Entry 6

                This was one tough week. I really found it hard to grasp a lot of the material. I’m gonne give it my best shot and hope I do a good job.

                Our guest speaker for this week was Carla Bengston who is the associate professor of painting and drawing here at the UO. I was excited when I heard its going to be painting week because I see myself as a painter and was excited to see a professional in that field give a lecture. I was disappointed to see that most of the work was not painting but nonetheless enjoyed the presentation in general. What really caught my attention was when she ask “Is a work more powerful it is political or more subtle?” In my opinion, I think that work that is more political is less powerful than work that is more subtle. This is because I think the author takes the spotlight and usually I forget about the actual piece. While work that is not political tends to take a life of its own and the artist is left in the background.

                In the end Carla showed us some of her work and it fascinated me because it was “unplanned.” Her ant paintings I thought were very original, I have never seen something like that done. And then to recreate them large scale made them seem so abstract and just fun to figure out the movement and path of the ants took. Another piece I liked that she did was when she caught up tiny pieces of paper and threw on the ground to have them interact with the ants. I liked that piece because it was something that Carla had no control over, and the piece itself took a life of its own. It was interesting to see the interaction and controversies the ants had with the pieces of paper.

                The reading for this week was torture. I read it, and read it again. Instead of things getting clearer, they got hazier. However, I did understand the main point the author was trying to make. Roland Barthes was asking the question of whether a piece of work can stand on its own merit or does it really matter what the author/artist think? What I understood is that the artist or author does not hold the key to interpreting the piece. And as soon as the viewer interacts with that piece and develops their own meaning of it, it does not matter what the author thinks; thus the author dies. I found it ironic that Barthes writes this piece of work explaining how the author dies, and when I read it he died. I might have interpreted it wrong and thus what he thinks is no longer relevant.

                Finally, our featured artist for this week is Kiki Smith. Smith is a sculptor and drawer. Looking through her work I found that it had a lot to do with human interaction with animals. When I was watching one of her videos I really like her explanation of what is art. “Art is something that moves from your insides to the physical world.” I can relate to that because I have a hard time expressing myself with words. “It’s like standing in the wind and letting it pull you whatever direction it wants to go.” I agree with her. I think the best kind of art is unplanned. You start with an idea, and as you begin creating you discover something a lot more interesting and decide to go with it. Even though I like her thinking, I dislike her work. I found it discomforting because a lot of it had religious themes and death. I didn’t like because its stuff I have seen before from other artists. I didn’t find anything that I would look at twice. Perhaps I misinterpreted it, perhaps not. I’ll never know.

                Ok now to put everything in a nutshell. A really big nutshell. Everything that I talked about is interrelated. “The death of the Author” is echoed by both Carla and Kiki. The way I interpreted Kiki’s work and the discomfort I felt was because the artist is dead. What I felt and what I thought could have been something totally different than what Kiki intended. When Carla asked the question about what makes a piece powerful, my opinion took a life of its own. Looking at Carla’s work, I found it to be playful and original. The guy sitting next to me may have disliked it. Carla may have been making a political statement. It doesn’t matter what we all think, what matters is us, and how we feel; everybody is dead.

                I also found that Carla's and Kiki’s ideas are very similar. Kiki said that art was like standing in the wind and to let it guide you. This was exactly what Carla did with her pieces. She just went with it. She did brush of the ants, she made the ants the artists and just went with it. The piece with green papers would have failed if the ants to take part of it. It is the unplanned that makes things special.

                 My visual response is a Natalie Dee Comic. I can never tell her tone or what she means with her comics, which sums up what I was trying to say above. And I think I'll leave you hanging with this awkward comic.