Week 2

This week’s guest presentation was by Laura Vandenburgh who spoke specifically about drawing. She talked about many interesting ideas and one of the first things she said was that there is nothing that quite compares to drawing because of how immediate and direct it is. She showed examples of doodles, maps, diagrams and a range of other quick illustrations that communicate information in a quick and visual way. I found this very interesting because when I think about an artist who uses drawing as a media, images of detailed portraits and dramatically shadowed still life pop into my head. Her comment however, made me realize that drawing is a tool that everyone uses in their everyday lives and that it is a very effective way of showing others things that cannot always be described in words. She went on further to say that in drawing, things can be visually worked out at the speed of thinking, which cannot be said for all forms of media. Just the other day I was videochatting with my brother and in trying to describe to him my apartment in relation to the UO campus, I took out a pencil and a piece of paper and drew a quick little map. This example illustrates part of what Laura was talking about in her idea of drawing being quick and direct. Another thing Laura said that I found to be very interesting was when she talked about the artist’s “mark”. In my opinion drawing is the form of media that has the most opportunity for/easiest to see the artist’s mark because the final product is a direct outcome of what the hand is doing and how it is moving.

            The reading had a lot of content and jumped around a lot without getting that in depth with any one topic so I found it a little hard to get into. I did however really like the small portion on Duchamp’s “readymade” art. I thought the point he was making was very interesting. To Duchamp choosing and presenting rather than making is the prime act of the artist (pg 109). I found the way he went about making this statement was very interesting. By taking objects that are already made and mass produced and composing them in his own was is fascinating to me. Later on in the reading when it got into the Pop Art section there is a part about a man named Danto who thought that pop art was the end of art because Warhol was taking images that already existed and having assistants make them and then calling it art. This to me, relates back to what Duchamp’s point was, that the artist should compose, not necessarily make. Warhol was not responsible for the hand labor but he was for the composition and ideas. Margaret Kilgallen’s work has a very distinct style to it. Her people are very flat and 2 dimensional and yet in my opinion they have distinct emotions. I found her interviews to actually be more interesting than the images of her art. I especially like when she talks about graffiti. She says, “I compared it to the barrage of images we see every day, especially advertising, and how on billboards or corner stores or anywhere—it's absolutely everywhere—and yet it doesn't bother anybody” (Margaret Kilgallen). It reminds me of a Banksy quote in which he talks about how people consider graffiti as trespassing but that advertisements trespass our brains everyday and in worse ways than graffiti. I completely agree with these ideas because personally I would rather be bombarded by interesting, diverse, original, accessible art than by bland, distasteful, commercial advertisements.

            One major connection I made from these different sources was the idea of the artist’s mark. Both Laura Vandenburgh talked about it, as I mentioned above, as well as Margaret Kilgallen. Kilgallen said in one of her interviews, “I like things that are handmade and I like to see people's hand in the world, anywhere in the world; it doesn't matter to me where it is. And in my own work, I do everything by hand…. From a distance it might look straight, but when you get close up, you can always see the line waver. And I think that's where the beauty is” (Margaret Kilgallen). I think that this is a very beautiful sentiment. In the reading there was a random quote that talked about how the artist sees what he paints, not paints what he sees. I can relate to this because in one of my art classes we were told to paint a still life. There was a set up in the front of the class and everyone was to draw that exact still life. After the project was due we took a look at the finished products and everyone’s were completely different. As humans we each have our own perception and therefore our own style or “mark” and that is what makes art beautiful. Another connection I made is that people interpret art differently. A lot of the work Laura presented as drawings, I considered sculptures. In the reading they talked about a lot of different movements some of which seemed like they overlapped or blurred together without any concrete distinction. That is part of why I love art. It is almost purely subjective and there is no right or wrong.

            The image I chose to include is an image I feel has a very strong “mark” to it. You can really see the strokes of the hand and how the artist moved across the canvas. 

(By: JBSC, "The Most Precious Gift of All")