It is all about funding – hense venue. Everyone has their panties in a knot over Barney right now. He a 'film maker' showing 'movie props' bitch Art Critics. He is punishing his captive audience - work belongs in a gallery not movie theaters I have heard film critics mention, - yet the overwhelming appeal is irrefutable people love him he is a huge hit in both again with fans in all fields, and I am not even touching fashion or commercial Art here.
And Matthew Barney's avant-garde "Drawing Restraint 9," his collaboration with paramour Bjork that is being distributed by IFC Films, continued to have powerful if not universal appeal in its second weekend. It averaged $8,422 at three theaters.
Y is MoMA getting corporate? Y did MoMA have to expand and now the Whitney to keep up? You do the math. Who’s ‘job’ is it to fund Art anyways? You want the government involved? Do the rich have a responsibility to ‘culture’, is the Art out there now adding to ‘culture’? trust no-one. Maybe some weird hybrid thing is on the cusp out side of venues now, as Artists need increasing funding to meet cost of living in the city and as funding continues to come from different more diverse venues. Maybe that’s good.
i'm a fan of her work. yes, it's precious and stylish and illustrative - sometimes this is a problem? whatever. but with her work i am on board. her images are just compelling and the way they are made is so perfect/beguiling. I can get lost looking at these (in person more than jpg, of course).
people often comment that my work "looks like illustration". ok...so? Min Kims work looks like illustration too. ...so? visual language is visual language...a tool in which to express ideas and feelings. i personaly think that the 'visual language' of illustration democratic in its ability to shrug pretention and speak to (or be able to be read by) many.
now, the pitfall is that illustration is often pleasing to look at and is very surface oriented. to transcend illustration and cross into 'art' one needs to create an experience in which the audience can experience and/or formulate an idea, it must be able to stand on its own...illustration is dependent on the thing in which it is illustrating. im not sure that Kims work stands on its own in relation to idea, however, maybe the context this painting needs is other of Kims paintings... the image in this painting is void of context...its an isolated figure on a white ground...
i don't think it's the technique or composition that makes it look like illustration, it's the way it functions as an image----it's the kind of suspenseful and forced narrative that book illustrations have--the formal quality of a child's imagination with a faint allegorical quality and promise of a twisted yet happy ending. can't get into it.
love the DR9 soundtrack & Bjork, but the combo itself not exactly mind blowing kinda reminded me of her with cunningham, or Nan, didn't mean to bring that up in the context of this post, - rather just the idea of 'context' and its power. the fact that i have heard the criticisms from both industries so much over the last few weeks that i have been re-thinking my dogma about 'illustrative' and the relationship between an Artists 'Art' and 'other work' say 'illustration' - where would you say the line is for Warhol? i saw a great exhibit at corcoran that had alot of his 'illustrations' in them - and the heart of them - gold leaf, boys did all inform his later work... where is the line?
and rosenquist was a billboard painter, i have watched him demo blending it is mind blowing.
and i notice all these artists you mention day jobs afforded them the ability to practice their craft through out the day, as a skill building day job. Could the lack of ‘craft ability’ in fine art right now relate to the lack of day jobs in such fields that were available for these Artists you have mentioned?
Certainly those disgraceful printed on tarps that flake ads across city blocks these days don’t hold a stick to those in say the 80's. Whole face of the city is plastic now. I always marvel at the hand painted ones when I see them, the few left in soho and one across penn are always noteworthy. the gap betten high and base art.
Look online. Thousands of people are drwing porn and monsters, people and places. They are happy doing it and get peer recognition and so on and so forth.
There are lots of jobs (still!) for people who can draw.
Only the visionary and talented show in Chelsea though,right?
Most people imitate and repeat what they imitated with subtle variations.
Imitation the way to make money - something artists are criticized for not doing, but in the end whos making the cool shit? Its usually not the guy doing the Excell spreadsheets.
Some of my favorite work was pretty easy. You could say its a culmination of hard work, but I'd examine that idea - it smacks of Puritanical Calvinism or something.
I often dislike work that looks self consciously casual.....
i would argue that the hand crafted, in commercial society is increasingly replaced by the machine, i think more people drew in the 70's then made spread sheets, it is sad i miss the human touch in the day to day.
I don;t know if illustration is theproblem here. Mostly, I don't like this one because of its strong genre affiliation. It looks like anime fantasy art and does not push the boundaries at all. In my opinion, when you stick to genre to closely, you lose any hope of transcendence or discovery, and cannot effect a viewer in any way other than to recall the successes and failures of that genre.
Some artists have played with anime successfully - Takashi Murakami of course, and Chiho Aoshima is one of my favorites. But what they did is use the genre to talk about greater issues, or use the genre as a jumping off point to create pieces of sufficient complexity and physical grandiosity that it becomes art.
I'm not saying all of Min Kim's art is like that, but this one really doesn't seem to push the envelope at all. It is a picture of a fairy under leaves, and is drawn with a style that seems all too familiar to the subject matter.
Let's please give the "illustration" versus "fine art" nit-pick fest a rest. Isn't is irrelevant by now? It just amounts to pretentious navel gazing and everyone wrapped up in this conversation - including me at the moment - is wasting time. Meanwhile, any number of artists - illustrators, painters, animators, sculptors, whatever medium, baby - are making what they feel compelled to make and not worrying about bullsh*t Art World constructs or dying modernist imperatives.
Sure, dismiss something because you don't like it, but get over this stupid "illustration" or "art" divide. In another decade, the theory folks will find it all so quaint and infantile.
It wasn't my intent so much to "shut others up," but rather to spew a little invective and read the ensuing fireworks. Surprisingly, there was no response, excepting your own.
I agree with your distinction b/n writing and art making, but, at the end of the day, all art "criticism" is reduced to the very subjective, "I know what I like." I don't see anyway around that. Sure, it's more important for your work to be interesting, intelligent, well crafted, etc, than well liked, but each viewer decides what is interesting to them.
And as for the "illustration" vs. "fine art" line: Yeah, a lot of critics/art historians would agree, but only those so firmly entrenched in the Art World proper (the East Coast Art World, at that) that they don't notice, or apparently comprehend, the sweeping changes around them. It just ain't right to wear the blinders if you're building something up or tearing something down - passing judgment, I suppose.
A quick look at the Los Angeles or San Francisco art scenes reveals how very different the coasts' respective approaches are. Here, we're busy hand wringing about "illustration," and, across the continent, they've embraced, absorbed and individually reworked myriad graphic influences, any one of which our ivory tower dunderheads would eagerly label "illustration" or "kitsch."
What is it that separates illustration from art? I don't think it is a "look" so much as a lack of scope that makes a work illustrative.
Illustration, almost by definition, takes an idea outside itself and depicts it. Art, in my mind, generates the idea while depicting it. Illustration is a process of rephrasing, art is a process of creation. That is my take on it anyway.
Well said! Using this definition, though, much of what the current Art World dismisses as illustration doesn't qualify. Comic books, cartoons, graffiti and the like, for example. While some artists working in these modes may depict ideas from outside, a great deal do not.
More importantly, again using this definition, so much conceptual installation is purely illustrative. Think of the ranks of young artists limning ideas from Deleuze, Guttari, Paglia, and any number of other contemporary philosophers/social theorists (and more classical thinkers currently in vogue, like Hegel or Schopenhauer). The artist statements and press releases associated with this sort of work are didactic and usually only reiterate, or offer abstract summations of, the sources' ideas.
Not that I find fault with this - though, more often than not, it's f'in boring if you know the the texts - but it must be deemed illustration.
This was one of those things you had to see in person.They were really fragile andsensitive and lovely. In jpeg they just look like yet another rip-off of japanimation.
23 comments:
Min Kim @
ATM gallery
511 west 20th street new york, ny 10011
And
619 west 27th street new york, ny 10001
Is there a diffrence between illustation and FIne Art anymore?
I think so.
Her piece in the Greater NY show was really great. Not as illustrative.
Zip, I think the difference is just context/venue. I've seen Vik Muniz fashion collages in NYT magazine, and Chris Ware comics in the Whitney.
I find the big-eyed manga-looking girls too cutesy; hard to see in this jpeg. A bit too illustrative for me. . .
It is all about funding – hense venue. Everyone has their panties in a knot over Barney right now. He a 'film maker' showing 'movie props' bitch Art Critics. He is punishing his captive audience - work belongs in a gallery not movie theaters I have heard film critics mention, - yet the overwhelming appeal is irrefutable people love him he is a huge hit in both again with fans in all fields, and I am not even touching fashion or commercial Art here.
And Matthew Barney's avant-garde "Drawing Restraint 9," his collaboration with paramour Bjork that is being distributed by IFC Films, continued to have powerful if not universal appeal in its second weekend. It averaged $8,422 at three theaters.
Y is MoMA getting corporate? Y did MoMA have to expand and now the Whitney to keep up? You do the math. Who’s ‘job’ is it to fund Art anyways? You want the government involved? Do the rich have a responsibility to ‘culture’, is the Art out there now adding to ‘culture’? trust no-one.
Maybe some weird hybrid thing is on the cusp out side of venues now, as Artists need increasing funding to meet cost of living in the city and as funding continues to come from different more diverse venues. Maybe that’s good.
http://artnet.com/Magazine/people/laster/laster3-25-22.asp
Her and her piece at GNY.
i'm a fan of her work. yes, it's precious and stylish and illustrative - sometimes this is a problem? whatever. but with her work i am on board. her images are just compelling and the way they are made is so perfect/beguiling. I can get lost looking at these (in person more than jpg, of course).
Reminds me of the green man myth, although I descend from the Picts not the Tonkin.
Vic Muniz reminds me of the bean portrait I had to do in undergrad.
I enjoy the Chris Ware comics in the NYT mag sometimes - I never have enough cash to buy comics though...
people often comment that my work "looks like illustration". ok...so? Min Kims work looks like illustration too. ...so? visual language is visual language...a tool in which to express ideas and feelings. i personaly think that the 'visual language' of illustration democratic in its ability to shrug pretention and speak to (or be able to be read by) many.
now, the pitfall is that illustration is often pleasing to look at and is very surface oriented. to transcend illustration and cross into 'art' one needs to create an experience in which the audience can experience and/or formulate an idea, it must be able to stand on its own...illustration is dependent on the thing in which it is illustrating. im not sure that Kims work stands on its own in relation to idea, however, maybe the context this painting needs is other of Kims paintings... the image in this painting is void of context...its an isolated figure on a white ground...
wow, what did i just spin,,,,,
i don't think it's the technique or composition that makes it look like illustration, it's the way it functions as an image----it's the kind of suspenseful and forced narrative that book illustrations have--the formal quality of a child's imagination with a faint allegorical quality and promise of a twisted yet happy ending. can't get into it.
love the DR9 soundtrack & Bjork, but the combo itself not exactly mind blowing kinda reminded me of her with cunningham, or Nan,
didn't mean to bring that up in the context of this post, - rather just the idea of 'context' and its power. the fact that i have heard the criticisms from both industries so much over the last few weeks that i have been re-thinking my dogma about 'illustrative' and the relationship between an Artists 'Art' and 'other work' say 'illustration' - where would you say the line is for Warhol? i saw a great exhibit at corcoran that had alot of his 'illustrations' in them - and the heart of them - gold leaf, boys did all inform his later work... where is the line?
and rosenquist was a billboard painter, i have watched him demo blending it is mind blowing.
and i notice all these artists you mention day jobs afforded them the ability to practice their craft through out the day, as a skill building day job.
Could the lack of ‘craft ability’ in fine art right now relate to the lack of day jobs in such fields that were available for these Artists you have mentioned?
Certainly those disgraceful printed on tarps that flake ads across city blocks these days don’t hold a stick to those in say the 80's. Whole face of the city is plastic now. I always marvel at the hand painted ones when I see them, the few left in soho and one across penn are always noteworthy. the gap betten high and base art.
Look online. Thousands of people are drwing porn and monsters, people and places. They are happy doing it and get peer recognition and so on and so forth.
There are lots of jobs (still!) for people who can draw.
Only the visionary and talented show in Chelsea though,right?
Most people imitate and repeat what they imitated with subtle variations.
Imitation the way to make money - something artists are criticized for not doing, but in the end whos making the cool shit? Its usually not the guy doing the Excell spreadsheets.
Some of my favorite work was pretty easy. You could say its a culmination of hard work, but I'd examine that idea - it smacks of Puritanical Calvinism or something.
I often dislike work that looks self consciously casual.....
i would argue that the hand crafted, in commercial society is increasingly replaced by the machine, i think more people drew in the 70's then made spread sheets, it is sad i miss the human touch in the day to day.
you can all rest your heads on the hand made that is:
http://jacobgoble.blogspot.com
I don;t know if illustration is theproblem here. Mostly, I don't like this one because of its strong genre affiliation. It looks like anime fantasy art and does not push the boundaries at all. In my opinion, when you stick to genre to closely, you lose any hope of transcendence or discovery, and cannot effect a viewer in any way other than to recall the successes and failures of that genre.
Some artists have played with anime successfully - Takashi Murakami of course, and Chiho Aoshima is one of my favorites. But what they did is use the genre to talk about greater issues, or use the genre as a jumping off point to create pieces of sufficient complexity and physical grandiosity that it becomes art.
I'm not saying all of Min Kim's art is like that, but this one really doesn't seem to push the envelope at all. It is a picture of a fairy under leaves, and is drawn with a style that seems all too familiar to the subject matter.
Yeah genre - Swamp thing, Princess Mononoke, the Celtic green man (as I mentioned)
Most if not all things can be grouped into genres...
becomes more about timing...
Let's please give the "illustration" versus "fine art" nit-pick fest a rest. Isn't is irrelevant by now? It just amounts to pretentious navel gazing and everyone wrapped up in this conversation - including me at the moment - is wasting time. Meanwhile, any number of artists - illustrators, painters, animators, sculptors, whatever medium, baby - are making what they feel compelled to make and not worrying about bullsh*t Art World constructs or dying modernist imperatives.
Sure, dismiss something because you don't like it, but get over this stupid "illustration" or "art" divide. In another decade, the theory folks will find it all so quaint and infantile.
Bada:
It wasn't my intent so much to "shut others up," but rather to spew a little invective and read the ensuing fireworks. Surprisingly, there was no response, excepting your own.
I agree with your distinction b/n writing and art making, but, at the end of the day, all art "criticism" is reduced to the very subjective, "I know what I like." I don't see anyway around that. Sure, it's more important for your work to be interesting, intelligent, well crafted, etc, than well liked, but each viewer decides what is interesting to them.
And as for the "illustration" vs. "fine art" line: Yeah, a lot of critics/art historians would agree, but only those so firmly entrenched in the Art World proper (the East Coast Art World, at that) that they don't notice, or apparently comprehend, the sweeping changes around them. It just ain't right to wear the blinders if you're building something up or tearing something down - passing judgment, I suppose.
A quick look at the Los Angeles or San Francisco art scenes reveals how very different the coasts' respective approaches are. Here, we're busy hand wringing about "illustration," and, across the continent, they've embraced, absorbed and individually reworked myriad graphic influences, any one of which our ivory tower dunderheads would eagerly label "illustration" or "kitsch."
What is it that separates illustration from art? I don't think it is a "look" so much as a lack of scope that makes a work illustrative.
Illustration, almost by definition, takes an idea outside itself and depicts it. Art, in my mind, generates the idea while depicting it. Illustration is a process of rephrasing, art is a process of creation. That is my take on it anyway.
Wod Zar Xam:
Well said! Using this definition, though, much of what the current Art World dismisses as illustration doesn't qualify. Comic books, cartoons, graffiti and the like, for example. While some artists working in these modes may depict ideas from outside, a great deal do not.
More importantly, again using this definition, so much conceptual installation is purely illustrative. Think of the ranks of young artists limning ideas from Deleuze, Guttari, Paglia, and any number of other contemporary philosophers/social theorists (and more classical thinkers currently in vogue, like Hegel or Schopenhauer). The artist statements and press releases associated with this sort of work are didactic and usually only reiterate, or offer abstract summations of, the sources' ideas.
Not that I find fault with this - though, more often than not, it's f'in boring if you know the the texts - but it must be deemed illustration.
This was one of those things you had to see in person.They were really fragile andsensitive and lovely. In jpeg they just look like yet another rip-off of japanimation.
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