Although Richard Serra’s Casting and Michael Heizer’s Double Negative are different in form and material, they both produce the strong phenomenological responses that Minimalism and the expanded field of media aimed to achieve. While Minimalism concerned itself with the re-examination of western aesthetics, it did not concern itself with the re-examination of values in the social and political world. Following the Minimalist standard, Serra’s Casting and Heizer’s Double Negative engage with the expanded field of media. However, while they demonstrate their own displays of violence, power, and aggression, neither Serra nor Heizer engage with a critique on the violence perpetuated by the American government in the mid-twentieth century. In his 1969 work Casting, Richard Serra demonstrates the Pollockian performative of utilizing his whole body to create his art–he walked around the room of Leo Castelli’s gallery to throw molten lead on the baseboards. In the process, Serra made very few artistic decisions: he chose to …show more content…
Serra’s Casting evokes a specific type of phenomenological response. His work does not look welcoming, in fact, it is rather threatening; because the lead was randomly splashed onto the baseboards, the castings do not have clear cut, well defined edges–the edges are sharp and jagged. When viewing Casting, the bodily response of an audience might be to touch it while at the same time knowing that it is dangerous and would likely could cut anyone who touches it. The fear of being injured engenders the threat of aggression of the work towards the audience. I would argue that it is specifically masculine aggression, as industrial materials are typically associated with masculinity. One could also see Serra’s Casting as a display of sexual aggression: long, straight, hard strips of jagged metal penetrating the space of the gallery as well as attacking the viewer’s sense of relative
1. Sobchack’s argument pertaining to on -screen violence that she wrote thirty years ago was that any violent acts portrayed in movies back then was to emphasize the importance of an element in a story, an emphatic way of engaging the viewers and forcing them to feel what the movie was about. It gave them a sense of the substance of the plot which would allow them to feel for the characters and yearn for good to overcome evil. In other words, the effort made to engage audiences through depictions of violence created violence that was artistic and well done, or as Sobchack writes, violence was “aestheticized.” Violence was incorporated into film in a stylistic way, and even though violence in all forms is offending, twenty five years ago when it was seen in film, it had a greater impact on audiences because it had meaning (Sobchack 429).
The exhibition of recent stoneware vessels by Peter Voulkos at Frank Lloyd Gallery featured the sort of work on which the artist established reputation in the 1950s. The work was greeted with stunned amazement. However now it is too, but it's amazement of a different order -- the kind that comes from being in the presence of effortless artistic mastery. These astonishing vessels are truly amaising. Every ceramic artist knows that what goes into a kiln looks very different from what comes out, and although what comes out can be controlled to varying degrees, it's never certain. Uncertainty feels actively courted in Voulkos' vessels, and this embrace of chance gives them a surprisingly contradictory sense of ease. Critical to the emergence of a significant art scene in Los Angeles in the second half of the 1950s, the 75-year-old artist has lived in Northern California since 1959 and this was his only second solo show in an L.A gallery in 30 years.”These days, L.A. is recognized as a center for the production of contemporary art. But in the 1950s, the scene was slim -- few galleries and fewer museums. Despite the obscurity, a handful of solitary and determined artists broke ground here, stretching the inflexible definitions of what constitutes painting, sculpture and other media. Among these avant-gardists was Peter Voulkos.” In 1954, Voulkos was hired as chairman of the fledgling ceramics department at the L.A. County Art Institute, now Otis College of Art and Design, and during the five years that followed, he led what came to be known as the "Clay Revolution." Students like John Mason, Paul Soldner, Ken Price and Billy Al Bengston, all of whom went on to become respected artists, were among his foot soldiers in the battle to free clay from its handicraft associations.
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.
Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes epitomizes the style of artwork during the Italian Baroque era. By using a Catholic subject and key elements and techniques essential to baroque art such as chiaroscuro and foreshortening, she was able to create a piece that gushes drama and realism. Without the use of all of these elements the effect would be lost, but instead the piece is one that moves the viewer with its direct and gritty realism of the religious subject, evoking emotion in a way that leaves the viewer in awe.
Oftentimes the lens we use when interpreting any art is based on our interpretation of the truth of the story – if a story is perceived as historically accurate, we look at the story as co...
The type of shots has an important role in the understanding of Joan’s victimization. Medium close-ups and close-ups are used through out the film, creating a scary intimacy between Joan and the judges. In The Passion of Joan of Arc, Dreyer uses close-ups to show that Joan is struggling against forces much larger than herself. “Dreyer uses strange and distorted medium shots, emphasizing the aesthetic tension between a frightened and disoriented Joan, and of her cruel and mocking tormentors. ” This distortion creates pity and fear in the viewer. Also, the close-ups make us fully focus on the story and Joan’s emotion since the set, props or anything else that could appear in a long shot cannot distract the viewer. In addition, Dreyer shot torture instruments with a close-up. By giving us the chance to see the instruments closely, we become fearful and feel sympathy for Joan. Again, this emphasise, the clergy’s
The postmodern cinema emerged in the 80s and 90s as a powerfully creative force in Hollywood film-making, helping to form the historic convergence of technology, media culture and consumerism. Departing from the modernist cultural tradition grounded in the faith in historical progress, the norms of industrial society and the Enlightenment, the postmodern film is defined by its disjointed narratives, images of chaos, random violence, a dark view of the human state, death of the hero and the emphasis on technique over content. The postmodernist film accomplishes that by acquiring forms and styles from the traditional methods and mixing them together or decorating them. Thus, the postmodern film challenges the “modern” and the modernist cinema along with its inclinations. It also attempts to transform the mainstream conventions of characterization, narrative and suppresses the audience suspension of disbelief. The postmodern cinema often rejects modernist conventions by manipulating and maneuvering with conventions such as space, time and story-telling. Furthermore, it rejects the traditional “grand-narratives” and totalizing forms such as war, history, love and utopian visions of reality. Instead, it is heavily aimed to create constructed fictions and subjective idealisms.
When the world was created there was chaos, that chaos has since persisted throughout the course of human history. In Giuseppe Piamontini’s twin pieces, The Fall of Giants and The Massacre of Innocents, he shows two pivotal moments in human history that have forever shaped society through a single action: the creation of the religious world. The use of cold dark bronze in these works helps display the gloom and terror of the scenes. While the intense detailed expressions on the characters faces conveys their horror, grief, or insatiable lust for violence. Piamontini does a fantastic job showing these violent beginnings will have violent ends, there is no escaping it as the cycle will always repeat.
However, upon the new changes in cinema—the idea of ideology shifted as well. Modernist Cinema subverted that typical dominant ideology. There is always a larger question poses about the film as a whole; why was this film made? Badlands situates the spectator in the position to decide whether or not murder is evil based on the visuals he or she views. The author’s hopes is that by creating unidentifiable characters and a nonchalant world that the spectator will realize that the idea of murder isn’t in fact being promoted merely the opposite—it’s being subverted. The subject matter of this film is one that is certainly unpleasurable in terms of entertainment but actually a dissatisfaction intending to comment on society as a whole. This intentional provocation involves “the attack on ‘entertainment’ cinema [as] part of a broader attack on the whole of ‘consumer society’” (Wollen, 424). Cinema serves as a distraction from society, but also operates to make a point to its intended audience. The point being the obvious, murder should never be morally acceptable. Its consequences typically should evoke a reaction that testifies against nature of the
Woodman’s glove teased ‘the construction of the feminine as that ‘hole’ to be always obscured.” Not long after she finished school, she created a series of images simply titled “Untitled.” It is a project that suggests self-representation. This series of five images involves an Italian artist Sabina Mirri. Woodman’s black gloves appear as the prop in these photographs.
“ It’s crazy, all that blood and violence. I thought you were supposed to be the love generation”. Conservative mother, Estelle Collingwood says to her daughter Mari in the beginning of Wes Craven’s cult classic The Last House on the Left (1972). With the war in Vietnam in full swing and the long term effects of the Manson family murders, the peace and love counter culture was at the end of an era. American society had become more violent and corrupt, as were the films Hollywood was starting to release. And with the new generation’s style of filmmaking and recent MPAA rating system, filmmakers were pushing the boundaries of their films and shocking audiences and critics to the core. With new filmmakers kicking down the door of Hollywood every year, it’s no surprise that soon-to-be horror icon Wes Craven would fit perfectly into the new generation of Hollywood. Craven’s early films fall into the exploitation category. They were severely gruesome, repulsive, appalling, and ended up being banned in several countries. Craven would go on to make films that reflect on contemporary society by using a number of recurring themes and formal filmmaking aesthetics that included:
Don DeLillo’s ‘Videotape’ is a short story of man who is absolutely captivated by some footage on the news that can be described as both, raw and shocking. The footage is being repeatedly played over and over. It depicts a young girl with a camcorder travelling in the backseat of her family’s car who happens to be filming a man driving a Dodge behind them. She continues aiming the camera at the man and filming until, suddenly, he is shot and murdered. The man watching the tape at home is clearly mesmerized and fascinated with the footage to the extent that he was trying to get his wife to watch it with him. This story portrays society’s utter fascination of shocking and disturbing content relating to death and other horrible events unless they themselves are involved. This, along with other characteristics, clearly suggests that “Videotape” is a piece of postmodern literature. This report will analyze and describe why “Videotape” belongs to postmodern literature through the in-depth analysis of the selected passage and a brief breakdown of the story as a whole.
The Walking Dead is an allegory for the real world. It presents audiences, the controversies of the conventional postmodern society amidst a post-apocalyptic drama. The series portrayal of dissolving humanity in unfeigned bleakness both reflects and inflames our societal perceptions and fears. Through an inhuman fallacy, (the zombie) The Walking Dead humanises the hopeless actualization of our corrupted world in all its postmodern traits. Therefore, the ambition for The Walking Dead is to exhibit a world pursuing a favourable equilibrium of peace and liberty but never achieving it as it is entirely a Sisyphean. In this essay, I will argue how cinema and humankind has fed into corruption within postmodernism.
...the need for a balance between man’s true physical appearance and man’s true behavior is needed. For Serrano, his journey led to his discovery of that balance and for the “Def-ghi”, it was the balance between the cannibalistic and civilized nature of man, something that frightened him so much that he confined himself to the city where it masquerades as something refined.
Ten years before Tarantino made Pulp Fiction, the academic and critic Frederic Jameson identified some of the key features of postmodernism, and debated whether these were a true departure from modernism, or just a continuation of the same rebellious themes. His paper on postmodernism tends towards the latter view, but at the same time prophetically pinpointed the essential departures that postmodernism has made from what has gone before. Tarantino’s film does not continue the debate in an academic way, but instead presents a virtuoso visual performance of the ideas that Jameson could only dimly perceive. These ideas include pastiche, a crisis in historicity and a blurring of the distinction between high culture and low culture.