nyu gallatin joywar lecture apr 2010
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
Art + Its Sources
Art
Internet Culture
&
Intellectual Property
([screen shots from “RIP! A Remix Manifesto”]
What about “remix” in terms of[traditional
Art?
Art-making has always been
remix
20th c.
“Culture Jamming”:
Collage
&
The Readymade
Marcel Duchamp established the concept of the readymade with his ceramic urinal “Fountain” (1917);
Earlier in the 1900s, Picasso produced extraordinary collages that incorporated "found" newspaper images.
John Heartfield (1891-1968) was a master of photomontage. A Communist German, he produced montages of appropriated Nazi symbols in order to subvert and undermine their power as propaganda.
“Adolph, the Superman: Swallows Gold and Spouts Junk.” 1932Photomontage
Raoul Hausmann, ABCD, 1923-1924
Dada presents a challenge to art and the Visual. 'Anti-art' movement of the early 20th Century, rebelling against traditional art and consumerist society.
Utilizing new techniques in myriad mediums, jarring juxtapositions, collages, text.
Be young and be quiet (a variation on the more common "Sois belle et tais toi", the classically sexist French version of "Just sit there and look pretty")
Paris ca. 1968
Painting + Photography:
conscious and unconscious “borrowing”
between different mediums between painters and photographers
across centuries
Visual Convergences:
Unconscious and conscious borrowing
Pictorial conventions
painting <<< >>> photography
Che Guevera’s corpse (ca. 1967)
Rembrandt : The Anatomy Lesson of Dr NicholaesTulp (1632)
Freddy Alborta, Che Guevera’s Death, 1967
Giovanni Antonio Bazzi “il Sodoma”: Lamentation Over the Dead Christ (1503)
The Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Andrea Mantegna (c.1490)
Painting directly from Photographs
Painters have been using photographs
and cameras ever since modern photography
came to into existence, and earlier…
"Officer & a Laughing Girl"Vermeer(1657-1659)Frick Collection, NY
Vermeer and other Dutch and Flemish painters of the period used the camera obscura...
"Bathers, Dieppe" 1902Walter Richard Sickert (1860 - 1942) Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK
The English Impressionist painter Walter Sickert developed a method of painting scenes of modern life from photographs.
This off-center composition, which features no horizon line, is an immediate, "snap-shot" moment, much like a photograph..
A few contemporary examples…
Andy Warhol:
Red Race Riot (1963)
Interview, Greater Boston Arts TV series and website: Artists & Violence (2002)
“I’m nuts on images. I cut them out of books and newspapers, mostly books and magazines. And this is absolutely crucial to me, because this is one of the ways I tap into the world.
“I see the world because it comes to me through media. Through film, through newspapers. Through TV.”
-- Leon Golub
Gerhard Richter:RaketeRocket 1966 93 cm X 73 cm Oil on canvas Catalogue Raisonné: 110-2
L: Confrontation 1 (Gegenüberstellung 1) (1988) R: Gudrun Ensslin from “October 18, 1977,” based on “ubiquitous photographs” of the Baader-Meinhof.
Gerhard Richter
Thomas Ruff: jpeg ny02 (2004) 8 ft. 10 in. x 11 ft. 11 3/8 in
For many artists after the advent of photography, the photograph was not merely an efficient tool, but part of an inquiry into how we see, how we look at the world, and how the world affects us through our vision.
The photographer’s intentions do not determine the meaning of the photograph, which will have its own career, blown by the whims and loyalties of the diverse communities that have use for it.
— Susan Sontag:
Regarding the Pain of Others (2003)
Painting the Mediated Image
re-inventing ‘found images’
My Source Material
• Science + technoscience photography• US Government + military archives• News photos; photojournalism
Science photographs
Declassified Cold War Imagery
"Trinity" July 16, 1945the first nuclear test
Alamogordo Test Range Jornada del Muerte Desert
(“Journey of Death”) New Mexico
Declassified government files
"Dog“, November 1, 1951Operation Buster-Jangle, Nevada Test Site, Area 7
1417 Foot Airdrop from B-50
“Castle Bravo”High yield thermonuclear weapons test (H-bomb) detonated on an artificial
island at Bikini Atoll February 28, 1954 (GMT)
Public military documents
Television: Night vision / Tracer fire : The First Gulf War (CNN)
QuickTime clips: Kosovo Gun camera imagery
Frederick Church: Twilight in the Wilderness, 1860
Joy Garnett: Bikini (1997) 20 x 26 inches. Oil on canvas.
Joy Garnett: Fireball with Joshua Trees (1998) 48 x 48 inches. Oil on canvas.
Joy Garnett: Boltzman (1999) 20 x 26 inches. Oil on canvas.
Joy Garnett:Christmas Island (1998) 50 x 42 inches. Oil on canvas.
Joy Garnett: Rocket Science. (2001) 28 x 38 inches. Oil on canvas.
Joy Garnett: Yellow Smoke. (2009). Oil on canvas. 26 x 30 inches.
Joy Garnett: Explosion, Yellow & White (2009)Oil on canvas. 32 x 26 inches
Joy Garnett: Crash. (2009) 38 x 48 inches. Oil on canvas
The Media Narrative
Joy Garnett: News Anchor (Kabul) (2002) 26 x 32 inches. Oil on canvas
Joy Garnett: Night Vision, Baghdad (2006) 38 x 44 inches, Oil/canvas
Joy Garnett: Road. (2007) 35 x 38 inches. oil on canvas
Joy Garnett: Jog. 2003. 26 x 46 inches. Oil/canvas
Joy Garnett: Paris Riots (3) 2005. 11 x 14 inches. Oil on canvas
Joy Garnett: Paris Riots (6) 2005. 15 x 20 inches. Oil on canvas.
Joy Garnett: Plume 2 (2005) 26 x 46 inches. Oil on canvas
Joy Garnett: Flood 2 (2005) 26 x 46 inches. Oil on canvas.
Joy Garnett: Flood 5 (2006) 54 x 60 inches. oil/canvas.
Joy Garnett: Dusk (2007). 30 x 38 inches. Oil on canvas.
Joy Garnett: Noon. (2007) 56 x 60 inches. Oil on canvas.
“Joywar” (c. 2004)
Revisited, 2010
“Riot”
a solo show in the spring of 2004…
Joy Garnett: Riot. (2004) 35 x 30 inches. Oil on canvas.
Joy Garnett: Leap. (2003) 54 x 60 inches. Oil on canvas.
Joy Garnett: Stones. (2003) 60 x 78 inches. Oil on canvas.
Joy Garnett: Air Strip. (2003) 44 x 84 inches. Oil on canvas.
Joy Garnett: Guardian Angel. (2003) 30 x 35 inches. Oil on canvas.
Joy Garnett: Emo. (2003) 78 x 60 inches. Oil on canvas.
“Cease & Desist”
Am I a Pirate?!
Susan Meiselas: NICARAGUA, Esteli (1979).
• Borrowing
• Copying
• Reference
• Resemblance
• Riffs• Development of ideas
History of Painting
Internet Culture
speeds up:
• Borrowing
• Copying
• Reference
• Resemblance
• Riffs• Development of ideas
In the meantime, online, in a discussion with net artists, coders and
musicians…
Artist Tim Whidden mirrored the image on his own site…
Artist Mark River created a “derivative” work based on Molotov:
Artist Ryan Griffis declares “Joywar”( a reference to “Toywar” c. 1999)
Jess Loseby
Joseph + Donna McElroyhttp://electrichands.com/shanghai-pepsi.jpg
Michael Szpakowski : Solidarity webpage
Ottokin.com:
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 16:33:22 +0100Re: tshirt
Produce this shirt an fuck the Pepsi!
Bye from ItalyPaolo
“Spook” site
Quicktime movie: “Art not Crime”
Kate Southworth: Pirates of Penzancehttp://www.gloriousninth.com/piratesofpenzance.html
Molotov Remix - consists od a jpg of Joy Garnett's painting "Molotov" sliced into 121 43px X 52px images. Each sliced image is randomly loaded via java script into one of 121 cells of an html table.
Users may click on the "Recompose" link to achieve a new randomly generated recomposition each time. The chances of users hitting upon a perfect realignment of image slices is less than winning the lottery, but just in case I have a "fair use" argument ready.
http://art-design.smsu.edu/cooley/molotov/
mark cooley
Edward Tang: “Molotov Landscapes” created using a custom software in Windows C++ using Visual C++ .NET and OpenGL for graphics.http://antiexperience.com
Pau Waelder: http://www.sicplacitum.com/arte/molotov.htm
Shepard Fairey
ca. 2008
Fairey expropriates and recontextualizes artworks of others, primarily propaganda imagery,
from 1920s (Russian Constructivism and Bolshevist posters)
to the 1960s
(Chinese Socialist Realism and counter-culture rock posters).
Shepard Fairey’s Method
Traditions of Agitprop Poster Design & Street Art
Dada in the 1920sPsychedelia in the 1960s
The Situationists in the 1970sPostmodern strategies of the 1980s
AppropriationCulture Jamming
Adbusting
[Shepard] Fairey's multi-colored Obama gave visual definition to the intangible excitement stirred by the candidate, and soon that face was everywhere. […] the Obama icon propagated itself. Fairey's free distributive model fit well with Obama's bottom-up, technologically-oriented, self-starting organization and base, and Fairey's web traffic spiked as thousands of people downloaded the image, applying it to their own sites and printed materials. A collaboration with a San Francisco street-wear brand called Upper Playground put the image on t-shirts. The Obama campaign commissioned 50,000 copies of an official poster, raising $350,000 for the campaign. Other artists followed suit, creating limited editions under the banner of Artists for Obama.
-- Joshuah Bearman, Modern Painters. http://laweekly.blogs.com/joshuah_bearman/2008/11/about-that-hope-poster.html
February 2009
The Associated Press accuses Shepard Fairey of Copyright Infringement
In response, Fairey and his attorneys bring suit against the Associated Press, asserting that Fairey’s work does not constitute copyright infringement, and that Fairey as well as any other parties in possession of this work, are
protected by the Fair Use Doctrine.
Precedents
The legacy of the Che imagery includes
”American Investments in Cuba,” by Patrick Thomas
Case Law:
“Rogers v. Koons”1990
“Blanch v. Koons”2005
Rogers v. Koons
1992
Blanch v. Koons
2005
Creativity
Versus
Property
Kinds of Property
Tangible goods
apples
houses
Intellectual Property
expression
ideas
Not protected by copyright:
Ideas, facts
Protected by copyright:
Expression
Legal Limits on Copyright:
“fair use”
“transformative use”
Fair Use
Coda
“Culture is made of objects, expressions, stories, gestures, etc. that MUST be repeatable (and repeated) in various situations - precisely to create an identity to be held in common. …it is through this process of repetition that a group's consensus of history and identity is created.…
“….Culture is composed of copies that we as a society share and subsequently hold in common - and that fundamentally bind us together. (We ALL copy without authorization all the time - that is called memory. Technology extends its perception and there is no 'self' without it.)”
-- David Clarkson, artist, NYC (2009)
the end