namitaylor123

[namitaylor123]

What ways can ‘the figural’ be interpreted contemporary art?

30/4/20

Speaker: Giselle 

surveillance / security 

image of another person - no way of seeing yourself 

What is the Figural? 

representation fo the figure - the universal triangle 

Transcendental figure - the triangle 

Huaman body 

Nicole Eisenman “I paint the figure because I know the world through my body” - representing the body in modernism 

John Currin “The hobo” - classical appearance - male glaze - shows the abstraction of the body e.g. plastic surgery

figure and the ground (background) - where or when these figures are? - strange historical references  Currin has a timeless quality to his work - part of the strangest 

Sue Williams Empathy Displacement/Loop in Blueand Orange 1997

Body full of holes  

Alludes to this instability of the body  

 Artist working with the figure and the ground for a long time  

Body movement  

Marcel Duchamp “The Passage from Virgin Bride” 

Jana Euler Nude Climbing up the strairs 

Show temporality 

Body coming through in its absence 

Inside coming outside and coming inside 

Figure can be shown in many ways

psycho dynamic 

 Body and the subject and abstraction  

Tension between the negative and the positive 

Charline von Heyl - what is receding in this painting ?  

The embodies body in Spatial Practice 

The body - sculpture 

Exhibition1 

The Human Factor: The figure in Contemporary Sculpture 

back in the day people would view people in portraiture however trough sculpture making - the breath of the subject matter goes from personal to political - these sculptures are realised - high tech 

All the work is life size - invest it with some kind of life 

Consistent theme of the figure = contemporary practices is engaging with the figure by demonumentaling 

Turning the gaze around 

Contemporary engagement with monument 

Exhibtion 2 

Statuesque: Public Art Fund, NYC, 2010

the figure left art because it was seen as traditional/innaproarite - contemporary art did without the figure 

Many different forms but without the figure 

Reemerged within the last decade - as a form of critique 

poses the question of what it means for contemporary art become a statue 

Commission project - some of the most ambition finical commissions in the state 

work is a cirque 

Exhitbion 3

From Will to From 

how to human body isn’t present but is

inanimate objects have a presence in the world as well - plants rocks 

Famine sublime 

Unravelling what the figural might mean in Contemporary Art 

pull our way back from the body and having an abstract view on the figural 

Complex 

A figure of speech/a likeness created through language 

Daniel Crooks “food for thought - three ingredients from the mass consumerism diet” - plays with the idea of the figure (robot) - before the internet 

Kate Mitchel All Auras touch, 2020 - photograph

auras around the people 

Taken different people from their senses 

[namitaylor123]

Reading: The Chicago School of Media Theory: Figurative/Figural

29/4/20

Write approx 20 lines in the form of a  paragraph / poem / dot points (The paraphrased words you write are related to the above reading)

LITERAL

Theorist Micheal Fried, explores the relationship between the figure and literal within the modern art world. 

Fried’s understanding of the modern age, views art as literalist and minimalist, suggesting that the whole work “they are what they are nothing more” than shapes, colour and form. 

Literal can be seen and used as a metaphor 

The introducing of anthropomorphism can be only depended on literalist art once a person seeks a hidden meaning. 

Anthropomorphism can be seen as a symbol seen from a singles of a shape. 

Literalist art proclaims its object hood

Referring back to literal and the figure, Fried suggest that literalist art is almost seen as non-art because it rejects the representation of art that calls the attention to in the term figure. 

The status of an object within Literalist works are further emphasised between the relationship of the view to the artwork in space. 

Fried draw attentions around the dichotomy betwen the liter and the furfural and figurative, as he further implies the way in which these dichotomy dissipated within the modern art movement. 

He concludes by highlights that art who try to break free from the figurative, they will fail in doing so. 

Lines:21

[namitaylor123]

The Figural

23/4/20

*Broader than the human figure extending to all fields of knowledge - ie Figure of speech 

Addressing the vitality of the life moment 

Guest Speaker Agatha Gothe- Snape 

*traces the body leaves - how we can feel the body after its gone - emotion/spiritual

Every Artist Remembered, 2009 

Research driven task 

Two hour conversations with nine artists 

First draft gallery (institution) - two year director 

Part of her directorship you receive one exhibition 

Talk to the artists for two hour in front of an audience - exercise remember every artists and dialogue 

Mutual path 

Spotlight captures these remembrance 

Documentation also a non hierarchal dis-organised process 

—> why do we chose to remember certain artists? Why do we forget peoples name? 

travelling down the maze how embedded stiff understanding of artists 

Get off the high way 

No one knows everything 

All vulnerable and bias - all in a trap 

Act of writing names - record artists that passed away - just to write a name that gesture implies such power

Different shapes and forms

Obscure artists 

Visual communicator

Act of recording more is revealed than other forms of documentation 

Liveness of the moment - capture  

*how the body manifests in absence and Presence. 

“Trying to find comfort in an uncomfortable chair” 

chair have so much significant 

Intimate 

Investigation request if I could loan a chair 

All these women together without brining their bodies together 

Not just chairs - what they found comfort in their studio 

Strangely emotional - feeling the bodies 

strange emotion 

Idea of the embodiment of an object 

“Lions Hunny”