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Koons' work becomes influential when discussing the aesthetics of camp in relation to Warhol. While Koon's sculptures invite a more obvious source of reflection through residual culture and the banal, Warhol's paintings are still up for open interpretation. 

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Andres Serrano's Piss Christ

Danto poses an interesting question when considering religious iconography in Warhol's work; when describing Serrano's piece, he asks, "Is the crucifix not an object of worship as much so as the person crucified?" 

When comparing Warhol's boxes to the real brillo boxes, Danto creates an analogy of a bone fragment put in gold encasing to compare- is it the casing that calls our attention to the object, rather than the object in itself? What does it mean when we separate Andy's idea of a Brillo Box with the physical representation of it? How does this relate to the way people interact with religion- do they pay too much attention to the physical objects while losing sight of what lies beyond it?

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Two Days Before the Project

The project planning is going extremely smoothly; permits for both the setup of the net and the filming of the performance were approved by JBI and the appropriate authorities at the corniche. I have gathered a team of 4 people to assist me with filming and interviewing, and have talked to more people about helping me start up the games and bring people from the beach in. I am proud and happy that the performance is taking shape; the permit process was remarkably easy, and I've established good relationships with the authorities in hope of future collaborations. My only uncertainty remains on how to anchor the net to the beach and what to use as beach poles. Through the video, I will try to reflect the experience of the performance in an honest manner; although the documentation is what will be presented at the end of the year show, it is the performance itself that I count as the piece- what will truly be experienced by the public that participates in it. 

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Reactions to Noor's talk

Noor's talk was an important presentation for the class in order to get a real perspective of what is happening in the real world of public art outside of our community at NYUAD. While Abu Dhabi often seems like a city lacking of an arts scene, Noor's presentation on the Houwi project exposed us to what is under development around the city in Abu Dhabi, while also introducing us to prominent artists around the region who work with the same issues that we attempt to deal with while in class. Noor's critique on my project was particularly valuable; as an outsider to our classroom, and as a person who regularly reads these kinds of proposals, she offered a unique perspective into what it would look like if we submitted our proposals to a competition or open call for submission. Noor was also helpful in her suggestions of ways to approach the permitting process; finding contacts interested in the arts, building good relationships, asking people we know for people they know, and reaching out to embassies were all suggestions that were useful and relevant to our projects.  

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I think the latest Warhol paintings are all, in a sense, deeply introspective, reflective of his own mortality as well as in his place in art history. His reversal series, as well as his most recent appropriation of Leonardo and Botticelli's work, provide an interesting reflection on his place in modern art history as he acknowledges his position as a modern master. I think there's an interesting dynamic in appropriating the images of such iconic paintings and revered artists, particularly in the later point of his career, if the paintings are approached with an eye for introspection. Similarly, the later portraits with the shadow show a similar awareness: a connection to prior works, given the commodification of the self and the themes of death, but this time put together to reflect on what lies behind Warhol as he dies- in a sense, he predicts his prosopopoeia. 

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It is interesting to analyze the concept of celebrity and adulation in the art world in relation to Warhol and Basquiat. While Warhol might have achieved his definition of success by becoming a "business artist", Basquiat was destroyed by criticism that he had become an "art world mascot". To what extent is the achievement of fame and celebrity as an artist a success, rather than a failure? Does fame come with a cost, inhibiting an artist's potential to do avant garde work? 

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I wanted to re-post this image, this time thinking about it in the context of reappropriation in the latest Warhol interview and according to Goldsmith. Goldsmith claims that he does not find the point in fiction. There is so much material that surrounds us that can be made into art, using the appropriate lens when looking at it, dissecting it, and contextualizing it. 

I can see a similar thing happen in the contemporary world of great art: more and more often, it is works of public art, or socially engaged art, that become famous as engaging pieces of work that make news in the contemporary art world. Is art through the context of a social practice reappropriation? Is it enough to see things through a different lens in order to understand and conceptualize it? When there is so much more information in our saturated world, how can reappropriation and reframing make for more interesting and relevant works of art? But also, more importantly, where does this leave the tradition of painting, as questioned in the latest Warhol interview? Is the prevalence of one medium the death of another?

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Notes on Final Project

As my ideas for my final project on the public/private beach take shape, it is now time for me to start thinking about issues related to production, research on the field, and documentation. So far, I have reached out to Gaar Adams, NYU film students, and Noor Alsuwaidi for help on navigating the permit process; I will not only need permits for filming the performance, but will also need permits to set up the net that will cross from the private beach into the public beach. I've also found a volleyball net for 120 Dhs, which, along with the poles that I have yet to find, would basically consist of the budgetary needs for this project. In terms of advertising and execution, I decided that advertisement would be unnecessary and may detract from the uniqueness of the moment experienced by the viewers and participants by creating an expectation. Since I plan to execute the performance on a friday or saturday afternoon, when the beaches are usually packed, I think lack of advertisement will not result in lack of an audience.

In researching for the project, I managed to get a couple of comments from NYU students on their experiences with the private/public beaches. These comments are very interesting and I will share them in class tomorrow.

For now, the challenge that remains is getting permits for installment, documentation through film, and the presentation of the documentation. I have a couple of ideas of what I want to do in terms of presentation, which I will also share in class tomorrow.

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Expatriates living in the UAE are constantly challenged with the task of navigating the nuanced realm of polarities that dictate social conduct in the UAE. The differences between what can be shown in public and private, what is haram or halal, and what is harmless or controversial can many times be unstated or unwritten, leaving room for interpretation that can, at times, challenge boundaries and bring unstated problems to light.

I’m interested in the mechanisms of social exclusion in the UAE. How, and based on what, do these mechanisms operate? What dictates who has access to what sorts of privileges or benefits? What makes one space accessible to some group of people, while being silently inaccessible to others? The differences between who habituates different places in Abu Dhabi is never stated, but is instead part of the collective social consciousness that weaves an invisible net of taboo and exclusion. Living in a society in the 21st century, and in a country where over 80% of the population is expatriate, under what mechanisms do these principles of social exclusion operate? More importantly, if these mechanisms operate on a subconscious level that’s unstated in rulebooks and laws, what happens when the mechanisms are challenged? How mechanisms of social exclusion based on economics or attire function when these elements are accounted for, and does this shed light on more perverse forms of social exclusion based on race, ethnicity, gender, or social class? 

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Write up your final reflections on the collaboration with the ZU students. What worked, what did not. How did the collaboration work out for you?

The collaboration with the ZU students, although not yet over, has moved into a phase where I am less active with production and instead focus on the framework of the concept and the logistics of the setup. The collaboration, although challenging, proved fruitful. Being an artist with little experience myself, I had trouble coming up with a strong conceptual statement, while my teammates had less experience in addressing concepts but a strong technical background and a deeper rooted knowledge in issues relevant to our context. In the end, I think we played off each other's advantages; while they thought of things relevant to the environment we were working in, I thought of ways in which we could address these issues through a strong concept that would come across in a lively and eye catching public art installation. The hardest part was the communication breach. Sometimes, even though we were thinking of similar things, it became hard to coordinate our thoughts and undergo a creative process together due to the distance. However, the sessions we underwent together proved to be of a relaxed collaboration where we were all intellectually challenged. More than creating a piece that is meaningful and important to me, I believe this project helped me think of the right questions when undergoing the creative process. It also helped me find different ways to collaborate and overcome issues of communication, proving that collaboration and challenges can lead to more interesting, thought provoking works. 

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I'd like us to consider Warhol's attitudes towards emerging artists and his decreasing importance in the art world in the 80's as told by Patt Hackett's The Andy Warhol Diaries. Warhol seems to have a very derisive attitude towards Schnabel, but warms up to Haring and Basquiat. What is it about Schnabel that pisses off Warhol so much, and why does he not have the same attitudes towards Haring or Basquiat? But more importantly, how is Warhol himself losing ground in a post-Warhol world, so saturated of Warholian influences but that somehow, still leaves him behind?

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Seven American Death and Disasters

Kenneth Goldsmith's book's approach to the mediated public events that shape American consciousness raises questions about Warhol's Death and Disaster series. Although the notion of death permeates Warhol's work, death is always a little removed from the audience: it's the death of a stranger, or the death of a public figure. Even when dealing with Kennedy's death, Warhol does it indirectly through the Jackie portraits: it seems he shies away from depicting events that traumatize the public. I wonder if Warhol would have done a series on the towers had he been alive: would Warhol's repetition be enough to erase or dilute the feelings that this tragic image brings up? Are we, as an audience in a post 9/11 world, too affected about these things to be "Warholed"?

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After listening to New York Telephone Conversation yesterday and thinking about its connection to the Diaries and its phone calls, I realized that not only do the diaries record how much money Andy spends for IRS purposes, but that his entire social operation in the late 70's revolved around money. Things were no longer about the underground superstars; Andy was now completely surrounded by socialites and millionaires. Even though it is seen as the weaker point in his career, are the late 70's the climax of Andy's career in his own terms? He was always infatuated with wealth, and loved hanging around with Brigid Berlin and Edie Sedgwick from his early days. There is an interesting contrast between how Andy sees his professional achievement when compared to the perspective of art critics and historians. 

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"But specific intentions would have been uncharacteristic of him. It is more likely that, once again, he was primarily choosing an already famous subject, loaded with referential overtones". - Bourdon

The hammer and sickle series illustrate yet more of Warhol's underlying interests in politics; whether he be supporting a certain party or not, it is certain that the way politics work through the media and symbolism works in the people's collective consciousness attracts Warhol as a subject of study. Even though Bourdon says specific intentions would be un-Warhol, he does say he picks subjects that are already referential: isn't this already a choice that Warhol is making to deliberately convey the ambiguity of his paintings?

On a sidenote: I wonder if his gun paintings, which were said to be a flop when they were made, would have more relevance due to today's gun control debate. 

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The Politics of Pop, or the Pop of Politics. Even though often quoted literature says Warhol wasn't interested in politics and shied away from political commentary, the prevalence of his political portraits cannot be ignored. Ranging from Mao to Jimmy Carter, Nixon inscribed with "Vote McGovern" to the Shah of Iran, Warhol's body of work shows a fascination with politicians.

In a world increasingly mediated by the media, is Warhol the first to point out the "Pop" in politics? He says, "I've always thought politicians and actors really summed up the American way. They can look at the various pieces of themselves, and they can pick out one piece and say, 'Now I'm only going to be this one thing.'" Is Warhol interested in politics merely for its celebrity and media status, or is he making a commentary on the mediated world that extends to all aspects of life, including politics?

NC

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After reading Lott's Essay, I found myself wondering why I've never seen these Drag Queen portraits before. As I thought about it, I realized the common denominator amongst the Warhol paintings I knew before taking these class: they all relied on iconography. Marilyn, Elvis, Liz Taylor, Brillo, the Campbell's soup cans, all were extremely recognizable icons. His portraits of Ethel Scull, drag queens, and lesser known celebrities are not as pervasive as his other paintings. What is the role of icon in Warhol's painting? 

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Even though Warhol restrained his political commentary after his Vote McGovern piece, the Mao series of paintings present an interesting study of iconography, repetition, and fear related to the ongoing global scene in politics. How is Warhol's image of Mao acceptable, even amongst conservative collectors of art, as a piece of artwork rather than political propaganda? By making a Mao series, Warhol dilutes political imagery, supposedly stripping it of its connotations. But isn't political propaganda everywhere, anyway? Is it here where we see a backlash towards the death of the artist- Warhol's intention is what counts, not what the painting says in and of itself?