Iona College Scoundrel Time Exhib Joywar Lecture Apr 2 2008 Final

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************* “Joywar”

painting, appropriation

and the myth of “originality”

*************

“Scoundrel Time”paintings and source imagery ca. 2000-2006

Originality?

Sources for Paintings?

other paintings

• Borrowing

• Copying

• Reference

• Resemblance

• Riffs• Development of ideas

History of Painting

Poussin: A Bacchanalian Revel… (1632-3)

Cézanne: Les Grandes Baigneuses (1900-6)

Painting from Photographs?

Painters have been using photographs

and cameras ever since modern photography

came to into existence, and earlier…

"Officer & a Laughing Girl"Vermeer(1657-1659)Frick Collection, NY

Vermeer and other Dutch and Flemish painters of the period used the camera obscura...

"Bathers, Dieppe" 1902Walter Richard Sickert (1860 - 1942) Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK

The English Impressionist painter Walter Sickert developed a method of painting scenes of modern life from photographs.

This off-center composition, which features no horizon line, is an immediate, "snap-shot" moment, much like a photograph..

Marcel Duchamp established the concept of the "found object.”

Picasso produced extraordinary collages that incorporated "found" newspaper images.

John Heartfield (1891-1968) was a master of photomontage. A Communist German, he produced montages of appropriated Nazi symbols in order to subvert and undermine their power as propaganda.

“Adolph, the Superman: Swallows Gold and Spouts Junk.” 1932Photomontage

A contemporary example…

Interview, Greater Boston Arts TV series and website: Artists & Violence (2002)

“I’m nuts on images. I cut them out of books and newspapers, mostly books and magazines. And this is absolutely crucial to me, because this is one of the ways I tap into the world.

“I see the world because it comes to me through media. Through film, through newspapers. Through TV.”

“I see the world because it comes to me through media. Through film, through newspapers. Through TV.”

For these artists and many others, the photograph was not merely an efficient tool, but part of an inquiry into how we see, how we look at the world, and how the world affects us through our vision.

Our source material

gives us insight into our subject.

Painting + Photography:

conscious and unconscious “borrowing”

between different mediums between painters and photographers

across centuries

Che Guevera’s corpse (ca. 1967)

Rembrandt : The Anatomy Lesson of Dr NicholaesTulp (1632)

Freddy Alborta, Che Guevera’s Death, 1967

Giovanni Antonio Bazzi “il Sodoma”: Lamentation Over the Dead Christ (1503)

The Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Andrea Mantegna (c.1490)

My Sources for Paintings…

Painting the Mediated Image

re-inventing ‘found images’ from the public sphere

(images that document real events)

Science photographs

"Trinity" July 16, 1945the first nuclear test 

Alamogordo Test Range Jornada del Muerte Desert

(“Journey of Death”) New Mexico

Declassified government files

"Dog“, November 1, 1951Operation Buster-Jangle, Nevada Test Site, Area 7

1417 Foot Airdrop from B-50

“Castle Bravo”High yield thermonuclear weapons test (H-bomb) detonated on an artificial

island at Bikini Atoll February 28, 1954 (GMT)

Public military documents

Television: Night vision / Tracer fire : The First Gulf War (CNN)

QuickTime clips: Kosovo Gun camera imagery

Painting from

News + Documentary Images

a new context

The Media Narrative…

The Media Narrative: Photojournalism

“Scoundrel Time”paintings and source imagery ca. 2000-2006

“Riot”

a solo show in the spring of 2004…

Susan Meiselas: NICARAGUA, Esteli (1979).

“Cease & Desist”

Piracy!

Susan Meiselas: NICARAGUA, Esteli (1979).

• Borrowing

• Copying

• Reference

• Resemblance

• Riffs• Development of ideas

History of Painting

Internet Culture

speeds up:

• Borrowing

• Copying

• Reference

• Resemblance

• Riffs• Development of ideas

In the meantime, online, in a discussion with net artists, coders and

musicians…

Artist Tim Whidden mirrored the image on his own site…

Artist Mark River created a “derivative” work based on Molotov:

Artist Ryan Griffis declares “Joywar”( a reference to “Toywar” c. 1999)

Jess Loseby

Joseph + Donna McElroyhttp://electrichands.com/shanghai-pepsi.jpg

Michael Szpakowski : Solidarity webpage

Ottokin.com:

Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 16:33:22 +0100Re: tshirt

Produce this shirt an fuck the Pepsi!

Bye from ItalyPaolo

Nick Douglas: “Is it legal yet? 3/22/2004http://www.popageorgio.com

“Spook” site

Edwardo Navasse:

http://navasse.net/joywar

Eryk Salvaggio: “JOY!” (ASCII) http://www.anatomyofhope.net/joy

Quicktime movie: “Art not Crime”

Kate Southworth: Pirates of Penzancehttp://www.gloriousninth.com/piratesofpenzance.html

Molotov Remix - consists od a jpg of Joy Garnett's painting "Molotov" sliced into 121 43px X 52px images. Each sliced image is randomly loaded via java script into one of 121 cells of an html table.

Users may click on the "Recompose" link to achieve a new randomly generated recomposition each time. The chances of users hitting upon a perfect realignment of image slices is less than winning the lottery, but just in case I have a "fair use" argument ready.

http://art-design.smsu.edu/cooley/molotov/

mark cooley

Edward Tang: “Molotov Landscapes” created using a custom software in Windows C++ using Visual C++ .NET and OpenGL for graphics.http://antiexperience.com

[Adam Mansfield: http://sasnak.org ]

http://www.splatterkitty.com

Pau Waelder: http://www.sicplacitum.com/arte/molotov.htm

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