Prague College Blog
Tag: Research EWA
Janice Fodor, Professor of English, Elmhurst College
Cognitive shift – we are looking for things we are not expecting / Punch line is not what we expect
We are so beautifully imperfect, that makes us funny. If we can understand and accept it, it’s amazing what id does with our outlook of life.
Bruce Conner (1933–2008) was one of the foremost American artists of the postwar era. Emerging from the California art scene, in which he worked for half a century, Conner’s work touches on various themes of postwar American society, from a rising consumer culture to the dread of nuclear apocalypse.
Peter Saul (American, b.1934), is a painter and printmaker celebrated for his satirical commentaries on political, social, and historical events in American history.
Artworks:
http://rogallery.com/Saul_Peter/w-74/Saul-self-portrait.htm
Interview: http://bombmagazine.org/article/3144/peter-saul
Robert Cozzolino, Senior Curator and Curator of Modern Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts about artists in Chicago in 1960’s.
Artists: Hairy Who | Peter Saul | Grant Wood | Bruce Connor
Critics: Franz Schulze | David Katzive | Clarence Joseph Bulliet
Artists in 1960 use their persona in art that they made in order to play around with the art world conventions to turn it on their heads, to create a new meaning out of that, to expand the possibilities that existed for artists to enter a dialog with the art world. They contributed to the shift in culture.
Truth in Jest: Critical Questions about Shakespeare’s Use of Humor
Angela Borzon, Director of Instructional Technology
they act like masters of his work already. At the very least, they prove that they possess the two things that any real critic of Shakespeare needs most—a sense of humor and a willingness to admit to feelings of pain and fear.
…we will read some of Shakespeare’s comedies and we will analyze the devices and tropes that he uses to create them…
This is a good example of how personal life experience is reflected in art works:
Bob Cozzollino – Senior Curator, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts: comedy and humor are about performance, delivery and right timing.
Lynne Warren, Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Cracked: A cultural context for the humor present in the early work of Jim Nutt and Karl Wirsum
Content – materials, color, images and words generate narrative possibilities: cultural criticism, political commentary, sexual politics and humor 1:25
“Male humor” – from TV, recognizable.
Sources: CAM | Sean Landers web page
Process shown in an exhibition
Multiple media – experiment, no limits for own art
Express ourselves to world that we don’t know, that’s beyond our small networks. Give voice to our doubts, believes, criticisms.
Clown Torture – 1987
Four channel video, sound (two projections, four monitors): 60 min. loop
Watson F. Blair Prize, Wilson L. Mead and Twentieth-Century Purchase funds; through prior gift of Joseph Winterbotham; gift of Lannan Foundation, 1997.162
parody the artist’s own insecurities
Linda Yablonsky, a contributing editor of ARTnews, is a novelist, a critic, and program director for WPS1.org.
Source: Artnews
My note – never read artwork description – it’s a waste of time. See it, experience it.
Artist to study:
1. Source of inspiration
2. Laugh and then think why
3. “When I started making funny paintings,” he says, “they felt deeper and more about heavy things, like death and sex and love, that I always wanted my paintings to be about. The sillier they looked on the surface, the more they seemed to contain those feelings.”
4. …Ultimately, they discomfort more than they please.
5. Art that makes you laugh does not really have to be funny—not just funny, that is.
6. “I never made them to be funny,” Wegman says of the videos. “The humor came about through a search for a conceptual format of picture and word.”
7. bruising cultural commentaries
8. “That’s the power of humor to carry a critique,” Kruger says.
9. As Tobias Meyer, head of the contemporary-art department at Sotheby’s, puts it, “Art loses its humor when it gets traded for a lot of money.”
10. Artists of every generation find themselves in a dialogue with the past.
Semibur 