Fresh Post, Fresh Art

Dear ArtFans (those of you, at least, whose attention I still have after the summer break)

As the summer passed by, and as I finally managed to recharge my batteries, my intellectual hunger for some juicy contemporary art started to grow. So what would be more becoming than reviving Art Recycler with a hot and crispy new exhibition at Budapest? The exhibit has a rather adequate name: it's called Fresh 2011, and its scintillating works of art are currently inducing chaos or catharsis at Kogart House (Andrássy street 112.)

Fresh is a permanent project in the fine arts arena and this is the eighth year it is organized. Basically, this is the major début of the most promising students with fresh degrees (under the age of 30) of the most prestigious art schools of Hungary (namely: Magyar Képzőművészeti Egyetem, Pécsi Tudományegyetem's Art Faculty, and Moholy-Nagy Művészeti Egyetem.) This year; however, was slightly different because several Romanian artists had the opportunity to introduce themselves to the audience through their artworks as well. The goal of this is bifold, since the organizers' aim was to evoke certain mutual points in the two nations collective memory.


Similarly, the exhibition itself wishes, and manages, to touch upon several layers of a nation's or an individual's most important areas of life and history. It has a clear pattern behind the mere concept of displaying the works of young and talented artists: it also exposes the stereotypes, myths, and themes of contemporary art. The polygraphic exhibit applies to multifarious issues and topics, for instance identity problems, sexuality, history, trauma, the relationship between past and present, the important role of the community, the future: the universe - and the subtle connections between all these, and their impact on the self.
The voice and atmosphere of Fresh is described to be light and ironic but grave, cold, even cruel at the same time by the critics. However, it is of no doubt that all of the displayed works convey substantial messages regarding the above mentioned subjects.


As the great variety of the addressed issues suggests, the genres, the designs, and the implementations of the messages are very diverse, too. Graphics, installations, paintings, collages, videos, and works of mixed genres are all exhibited at Kogart to treat or grind the audiences eyes and minds.

A brief comment: although Kogart made a fairly comprehensive and alluring catalogue for the exhibit, those who still remained hungry and curious about the further works of the young artists will probably be disappointed since their materials and works are incredibly hard, or downright impossible to find on the Internet. Anyway, this might be another telling argument to go and check out Fresh.

Moreover, here is a list of the names of the artists for the unwavering kind: antalaci, Bodolóczki Linda, Bögi Diána, Brückner János, Fátyol Viola, Fridvaliszki Mark, Gergely-Farnos Lilla, Hollós Ádám, horrorpista, Horváth Erzsébet, Jagicza Patrícia, Karsai Dániel, M. Páll Zoltán, George Marinciu, Radu Mocanu, Mohamed Gamal Sophia, Molnár Ágnes Éva, Nagy Benjámin, Orr Máté, Pinczés József, Radics Márk, Stefan Sava, Szabó Gergely, Szalai Dorottya, Razvan Tun, Daniela Vasiliu, Vasvári Márta, Daniela Virlan

The exhibition can be visited till 18th September.
The two artworks featured in this post are Brückner János's Maya Gold and Bodolóczki Linda's Szerelem, szerelem.

Redefinitions

Hi Everyone,

Before anything else, I would like to thank you all for following my blog for nearly four months now. Viewing my stats, and realizing that my posts are being read at various places in the world gives me a lot of inspiration. I like to believe that the data I collect and the observations I share prove useful for everyone who is interested in contemporary art, or wishes to have a peek at today's artistic sphere.

Today's blog entry will be dedicated to two incredibly resourceful artists, both of whom likes to reinvent or redefine everyday objects, and challenge the widely received meaning they carry. Alan Sailer mainly thinks in the frame of l'art pour l'art, while Zbigniew Libera's works usually convey messages which are preoccupied with social and cultural tendencies and stereotypes.

Alan Sailer: High-speed Photographs

Here is an artist who gives a new definition to the expression "trigger happy." The 54 year-old photographer, who lives in California, found his individual path in the field of the art of destruction. A photo shoot, according to his notions, is not just a figurative phrase anymore. So much the more as his hobbyhorse and specialty is to shoot everyday objects with an air rifle and take high-speed pictures of them. He shoots his targets from a close-up position: he is only 20 centimeters away from the object he aims at in his dark "laboratory." The special effect that his camera features is a homemade flash which is set at a one-second delay and thus gives a heart-stoppingly detailed picture of the disassembling targets. The result is spectacular and dramatic, since the artist rips wide open the heart and essence of everyday objects like vegetables, fruits, or bibelots.

His art is not only complex on a visual level: he has to master the cold technicalities of professional photography as well to get the maximized effect from his ephemeral targets, which explode within seconds after Sailer's bullet enters them. "The camera is set at one second and an f-stop of 9-13 depending on the reflectivity of the subject. The flash stops the action. The one second gives me time to click the camera shutter with one hand while I pull the trigger on the rifle with the other," he explained in an interview.

His expectations regarding the chosen objects sometimes put him in predicates which typically resemble the dilemmas of conceptual artists. Namely that from time to time, he enjoys the idea of an artwork more than the result itself. His photograph, It's a bit runny, for instance, is based on a Monty Python episode where the comedians say: "Ah, we do have some Camembert, sir... It's a bit runny, sir..." Still, Sailer is not quite satisfied with his execution of the idea; yet, he publishes the image, since it is based on a valuable and cherished concept. Although he's a maximalist, his artworks show that even mundane everyday objects can be turned into pieces of art with a pinch of creativity and vision.

You can indulge in the visual delight Sailer's ingenious photographic vandalism offers if you check his works on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8763834@N02/

Zbigniew Libera: Ken's Aunt

Libera has been widely infamous for changing tiny details regarding the concept behind acclaimed toys, and turning everything, including the audience, upside down with his twisted mind ever since he made the Lego Concentration Camp series. The effect of his work, Ken's Aunt, is no different. His piece incorporates 24 plus-sized Barbie dolls stored in cardboard boxes, undermining the general catchiness of the glamorous Mattel dolls who otherwise breathe the crystal-clear air of perfection through their cautiously colored lips.

The plump Barbies, who still have the charming facial features of the original blonde bombshell, are tooled up with luscious hips, busoms, and a "swim ring" of fat around their waist which rather resemble the proportions of the fleshy fantasy female team Rubens liked to spend his freetime with. Also, as their name indicates, they are more mature than their anorexic little sisters, which the artist emphasizes with the somewhat old-fashioned undergarments they wear as well. This rethinked doll is apparently much more of a cuddly Auntie who locks unprepared adolescents into her suffocative hug during family visits than the hardly-disguised hourglass-shaped sex toy it used to be.

The acid idea clearly rebels against society's standard aesthetic values which blunt the body image of women and girls at a very early age. Although the overweight, yet voluptious Aunties seem quite shocking to the audience, their body shape is curiously much closer to the everyday female body than the skinny blonde's, whose waist is so slim that it could hardly bear the weight of her shapely breasts. Thus, although Libera's toys appear to be non-canonical, if one thinks the situation through more profoundly, they must realize that either a great percentage of real life (and real sized) women live outside the norm of attractiveness, or it is the dolls of Mattel that are unrealistic.

"My ability to work with objects is taken from everyday urban contemporary life. In my study of the development of correctional devices and educational toys, I see such devices reveal more about a society and its mechanisms for creating and enforcing its norms than any study of society could," the artist himself stated about the concept which lies behind his artwork.

"I wanted to inject an internal "virus" which would disjoin the object and the domain in which it operates," Libera said.

Mission accomplished. At least in Barbie World.

Spring Exhibits II.

Spring is a very special season for young contemporary artists, since the winners of the Derkovits Bursary are announced at this time of the year. This acclaimed award is a very significant one, as it is the only federal award which is intended to support entrant artists under the age of 35.) Although the idea of the bursary is an unparalleled one in Hungary, the total sum of money that these beginning artists are given is a fairly modest one (eighty thousand forints per eleven months.) Still, it is better than nothing, and besides the money, it means a real prestige for a young artist to partake in the Derkovits Bursary, particularly in light of the fact that there are approximately two hundred applicants each year. Moreover, it is a great improvement compared to the previous years that the artists are allowed to participate in other exhibitions and projects as well.

As usual, the three classes of the previous year's winners have an exhibition in Ernst Múzeum at springtime. The current exhibit was opened at 9 April, and it features a wide array of colorful works both stylistically and with regards to their genre.
As the critiques observed, the artworks of this year are unusually mature and conscious regarding their themes and construction. The majority of them show a chaotic, yet witty blend of techniques, resulting in astounding and inventive pieces. However, the best of them do not only remain on the playground, but take a look at the street as well: there are several works which carry a strong social connotation as well, and thus leaves the grounds of l'art pour l'art. As some experts indicate, this could freshen and energize the Hungarian artistic arena.

Even though the versatile and playful exhibition promotes an incredible amount of works, which have a blurry conversation with each other and the visitor, there are no particular pieces which are emphasized in the exhibit. All the artworks exist in the same space and in the same time with equal importance.
Although it is pretty hard to choose from them, I selected two specific artists and their works to present in my blog. One of them is Germán Fatime, and her salacious collages regarding the female body and its treatment by society and the media, while the other one is Koralevics Rita, whose creative and voluble installations just crave analysis.



Germán Fatime: No Fur

This artist usually creates works which are constructed with flawless technique, but their greatest strength is the complex layer of the messages they carry. Stylistically, the works' biggest achievement is the spontaneity and the well-hid deliberation they manage to amalgam. Contentwise, they usually explore female roles and stereotypes. Although the image they convey concerning the social conceptions about contemporary women is often sharp-fanged, the sense of humor they are constructed with always protects them from becoming too acerbic or narrow-minded.
Germán Fatime's series, No Fur, is made with diverse techniques, and reflects on the distorted body image that the media transmits about the ideal state of the female body. Her works are ironic presentations of the prescribed beauty today's people base their expectations on.


Koralevics Rita: Dobozolt terhek (Boxed Loads)

The artist's series, Boxed Loads, mainly transforms everyday articles of personal use into artworks which have a strong aesthetical emanation and significance. Her installations of crowded rooms, or rooms with conspicuous absences reflect on contemporary familial and romantic relationships. There is a sense of distortion she depicts: the realistic elements become surreal, while the surrealistic parts seem natural. Furthermore, her pieces circuit around the current concept of "home" in a world where everything is mobilized and transitory. As she herself claimed, these installations are also leads for her to find her roots and a state of stability in her life.

Anyone who wishes to have an accurate picture about the new generation of today's contemporary artists and the artistic sphere itself should go visit the exhibition which will be open till 29 May.

Spring Exhibits I.

Today's blog post will introduce two inspiring exhibitions that I had the opportunity to check out during spring break. Apart from involving the artworks of contemporary artists, the two exhibits have another curiosity: they are just a few steps away from each other, since one of them was in Trafó, while the other one in Tündérgyár.

OUTPOST - The Critical Space

Contributing artists: Tomáš Džadoň, Halász

Péter Tamás - Domián Gyula, Kokesch Ádám, Pavla Sceranková

The works strongly reflect on the Eastern and Middle-European identity, and the region's social and economical tendencies. In other words, it is an abstract scenery of our region's past and present, which aims to have an impact on all the senses.

The installations have a gloomy atmosphere: almost all of them carries an apocalyptical desolation, which is, however, balanced by the playful irony most of the artists manage to plant into their pieces. The exhibit daintily avoids every opportunity to pass the borders of kitsch. Most of the works are simple, cheap, yet witty creations (like the photoelectric rural gate, which locks out every visitor). Their mutual feature is that they all convey a sense of homemadeness. This so-called "garage-aesthetics" is highly valued by the contributing artists, who suggest that this gadgeteering spirit is a great strength of the regions' contemporary art. Still, the minimalistic materials are all re-defined by our today's high-technology, resulting in perplexing contradictions or paradoxes.

Perhaps the most outstanding piece of the exhibition is Halász Péter Tamás's and Domián Gyula's strange hybrid of a stealth aircraft and a casual ward for the homeless. The fact that the plane is undetectable by radars transmits a bitter message regarding the treatment of homeless people, how are just as marginalized and invisible as the military plane.

The exhibition was open till 23, April, and it will probably be soon followed by another one involving the works of contemporary artists.

Balázs László - XV. Varnyú

The other exhibit I checked out was Balázs László's "XV. Varnyú"-exhibition, which is characterized by the artist's borrowed motto: "Only the insane take themselves quite seriously."

Tündérgyár is a quite pleasant and spatious tavern, which is famous for its hospitality towards alternative music bands. The place stays true to its spirit, and continues to promote those performers or artists, who are somewhat on the periphery, and one of their new projects is the organization of exhibitions.

Thus, for a month, Balázs László's charming, mischievous, and incredibly lively illustrations are decorating the walls of Tündérgyár. The artist claims that he gets his inspiration from the tiny morsels of impacts that he encounters during his everyday life, then these little details are transformed by a group of playful elves in his head. He must be right, because his visual world is vivid and magical, yet it always holds a crooked mirror to the human nature or society as a whole. Another interesting trait of his works is the distinctive and quirky language that he uses to reinforce his messages, which are conveyed by the monsterlike, yet, amiable figures he creates.

All in all, the general imagery and effect that his illustrations form is quite indescribable because of their originality and idiosyncracy. Therefore, it is strongly recommended for anyone who is interested in a bunch of smile-raising and cartoonlike pictures to check out Balázs lászló's blog (http://varnyu.eu/) or see the exhibit itself while enjoying a glass of beer with a couple of friends.

Images of Isolation

Today's blog entry will cover two works of two artists, who were most often associated with surrealism, but remained on the peripheries of the movement. The first one is the Belgian painter, René Magritte, and the second one is the Mexican icon, Frida Kahlo. Both painters were idyosyncraticly genuine representatives of the chance encounter of that infamous sewing machine and the umbrella.

René Magritte - The Lovers

While Magritte was introverted in his personal life, he was eccentric in his art, which made him a primary figure of surrealism. Like many of his fellow artists, he liked to shed a new light on everyday objects and experiences, bringing their forgotten or undiscovered meanings to the surface. The Lovers (1928) is a forcibly descriptive example for this phenomenon.

The painting; however, is a real riddle. The number of the associations that stem from it are just as infinite as the different, yet inherently similar forms of love which the work depicts. The painting may emphasize the eternal nature of love: although its subject and face might change, it borns and florishes throughout a person's lifetime. Or it might refer to the well-known saying: "love is blind." In that case, the piece suggests that even though the veiled faces are desperate to approach and touch each other, they will always be separated by the different identities they conceal.

(Perhaps one of the most beautiful and expressive summary of this intrinsic inaccessibility that two lovers experience is this quote from the movie, Unmade Beds: "That it's an illusion to pretend that we can bridge the gap between your thoughts and mine. For you, every person is like a planet and two different planets can never become one. Two people together will always be: one plus one. I preferred to think of us as bubbles, because when they touch, they merge into one another like when two people make love. But now I know what you meant. Two people together will always be one plus one.")

About making love: if we would like to interpret the title of the artwork literally, then we are dealing with a case of the mutual anonymity of two persons who only form a fragile bondage to find short-term pleasure through each other. In that situation, it is only the surface of each other that these two osculate. The rest, the individual characteristics of the face, which are the expletives of the soul, remains untouched in this encounter.

Although the treasury of associations in connection with The Lovers seems unexploitable, the ars poetica of Magritte, namely that the quest for a rational subtext is futile, might set bounds to one's inclination to spend hours trying to find the perfect interpretation for it. According to him, the mystery of art, just like the covered lovers in his painting, is genuinely unknowable.

Frida Kahlo -The Broken Column

Kahlo, who is perhaps the most renowned Mexican woman, was an incredibly colorful and talented artist. Her oeuvre encompasses numerous recurring themes: her own femininity, failures, losses, a strong sense of national identity, her leftist political notions, the effervescent versatility of nature, and the like. Yet, one of the most conspicuous features of her art is a constant presence of duality: although her motto was "viva la vida," the life that she celebrated so much was underborn with an unimaginable amount of suffering.

In her teenage years, Frida had to endure an almost fatal and life-changing bus crash, which mutilated her for the rest of her life, and put her thr ough a neverending series of unsuccessful procedures to hold her body together. Although she gave evidence of an unparalelled fortitude regarding physical pain, she had to withstand plenty of hurtful events due to the infidelity of her adored husband, Diego Rivera, as well.

The Broken Column (1944) is one of the most powerful works among her countless self-portraits. Kahlo was a naive painter, and an autodidact; still, her paintings carry an extremely impressive and cathartic sense of anguish. The piece reveals her two-sided affliction: the broken spine symbolizes her suffering on a somatic level, and the immeasurable amount of small nails lodged in her skin stand for the emotional distress she was experiencing owing to Rivera's affairs. Kahlo always depicts her feelings in a bewilderingly sincere manner: the dense tears in her eyes show that the aches she has to sustain are both constant and excruciating. Moreover, contrarily to the majority of her artworks, in which she depicts herself in the company of her beloved pets, or her husband, she is all alone in this painting. This shows that she was always experiencing a sense of imperishable loneliness, since her dreadful and unique condition isolated her from the people around her.

Although the audience gets the impression that the iron corset is the only thing that saves her from utter disintegration, her incredible fortitude is also present on the picture. Even though she's crying, she stares at the viewer in an unflinching manner. Her glance and her posture both convey a sense of strength and proudness. Although she is miserable, Frida is invincible in her nudity and vulnerability.

Another point of interest concerning the painting is the ionic column that she inserted in the middle of her open torso. The chiseled and classical column also projects a double meaning: first, Frida's inclination to use art as therapy, secondly, her greatest achievement as an artist, namely to create the aesthetics of anguish and deterioration, which celebrates the pulsation of life under the shadows of endless suffering.

Beneath the Canvas

Today's special blog post will be devoted to the exhibition of Zsuzsi Csiszér, a contemporary painter from Veszprém, which was recently opened in Várfok Gallery. The name of the exhibit, Journals, is an accurate summary of the atmosphere of the works presented, since most of them are the mementos of someone's daily musings and self-analysis in the mirror of the various impacts one encounters during the day. In that spirit, in her huge collages, Csiszér rips open the smooth canvas of reality, and scrutinizes the new associations and parallels between the fragments of tiny details and influences (ads, dreams, imaginary faces and landscapes) this reality is formed by. Using her brush as a scalpel, she drills small tunnels into the surface of things, and creates a new panorama to the chaotic mixture at the bottom of our, personal or collective, unconscious. Although her works are rather intrinsic, Csiszér manages to make a conversation with the outside world as well, because she addresses a number of external events in her pieces: she often uses bits of newspaper headlines and articles as a building material for her art for instance.

One of the artist's recurring motifs is the human face. Her large collages usually depict two or three faces from different angles, putting a great emphasis on the eyes, which have always carried the connotation of seeing the deeper essence of people or everyday phenomena. Still, some of these faces are painted with faint and nacreous colors, which sometimes create an artificial or kitsch-like effect. The paintings remain silent about the question whether this is a conscious and intentional thing from the artist's part, evoking the idealized images that mushroom in the media, or an inadvertent one. In this series, the pictures that portray aging people are way more interesting, since the fragmentary and deteriorating faces of old people resonate very well with the disintegratedness of the form itself.

Although the most impressive works are these collages, Csiszér also featured a number of witty and delicate installations made with different techniques. She grasps the subconscious of the typical female by displaying the same abstract and fractional elements on chopping boards for example. Also, the artist carved out a big papier macher figure solely from newspaper sheets, and made a miniature labyrinth out of tv program guides.
Still, one of the most intriguing objects in the gallery is probably an excerpt from the artist's actual journal, in which she ponders on her ars poetica and most inner feelings and thoughts; however, even here, her most intimate moments are stirred up by the menial happenings of daily life: one of her friends draws a small heart on her sheet of paper, or distracts her by talking to her about irrelevant issues.

Those who are interested in Csiszér Zsuzsi's above mentioned or other artworks can either check out her own blog: http://csiszerzsuzsicsiszer.blogspot.com/ or see the exhibition, which can be visited till 7th May.

"But you didn't, did you?"

Hi all,

Today's blog entry will be devoted to two devious members of the YBA (Young British Artists): Tracey Emin, whose infamous work, My bed was already covered here, and Damien Hirst, the so-called leader of the group. Apart from discussing two pieces by each artist, I will touch upon the serious dilemma of creating remakes of certain works and the different positions these two artists take regarding this matter.

Tracey Emin - Everyone I Have Ever Slept With

One of Emin's debuting works as a member of the YBA, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, or The Tent, gained a fair amount of media attention when it was first exhibited in the Royal Academy in London, 1997. Basically, the young artist obtained a regular tent which she decorated with the names of literally everybody she has ever slept with between 1963 and 1995. This means exactly 102 names, which were appliquéd on the inside of the tent.

Unfortunately, the piece was usually misunderstood by the audience and critics as well, since they regarded the work as a symbol of Emin's promiscuous lifestyle. However, the artist emphasized several times that the majority of the names are the names of friends, relatives, school peers, and, staying true to her unusual ways of healing with the help of art, two foetuses whom she did not give birth to. Although Emin is generally not afraid of a saucy scandal, she stated that the misapprehension of this being the list of those she was sexually involved with reduces the message and meaning of her piece.

She wanted to create a work of art which is a memorandum of the intimacy and propinquity that those people experience who sleep together. "You don't do that with someone you don't love and don't care about" - she claimed. The tent carries another significant message to the artist herself, functioning as self-assurement and reinforcement at the same time: there is a text on its floor, which goes like this: "With myself, always myself, never forgetting"

Sadly, Emin's work was destructed in a fire at the East London Momart warehouse, which destroyed two of her other works, and a great number of other pieces by her fellow artists contributing to the Saatchi-collection. Apart from the loss of contemporary pieces of art, the event was increasingly upsetting, since the public's response was mockery and laughter, and "a lack of cultural understanding," as Emin later stated.

Although rumors say that she was offered tempting amounts of money to re-create her piece, she constantly refuses to do so, usually due to her highly emotional ars poetica: "I had the inclination and inspiration 10 years ago to make that, I don't have that inspiration and inclination now ... My work is very personal, which people know, so I can't create that emotion again — it's impossible."

Damien Hirst - The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

This most renowned work of the leading member of the YBA was created in 1991, and was exhibited in 1992 for the first time. Basically, it consists of a dissected tiger shark preserved in a vitrine full of formaldehyde. Similarly to Emin's Tent, Hirst's piece gained great publicity and it is considered an iconic example of Britart; no wonder it was nominated for the Turner Prize.

The artist's primary intention was to shock his audience. He said that he wanted to embody his idea by something that is "big enough to eat you." That's how he found the shark, which was obtained and prepared for its life frozen to eternity by an excruciatingly lengthy and delicate procedure. Hirst achieved his goal, since his work is still frequently discussed and assessed in artistic arenas. In 2007, The New York Times took the effort to write an article which digs into the deeper meaning and context of the piece, and described it the following way:

"In keeping with the piece’s title, the shark is simultaneously life and death incarnate in a way you don’t quite grasp until you see it, suspended and silent, in its tank. It gives the innately demonic urge to live a demonic, deathlike form."

Yet, similarly to Emin's Tent, the piece was doomed to dissolution. In 2006, the original shark had to be replaced with a new specimen, and Hirst acted in a fully co-operative manner. Still, he had to face the philosophical and artistic dilemma whether the result was the same piece of art or not. Although Hirst was a bit hesitant, he stated that according to his background as a conceptual artist, he is entitled to think that the intention itself is more important than the original tools and specimen.

As for the harsh criticisms that claimed that anyone can create an artwork like this, the artist retorted: "But you didn't, did you?" I think, that's a fair argument in defense of a lot of contemporary pieces of art.

The Celebration of Emptiness

Yves Klein: Anthropométries

The French artist, Yves Klein was among the pioneers of performance, minimal, and pop art. He did not only use the result of his work as an artistic piece but he included the whole artistic process as creating something new and different. For instance, in the case of a series of paintings, he made a performance out of the creation of the works. In 1949, he composed The Monotone Symphony, a single 20-minute sustained chord followed by a 20-minute silence, and played it during these events.

Klein was a highly self-conscious artist, so when he realized that his audience perceives his multicolored paintings as mere interior decorations, he decided to reduce his world to one color only: blue. The color later became his emblematic feature, conveying a sense of infinity and otherworldliness.

Besides The Void (an empty space in a wardrobe), one of his most famous works was Anthropometries, which is a series of paintings created by the naked bodies of women. Klein was fascinated by experimenting, and he often did so regarding the tool with which he can apply paint on the canvas. In a little while, he developed the idea of "living brushes" (female bodies). He controled the process of creation as a conductor: they made the women, colored in blue paint, roll over, squirm, or being dragged over his canvases in a ritualistic manner. He regarded sponges or brushes (thus, these bodies as well) as sanctified objects because they impregnate by being impregnated. He pondered on this in the sense of artistic effect: he wanted his viewers to be impregnated by his art with the susceptibility of sponges. Strangely enough, Anthropométries do gets stripped from raptorous eroticism, and conveys a more foundamental meaning by the plunging, splashing, dreaming, and levitating bodies it displays. As Klein himself put it: "My paintings are but the ashes of my art."

Banksy: Christ with Shopping Bags

Graffiti has always been a controversial genre, since it was frowned upon, being considered as a form of vandalism. It was an underground movement and an ephemeral form of art for a long time, but lately it has been admitted to the artistic canon. Amusingly, one example for this breakthrough is the graffiti-project in the London underground and the New York subway.

The British artist, Banksy is infamous for his tongue-in-cheek works which usually convey messages with strong social connotations. He looks at social tendencies from a critical point of view. Just like many contemporary artists, mainly the ones in the field of street art, which is considered extremely direct and forceful, he uses shock as a tool for revelation.

Christ with Shopping Bags is a stencil of the crucifixion, depicting Jesus with two huge bundles of gifts in his pierced hands. The graffiti is an imprint of an era where "God is dead", yet, holidays still florish. Banksy's work suggests that holidays, especially Christmas, have lost their meaning and they became the celebration of consumer society, where people's sentimentalism or religious belief are used as tools for gaining profit. They are more of industrial and commercial happenigns than intimate family events: they became oversentimentalized and empty at the same time. Also, it is clear that just as he violated the sanctified image of Christ, people make products out of everything, without giving it a second thought. Everything is possible, and nothing is untouchable if it sells well.

"If a Piece of Work Only Exists in your Head, Can it Still be Called Art?"

The next block in my blog will be devoted to two conceptual works of art: Yoko Ono's Play it by Trust and Zbigniew Libera's LEGO Concentration Camp. The two pieces were both created in 1966 and they touch upon serious issues in a playful and experimental way.

Yoko Ono: Play it by Trust

The observation of chess sets is a well-known phenomenon in artistic grounds. Duchamp even stated that they can be interpreted as the "landscape of the soul." However, most of these works which centered chess sets exploited the opportunities of different kind of decorations that can be applied in their case.

Contrarily to these trends, instead of coming up with a new decorative idea, Yoko ono made a fundamental and interior change regarding the function of a chess game. She extinguished all the black figures by painting them white. This way, she called attention to the fact that the world is not black and white. That is clear. But why didn't she give different colors to all the figures in order to symbolize diversity? It's because her concept was deeper and more abstract than the overused metaphor of a rainbow for highlighting distinctive features in people and the world.

In an interview, she claimed that everyone is different. We all know that by know. Everyone is unique and idiosyncratic in a way that is positive (individuality), and everyone can be different in a sense that is unusual or does not quite tie with the norm (equality movements, celebration of diversity, etc.) This differentness is something that is given and unchangeable. Ono said that it is the sameness that should be searched for because that is something that requires effort from people's part. Finding a similar platform, communicating and co-operating with each other is much harder than just tolerating or enduring each other. One of them is passive, the other one is active and constructive. That is why the competition element is taken out of the piece and is replaced by sameness and assimilation. Inspired by Zen philosophy, Ono emphasizes the necessity of self-discovery, and she extends this imperative to a collective level.

Although Yoko Ono works in the field of conceptual art, which means that the powerfulness of the idea itself is much more forceful and impressive than the manifestation of it, Play it by Trust cannot be judged as a completely alien and abstract piece of art which is only understood by its creator. The viewer can sit down, they are allowed to touch the figures, and they can try themselves out in the hard task Ono assigns to them.


Zbigniew Libera: LEGO Concentration Camp

Libera's work is undoubtedly a controversial piece of art since it deals with the sanctified topos of Holocaust in an appallingly colloquial manner. Holocaust is still a hot-button issue, and its depiction is still debatable, given that survivors always mention that no-one (not even the victims) can really disclose the excruciating horrors they lived through.

Libera used seven boxes of the popular game, LEGO to manifest his idea which was to build miniature concentration camps in their harshest reality (gas chambers, shooting soldiers, overworked and humiliated captives, and the like.) He was immediately threatened with a lawsuit by LEGO which was not familiar with the artist's purpose when they gave him the bricks for free. The general reception of the work was similarly scandalous. People - even artists - were outraged by the piece, claiming that it was not a work of art and it was the utter trivialization of one of the darkest events of human history. Still, a massive press campaign finally persuaded LEGO to drop the charges, and during the time that elapsed, the adjudication of the work grew more tolerant and lenient. Even the Jewish Museum in New York bought one of the replicas of the camp.

The LEGO Concentration Camp can be interpreted in many ways. First, it obviously calls attention to the practical presence of Foucault's biopower theory, which suggests that there is a technology of power which is a way of managing people as a group, reducing them to mere bodies which can be controlled. Thus, populations can be manipulated and regulated this way. In this specific case, Libera extends the concept of biopower to genocide, which is an organized form of the oppression and eradication of certain groups of people.

Another interpretation of the piece can be one in which we presume that Libera's camp is a fillip which criticizes the overprocessing of Holocaust in the media and in artistic spheres and thus trivializing and oversentimentalizing it. The LEGO figures can thus be symbols of the distorted and glamorized images that these other works convey regarding the Holocaust.
Viewed from another angle, Libera's piece can be regarded as a banalized and oversimplified game with the purpose of enabling people to cope with the tragedy easier.
From yet another viewpoint, which is a quite obvious one, LEGO Concentration Camp is just a symbol which stands for the brutality by which the Nazis treated other people just like figures in a child's game. Also, the fact that Libera made several replicas of the camp carries the dark message: history can repeat itself anytime.

It is certain that Libera's work of art carries a great shock value. Still, if the viewer is willing to overcome the general indignation, the piece will raise new questions regarding this clichéd topic which is still unutterably terrible, and which should not lose it's capability of provoking thoughts or emotions in people. Furthermore, a work like this is likely to provide new ways of finally overcoming and coping with the wounds.

Life Exposed

Hi all,

Today's post will be dedicated to the works of two artists, Tracey Emin and Ed Templeton, two artists whose art is strongly autobiographical. In fact, both Emin's and Templeton's pieces are so deeply rooted in their private sphere that they are sometimes more than bewildering. Both of these artist uses such things as love, depression, marriage, hobbies, sickness, and the like as raw material for their pieces. In a sense, they recycle little pieces of their lives as art. Thus, their oeuvre can be considered as a visual journal for their life story. The notoriousness of the result, even in contemporary art terms, is doubtless.

Tracey Emin - My Bed

Infamous for her perplexingly confessional sort of art, Emin created something with "My Bed" that really pushes the envelope. After living through suicidal depression due to relationship problems, she presented her rumpled bed, the visual journal of the rhapsodic emotional phases she went through, as a shockingly personal work of art. The bed is somewhat symbolic, yet, at the same time, it smells like real life to a rather intimidating extent.

The chaotic state of the bed represents the troubled frame of mind of the artist: the sheets are unwashed, there are visible blots of body secretions on them, also, there are clothes and seemingly innocent everyday objects in the bed and on the floor: a pair of bloodstained knickers, bottles of vodka, cigarette packs and fag butts, condoms, polaroids of self-portraits, a pair of slippers, and a fluffy peluche toy. Not only do these articles of despair symbolize an unbalanced mental state but they also give picture about the confusions inside the artist: the boundaries between the womanly and childish traits, as well as the dangerously adultlike objects (condom, alcohol) and the innocent ones (peluche toy) are not clear anymore. The polaroid self-portraits also indicate that the self-image was damaged and fragmented by the tensions she had in her life.

These exclusively personal objects extinguish the intimacy of the artist and they intrude in the intimacy of the audience as well. Everything is painfully sincere and straightforward about this work. It affects all the senses: the detriments and the litter in the bed not only have a visual impression on the viewer but they also suggest and evoke strong odors. The way the state of the bed is presented can be too much for the recipient. However, this abundance of mangy articles is in contrast with the absence of the root cause of the chaos. There's something that's missing here (the beloved man perhaps) whose objects would perhaps bring a balance and some reassurement to this derangement.

Taken as a whole, Emin's My Bed indicates an ars poetica of dirt and rawness which is somehow glorified by the latent emotions that lay under the rumpled surface. As Roberta Smith, an author of the NY Times wrote about the work: "it tells all, all the truths, both awful and wonderful, but mostly awful, about her life." The spontaenity and frankness of My Bed even brought Emin a nomination for the Turner Prize in 1999.


Ed Templeton - Map of the Inner War

Templeton's art, a colorful phenomenon in contemporary art, incorporates photography, digital art, painting, graphics, street art, videos, and sculpture as well. Being well known for his dedication towards professional skateboarding and skateborder lifestyle, the artist is extremely popular among the younger generation. He is particularly well-known for his idiosyncratic skateboard designs. As a public figure, Templeton supports vegetarianism, sport, healthy sexuality, and creativity among many other things.

His works' major characteristic is their openness and frankness. Templeton shows and tells the audience everything, even the things that the viewer wasn't really up for. He forces the recipients in the role of a voyeur: this oeuvre knows no taboos. His photographs give an unvarnished cross section of both his own private life and the crude reality of American people, especially the younger generation. On a personal level, he presents the tough everyday life of skaters: both the glory, the cheerful moments, and the injuries and failures as well. Also, he represents his wife, Deanna, as a totally humane and casual godess. He dares to go as far as exhibiting photographs of the two of them during sexual intercourse. Sexual liberty is a recurring motif in his collage-like images. On a broader level, he addresses current and topical problems of society. He takes sincere and deglorified pictures of the everyday street life of America: he shows the prostitution, poverty, neglect, obesity, the deviant behavior among youth, and the general lack of interest that is out there. The portrait he paints of America isn't a flattering one, however, he does not remain morose. There are several flashes of irony and humor in his photos.

The work that I've chosen from him is called The Map of Inner War, which was also a title of one of his exhibitions in the States. This painting carries significant attributes of his art: it resembles a collage, and the images and the inserted text reinforce each other.
Basically, The Map of Inner War reveals the frustrations of average people owing to the many expectations that society and mainstream social values force on them. On the left side of the painting, there is a little boy who is sitting at school, remaining silent while it is being hammered into his brain that Christianity is the only true religion. Although he has a different opinion ("This is bullshit") he doesn't give voice to his real thoughts. There's a small symbolic image hidden in this part as well: it depicts a washing machine while operating, and an arrow points at the things being washed: a short text says: "My brain."

At the bottom of the painting, there is a woman with a beautiful and voluptuous body, which symbolizes the distorting effect of the media's image of the ideal body on women.
Men's problems are also addressed: on the right side, there's an average middle aged man, who seems frustrated and worried because of his body. There are short texts and arrows which point out the general concerns of men: "pot belly", "receding hairline", "pathetically average penis."
On the top of the painting, there is a harsh contrast between the glamorous and noble connotations of the American flag and American symbols, however, in the background there's a route, a cemetery, and a road sign that says: END. This is not very unusual from Templeton: he often criticizes contemporary America and American utopia in his work.

Good news for Hungarian readers: Ed Templeton has a current exhibition in Budapest called The Cemetery of Reason. The setout can be visited in Ernst Múzeum (Nagymező street 8.) until March 20th.

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"Beauty is truth, truth beauty"

Marina Abramovic – Art Must be Beautiful, Artist Must be Beautiful

The first piece of art I’d like to discuss is a fairly extraordinary one. One reason for this is the fact that it is a performance and not a handmade object that can be carried around or put on a wall. The title is pretty telling: Art must be Beautiful, Artist must be Beautiful, and it was made by Marina Abramovic, a performance artist of Serbian origin. I think it is the perfect work to start my blog with, since it touches upon the evergreen dilemma of the majority of artists and the audience as well: is aesthetic pleasure the main object of art? The Romantic poet, Keats gave a categorical answer for that question in his famous poem, Ode on a Grecian Urn: “Beauty is truth / truth beauty” - he wrote.

Still, in 1975, Abramovic sees it quite differently. In her video, she brushes her hair in a frustrated and desperate manner: she holds metal combs in both of her hands and brushes her hair until it becomes messy and rumpled. The expression "shock headed" suits her appearance perfectly. Apparently, she is not the least concerned by the possibility of harming herself with the combs. Throughout this ritual, she repeats the sentence “Art must be beautiful, artist must be beautiful” like a mantra. Her performance gives an insight into the ars poetica of the modern artist from a double perspective: it deals with the problems of a contemporary artist, "aggravated" by the fact that she is a female one.

We could say that it is a double-attack on conventions as well: she challenges the traditional beauty-notion that is forced upon and expected from both art and women in general. Her naked body becomes a work of art itself which refuses to be pretty and empty, either as a living being or a piece of art. Her work could not really be accused of lack of meaning since her message is very strong and clear. In her retrospective called The Artist is Present (2010), she claims that beauty has nothing to do with art, since art has to be disturbing and full of questions, and, above all: true. Most probably, she and Keats would have had a rather disturbing colloquy about the "beauty truth, truth beauty" matter.


Marcel Duchamp: Fountain

The infamous Fountain, which is a plain white urinal, is one of the most cheeky and scandalous works of art of the 20th century. It being a piece of art is a controversial issue not only because of the dismissive attitude of the audience but also owing to the fact that Duchamp was one of the most significant members of Dada, which was an overt anti-art movement. Although the Fountain is undoubtedly a flillip, somehow it justified the existence of readymade artistic objects and established the concept of found art. As it was written in 1917 in the editorial of the second issue of The Blind Man, the fact that the artist chose this object as a work of art enabled it to gain a higher meaning and a ticket to the pantheon of acclaimed masterpieces. Thus, the artist acts as a reinventor in the case of readymade objects.

This ideology is an idiosyncratic characteristic of modern art: the conceptual value and the nawfangled nature of the piece is much more appreciated than the craftsmanship or the technical skills of the artist. This shift puts the audience in an undeniably more demanding position: they have to muster their creativity, associative skills, and imagination in order to be able to interpret such a work in an intellectual manner. The fact that the original Fountain disappeared a short time after its initial exhibition; also, that Duchamp made several replicas of it, proves the same thing. Thoughts, ideas, and the conceptual powerfulness of a piece of art no longer roots in its physical being or appearance. Thus, it does not have to be preserved and treated in a fashion as if it was the most perfect and unrepeatable realization of the artist's idea and talent.

Strangely enough, if one is willing to give a second thought or a second chance to the Fountain, its message could be quite interesting. Turned upside down, one of the most coarse practical objects, the urinal, becomes a curvy and delicately shaped article, which is associated with fountains with the help of the title. This might reveal how thin the line is between the low and ordinary and the sublime and aesthetically pleasing. Also, the fact that the creation of a work like the Fountain did not require an artistic vein (not in the traditional sense at least) may be inspirational for people with no particular hand skills but a vivid imagination, since it makes the creation of something intellectually exciting possible, and opens many doors for ways of using creativity.
Still, one thing should not be forgotten: sometimes the manic attempts at discovering a majestic and profound meaning in modern works of art are just simply in vain. Contemporary art has a sense of humor; thus, we, the audience are allowed to laugh together with the artist. Exhilarating, isn't it?

Care to Come a little bit Closer?

I've always considered myself an amateur of art. Being a curious person, nearly nothing impresses me more than contemporary art. It reflects on the way of thinking and attitude of modern people and the state of affairs in the modern world. It's current, topical, and it is in war with clichés and over-exploited themes. It creates new languages to discuss the undiscussable or even unutterable, watches itself in the mirror during the whole performance, and is not afraid to laugh at itself in the meantime. I am truly fascinated by it.

However, throughout the very short time that I was able to spend with reflecting upon such sublime issues, I constantly bumped into people who were threatened, intimidated, or downright offended by modern art. These moments and incidents I witnessed were always carved into my memory and stayed with me for a very long time. Thus, I've decided to dedicate this blog to the recycling of contemporary art. It is difficult and problematic by nature, doesn't really care about its appearance, and isn't really willing to talk to anyone apart from the ones that have the right ears. Still, no matter how harsh and dazzling it might be, or how ugly and hopeless things could seem in the cruel light it uses, it has many things to say.

As the author of this blog, I'd like to make an attempt at becoming a juggler: may aim is to create a language that is able to discuss the undiscussable, and, at the same time, I'd like to make the ears and eyes of those who are unbelieving a bit more receptive. I'll choose and discuss two or three contemporary pieces of art every week with the single unvarnished and calculating goal of bringing them closer to the audience. The works will be presented here. If you want to join the audience, all you have to do is come and look a little bit closer.