A Justice Site
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: August 28, 1999
Latest update: August 5, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu
- Mobiles / Kinetic Sculpture
by Matthew Brand. Link added August 28, 1999.
- Mobiles / Kinetic Sculpture: Artificial Artists
by Matthew Brand. Link added August 28, 1999.
Essays on art as a means of expanding the imaginary should go up soon. Notice that Matthew Brand expresses dismay that mobiles have not been used more in conceptual and figurative art. Until I find the time to work on these essays, conceptual art is for me art that expresses ideas, art that expects to make you think about your perspective of the world. Ofili's elephant dung would qualify as conceptual under my definition. But I am not an art historian. Figurative art for me is art which is representational at least to some extent. The art that I use for the site is figurative, though not photographically realistic, meaning that I distort the figures to express feelings about them, yet their identitities are important to the understanding I am trying to convey.
Abstract art also expresses feelings and ideas, but you're often more on your own to interpret them, as we are to some extent with all communication. On the other hand, sometimes you just know. I can walk into a room with a Picasso drawing and burst out laughing. I can't tell you how I know, I just know: he was playing, and it shows in the artwork. An artist teacher of mine once did that with one of my paintings. It was up on the easel, and as he walked into the studio, he burst out laughing. It was the finest compliment he could have paid me.
I suppose I could use a traditional art text to offer you textbook definitions, but I don't think textbook definitions always "get it." Art, communication, learning, they're all forms of play, of social life, of community. I don't want to be Foucault's love slave; I just want to build on his ideas and go on to play and love and community. Theory and formal schooling are neat; we need them; but then we must go forward to praxis. I don't want to drag myself "through the Caucasian campuses at dawn looking for an angry signifier."