Use texts for each week if you find them useful - don't have to
Following on from the lecture:
Started by talking about Philsophical concepts of beauty. Aesthetics is a field quite central to art and art practice only recently those ideas have begun to be dismantled
Still conventionally use the idea of being beautiful, as artists just as interested in things that are the complete opposite and challenge our ideas of beauty. Reverse of beauty - chaos, violence, collapse
Dada anti art movement unstable and contradictory no dada thinkers seem to agree on anything
Collage (Berlin dada art) cheap and quick and spontaneous
Beautiful things are powerful
Skill and materials
Common ideas behind beauty is that it is eternal
20th century people are drawn to things that are grotesque, monstrous
Notions around the monstrous: monster as a figure is terrifying frightening upsetting
Notions around the grotesque: excessive, comically ugly, swollen and over formed
The abject: abjection, things which have begun to collapse, the difference in things become ambiguous
Goya, Saturn Devouring One Of His Children, 1821
Times where you go that's awful but I want to look at it
As a society endlessly fascinated by murders - medicine museum, Berlin. Anatomical specimens, diseased organs, skeletons of deformed people
Showing something that is normally hidden, human thing of being curious
Distinction between beauty and ugliness
By identifying what's ugly, can see what's beautiful
John Peter Witkin, presented as a still life, black and white large prints, subject matter includes uncomfortable things, deformities, love or loathe him, divides opinion
Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror
Horror films, representations
Childhood memories, skin on milk, children have to learn what is good for them
Borders between things are complicated and ambiguous and anxiety things that switch one place to another. Fascination and repulsion
Clear sense of our own personal space, certain people that we trust
Consider what I put into my mouth, it is a border. One minute that was an object now it is part of me, that border - fascinating ideas
The idea of PC
Understanding of classical beauty, filtered through the Renaissance discovery. Roman marble statues actuallty painted as real life, did not realise until recently there were traces of paint
Cubism and dada about disfiguring the cannon of beauty. Constructivism restoring that idea of beauty and taste
Why are things that repel us which we want to look away, as a culture why are we fascinated by them?
The 'formless': George Bataille seen by western art critics from 1960's onwards one of the most important physicists
Borders of the body, issues around sexuality
Structure and order fall away no longer possible to identify
Harmony and order and organisation both fascinating and repulsive
From the formless something new might be made
Ink blot tests - supposed to say what it is, why do we insist of reading form into it?
People become interested in moments of chaos - Eugene Atget, Ragpickers, 1913 these areas are gone now, buildings and flee market and ring road
Feet and toes are anxious and disgusting
Andre Boiffard, Mouth, Big Toe, Flypaper and Flies, 1929-30
Conclusive beauty:
Surrealism
Convulsive beauty is an erotic and sexual notion, one might connect objects and experiences in the world. Characterised as unexpected and jolts. Suddenly arrises. Inberween ness. Two opposit that shouldn't be in the same place.
Bipolar. Two things that pull in different directions. For a moment held in tension.
Kitsch:
Seen as bad, fascist, Jeff Koons, questioning around kitsch
Is it still possible and relevant to have a concept of what beauty is, what constitues beauty. Ongoing question. Is it a problem if somebody finds a photoshopped girl attractive? Question bound up in that encounter is not with an object but as an image. Representations of women, not actual encounters.
Cannons of taste and beauty is somewhat decided by museums.
Notion of beauty is a redundant one. Attracted to the reverse of beauty. Easier to determine.
Our objects and images:
Butterflies - colour, nature, feminity. Cultural we've assumed them to be beautiful. Not a threat, harmlessness
Displayed in a box, contained, captured. Do we look and feel the same about them while they're in nature or in the box.
Tempted to identify beauty with nature.
Metamorphosis of insects eg butterflies
Anxiety being redeemed, redemptions from violence and ugliness
Beauty linked to feminity? Subject to cultural ideas
Ideal body shape - problematic idea
People have been taught in a way to associate feminity with beauty. Ignorant to forget the male
Power, control, wealth
Until recently all has been about male power controlling female beauty.
Covers of magazines: women's magazines women, men's magazines women.
In film and tv women are often shown naked, exposed, not so much the man
Anonymity to women painted nude. Female nudes use beauty to hide the pleasure of looking and enjoying. Widely painted by men, for men.
Early photography - female nudes. Anonymity is going. Pornography.
