Knep & YesMen

It was really nice to have Brian Knep come and speak with us in class last week.  I am not like some of his scientific and mathematic peers and did not understand right away what his pieces were about so it was definitely important for him to explain it.  Knep seems like a very thoughtful person although I wonder where he gets his money from if he hasn't been selling his work and is seemingly spending most of his time at his lab/studio.  It seems rude to think about people's income, that is how we are raised in this society.. but how are people supposed to figure out what is and isn't possible if these questions aren't asked?  I really appreciated him talking about all of the grants he applies for expecting to be rejected.  The art world seems like a constant stream of rejection, there are just too many of us!  But to hear somebody speak about it as a business ploy, a way to get your name out, it took some of the stinging fear out of being told "no."

The Video on The YesMen was great.  I have never heard about them before but look forward to seeing what they come up with next.  My initial reaction again was "how is this art"?  Of course it is a fabulous form of protest and the people involved are extremely creative thinking, but how is it what I consider to be art?  I ended up excepting it by the end of their videos because it is a new media form of art.  Things are progressing and I need to start accepting this more quickly!  I am consciously trying not to become a snobby old painter who isn't interested in any new types of art!  This class has continued to push me out of my close minded view of what art "is."  Usually when presented with issues such as these I deem it NOT art and continue on.  Now, once I get a hold of one new concept the next week a new one is thrown at me!  I still find myself being highly cynical about this issue and I can only half heartedly proclaim The YesMen as Visual artists.  Maybe that is the problem, seeing things as visual art and then music.  I myself have thought about putting sounds to some of my paintings so that is one step towards this new media.  I still have the solid piece of art there that you can touch though.  I am a very tactile person, I'll blame that on my new media resistance for now.

Brian Knep

Here is an image of Brian Knep's 2006 installation "Deep Wounds" in Harvard University's Memorial Hall. The hall's purpose is to commemorate soldiers who died during the civil war and were also Harvard Graduates. I find this piece much more stimulating than Knep's other pieces using this technology because it is clearly linked to an idea and not just a play thing that belongs at the Museum of Science. The reason these men's names are put into the building in the first place is so that they are not forgotton, but the Hall was built in 1878 so the idea of lives sacrificed can become abstract. Knep is bringing the soldiers back into our conscience mind; "Deep Wounds" is very clearly communicating to the viewer/participant the power of what these men gave to us.

Jenny Holzer

Artist's Website

Art:21 Clip


*Jenny Holzer is 59 and has mulitple degrees including honorary Doctorates from University of Ohio, RISD and New School University in NY
*Began working with text as art after her move to NYC 1977
*Works primarily with projection and digital text scroll

Examples:

*For the City (2005), nighttime projections of declassified government documents on the exterior of NYU's Bobst Library, and poetry on the exteriors of Rockefeller Center and the NY Public Library in Manhattan
--- Government Documents
--- Poetry

Critics:
*"Feminist" to many

* NY Times
LEAD: To the Editor:

To the Editor:

Not only happy to broadcast her truisms all over Europe, Jenny Holzer has also demonstrated - at least in the reproduction that illustrates her work in ''A Changed Biennale Remains the Same'' [June 10] , - her provincialism and embarrassing lack of mastery of foreign languages. The accent on the E in the sentence ''Il desiderio di riproduzione e un desiderio di morte'' should be grave, not acute. May I suggest that Ms. Holzer limit her display of dime-store philosophy and poor orthography where it belongs: inside fortune cookies.

J. PATRICE MARANDEL
Detroit

The writer is the curator of European paintings at the Detroit Institute of Arts.