jehanmichelprouvaire

[jehanmichelprouvaire]

References

Allinghame, C. (2018). Change The Date. [digital painting] Twitter @drawnbysoymilk.

Archard, D. (1984). Consciousness and unconsciousness. London: Hutchinson, pp.106-107, 124-125.

Bargh, JA 2014, 'Our Unconscious Mind', Scientific American, vol. 310, no. 1, pp. 30-37.

Barker, Chris 2012, 'Issues of subjectivity and identity', in Cultural studies: theory and practice, 4th ed., SAGE, London, pp. 219-251.

Breton, A., Seaver, R. and Lane, H. (2008). Manifestoes of surrealism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, p.22.

Eccles, J. (2014). Gordon Bennett explored indigenous past through his conceptual art. The Sydney Morning Herald. [online] Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/national/gordon-bennett-explored-indigenous-past-through-his-conceptual-art-20140627-zsnql.html [Accessed 12 Mar. 2018].

Glăveanu, V. and Tanggaard, L. (2014). Creativity, identity, and representation: Towards a socio-cultural theory of creative identity. New Ideas in Psychology, 34, pp.12-21.

Jung, C., Forryan, B., Glover, J., Read, H., Fordham, M. and Adler, G. (1979). The collected works C.G. Jung. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

MacNeil, H, & Mak, B 2007, 'Constructions of Authenticity', Library Trends, vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 26-52.

Mansfield, Nick. Subjectivity : Theories of the self from Freud to Haraway, Allen & Unwin, 2000. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uow/detail.action?docID=286495. Created from uow on 2018-03-17 16:07:35.

McDonald, K 1999, Struggles for subjectivity: identity, action and youth experience / Kevin McDonald, Cambridge, U K; New York; Melbourne : Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Morton, TA, Hornsey, MJ, & Postmes, T 2009, 'Shifting ground: The variable use of essentialism in contexts of inclusion and exclusion', British Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 35-59

Segall, G, Birnbaum, D, Deeb, I, & Diesendruck, G 2015, 'The intergenerational transmission of ethnic essentialism: how parents talk counts the most', Developmental Science, 18, 4, pp. 543-555, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 12 March 2018.

Ross, T. 2017 Artforum, 'The National: new Australian art', New York, 385. exhibition review pg. 385

[jehanmichelprouvaire]

The idea of social identity involves the formation of identity through socialisation and acculturation (Barker 2012)

The film Coco, 2017, explores social identity through the eyes of a young Mexican musician, Miguel Rivera, as he tries to convince his family to allow him to play music. The Rivera Family has a long lineage as shoemakers as well as despising music due to the patriarch of the family leaving to pursue music. Miguel’s issues of wanting to pursue his dreams while also maintaining peace within the family are a result of his social identity within his family. Miguel’s aspirations to play music is dampened by his social context and obligations to his family. Their preconceived ideas of who Miguel will be, another shoemaker within the family business, overshadows any dream Miguel might hold. This is an example of social identities that are “associated with normative rights, obligations and sanctions which, within specific collectivises, form roles.” (Barker 2012)

[jehanmichelprouvaire]

Fractured Identity: the idea that within us there are fragments of contradictory identities constantly clashing, adapting and growing creating a multifaceted persona. (Barker 2012)

Shakespeare’s Hamlet, 1602, is a prime example of fractured identity. Hamlet’s being the ‘ideal’ Renaissance man, sense of morality and rationality does not allow him to act impulsively however he must appease the feudalist medieval code of honour, enacting righteous vengeance for his father’s murder. Hamlet is seen early on within the play rationalising his own death as he quickly becomes overwhelmed “O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fixed, His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God, God” (Shakespeare and Hibbard, 2008). Hamlet’s paradoxical problems caused by his contradicting identities leaves him unwilling to live but even this is unable to act upon due to his Christian beliefs that if he commits suicide he will reside in eternal damnation.

[jehanmichelprouvaire]

A creative identity is your external representation of how you see yourself, a composite of your imagination, skills, and talents. In Glăveanu words, “Creative identities are considered representational projects emerging in the interaction between self (the creator), multiple others (different audiences), and notions of creativity informed by societal discourses.” (Glăveanu and Tanggaard, 2014)

 Digital artist Charlotte Allingham (1994, Australia) is a freelancer, her work focuses mainly on Aboriginality and femininity with black women being the main subject of all her work.  Her recognition gained from a piece titles ‘Change the Date’ 2018, Allingham was unaware of the influence her art would have, “I was looking at images of protest” (Allingham, 2018). The protest for the change of Australia day as it purposely it celebrated on the day Australia was invaded. Allingham had no intention of creating an image that would be used in protest “I was quite emotional. And it just came out nice. I wasn’t trying to make a big statement. It was just a way of expressing my feelings that day” (Allingham, 2018). However, it is now obvious to her that the power of her message relies heavily on the audience perception of her work, “I have to be two times more attentive in what I’m doing now. Now I have a way of helping people” (Allingham, 2018). The unforeseen impact of her creation has given Allingham a new sense of identity as an artist “I feel like I have a duty to promote Aboriginal women as strong and powerful” (Allingham, 2018)

[jehanmichelprouvaire]

Authenticity carries “three broad definitions of authenticity: authentic as true to oneself; authentic as original; and authentic as trustworthy statement of fact.” (Barker, 2012) The definition that proves to be most relevant to my work is authentic in terms of authentic ownership of an original work.

For example, Sol LeWitt’s (1928-2007, United States) instructional artworks have been a topic of controversy regarding the authenticity of the pieces. LeWitt produces instructions to create his artworks, that are then followed by artists commissioned by with LeWitt himself or the museums that have received his instructions. The controversy of authenticity beings as the images produced are then credited to LeWitt, is he truly an artist? LeWitt believes so, he explains, “When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art” (LeWitt, 1967) LeWitt focuses on the conceptual rather than the practical perceiving it as trivial.

[jehanmichelprouvaire]

Both personal and external aspects can influence creativity for example Artist Gordon Bennett (1955-2004, Australia) clearly draws inspiration from the art of Jean Michel Basquiat (1960-1988, United States). Even as going so far as having a series of paintings paying homage to Basquiat. ‘Notes to Basquiat: (Ab) Original,’ 1999, has a clear Neo-Expressionistic style to it as well as having the subjects of the paintings being of colour (black). The childlike naivety of Bennett’s artworks however, have an extremely dark concept and use classic Basquiat motifs such as the copyright symbol and repetition of words and ramblings. These are all clear references to Basquiat and shows the impact the artist has had on Bennett.

Blackness, in terms of ethnicity, is another integral part of Bennett’s work, the distorted black and brown figures, the manic atmosphere and apparent violence is potent in his work a raw purge of emotions Bennett has repressed due to “the historical narratives of colonialism with all its romantic illusions and factual deletions" (Eccles 2014) he was educated by.

[jehanmichelprouvaire]

In Frances Mascia-Lees words, sensory knowledge is “the knowledge that one acquires through one’s skin.” Artist Sissel Tolaas (1963, Norway) has encapsulated the idea of sensory knowledge through recreating the smells of major cities, including Melbourne, Cape Town and Istanbul. Tolaas creates installations where you are able to smell one of the many scents of the city, through this Tolaas aims to enlighten the audience that the “investigation into the ‘essence’ of human culture itself" (Tolaas, 2005). She describes her fascination with scent “we are equipped with senses to help us navigate and appreciate the world in so many other ways. The nose knows everything long before the eyes.” Tolaas’ artwork makes use of the sensory knowledge whereas traditionally art focuses on the visual aesthetics

[jehanmichelprouvaire]

   Overdetermination is a concept that the most arbitrary choices or actions people makes are the result of the complex unconscious mind. “This means that even the most trivial behaviours— biting your nails, disgust at the skin on the surface of warm milk, anger and impatience in traffic— are the focus and expression of the most plural and deep psychological complexity.”(Mansfield, 2000) An example of overdetermination within art is the use of simple motifs with underlying complexity is Yhonnie Scarce’s (1973, Australia) Death Zephyr (2017). Scarce creates small glass yams representing the indigenous people of Maralinga. She then hangs the yams from the ceiling to create a form that reflects the poisonous clouds that had affected the Marlinga land due to the British and Australian governments that undertook nuclear testing there in the 1950s and 1960s. (Ross,2017) These tests significantly alter the landscape and dramatically effecting people’s lives.

[jehanmichelprouvaire]

Essentialism: Essentialism can be described as set and shared characteristics that are used to define and group people/things into categories (Hall 1992). In Segall, Deeb, Birnbaum & Diesendruck’s words, essentialism is “A belief that underlies intergroup prejudice and biases is that members of different social groups are essentially different kinds of people” (Segall, Birnbaum, Deeb, & Diesendruck 2014). The concept is that individual social groups have underlying beliefs that divide them enough which in turn can lead to discrepancies. For example, within a racial context Morten, Hornsey and Postmes explains that “although prejudice among white Australians is typically related to essentialist beliefs about Aboriginal identity, this relationship disappeared when racial criteria were used to exclude someone for ‘being white’.” (Morton, Hornsey & Postmes 2009). Extreme essentialism in relation to race can also be found in Comedian Victor Pope Jr’s (1993, United States) work. He has outlined the hypocrisy of extreme essentialism through his many satirical skits. Most notably, a skit parodying a Klu Klux Klan meeting, where his use of satire allows the viewer demonstrates the lack of logic when using essentialism to stereotype a group of people and yet deny essentialism when it relates to a group you coincide with and makes a mockery of it.  

[jehanmichelprouvaire]

Subjectivity is the condition of being a person, growing and realising the self being a result of reflexivity. The role of discipline and social normalities cause a form of “social regulation in social life,” which therefore is the mentality of “self-improvement and adaptability” (McDonald 1999).  Sociologists J. Hage and C. Powers corroborate on the idea of an ever-changing personality expressing that “a complex self can entertain different identities simultaneously and has the ability to handle change in the definition of social roles and their corresponding identities” (McDonald 1999). This concept then raises the question do we have any ownership of our identities or are we only subjects of our societies? In her song The Archetypes (2011), Marina Diamandis (1985, Wales), explores the idea of having multiple aspects of a personality that each become dominate when the social context calls for it in, an extreme way. In Archetypes, Diamandis crowns herself as “the Queen of no identity” as she has multiple archetypes within herself (Diamandis, 2011). Within this self-observation instead of questioning who her ‘true’ self really is, she simply denies having any self-proclaimed identity. She sings, “through others, we become ourselves” (Diamandis, 2011) suggesting that her identity belongs to the social context rather than herself.

[jehanmichelprouvaire]

·       Philosopher David Archard outlines the unconscious as “mental items…which the individual is not immediately, presently and certainly aware” (Archard 1984). Using memories as an example, an individual is not aware of their plethora of memories yet they retain experiences of past events. This coincides with Carl Jung’s theory of the unconscious. Jung regarded the psyche as made up of several separate but interacting systems. Consisting of the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. “The first layer is the personal unconscious which contains temporality forgotten information… and well as repressed memories.”(Jung 1979) Jung outlined an important feature of the personal unconscious called complexes. A complex is a collection of thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and memories that focus on a single concept. The more elements attached to the complex, the greater its influence on the individual . A collective (or transpersonal) unconscious is a “system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited” (Papadopoulos 2004) The unconscious affects our emotions and behaviours needing “only a simple stimulus”(Bargh, 2013). This proves true in simple art making practices such as Automatic Drawing. Andre Brenton (birth-death, country) describes automatic drawings as the removal of concepts and planning, leaving only the artist “dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern”(Breton, Seaver and Lane, 2008) allowing the deep recesses of the mind to create.

[jehanmichelprouvaire]

Bibliography

Allinghame, C. (2018). Change The Date. [digital painting] Twitter @drawnbysoymilk.

almer, A. (2018). Can Smell Be a Work of Art?. [online] Smithsonian. Available at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/can-you-smell-work-art-180958189/ [Accessed 12 Mar. 2018].

Archard, D. (1984). Consciousness and unconsciousness. London: Hutchinson, pp.106-107, 124-125.

ascia-Lees, F. (2011). A companion to the anthropology of the body and embodiment. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell.

Bargh, JA 2014, 'Our Unconscious Mind', Scientific American, vol. 310, no. 1, pp. 30-37.

Barker, Chris 2012, 'Issues of subjectivity and identity', in Cultural studies: theory and practice, 4th ed., SAGE, London, pp. 219-251.

Breton, A., Seaver, R. and Lane, H. (2008). Manifestoes of surrealism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, p.22.

Cox, W. (2018). The Story Behind the Work That Went Viral on Australia Day. [online] Broadsheet. Available at: https://www.broadsheet.com.au/national/art-and-design/article/story-behind-work-went-viral-australia-day [Accessed 13 Mar. 2018].

DeHaan, L 2001, 'Struggles for Subjectivity: Identity, Action, and Youth Experience (Book)', Social Forces, vol. 79, no. 4, pp. 1553-1555.

Eccles, J. (2014). Gordon Bennett explored indigenous past through his conceptual art. The Sydney Morning Herald. [online] Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/national/gordon-bennett-explored-indigenous-past-through-his-conceptual-art-20140627-zsnql.html [Accessed 12 Mar. 2018].

Glăveanu, V. and Tanggaard, L. (2014). Creativity, identity, and representation: Towards a socio-cultural theory of creative identity. New Ideas in Psychology, 34, pp.12-21.

Glăveanu, V. and Tanggaard, L. (2014). Creativity, identity, and representation: Towards a socio-cultural theory of creative identity. New Ideas in Psychology, 34, pp.12-21.

Hage, J. & C. Powers 1992, post-industrial lives: Roles and Relationships in the 21st Century. Pp.82-83

Howes, David 2005, 'Skinscapes: embodiment, culture, and environment', in Classen, Constance The book of touch, Berg, Oxford, pp. 27-39

Jung, C., Forryan, B., Glover, J., Read, H., Fordham, M. and Adler, G. (1979). The collected works C.G. Jung. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

MacNeil, H, & Mak, B 2007, 'Constructions of Authenticity', Library Trends, vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 26-52.

Mansfield, Nick. Subjectivity : Theories of the self from Freud to Haraway, Allen & Unwin, 2000. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uow/detail.action?docID=286495. Created from uow on 2018-03-17 16:07:35.

McDonald, K 1999, Struggles for subjectivity: identity, action and youth experience / Kevin McDonald, Cambridge, U K; New York; Melbourne : Cambridge University Press, 1999.

McLean, I 2014, 'Post-Western Poetics: Postmodern Appropriation Art in Australia', Art History, vol. 37, no. 4, pp. 628-647.

Morton, TA, Hornsey, MJ, & Postmes, T 2009, 'Shifting ground: The variable use of essentialism in contexts of inclusion and exclusion', British Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 35-59

Ostrow, S. (2018). Sol LeWitt by Saul Ostrow - BOMB Magazine. [online] Bombmagazine.org. Available at: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/sol-lewitt/ [Accessed 10 Mar. 2018].

Segall, G, Birnbaum, D, Deeb, I, & Diesendruck, G 2015, 'The intergenerational transmission of ethnic essentialism: how parents talk counts the most', Developmental Science, 18, 4, pp. 543-555, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 12 March 2018.

Stewart, DJ 2014, 'THE EMERGENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN GENESIS 1-3: JUNG'S DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY AND THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY', Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science, vol. 49, no. 2, pp. 509-529.

Toni Ross, Artforum, 'The National: new Australian art', New York, Summer 2017, 385. exhibition review pg. 385

Visanich, V. and Sant, T. (2017). Establishing a creative identity: Rebranding a creative space. City, Culture and Society, 10, pp.11-16.

Yofiel. (2018). A Criticism of Emotive Criticism - Yofiel. [online] Available at: https://www.yofiel.com/writing/essays/a-criticism-of-emotive-criticism [Accessed 12 Mar. 2018].