Performance Art...Be Free!

I certainly had a lot of fun making this project, as you can tell. I have always been very prudent with how i dress, and undressing like that in a public place was very daring and liberating for me at the same time. It was mad hot outside, and putting on all those clothes was a completely crazy idea. But it went along with exactly what we wanted to express: Free yourself! When we are born, we are born naked, we have no ideas on our little brains; we act by instinct. However, when we start growing up, society and school start filling our minds with preconceived ideas of how we ought to behave. We start traveling with a lot of extra luggage. Therefore, by taking our clothes off, we wanted to represent that as you take off extra layers that you don't need, like prejudices, shame, "complejos", hate, etc. you are lighter and you can move faster and advance more smoothly through life.

PS: We chose the song "Inuendo" by Queen, because it fit perfectly with what we wanted to express and because we studied their work of art in class a couple of days ago. :)

Pop Art & Andy Warhol

When thinking about pop art, the name of Andy Warhol comes inevitably to mind. Having a very interesting social and cultural background, Andy Warhol became an iconic figure of the 70's and 80's with his unique style of art. I saw his work art before, but never knew who the artist was. I mean, who cannot identify the famous Campbell's soup painting? It's like you can tell by his unique style which pieces of art are his; his style is very consistent and coherent. I thought it was hilarious how he was so ambiguous and mysterious in the interviews; he was being an irritating and contemptible person to the journalists. I think his behavior can be explained and even justified to a certain extent; he was mocking them and showing them that not everything has to be taken too seriously. People always try to find reasons and explanations for everything, but sometimes, not everything has a reason.

Andy Warhol was surrounded by "la creme de la creme" of hollywood and loved by a lot of people. I found it interesting and horrid however, that Valerie Solana ( a radical lesbian) almost killed him. Not everything smells like strawberries and cream after all i guess. I really liked Warhol's proposal; his use of colors and natural every day objects make his art work very refreshing and futuristic.

Xerox Project

Ok...So I am FINALLY posting pictures. I am sorry it took a while. First, i have to admit this was actually really fun to do. I always saw in the typical American movies the crazy guy who took copies of himself in a xerox machine. Never in my wildest dreams had this idea crossed my mind. Although i did felt curiosity to see the real outcomes.

I went to the library with Javier and photocopied some body parts. I did my hands, my face, and the hardest one, without a doubt was my feet. I thought i was going to break the machine but luckily nothing happened and we managed to get the task done! And, to our benefit, we got it done while having a good time, experiencing something new, and even scandalizing some old ladies and gossipers who were passing by giving us disapproval rules. It felt good to laugh at their dismay looks, i bet that is exactly what Marcel Duschamp and Andy Warhol felt! It feels good to break the rules in such a way in which you are not hurting anyone...we were just having fun! :D

P.S.: My xerox project was supposed to be a butterfly, but it ended up not looking like one!! I wanted to incorporate the collage technique along with the xerox parts, but it ended up looking like something really abstract...I hope you liked it though!

Bauhaus

I was blown away by the vanguardism and vision of this school of design. Architecture-wise, i can dare to say that it set the precedent for the modern and contemporary era. Artists were creating and influencing the creation of functional, creative objects. Who knows, maybe what we buy today from stores like Ikea came precisely from the influence of the designs that Bauhaus endorsed. It was really sad that the Nazis shut it down; the nazis thought that Bauhaus was extremely dangerous because not only did it not represent the white supremacy ideals, but it was also the cradle for new artists. And you know what Hitler said" Kill the artist first".

As expected, all this fabulous artists, were forced to migrate abroad. Artists like Klee, Pollock, etc. flew to the United States and became extremely important architects. They brought all kinds of fabulous ideas and in that way influenced the concept of art in North America. We are just left with the doubt on what this school of art could have been in the XXI century...the designs we saw in the video were very similar to the furniture we buy today, and that was more than 50 years ago...can we imagine the outcomes of 50 more years of Bauhaus?

Un Chien Andalou...and the famous donkey eye

When we were brutally exposed to this movie i had a lot of mixed feelings towards it. I still do not know if i felt nauseous, if i felt confused, or if i felt distraught by what i was seeing. At first i knew that i was going to be exposed to something weird and totally surrealist (given the fact that it was directed by Luis Bunuel with scenography by Salvador Dali). It was out of my league however. The scene where the guy cuts the eyes was disgusting and creepy. The cynical part is that Santi played it twice.

At the end, however, it is made very clear that this kind of movies, this kind of art, has more purposes than simply entertaining or transmitting. This kind of works are intended to provoke rather than to please. The purpose of this movie is not showing beautiful artists in perfect sceneries, with perfect stories. This movie was about distorting the classic depiction of what we know as cinematography. And after all, who are we to judge? we have to give this type of art the benefit of the doubt, who knows, one might even get something good out of it. :P

L.H.O.O.Q...hahaha!

Once again, Marcel Duchamp caught my attention and won my admiration. I think it was hilarious how he mocked society in general through his art. Isn't that what art is all about? expressing ideas, feelings, critics, etc. With this LHOOQ written down on a Mona Lisa postcard he was intending to create confusion amongst spectators and he definitely succeeded. He created a phonetic confusion that triggered (unbelievably enough up until today) the creation of thesis and theories as to what the LHOOQ letters stand for. Many believe it is an acronym of a hidden message that he was trying to say. However, he was just having fun and trying to add a twist to the Mona Lisa. Of course it had a sexual connotation, but everyone is so worried behind the meaning of the letters, that they forgot to think about the basic instincts of mankind: sexuality. I think Marcel Duchamp is amazing! his art is dazzling and innovative!

Dada...Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp

It is amazing how the narrow definition of "art" has been expanded and twisted into different forms. It is unbelievable how even today, in plain XXIst century some people are closed minded enough to say that pieces by Man Ray or Andy Warhol are not art. Who decides what is art? What makes art, art? This class however, has forced my eyes open. It has forced me to think outside the box, and i feel more tolerant and appreciative of what is considered art. That is precisely the beauty of art: nobody can define what it is, it is totally subjective. When we studied Dada i was thrilled to see something so different and interesting. Dada was a rebellious act against the bureaucratic rules and the narrow mind of hypocritical societies. They took inspiration and twisted it. The decontextualized the objects, took it out of its natural context and declared it as art.

A couple of weeks ago, i was reading a hispanic magazine called "Vanidades" and there was an article about Man Ray. They showed his paintings, his photographs, and his work in general. Words like "ambiguity", "innovation", "multifacetico" are just common words that are mentioned throughout the article to describe him and his work. We cannot deny that he was a talented artist that impacted art in the XX century. I felt good to know who Man Ray was :) i felt proud to ignore less.

Another artist we mentioned in class was Marcel Duchamp. It is evident Santi loves him and how he has inspired his work and vision; and as a matter of fact i loved him too. He simply marked the history of art in two. There is a before and after Marcel Duchamp. He was such a skilled drawer, and such an innovative, brilliant man...How could his ideas not be considered art? I thought "the Urinal" was very interesting. Because it is one's interpretation that make it have sense. It is very personal and hence very insightful. Marcel Duchamp explored different fields, from traditional drawing, to fragmentation, to the drawing of weird, bizarre figures. This explosion of figures granted him the creation of the "Objet Trouve" and the decontextualization of objects.

Grid Art Project!

When Santiago mentioned that we needed to create a grid art project, my mind started spinning with a million ideas. The only problem is that most of them were impossible and definitely not realistic. That day when i got to my house, exhausted after a very long day, i decided to take a minute to breathe deeply and look around my apartment. Being a stubborn perfectionist i realized i needed to vacuum the carpet and clean the table. All of a sudden as i was looking at my table, i saw the cloths my mom brought us from Guatemala. They are not only beautiful, but they also remind me of home. They are so colorful and complex; suddenly it stroke me: they are the perfect examples of grid art. I knew i had to attempt to do something similar to it. I went the next day to get all my materials, intending of course to make a purse, but my loop was too small and i ended up making coasters. Of course they were not as neat and beautiful as the typical textiles in my country, but i had a lot of fun and put an immense effort in doing them. The whole process was beautiful and fruitful. It made me appreciate more my culture and my background. I hope you guys liked it! :)

Otr.com

I know this is long over due, but it has been really hard for me to keep up with this blog. Nonetheless, i am trying to cover all of the topics that we are supposed to cover. Having clarified that, to the subject...A couple of weeks ago, when we were studying the old radio days, Santi showed us a pretty amazing website: otr.com. I took the time to browse, and could seriously not believe all the radio shows that are there! What really amazed me the most is that some of this shows have the option to be downloaded in mp3 format! Incredible what technology can do, and how it can help save memories from the past...like the shows from the 50's or 60's.

Going through this page made me realize how radio was such a transcendental invention. Radio not only made the world smaller, it also broke the 4th wall and provided a new activity for families and individuals to entertain. I really like radio because it makes my mind work, it gives the sound, the voices, the details, but is up to the listener to imagine how things look like and how stories develop. Back home in Guatemala, there are still some radios in which "novelas" are still on air. As a matter of fact, my grandmother had a very successful show in one of the first radio stations in Guatemala. I would love to listen to it, but that was back in the 60's and we do no have sites like 0tr.com (unfortunately) to keep up an inventory of the programs that made history back in the day.

MZTV....Norma who?

The magnificent but at the same time troublesome invention of mankind, television, has influenced almost every aspect of the human life and behavior. It has put into images the philosophies and ideals of people in each specific period of time. If we stop to realize how much our lives are affected by all the technological inventions of the last century, we cannot help but re think about the benefits and costs of these inventions.

Television was definitely the next logical step after the invention or radio. It was the consequence of ambitious ideas of putting images to the sounds that were already being reproduced. The race to see who was going to own the patents and merits for the invention of television was not only rivalrous but tragic. David Sarnoff developed the concept of both TV and radio, and on his greedy way to own and manage the television industry, he ran off great minds and efforts like Philo Farnsworth's.

As I was taking a look at MZTV.com, many elements of it called my attention. The quotes are especially shocking; these quotes are from authors, artists, and inventors who were giving their opinions on Television. It was astonishing how many writers,especially, were against it. I bet their arguments gravitated arount the fact that television came to kill imagination. If everything is given to you, what logic is there to think? what is left for you to do other than sit in front of the TV and gain weight? As you can see, I am not a television fan, as a matter of fact I do not even own a television. I rather pick a good book or listen to the radio.

I thought the site was really interesting, another area i liked was the Marilyn Monroe section. It was incredible how she was transformed: from being an average brunette girl she passed on to be a glamorous blond who conquered the world. She was definitely an icon, altough her life was always surrounded by scandal and dramas. Certainly, television helped her become a legend.

Flipbook

So...I struggled a lot to do the flipbook, but the hard work and effort paid off great dividends!! I enjoyed a lot the process of creating and imaginating stories...I guess neither government nor economics give me the space to be creative and do whatever i feel like doing. This is why i love this class so much :) I hope you enjoyed my flipbook as much as I enjoyed making it!!

Singing in the Rain...Clockwork Orange

In the last couple of weeks I have been exposed to shocking and at the same time interesting pieces of art. I say art because I consider film to be an important branch of this abused word “Art”. I have to admit that I have not seen most of the films we have watched in class. I guess that in part it all can be justified by the fact that I am an international student. I also have to admit that some of them looked really fascinating and worth of watching, like Casablanca, The Women, and Singing in the Rain. ‘Singing in the rain’ was a movie made in 1949 that epitomized the story of very curious characters and how the movies evolved in the front of our own eyes. It was really funny how the audio was incorporated to the movies and how we take things like that for granted. My grandmother went to the movies without audio for instance! And sometimes we just take it so for granted, without realizing all the years and even decades of work and innovation it took to concretize the idea of audio in movies.

Who would have thought that only twenty years later the movies, especially the motifs and messages of movies would change so much? In 1969 Stanley Kubric did an adaptation of Jonny Burgess’s book “A Clockwork Orange”. I did not like what I saw. I was perturbed by the images and everything that was going on in the movie. It seems that things changed so much between the 50’s and 60’s that by the time this movie was made, the morals and portrayal of the happy American family and funny mild situations were completely distorted and varied upon the new generation of that era. We have to consider that this movie was made in a time of war, drugs, liberation of females, the invention of the pill and other anti-conceptive, drugs, hippies, the Beatles, Martin Luther King and the fight for Civil Rights, John F. Kennedy, and all over rebellion. In a sense this movie portrayed all of that. This movie is a depiction of a dystopia in its entire splendor; the questions of human nature, morality and the existence of good and evil were fundamental in the little chunks we saw in class. I thought that the part in which the guy sings ‘singing in the rain’ is nothing more than a parody of the new generation to the old, naïve, and innocent older generations when movies like ‘Singing in the Rain’ were made.

Greatness...simply greatness!

Steve Jobs is perhaps one of the most interesting and inspiring people in the world. The article was beyond interesting and the motivation it gave me surpassed the limitations of my mind and went into writing. The most interesting idea portrayed in this article was Job's satisfaction with only greatness. His achievements are unsurpassable and he is evidently disgusted by those who don’t try. I could dedicate this post to the article itself but I have decided to dedicate it to the piece that inspired me to write.

In today’s era, limited too much by the need-to-do basis, greatness is no longer a requirement. Steve Jobs however has innovated the concept of technology and communications. I myself have a MacBook and I love it. I have never been the brightest bulb on the christmas tree when it comes to technology, and my old PC was always full of viruses and slow as a snail. But when I switched to a Mac, it was a different story; i no longer thought of myself as a cave women anymore! If I could use it, anyone could use it! It is incredible how Steve Jobs has had such an entrepreneurial vision throughout all these years. And the success of his brand relies precisely on the innovation it brings; he has not tried to mimic others, instead he has built on his imagination and followed his hunches.He was even fired out of the company for a while and came back and literally revived that brand from the ashes like a Phoenix.

Reading about the history of this entrepreneur inspired me greatly. His genius was enviable and at the same time mind-blowing. It is important to always know that the limitations set by society are only institutional, never physical. Let's see what comes next from this brilliant man.

First Class

So, this is the first time I am writing a blog. For years I kept a journal, because I felt that it was my catharsis, my way of expressing and to keep a track of every decision and step i took. Now, I guess blogs are the new journals. The main difference consists of people posting and discussing, not at a personal level, but at a macro level. Someone from Africa could be reading this at this very moment...it is unbelievable! and awesome!

I am both thrilled and scared about this class. On the one hand I know that i will learn immense amounts of knowledge, or as my grand father would say "I would learn to ignore less", and on the other hand I am terrified about the idea of letting all my creativity out. I may not seem shy, but I am incredibly bashful. That is accentuated by the fact that I was really creative when I was a little kid, but my parents were never happy with me painting and expressing myself in ways that were not conventional. Thus, I had to leave painting and drawing and try to channel that creativity by playing the guitar. And don't get me wrong, I love playing the guitar, but it has never fulfilled me in the way that painting did.

I am really excited about this class and look forward to all the interesting stuff we will be learning and doing. :)