Right, after a bit of a false start it's time to get down to some SERIOUS BLOGGING ACTION. That totally deserves capitalisation, because it is going to be sort of my life for the next few weeks as I attempt to avoid the increasingly daunting piles of work which I am supposed to be undertaking. It's an easy escape really; what's better, writing essays on:
1. The treatment of the body by Hans Baldung Griern
2. The artist I would nominate for the Turner Prize and why
3. Can the art of the female YBA's concerning gender and sexuality be politicized?
or RAMBLING about things on the internet? That was a rhetorical question. Duh.
Such is my need to distract myself from these essays, I've done the unthinkable- I joined twitter. I thought my constant facebook status updating was bad enough, but with twitter at my fingertips, there won't be a single movement I make which isn't well documented. See a fat person walking down the street? twitter it @nickmward; Drink a cup of coffee? THE PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW. I may even resort to twittering about my essay topics, discussing the intricate details of the subjects in 140 characters rather than ACTUALLY JUST READING A FUCKING BOOK AND WRITING AN ESSAY.
ahem.
So lets discuss Herr Baldung; A German engraver and painter from the early 16th century, Baldung was taught by Durer, the most famous German artist EVER [apparently, I'd personally never heard of him until January of this year, but then as Art Historians go I'm not particularly up on knowledge of, oh, you know, the Art world... Problematic]; The reason I chose to [not] write my essay about Baldung as opposed to Michelangelo, Da Vinci, or a more well known artist of the period is simple- Baldung mainly produced erotic woodcarvings of witches.
...
What is not to love about this man?! It's the early 16th Century, the Reformation is well under way, you're from Germany- a country with a rich history of pagan tales; of course the art you produce is going to be images of naked hags riding on goats and plotting to kill people! I just question why there weren't more artists creating this kind of stuff. And why I don't own any pieces by the man, the legend, Hans BG.
Essay number two is slightly more problematic in that it's for my contemporary art course and I literally have no clue about contemporary art because I came to the conclusion that every time I go to an art gallery to see a new show I'm left pretty numb inside by the blatent desire for commercial/financial success of the majority of artists. I'm not stupid, I know that since the dawn of time artists have produced works in order to sell them, but I feel like in a time when the majority of the Western world's population has the autonomy to critique government actions, international wars and the like, surely artists should be jumping to use their work as political statement? Or at the very least attempting to say SOMETHING with their work instead of creating an aesthetic. Which is why for this essay I'm planning on suggesting that no-one should be nominated for the turner prize, as the prize itself is redundant in a period where art has no effect. The Turner Prize was named after the artist who in his day was considered controversial and shocking but became well-loved for his work; Art no longer courts controversy; after the 90's boom of the art world brat pack of the YBA's, with the 'Sensation' exhibition featuring on the front covers of all the red-tops, the artists have stopped creating anything new but churn out the same ideas, ideas that the public has become immune to. The last Turner Prize to actually court any sort of controversy was in 2003 when Grayson Perry won, but even that was only due to the fact that he likes to wear dresses and call himself Claire.
Number three is my dissertation, and I'm not even going to attempt to ramble about that because honestly? I have no idea what the title really means, if that is even going to be the title, or what it is that I want to say. I took a course in art and sexual politics last year and was really enthused and interested by the ideas of post-feminism, but I think that's because I didn't pay enough attention in class and thought it was simpler/less WANKY then it actually is. I guess this goes back to my issue with contemporary art in general- everyone who writes about it writes in such a high-faluting, pretentious way, littering their texts with buzz-words and psychoanalytical phrases which have no real MEANING behind them, that it becomes impossible to interpret what they're trying to say about the work; instead you just get angry at how cryptic and self-indulgent their writing is, and then you scrunch it up into a ball, or write notes at the side like "this is a load of tripe, you should rot in hell you cunt", or you find out where they live and leave a steaming pile of dog shit on their porch, or you just have a mental breakdown and weep and wonder why oh why you ever chose to study HISTORY OF ART instead of, oh I don't know, Maths, or French, or Animal Husbandry. You live you learn.
Well there's my essay update, I hope you now understand why I'll be blogging rather a lot in the next few weeks [for after essays comes exams, but don't get me started on those just yet]. Time to update my twitter- the washing machine repairman just left and had found about HALF A CAT's worth of fur in the drum- THE PEOPLE CANNOT WAIT FOR THIS PRESSING NEWS.
