My paper link

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jg4u94zfe9sp0gx/Marina%20Abramovic.pdf?dl=0

Marina Abramovic

The first time when I see the video “Abramovic and Ulay during Abramovic’s The Artist Present performance at MoMa”, I was really shock while I see the tears streamed from her eyes. After I checked her information, I found that the women in red is named Marina Abramovic, the man who hold her hand is her ex-boyfriend, Uwe Laysiepen. Apparently, the relationship between Abramovic and Ulay definitely evoke my interest, so I begin to search their information and background.

Marina Abramovic is a Serbian performance artist based in New York. She is been called “Grandmother of performance art”. Most of Abramovic’s work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body and possibilities of the mind. Abramovic was grown up in a military-style family, her parents were “national heroes” after the Second World War and were given positions in the post-war Yugoslavian government. I believe the military background of Abramovic’s parents brought her lots of pain. As a child, Abramovic’s mother beat her and her brother a lot. The most horrible moment of Abramovic’s childhood was the moment while her father smashed 12 champagne glasses and left the house. I don’t know if this part of background relates to her pieces, however most of her works focus on “confronting pain, blood and physical limits of the body”.

I believe that Ulay is the most sweet but painful memory in Abramovic’s head. When they are lovers, they do performance art together a lot, however their art made they gradually hate each other. It seems like art is their child, while they raising up their child, more and more conflicting appears between them. There are two very large performance during them walk together. The first one was they stay in a boat and stare at each other for 90 days. While the time pass, they gradually feel bored and begin to hate each other. I could said that most of their pieces shows relationship between people, especially man and women.
The first art performance they worked together is called “Relation in Space”. They ran into each other repeatedly for an hour – mixing male and female energy into the third component called “that self”. I saw the video of this piece, Abramovic was knocked down by Ulay several times. However Ulay didn’t use most of his energy when ran into Abramovic is because “They feel terrify and hate while facing their weakness, they want to create something complex between them”.

After this show, Abramovic told her ex-husband that she falls in love with Ulay, and they had a divorce soon.

The other performance that really amazed me was the one called “Breathing in/ Breathing out”. Abramovic and Ulay devised a piece in which they connected their mouths and took in each other’s exhaled breaths until they had used up all oxygen. They insist this performance for 19mins, both of them breath really hard after they suddenly split out, they even feel the Carbon dioxide they they created disgusting. I think that this performance really interesting because it shows the relationship between lovers that only depend on each other. They can’t live without each other, just like we can’t leave the Oxygen, however they get tired of this kind of relationship very quick because their love are very stressful. They only have two endings to choose: split up or die. I think this performance also imply the tragic ending between Abramovic and Ulay.

After they broke up for 22years, when Ulay appears in front on Abramovic again, she was doing a famous art performance in MoMa. This performance lasted for one month, Abramovic have to seat on a chair and waiting for others to seat in front of her face to face. She stares these audience in silence and peaceful while they are crying or laughing, however when Ulay appears, she lost her control. Tears streamed from her beautiful eyes, she began to cry. They hold their hands together for 10secs and Ulay leaves. I believe this is the last performance they do together in their life. Their love and hate were fire at beginning, however finally extinguish peacefully in the end. Though their love didn’t have a perfect ending, however this is what our life like – beautiful, but not always end in perfect.

Artist Statement

 I am really interesting in the concept of collage so I want to do some collage into a thin book. I am gonna to use some patterns that I made on the computer and print them down, and combine them together with the book sculpture I made.

Color

About the beauty lecture

  After read the lecture, I feel like I can't stop thinking lots of questions. The most interesting part in the lecture I think is when I see "the creation of beauty is so fitting as a way of marking it". The example of flower and sorrow music in 911 makes me consider a lot- What is beauty? Is it a thing that you think is beautyful after you see it, however no other feelings other than that? I think this lecture kind of denied this thought. So I think the real beauty must be a mirror to reflect a person's heart. From my personal perspect, I think beauty is not only because it has a nice visual effect, however the concept of beauty is more about soul, it could make us to think, convey our emotion and release our emotion. People needs different beauty in different society period. As they need flowers, song and candle during the war time, however they need creepy costume and decoration during the Halloween. So the concept of beauty is not all about the beauty itself, however always relate to the important history events or some traditions. What is beauty? No one knows because the beauty they think is always the thing that they can accept according to their value and living background.

The gallery in Moma

I was attracted by this painting first when I went to the third floor, the color combination is really charming. The background of this painting is combine with light gray and deep gray, which make the color orange draft people's attention then other paintings. Once of the reason I like this painting a lot is that I could understand what the painter wants to convey once I see this painting.The structure of this painting is also really neat and interesting. I really like the painter's painting style, the facial expression really conveys the people's mood, I could tell their fear, anger and sadness through their face.



I was really crazy about collage this days, so I really feel lucky when I see this painting in gallery. What I think really interesting is that most of the paintings in background is really rough, however, these paintings creates a special style while they are combined together. I also really like that large black head that looks like graffiti. But there's one thing that I really concern about is as we could see on the bottom of the left corner, there are two paintings repeated. I don't know if the painter do this on purpose or...

Inspiration

Artist Statement

 While I was walking on street, different kinds of windows always attracted my attention. I always wondering what is going on through these windows. The most interesting thing is, while I pass these windows in different times, they always give me different feelings.

 Base on this inspiration, I create a piece that combine with three collage which happens in the same location however different times. I want to show the relationship between location and time through this art work. I use collage to make main characters and change the sky to shows the concept that time flows. These three collage also shows the subtle relationship between men and women.

Three Questions

Ocular Show

1.What do you mean by sense the "aura"? I can tell "aura" means something really attract you, so what attract you most?

2.I am really interesting in the comment "then again most of the internet is used for pornography so that kinda reveals how savage we all really are." 



Yanjia Zhang

1. What kind of relations you feel that six Geometric Figures have? Do you think that uncolored space have any meanings from your personal view?

2. How do you define the notion of "Art"? Do you think is subjective, or it is obejective?

3. Which art works of David do you like the most?


Jiajun Liu

1. What kind of relationship do you found between the real world and Valla's work?

2. I think that can also

David Weinrib Memorial Exhibition

  What I found interesting in Mr.David Weinrib's pieces is that the shape and pattern in his pieces is kind of similar. It seems like I could recognized his work because there's a special "tone" in his work that I could tell. It seems like most of his work's color is warm and makes me feel peaceful, the surface of his pieces seems really smooth, and gives me a shinning feelings. Though some of the pieces' shape seems really simple and there's not really lots of details on it, but the pieces still gives me a feeling that he made every simple details really carefully.

About Clement Valla

  According to Clement Valla's exhibition, I could see the combination of the technology and nature together. Here's some pieces that I am interested with:

  1. Surface Proxy

 

  What I found this pieces is really interesting is because after knowing the way he create this art pieces. Clement Valla combine three elements together: "Photography, sculpture and software". Through his piece Surface Proxy, I think the way I appreciate an artwork changed- I am not only watching a simple 2D photograph, I am watching a 3D sculpture that I could watch through different angles. I think is really amazing that he could use 3D technology to reproduce lots of photos as a 3D massive one. The ideas of take each pieces through different place and reproduce them into one is outstanding.

  2.Postcard from Google Earth

  I think the most interesting part of this photo is these road is really different than what we feel when we are having road trip. We we on the road, we kind of feel that the road is flat if we close our eyes. However through the piece, we could see the distort of the road that gives me a incredible feeling.

About Works of Art and More Real Things

  I am a little bit confuse about the the lecture I read. However through this lecture I could feel something called "Helpless" in it. When we see the same painting, we have different understanding. Though it is very nice to get different inspirations from an artist painting, however it doesn't means we have to distort the painter's ideas and what is he real want to express.

"Giorgione's primed canvas, supposing the paint to have been laid on by him: a fence painted by J is only a painted fence. "
"I allow that J has much the same right, whereupon he declares the red expanse a work of art, carrying it triumphantly across the boundary as it he had rescued something rare."

  These words makes me think that sometimes what an artist want to express is only the thing itself, is not always what we think about. They may have there own thoughts, they even just wanna create a pointless and simple art work sometimes. The real meaning of an art piece is really hard to express because people intend to reflect their own feelings to an art work they saw. There understanding and value reflect their personality, background and characters.

  So do we really "read" an artwork?
  Or we are just read ourselves, or try to read an artist background through his artwork?

Artist Statement

  While I walking on the street, different kinds of windows attract my attention. Through each window, different stories happens. Mysterious makes people curious, I always wonder what happen in each window. I can barely see some furnishings through different windows, however “less is more”; these mystic windows gave me inspirations to create this project.

  So I shoot some windows that I am interested with and made collage on it. I create different scenes according to my imagination and the furnishings in window. It is really amazing that there are lots of others doing different things around you, however you can’t see them. I want to show the amazing feelings of what I feel between location and time.

Short post

I am going to take pictures of window this week. And I plan instead of shooting lots of windows to draw different scene, I may just shoot one window and play with it with different painting style.

2 questions for Michael

1. I am amaze by the work of paper sculptures series. The question I wanna ask is do you have a specific idea on the whole masterpieces you wanna do before you do it, or you just thinking about and doing it during the progress. Since transform the flat papers to 3D is really really hard.

2. What do you wanna express in your pieces "Magnolia"? What gave you the ideas to made this?

Project 1- Story and Windows

  The thesis that I chose for my project is "time and location". I wanna shot different styles of windows in NY (Both through outside or inside is fine). And according to the background surrounding and the view, I will draw a character and stories on the photos.

  As an example, I found some material of window and draw some very rough draft to show my ideas. The picture source is from here: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window