3 minute read
NEHA CHOKSI
BY WAQAS KHAN
In her new work Choksi tests her belief that to learn to be oneself, one always needs others.
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In “Art and Objecthood,” Michael Fried derisively labels art that acknowledges the viewer as “theatrical”
There is a strong parallel between installation and theater: both play to a viewer who is expected to be at once immersed in the sensory/narrative experience that surrounds him and maintain a degree of self-identity as a viewer.
The traditional theater-goer does not forget that he has come in from outside to sit and take in a created experience
Trademark of installation art has been the curious and eager viewer, still aware that he is in an exhibition setting and tentatively exploring the novel universe of the installation.
The artist and critic Ilya Kabakov mentions this essential phenomenon in the introduction to his lectures “On the “Total” Installation”:
“[One] is simultaneously both a ‘victim’ and a viewer, who on the one hand surveys and evaluates the installation, and on the other, follows those associations, recollections which arise in him[;] he is overcome by the intense atmosphere of the total illusion” (Kabakov 256). Here installation art bestows an unprecedented importance on the observer’s inclusion in that which he observes. The expectations and social habits that the viewer takes with him into the space of the installation will remain with him as he enters, to be either applied. In “Art and Objecthood,” Michael Fried derisively labels art that acknowledges the viewer as “theatrical” (Fried 45). There is a strong parallel between installation and theater: both play to a viewer who is
In “Art and Objecthood,” Michael Fried derisively labels art that acknowledges the viewer as “theatrical” There is a strong parallel between installation and theater: both play to a viewer who is expected to be at once immersed in the sensory/narrative experience that surrounds him and maintain a degree of self-identity as a viewer.
The traditional theater-goer does not forget that he has come in from outside to sit and take in a created experience
Trademark of installation art has been the curious and eager viewer, still aware that he is in an exhibition setting and tentatively exploring the novel universe of the installation.
The artist and critic Ilya Kabakov mentions this essential phenomenon in the introduction to his lectures “On the “Total” Installation”:
“[One] is simultaneously both a ‘victim’ and a viewer, who on the one hand surveys and evaluates the installation, and on the other, follows those associations, recollections which arise in him[;] he is overcome by the intense atmosphere of the total illusion” (Kabakov 256). Here installation art bestows an unprecedented importance on the observer’s inclusion in that which he observes. The expectations and social habits that the viewer takes with him into the space of the installation will remain with him as he enters, to be either applied. In “Art and Objecthood,” Michael Fried derisively labels art that acknowledges the viewer as “theatrical”
Painting
PAINTING IS THE PRACTICE OF APPLYING PAINT, PIGMENT, COLOR OR OTHER MEDIUM TO A SOLID SURFACE (SUPPORT BASE). THE MEDIUM IS COMMONLY APPLIED TO THE BASE WITH A BRUSH, BUT OTHER IMPLEMENTS, SUCH AS KNIVES, SPONGES, AND AIRBRUSHES, CAN BE USED.
PAINTING IS A MODE OF CREATIVE EXPRESSION, AND THE FORMS ARE NUMEROUS. DRAWING, GESTURE (AS IN GESTURAL PAINTING), COMPOSITION, NARRATION (AS IN NARRATIVE ART), OR ABSTRACTION (AS IN ABSTRACT ART), AMONG OTHER AESTHETIC MODES, MAY SERVE TO MANIFEST THE EXPRESSIVE AND CONCEPTUAL INTENTION OF THE PRACTITIONER. PAINTINGS CAN BE NATURALISTIC AND REPRESENTATIONAL (AS IN A STILL LIFE OR LANDSCAPE PAINTING), PHOTOGRAPHIC, ABSTRACT, NARRATIVE, SYMBOLISTIC (AS IN SYMBOLIST ART), EMOTIVE (AS IN EXPRESSIONISM), OR POLITICAL IN NATURE (AS IN ARTIVISM).
PAINTING IS A MODE OF CREATIVE EXPRESSION, AND THE FORMS ARE NUMEROUS. DRAWING, GESTURE (AS IN GESTURAL PAINTING), COMPOSITION, NARRATION (AS IN NARRATIVE ART), OR ABSTRACTION (AS IN ABSTRACT ART), AMONG OTHER AESTHETIC MODES, MAY SERVE TO MANIFEST THE EXPRESSIVE AND CONCEPTUAL INTENTION OF THE PRACTITIONER. PAINTINGS CAN BE NATURALISTIC AND REPRESENTATIONAL (AS IN A STILL LIFE OR LANDSCAPE PAINTING), PHOTOGRAPHIC, ABSTRACT, NARRATIVE, SYMBOLISTIC (AS IN SYMBOLIST ART), EMOTIVE (AS IN EXPRESSIONISM), OR POLITICAL IN NATURE (AS IN ARTIVISM).
GREG ELIASON
Color And Tone
What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity. Every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity; by using just color (of the same intensity) one can only represent symbolic shapes. Thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization (perspective), and symbols. For example, a painter perceives that a particular white wall has different intensity at each point, due to shades and reflections from nearby objects, but, ideally, a white wall is still a white wall in pitch darkness. In technical drawing, thickness of line is also ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters.
Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music. Color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, white is. Some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory.
