Joseph Beuys

This dude has probably one of the most interesting background stories that I have ever read about an artist. What I was most interested in was how his involvement in the war led him to create sculptures out of fat and felt. Before class on Monday I had no idea that felt was so important in the war, nor that it was as effective at keeping people warm as it actually is. Clearly, these days felt is highly unappreciated.

I am a huge fan of multimedia and therefore find the fluxs movement to be very interesting. I especially like that fluxus art incorporates music, which is weird and ironic since i don't really care for or am interested in music normally. I guess the idea of incorporating it with other media and just labeling it as "art" instead of some kind of genre of actual music makes it more appealing to me.

oh p.s. did watching yoko ono get her clothes cut off by complete strangers make anyone else feel uncomfortable? I mean, power to her for being brave enough to show that much vulnerability, but i'd be afraid someone would accidently snag my undies with the scissors and i'd be flashing my lady parts to the world. I did find her connection to the submissive japanese woman to be funny and ironic though.

Power to the perverts.

I loved the Andy Warhol documentary we watched in class today. Watching him on screen I thought he was hilarious, but if I had had to work with him it would probably have been a different story - I might have tried to shoot him too. That one transvestite that was in the video (I know there were a lot, but there was one in particular) really looked and sounded like a woman. I was impressed.

The fact that Warhol started out doing "normal" artwork really surprised me because all I have ever heard about is him being involved in pop art. Before watching this documentary I also had never seen what he looked like or heard him speak - it made me like him even more. This was probably the first documentary that we've watched in class that I have been genuinely interested in watching.

It was amusing that the one man who was the first to see Warhol's series of campbell's soup cans found them so interesting and thought that they were so unique. If I had seen that I probably would have just thought that the man had a weird obsession with tomato soup and offered him some grilled cheese to go with it. But as "weird" as Warhol was, I appreciated that he didn't cut anybody open or dissect anything to make his artwork - he simply took every day objects that we take for granted and de-contextualized them to make us pay attention. Some of the things he did were really sexual, but being a fellow pervert I could appreciate it.

Donkey Eye?

The video that we watched in class last Wednesday was so weird! I thought I was going to dry heave when the woman's eye was cut, even though Santiago later told us that it was just the eye cut out of a dead donkey. Donkey's seemed to be a continuing theme in the film though, because at one point the man was dragging what looked like a piano behind him with two dead donkey corpses lying over it. And I think the corpses were bleeding? I don't know. The movie did keep my attention, but it was only because I was half nervous and half curious to find out what weird thing I would see next.

L.H.O.O.Q.

Marcel Duchamp has REALLY got some balls. I think it is hilarious that he took a post card of the mona lisa and not only drew a beard and mustache on it, but then put these initials which everyone tried to interpret in all kinds of deep ways. Of course as we learned in class, the letters spoken out loud actually translate into something sexual in french.

I think that it is so typical of people to take the work of a famous artist and look way too far into it. Not every artist has a really intricate reason for doing their work - some just think its funny or interesting to do something. As if Duchamp didn't have enough to make fun of when he first did this, the fact that everyone overlooked his humor and made fools of themselves makes it even better. I only wish that I could do something this simple and make millions for it...I would drop out of college and draw mustaches on all kinds of famous works, but of course then i'd be copying and not original. Damn you, Duchamp!

Grid Project

I made this Andy Warhol banana out of tic tacs on a 18x24in canvas. Let me start off by saying that tic tacs are friggen expensive- i think i spent at least $150 on tic tacs alone, not to mention the money spent on elmers glue. And I couldn't find just red tic tacs - the cinnamon ones appear to be MIA. So i had to buy the cherry passion flavor, which is a mixture of red and yellow tic tacs, which was perfect because those were the exact colors that I needed. However, as you can see I used way more red ones than yellow ones so I now have enough yellow tic tacs left over to last me for the rest of my life. I'd say this probably took me about 10 hours all together to make and by the time I was done i would have been content if i never had to lay eyes on another tic tac. Let me know what you think!