ARCHIVE - Creating a Conceptual Framework for Images - Week 4

ARCHIVE - Notes on the Gallery Space

taycan04 — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 23:43:52 -0700

"So powerful are the perpetual fields of force within this chamber that, once outside it, art can lapse into secular status. Conversly, things become art in a space where powerful ideas about art focus on them." p. 14

It is amazing how much power the gallery has on art and vice versa. A dumpster on the street is garbage, but when taken outside of its context and put in the white cube, it is now technically art and the context becomes the content, framing the gallery. The relationship between art and the gallery are so dependent on one another. The gallery needs art to survive. I also believe that some art needs the gallery just the same. The gallery shapes the art along with what type of people will become the viewer.

ARCHIVE - Inside the white cube

osmjus15 — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 20:10:52 -0800

“Conversely, things become art in a space where powerful ideas about art focus on them” “The Ideal gallery subtracts all cues that would interfere with the fact that the art work is art”(p.14) The gallery not only provides a space to put art but also defines what is put into that space as art. The gallery is a shrine, putting every thing inside of it on a pedestal; displaying any object from the finest oil painting to a ripped piece of notebook paper, as both equal and worthy of attention. In many cases, being put into this context is the only thing that makes it what it is. This pedestal ensures that any thing put on it will be carefully considered and appreciated as art.

ARCHIVE - Week four response

hilall08 — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 01:29:25 -0800

In an earnest attempt to interact with the weeks reading, I walked away more confused than when I began to lay eye to text. In describing the gallery space the author at first seemed a lot like those endless pages of text one sees pasted on street poles, somehow desiring to become the object of the idea itself, an entity without time. I was disconcerted by the cutting off of anything that had to do with the ‘outside’ and its systems, how linear and traditional. The gallery space in the author’s analysis is a barren place, void of any context other than the bordered assumptions that can be ‘skied’ at a moments notice. The view annihilated into ‘spectator’.

ARCHIVE - cube

lewkyl13 — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 22:06:16 -0800

The "white cube" was created to give the artwork a “transcendental”, timeless space in which it can be seen with little to no distractions. It seems to me that this kind of art viewing place was created—for the most part—to sell the work, and therefore means of capital gain. I suppose it keeps art safe, but that can be done without “the cube”. The cube, whether it is trying to or not, it is framing the image, framing it in a pristine white nothingness. This—according to O’Doherty—is to suspend the viewer from space-time, and the dirty, fleeting world. The nature of the gallery space is to annihilate “the self”—so to speak—from every viewer, as well as time. Upon entering a gallery we are conditioned to release some of our daily human worry and loose ourselves in the art (hence the transcendental space). The gallery is striving for the most transcendental and removed space possible. Nothing can distract from the art, nothing can distract from the sale, for this alone is what the perpetuation of the gallery depends on. The timeless, attention-demanding space is almost treated with the same respect as that of a church. Think about it; you usually lower your voice, walk, “don’t touch!” respect. Most (with the exception of some installation) acceptable gallery interaction is usually done as though we are in the presents of the divine. I think that most art—in order for us to understand fully—needs to be seen beyond the sterol white cube, and amongst its influences, weather city or country, water or land, there is always more than the “now” (the “installation” is beginning to see this). I don’t think the gallery knows it, but it is framing the images, framing in nothing, blotting out all that is not trivial to this single moment, cutting the depth of the work.

ARCHIVE - yellow paper

sanshe07 — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 16:38:38 -0800

Yellow sheet sherda sanders

No matter how much technical skill you have or you know about photography, the viewer will never fully understand the subject of the picture or entirely why the photographer choose the subject. You can understand that you are looking at a certain place or subject in time, often a time very different than your own. A frozen representation but you will never really know what happened to the subject/what they had seen/ who had been there…etc. and that is something that makes the photograph amazing it’s as close to that particular reality as you will ever get and you still can only imagine what was happening. in reference to opening with napoleon and page 27 section 26

ARCHIVE - week 4

sanshe07 — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 16:35:17 -0800

Week 4 sherda sanders

Seminar questions

The book is written like an Edgar Allen Poe piece

Question 1 do you think gallery space/ placement enhances or takes away from the art?

People used to focus on a subject and look more into the subject, now people focus more on what is going on around and beyond the subject.

Do frames take away or help to clean up pieces, what about photographs? Should gallery walls be white maybe they should be grey instead.

ARCHIVE - Week 4 Response

hailau12 — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 12:44:02 -0800

I got a lot out of Camera Lucida. Roland Barthe’s writing was fluid and rich with detail and it was easy to understand his thought process. He wanted to get to the bottom of why he liked photography. In the end, it was a picture of his mother when she was a child that seemed completely real to him, that really captured the essence of her that made him appreciate photography. He believes the experience and meaning behind a photograph, makes it good (which seems to be the opposite of what Inside the White Cube was saying). I can relate to this. Phony, staged photographs drive me crazy. It seems like everyone has their fake “picture smile.” And even if someone may seem casual, when a camera is out, people automatically pose. Barthe makes a very good point, and it’s actually pretty funny. Barthe’s picture of his mother reminds me of a picture I have of my Aunt Jane. Not many pictures were taken of her before she died, and it truly captures her unlike I have seen any photograph capture anyone. In it, she is laughing hysterically and holding her niece. The picture is kind of out of focus. That photograph alone holds more meaning for me than an entire gallery full of photographs.

ARCHIVE - "Hard-core conceptualism"

donand10 — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 12:27:10 -0800

In the chapter, Notes on the Gallery Space, O’Doherty uses an ironic title to thoroughly and philosophically explain the reasons for which the museum space has become an entity in correlation with human history. “The wall itself has no intrinsic esthetic; it is simply a necessity for an upright animal.” Here, O’Doherty is obviously speaking of the museum wall when he simply mentions “the wall”, but what I like most about this quote is his strait forward logic behind his statement, which is believable and most likely the actual reason why art is displayed upright. In the Second chapter, The Eye and the Spectator, O’Doherty attempts to explain the reasons for which humans interpret different styles of art and how it all came to be. “…the spectator and the eye are conventions which stabilize our missing sense of ourselves. They acknowledge that our identity itself is fiction and they give us the illusion we are present through a double edged consciousness.” The connection between conceptual art and philosophy is often very relevant when I am a spectator, but often, I get the feeling of being held back by my own parameters of the mind and essentially viewing the art from my own illusions. One artists work from the reading that I really enjoyed was William Anastasi and his, West Wall. I felt it was a very important piece in how it prompted feelings about the space itself and the history and lifetime of that wall in particular. “When the paintings came down, the wall became a kind of ready-made mural and so changed every show in that space thereafter.” That brings up an interesting question involving our responsibility as artists; shouldn’t we strive to leave our mark, like Anastasi, on every museum space we inhabit? -Drew

ARCHIVE - Week Numbre Shi (Ooh, language ahead..)

dankam12 — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 10:43:59 -0800

I don't get it. When I use analogies, they don't make sense, when someone else does it doesn't make sense, so maybe we should just all sit down and die right? It's fine to use analogies to bring out idea, or give it more meaning. ("Like is like a dick, if it's hard, fuck it. *that got me in trouble in middle school.*) But there is a time and place. The place being this book. It doesn't need to give us these adolescent analogies to "try and make us understand modernism" as he sees it. Over explaining art can make it hard to fully appreciate it when you see it. I don't need to be talked down to. Even if I understand only one word out of a whole monologue you go on about art, I feel better that you came to me thinking I'll understand.

ARCHIVE - The Gallery and its Sad Limitations

smieri24 — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 09:55:41 -0800

I'm a bit embarrassed that I'm going to respond to information presented so early in the text, but having a few days to distance myself from the reading, the idea of the gallery space as the a priori stimulus for the audience has resonated deeply. O' Doherty clearly states, "We have now reached a point where we see not the art but the space first" (14). Indeed, I remember while attending Tacoma Community College when the new campus art gallery was in its final leg of construction, I glared at the outside at its metal, rather bland, greenish-gray, horizontal siding and thought, "how ugly." Its geometry was pushed to fit the space allotted and the inside space was...well, white with polished concrete flooring (or something similar). My art Prof.