1. You could argue that all art, across time and geography, is identity art. But especially in the last 50 years, a great amount of contemporary art has explored identity.
  2. This week you can make a Zine that explores identity.

3rd Idea: Art is a lot about Speech

Pablo Picasso:The Guerrilla Girls:Yoko Ono & John Lennon:
Dread Scott:Nadya Tolokonnikova:Ai Weiwei:
  1. Somewhere in between art that is mostly about aesthetics, and speech that is mostly about ideas, is a zone where art becomes speech. Visual Artists, musicians, and many others have used art as a way of presenting speech. As a way of making political arguments.
  2. This week you get to think of an art action that advances your perspective on any topic large or small. Maybe it’s a global topic like Climate Change, or a campus topic like Puvunga, or a more personal topic about your family or other relationships.

4th Idea: Free Speech is more important than Free Beer

Richard Stallman:Lawrence Lessig:Aaron Swartz:
Photo of Tim O'Reilly & Richard Stallman. photo of Lawrence Lessig photo of Aaron Swartz
  1. What is Free Speech?
  2. Does it matter?
  3. Free Speech, Free Software & Free Culture
  4. Open Source Soup
  5. This week you can explore your Academic Freedom with our Student Choice Art Activity.
  6. If you’d like to watch the documentary film The Internet’s Own Boy about the life & death of Aaron Swartz, you can do a 4 paragraph review of the film on your blog for up to 50,000 points of EC. Title your post D4-EC Aaron Swartz
Christophe Bruno's Google Adwords Happening
Christophe Bruno’s Google Adwords Happening, 2002

5th Idea: Architecture Affords Activity

Jane Jacobs:Tessa Forde:Disney Hall:
portrait of Jane Jacobs photo of Tessa Forde Photo of Disney Hall.

How does Architecture effect your experience?

  • Long Beach State
  • Your Home
  • Big Cities v. Small Towns v. Rural Areas

What is your dream home like?

  • Concept-Vision-Content
  • Formal qualities

The Wedge

6th Idea: Cameras Tell Stories

Nan Goldin:Lewis Hine:Brian Walski:
Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a taxi, NYC 1991 Nan Goldin born 1953 Purchased 1997 ttp://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/P78046 photo by Lewis Hine LA Times cover photo by Brian Walski.

Why Pictures

  • do you like to take pictures?
  • why?
  • what do you take pictures of?
  • what do you do with them?
  • do you like to look at pictures?
  • what pictures do you like to see?
  • who do you follow on Instagram?

Pictures & Culture

  • are there pictures that help build a better world? How?
  • are there pictures that are not helpful? Why?
  • Does photography have anything to do with "truth"? (Lewis Hine/Brian Walski)

Storytelling

7th Idea: Remix is the Art of Your Time!

Notorius B.I.G. + Miley Cyrus:Girl Talk (Greg Gillis):Julian Sanchez:
Photo mashup of Notirious BIG, Miley Cyrus, a Crown, and an American Flag performance image of Girl Talk, Greg Gillis, in Times Square, NYC screen capture of Julian Sanchez of the CATO institute giving a television interview
Girl Talk from the documentary Good Copy Bad Copy

Remaining Schedule

Be sure to Clearly Label Your Posts! Make sure each Art Activity and Artist Conversation is labeled, like:

  • D6 – Storytelling (Photography)
  • D6 – Maccabee Shelley – No Redemption Value

Week 12

  • Monday 11 Nov – Veteran’s Day – no class!
  • Wednesday 13 Nov – California Impressionism Gallery
  • No Activity due this week
  • No SOA Gallery Conversation due this week

Week 13 – D6

  • Monday 18 Nov – Scantron Midterm!bring Scantron 882-E & No.2 pencil!
  • Monday 18 Nov – 6th Idea: Cameras Tell Stories
  • Monday 18 Nov – Art 110 Virtual Art Gallery Presentations
  • Wednesday 20 Nov – Art 110 Virtual Art Gallery Presentations
  • Wednesday 20 Nov – SOA Gallery Conversations

Week 14

  • Monday 25 Nov – work from home day
  • Wednesday 27 Nov – Fall Break – no class!
  • No Activity due this week
  • No SOA Gallery Conversation due this week

Week 15 – D7

  • Monday 2 Dec – 7th Idea: Remix is the Art of Your Time!
  • Monday 2 Dec – Art 110 Virtual Art Gallery Presentations
  • Wednesday 4 Dec – Art 110 Virtual Art Gallery Presentations
  • Wednesday 4 Dec – SOA Gallery Conversations
  • Sunday 8 Dec – Final Paper – Art & (my) Life due @ 11:59 pm
  • Sunday 8 Dec – Optional Class Feedback post due

Week 15-1/2

  • Monday 9 Dec – Art 110 Virtual Art Gallery Presentations

Final

  • Wednesday 11 Dec, 2:45 – 4:45pm
  • Potluck?
  • Art Activity: Zines

Points Update

We’ve now got 653,000 of our 1,000,000 points up on BeachBoard. Here’s what’s still to come:

  • B – Art Gallery – 160,000
  • D7 – Artist Conversation – 30,000
  • D7 – Art Activity – 30,000
  • E – Art & (my) Life – 65,000
  • F – Final – 62,000
  • And the optional Museum and/or Feeback EC’s

Total points still to come: 347,000

With 653,000 up currently, here’s how many points you should have to be at each grade level, and how many peeps are currently at that grade level:

  • A = 587,700 = 62 peeps
  • B = 522,400 = 19 peeps
  • C = 457,100 = 17 peeps
  • D = 391,800 = 11 peeps
  • F = 391,799 & below = 16 peeps

This works out to an overall class GPA of 2.8

Leaderboard

With 653,000 points possible so far, here are our current class top 10:

  1. Nguyet Nguyen – 759,000
  2. Annie Tong – 687,000
  3. Salvador Macias Silva – 680,000
  4. Angela Kight – 674,000
  5. David Lee – 673,500
  6. Matthew Gonzalez – 672,000
  7. Caroline Gao – 672,000
  8. Maria Vasquez – 667,500
  9. Bernice Villicana – 667,000
  10. Isabel Inda – 664,700
a color field exploration as a finger painting on paper. The work features deep blues, browns and greens
Valeria Gonzalez

Comments

Comments? Questions? What great art did you see, make, or experience today?

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.