“The Mending Project” by Chinese-born artist, Beili Liu, is a performance art and installation project. This project was held on February 26, 2011 at the Women and Their Work gallery in Austin Museum Of Art, Texas, USA. The installation consists of hundreds of Chinese scissors suspended from the ceiling in a shimmering cloud, pointing downwards. The project involves the artist sits in front of a small black table beneath the countless sharp blades of the scissors performs an on-going simple task of hand-mending patches of fabric together, which visitors are encouraged to cut themselves near the entrance. This essay will analyse the meaning and artistic intention behind the project and it is also a reflective writing, which expresses my feelings …show more content…
The installation is made of 1,500 pairs of scissors suspended in the air in a circle 20 feet across, each of their black iron handles held aloft by a slender strand of black saltwater fishing line. The reason of this is because the fishing line may tear apart anytime, and if this happens, it could be hazardous and give a risk to the performer who sits below the cloud of scissors and the visitors who admire the performance. To support the idea, a founder of mutantspace.com arts skills exchange, Moray Mair, commented that “The work seems to be a balance between terrifying danger and calmness, but I see nothing calming about it at all.” (Mutantspace.com, August 2012). Although this project has ended and there is no accident happened, the artist would still have to be concerned about the probability of the risk that could happen in the future …show more content…
The elements of the project are quality, whether it is the content that makes the metaphor, the feeling of the performer, or the concept of the project. Overall, it can be said that this mending project is one of the most successful projects of Beili Liu as it can influence and impact the audience’s
People usually expect to see paintings and sculptures in Art Galleries. Imagine the surprise one finds when they are presented with a man stitching his face into a bizarre caricature, or connected to a machine which controls the artist’s body. These shocking pieces of performance art come under the broad umbrella that is Postmodernism. Emphasis on meaning and shock value has replaced traditional skills and aesthetic values evident in the earlier Modernist movements.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has one of the finest Asian art collections that has enlightened and strengthened my understanding in my personal art experience. The Museum itself is an artistic architectural structure that graces the entire block on 82nd Street in Manhattan. Entering inside, I sensed myself going back into an era, into a past where people traded ideas and learned from each other. It is a past, where I still find their works of yesteryears vividly within my grasp, to be remembered and shared as if their reflections of works were cast for the modern devoted learner.
With works in every known medium, from every part of the world, throughout all points in history, exploring the vast collection of the Museum of Modern Art was an overwhelming experience. The objects in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts are an important historical collection, reflecting the development of a number of art forms in Western Europe. The department's holdings covered sculpture in many sizes, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, jewelry, and tapestries. The gallery attracted my appreciation of the realistic qualities of the human body often portrayed in sculpture.
As a conclusion, Mingei and nationalism can be perceived as fundamentally interwoven through Japanese handicrafts. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, many factors came to play a part in bringing the Japanese spirit to the forefront of craftsmen minds, whether as reason to bring attention to themselves and their own work or as a way of providing necessary utensils to the average Japanese home. The efforts of the Mingei movement and the Japanese Traditional Crafts Exhibition cannot be ignored. Yanagi can be said to have foreseen this radical decline in traditional styles and if not for his and his fellow founders collecting and preserving crafts in the Japanese Folk Art Museum, many of the regional methods and styles could be lost today. After the destruction of the war and
"Modern art." Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 2011. Web. 02 Dec. 2011. .
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Cliche as it may be, this maxim holds true throughout the world, whether it be in regards to celebrities, cars, rural lanscapes, gritty cityscapes, your co-worker’s children, or your father-in-law’s turkey carving skills. Holding differing points of view in regards to what is considered beauty is something that humanity has argued over for centuries. What one sees as merely a rundown subway car, another may see the small sparks of creativity in the walls’ grafitti, the colorful bursts of commuters’ clothing, the sheer beauty of humanity itself in the hidden spaces of the train. Discussions over what is truly beautiful are common throughout humanity’s history, though nowhere are they as obvious or as well documented as they are in the art world.
Rhee, J. “PERFORMING THE OTHER: YOKO ONO'S CUT PIECE.” Art History. 28: 96–118. (2005). Print. 30 Apr. 2014.
Performance artist Patty Chang creates pieces that deal with scopophilia or voyeurism, best described as “the love of looking”, a topic that goes hand in hand with the issues of gender roles in society that Chang also represents in her work. Chang particularly addresses issues of gender roles through her confrontation of female representation in art, film and popular culture as a whole. In Chang’s video clip entitled, “Shaved (At a Loss)”, she sits herself on a chair in front of her audience, hikes up her dress to expose her vagina and then proceeds to, very roughly, shave off her pubic hair. The entire duration of “Shaved (At a Loss), Chang is blindfolded. In this piece Chang presents consumer culture’s fetishization of the ”flawless” female figure, which is outlined by the unattainable body ideals that are portrayed not only in most mainstream pornography, but also in almost all media connected to our society’s popular culture sphere.
Everyone has expectations to uphold and often it can feel overwhelming to comply with them all. When one chooses not to comply to the expectations set by oneself or from others, it can be seen as an act of rebellion, foolish-thinking, or a failure to see what the future holds. Similarly, expectations that are too elevated towards others can result in a harsh confrontation with reality. In the novel, The Other Side of the Bridge, by Mary Lawson, the author develops the idea that one bearing too many expectations of others and of oneself can lead to developing distress and feelings of betrayal if the expectations are not met. The theme of expectations is developed using the character Ian, through the social expectations he encounters, familial
These famed readymades are ordinary manufactured objects that Duchamp selected and barely modified, as a contrasting statement to what he called “retinal art” – art that is purely visual. Creating these pieces involved a bare minimum degree of interaction between the artist and artwork, hence forming the most extreme form of minimalism up to that period (1915) . The term ‘readymades’ was coined for these pieces, as this was a commonly used term in the US at the time to distinguish manufactured goods from hand crafted goods - an assurance that the outputs of industrial life would be a fruitful resource in works of art. However, Duchamp’s submissions of his readymades as art to art juries and the public were largely rejected by jurors or went unnoticed in art shows. This was especially the...
Since the dawn of mankind, humans have crafted tools to assist them in their daily lives. From the first rock thrown in anger, to the first tree branch used to dig, society’s relationship to tools and weapons has been represented in all of the visual arts. Throughout our textbook I have interpreted the recurring theme of tools and weapons in the arts.
This breaks all of our tradition in sculpture. On the one hand the simplification and distortion of body and limb seem extremely daring departures from the tradition which few do; on the other hand, this is reminiscent of the earliest sculpture ever produced, which is far from a perfect balance. Thus he has created a new form; that of pure laziness.
Feminism has been an extremely controversial and significant subject over the centuries. The issue of equality between men and women have been questioned and exceedingly debated upon, why men were treated and considered the ‘superior’ gender. During the 1960’s, civil rights, protests against war and gay and lesbian movements were at its peak. It was the period of time, which the Feminist art movement had emerged, also known as the “second-wave” of feminism, shifting away from modernism. Women wanted to gain equal rights as men within the art world. Feminist artists such as Cindy Sherman, Carolee Schneemann and Hannah Wilke pursued to change the world and perspectives on women through their artworks, specifically in body art. Their goal was to “influence cultural attitudes and transform stereotypes.” (DiTolla. T, 2013)
It is difficult to define or explain the artistic impulse, even today, and it is even more difficult to pinpoint the one point in history when human beings developed a desire for aesthetically pleasing objects. However, several trends that have endured for thousands of years, particularly the decoration of vessels, textiles, and jewelry, and the creation of drawings and sculpture even today when they are no longer the easiest way to tell a story, leads me to believe that there is something in the human spirit that has always sought out the beautiful, whether in concord or conflict with the practical. And although the role of art and artists has changed drastically in the past and will likely continue to do so in the future, there will always be an impulse, whether admired and supported or looked down upon by society, to make life just a little bit brighter.
During the research field trip in the Downtown gallery, one of the most interesting artist which called Randi Nygård. Her works If You Imagine Cutting the Universe into Pieces, the Different Parts Can Serve as Clocks for the Others 2 (2013) which made by mirrors, digital prints, steel was really attracted attention and the size of this work was 130*50*50cm. The work was presenting the natural state of the world like mountain, cell, flower, river and clouds. She was really special to using the mirror in this art piece which people in the front side could see themselves in the mirror, but they could not see themselves very clear in the ba...