THE BSAK ART NEWSLETTER
EDITION #3
WELCOMING WORDS
By Kathryn McGuireWelcome to the third edition of the Art Newsletter, a publication that is entirely centred around museums, in their double capacities as key monuments of our cultural landscape and catalysts for change. However, before delving deeper into the subject, we must rst and foremost consider what a museum is and how its purpose can be de ned. The latter is generally de ned as a building in which objects of historical, scienti c, artistic, or cultural interest are stored and exhibited to an audience. Otherwise said, a museum is an institution that collects, preserves, interprets, and displays art for the education and entertainment of the public. Featured in this edition is an essay tackling the introduction of Pop Art into the museum system and the Western art canon, at large; the pivotal role of the Open Space “museum” at BSAK with A-Level student interviews; a gallery of images honouring BSAK students’ creative prowess and artistic perseverance; a closer look at some of the most easily recognisable and well-renowned masterpieces from public museum collections; and an essay on what constitutes a museum in the 21st century, as well as what structural changes may be indispensable for the future.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The BSAK GCSE and A-Level Autumn Art Exhibition 2022/2023
Open Studios Interviews
A Closer Look at Masterpieces from Public Museum Collections
What Constitutes a Museum in the 21st Century?
The Introduction of Pop Art into the Western Art Canon
Gallery of Honour
Acknowledgments
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The BSAK GCSE and A-Level Autumn Art Exhibition 2022/23
The Autumn Art Exhibition is a celebration of artwork and creative exploration from our Yr13 A-Level and Yr11 GCSE Fine Art, Graphic Communication and Photography students. Continuing to adapt to the adversities of Covid, The Autumn Art Exhibition replaced the traditional Summer Art Exhibition with this virtual gallery platform. As always, we are immensely proud of our young creatives who continue to embrace situational impediments and in turn challenge themselves to rigorously explore visual language and concepts that we believe move beyond traditional modes and what we may “expect” to see in schools settings. Whilst the titles and process of A-Level and GCSE form the education description, we are committed to and proud that our students genuinely develop their creative practice as artists. That they work, explore, think and create like artists and as a result not only achieve outstanding academic results, but as we believe, develop into genuine future creative powerhouses.
If you haven't seen this exhibition before, we hope you enjoy exploring. Looking ahead, we look forward to launching our “Open Studios virtual exhibition” later this term, and of course welcoming you back to our physical art exhibition/s later in the summer term.
Warmest regards The Art Department
https://artspaces.kunstmatrix.com/en/exhibition/10932419/autumn-art-exhibition-bsak-202223
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Open Studios Interviews
By Andy Raza ndralamboThe “Open Studios” is an initiative that was developed by the BSAK Art Department to enable A-Level Fine Arts, Graphic Communication and Photography students to explore, innovate and display their original and innovative work in an environment located at the heart of the school, and open to all sta members, students and visitors. We are e ectively encouraged to create and display our work in a dynamic setting, in order to broaden our skills and heighten our con dence as emerging artists. Three talented A-Level students, Joshna Sajit, Gabby Wark and Kathryn McGuire talk to us about their unique, tentative and idiosyncratic artistic trajectories, as well as the manners in which the Open Studios helped shape their art practice.
Andy Razafindralambo What advice would you give to future students who are potentially going to work in the open studios?
Joshna Sajit (Fine Arts/Photography) To go completely wild. I would recommend them to take advantage of the three dimensional space and install works that are immersive.
Gabby Wark (Fine Arts) Make the most of your space, put up your work as you create it and dont be embarrassed of what you display. Put up everything, good, bad and ugly because it can help you expand on your failures. If you only put up your best work - you are not allowing yourself any room for improvement.
Kathryn McGuire (Photography) Do not be afraid of people seeing your work (maybe if you do not feel it is good enough yet) - you will throw that out the window and want even more eyes on your work as your open space and project develops.
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Joshna (FA/PH) My art is centered around the structure of fear, and our primal responses to terror. In fact, my work is inspired by horror lms and mainly video games of the same genre. I would like my project to be an expansive exploration into terrifying mediums, such as existential horror/dread to gore.
Gabby (FA) Stemming from the subject matter of "structure", I decided to research and study the anatomical structure of a person. However, I didn't want to strictly create portraiture; I wanted to explore di erent ways to display the human anatomical form in close detail. In a sense, I wanted to be able to metaphorically dissect people through studies.
I chose to use clay and plaster to work three-dimensionally and use my own body as a point of reference, to understand how the parts of our body work collaboratively to function. I also chose to stretch the idea further within my personal study by looking into the societal views of the human body and, more speci cally, the over-sexualisation of the female body. From the point where we are children, all humans are told to dress and to present themselves in a speci c way. We are told exercise is for health, yet approximately 73% of people do it to t a societal expectation of what their bodies should look like. We are told that too fat is not beautiful and too skinny is o -putting. We are encouraged to put on makeup to look more attractive, but too much is distracting. We are told to dress attractively to please others, but to show too much skin makes you a disreputable vagrant. This is the core idea I wanted to explore and communicate with my audience.
My work is inspired by the ability to communicate with an audience. The idea that a piece of artwork that I create today could display a symbolic meaning to a viewer ten years into the future, despite it just being an inanimate object, is what drives me to create art. The ability to create conversation and debate about a gurative or opinionated view of an artwork is what makes art as a whole so appealing to me as an artist, because art in itself is a driving force that creates social interaction between people.
Kathryn (PH) My current project is about sentimental items and the memories connected to these items, memories connecting family and the loss of memories over time. At the moment, I am creating an arcade "Whack-A-Rat" machine that literally portrays this loss of memories. My art practices in general are very conceptual and slightly more abstract in my outcomes, and the mediums I use are sometimes quite broad (drawings, sketches, clay modelling, photography, painting, Photoshop, etc). I am inspired by a range of artists, but at the moment, the two people who come to mind are Olafur Eliasson and Oswaldo Guayasamín.
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Andy Can you describe your art practice and what inspires you as an artist?
Andy How do you think the “open studios initiative” bene ts you as an artist?
Joshna (PH/FA) The Open Studios have massively helped me to visualise my work in a 3D environment, and introduced me to an area of new opportunities by exploring ideas and concepts with my peers.
Gabby (FA) It has provided me with the ability of always being able to view my completed and work-in-progress artwork, giving me the capacity to always view my work and constantly think of improvements. I even intentionally kept free spaces, to allow myself to expand on my work as I keep producing designs for MP2/C1. Furthermore, having my standing desk space provides me with a practical hands-on working area where I can leave my work and return to it every lesson. It equally provides me with the freedom to experiment between classes and leave my work ready for the next lesson.
Kathryn (PH) The Open Studios allow me to showcase my work to the wider BSAK community, which in turn aids my con dence, especially when teachers and students alike approach me to discuss my work when I'm working in the space.
It also assists me in my project, because I can spread all my work out (sheets, documents, paintbrushes, installation pieces) without having to take it all down again to put away in a drawer. This in turn allows me to work for longer hours, particularly since I do not have to spend ve minutes at the start and end of each lesson setting up or clearing away after myself.
And nally, it widens my discussions with other art students that do not also take Photography (my A-Level subject), because I can go to a Fine Arts or Graphic Communication student and ask their opinion on something, share ideas, or suggest a new avenue I think would be bene cial to them, etc.
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Andy How has your viewpoint towards creating and displaying art changed after working in the open studios?
Joshna (FA/PH) It has changed completely. I only worked in 2D and visualised my work on one plane, but having to work in 3D has developed my space management skills and also helped me create more immersive work.
Gabby (FA) It has allowed me to display a mixture of my ideas, to visually understand how I have built and enhanced a range of my skills, and I can add work as I like as I continue to expand upon my creative journey, providing me with much stronger creative freedom.
In addition to that, I have much more liberty to move around and interact with other students from my class and from the A-level photography class, where we can share ideas and present work to each other critically. Whereas last year, I did not have the chance to interact with the photography class at all, so this experience is very refreshing and provides many new opportunities and mindsets that I can apply to my creative process.
Kathryn (PH) My work has become no longer just an A-Level project, but also about displaying myself as an artist/creative, and presenting it to my rst “audience'”
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By Gigi Pengilley
A closer look at masterpieces from Public Museum Collections
The Mona Lisa: A Victim of Dramatic Thefts and Speculation?
There is a lot of speculation and debate regarding the identity of the world-renowned Renaissance painting, the Mona Lisa. Indeed, while some art historians claim it was painted by da Vinci’s sister, others have posed other possibilities, including that she is Lisa del Giocondo, wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco di Bartolomeo del Giocondo—hence the alternative title to the work, La Gioconda. The painting was commissioned by a rich Italian merchant, Francesco del Giocndo, who wanted to place a portrait of his wife, Lisa, in their new home. However, for an unknown reason, the painting never ended up in the possession of its commissioner. The Mona Lisa has drawn a fair number of attacks throughout her history, having now been subject to vandalism or attempted vandalism ve times. In 1956, it was doused in acid by a vandal, a ecting its lower portions. It was a victim of vandalism again in 1956 as a homeless Bolivian man named Ugo Unzaga Villegas threw a rock at the masterpiece, chipping some paint o of her elbow. While on tour in Japan in 1974, being displayed temporarily at the Tokyo National Museum, the Mona Lisa was attacked anew by a woman using a wheelchair as a protest against the museum’s lack of accessibility for patrons such as herself. She attempted to spray the artwork with red paint, but only managed to get the glass case, leaving the work undamaged. More recently, in 2009, a disgruntled Russian woman angrily threw a ceramic mug at the Mona Lisa, which shattered against the bulletproof glass, leaving the painting undamaged. The most recent attempt to vandalise the Mona Lisa occurred in 2022 when an apparent climate activist dressed as a woman using a wheelchair to manipulate his way into getting closer to the famed work, per the Louvre’s standard procedures for people with reduced mobility. Once close, he jumped from his wheelchair, tried and failed to smash the bulletproof glass protecting the painting, then smeared cake on the glass.
The Starry Night: Observation of a Nocturnal Landscape
It is during his stay at a mental institution that the Flemish modern artist Vincent van Gogh created one of the most widely recognized pieces of artwork in the world. Indeed, the artist checked himself into the Saint-Rémy asylum in Southern France as he was seeking respite from the plaguing depression when he painted The Starry Night in 1889. It is for this reason in particular that art historians postulate that the latter portrays his direct observations and artistic interpretation of his view of the countryside from his room’s window, as well as the memories and emotions this landscape evoked in him. Today, visitors from all around the world visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York to view this iconic painting, which is currently estimated to be worth $100m.
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Edvard Munch was inspired by “a gust of melancholy,” as he declared in his diary when he painted The Scream in 1893. It is because of this, coupled with the artist's personal life trauma, that the painting takes on a feeling of alienation. In e ect, the Norwegian artist su ered from depression, anxiety, and probably schizophrenia and this painting attests to his attempts to rationalize and explain his experience through what he knew best: painting. He refused treatment for some time stating: “My su erings are part of myself and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art.” In fact, when taking a closer look at the painting, the viewer could discern a text scribbled in pencil which reads Kan kun være malet af en gal Mand! (Can only have been painted by a madman!). New infrared images of the artwork obtained recently at the National Museum of Norway where the painting is exhibited con rm the ndings that Munch himself wrote this note.
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Visitors to the U zi Gallery in Italy are greeted by a majestic painting portraying the goddess of love and beauty Venus standing on a giant scallop shell, as pure and as perfect as a pearl. She is seen embarking on the island of Cyprus, born of sea spray and blown there by the winds Zephyr and Aura. The latter is met by a young woman, who is sometimes identi ed as one of the Graces or as the Hora of spring, and who holds out a cloak covered in owers. Inspired by Greek mythology, the Renaissance Italian artist Sandro Boticelli created this painting in 1486 and is today estimated to be worth $500m. Sources suggest that the painting was made to atter the head of the Medici family, Lorenzo de Medici. Other interpretations postulate that the gure of Venus was made in the likeness of Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci, who was the wife of the Florentine merchant, Marco Vespucci.
Greco-Roman Mythology and Beauty: The Birth of Venus
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The Scream of a ‘Madman’By Fatih Fayed
What Constitutes a Museum in the 21st century?
We live today in a profoundly museological world – a world that in no small measure is itself a product and e ect of some two centuries of museological meditations. Indeed, museums are one of the central sites at which our modernity has been generated, (en)gendered, and sustained over that time. They are so natural, ubiquitous, and indispensable to us today that it takes considerable e ort to think ourselves back to a world without them, and to think through the shadows cast by the massive and dazzling familiarity of this truly uncanny social technology. The word museum itself is generally de ned as “a building or space for the display of art, usually from the museum's own collection.” It could be in public or private ownership, and may be accessible to all or have restrictions in place, so in that sense, is a street full of gra ti a museum? and is an art class a museum? And if it can be public or private is a cupboard full of artworks a museum? At any rate, there are four main functions a museum needs to achieve and maintain, in order to preserve its status:
- to collect artworks and preserve them according to established museal standards. - to organise and classify artworks. - to publicly display its artworks. - to instruct its audience(s).
ICOM (International Council of Museums) creates a new de nition for museums every year. This year, they de ned a museum as “ a not-for-pro t, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability.” This novel de nition is aligned with and attests to some of the major changes that ocurred in the contemporary museum environment, such as recognising the importance of inclusivity, community participation and sustainability. A new President and Executive Board will be elected during the Ordinary General Assembly. The new governance will meet in due course to set the next steps for the implementation and adoption of the new de nition, in collaboration with the ICOM Committee for the Museum De nition. Just as with the prcess of the revision, inclusion, transparency, and participation will of course remain at the heart of this new phase.
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Resiliency and Contradiction of museums
Museums—whether devoted to art, architecture, science, nature, the news, history, or anything else—tend to be resilient organizations that can usually survive private and/or public funding crises, political attacks, and other existential challenges. Museums are resilient precisely because they embody contradictory yet ultimately compatible conditions: they are dependent upon large amounts of capital to operate, and they are—certainly in the case of contemporary art institutions—also often dependent on artistic interrogations of capital. Capital and its critique exist comfortably (and/or uncomfortably) side by side within museums, so that we can have patrons with conservative political views funding museums that present exhibitions that re ect progressive perspectives. Such contradictions and tensions have become normative. One might even suggest, invoking Herbert Marcuse’s ideas, that museums are the perfect platforms on which to perform repressive tolerance, even though they create the impression that nothing is indeed being repressed. Much has already been written about the art museum as a site of profound cultural, economic, class, and other contradictions. Today, in a world in which art museums are only possible through massive accumulations of capital and power, does art still stand a chance to engage in any reasonable critique of these institutional conditions? Are mega-museums the last great hope for art, art’s fortress against intolerance? Can we still a ord, so to speak, to critique museums—or, for museums to critique themselves—in this confusing, troubled period, when there is more money for art than perhaps at any other moment in history, and yet so much economic inequity at the same time? Does such critical analysis threaten the future of museums—or, on the contrary, make the future of museums potentially even stronger? The museum of the present and the museum of the future shouldn’t be places of self-censorship; to the contrary, the museum of the future should be a palace devoted to freedom of expression regardless of the content of that expression.
The Future of Museums
There are a number of global standards that have been established on how to build and operate modern and/or contemporary art museums which we could use as the criteria for future developments. However, it must be noted that the vast majority of museum visitors are not arts professionals, and their criteria of evaluating their museum experiences may not be in sync with the art professional class. We are therefore presented with an interesting tension: museums endeavor to think about their public outreach and education programs, and yet there is a lot of unpredictability, notably in the encounter between multiple publics visiting one museum. So what makes a museum relevant, and what criteria do we use to determine this, moving forward? Is it the quality of a museum’s exhibitions? The quality of a museum’s architectural design? The quality of a museum’s social media presence, its commitment to diversity, and equal pay? The quality (and/or quantitative business success) of a museum’s restaurant? And the quality (and/or quantitative business success) of a museum’s shop? Or is the success or failure of a museum predicated upon the quality of its board; its committees; its politics; its investments; its divestments; its users’ experiences (since museums are driver’s in the so called experience economies); and its membership statistics? Or perhaps, the number of museum sel es people post on Instagram and other social media platforms? Or, ultimately, all of the above and more? On the one hand, in terms of a notion of democratized culture, the fact that museums seem to be bringing art to more and more people might be welcomed as a positive development. On the other, the crowding of certain museums produces another kind of museum experience ( eeting engagements framed by endless distractions), as well as the pressure to design other kinds of museum spaces to accommodate an over ow of bodies. Will the future bring us museums engineered only for crowds, yet bereft of art? Such developments suggest that some people have forgotten that a fundamental role of the museum (whether these institutions are public, private, or hybrids) is to be a place wherein diverse audiences and constituencies encounter art that they may not understand and that may widen their experience of the world. To enter a museum is to enter a space of complexity and dissensus, a civic space wherein if we cannot agree, we must at the very least agree to disagree. At any rate, our world is unthinkable without this extraordinary invention.
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The Introduction of Pop Art into the Western Art Canon
By Kathryn McGuire
Andy Warhol was in no way famous in 1962. After being a commercial artist for high-end advertisers, he wanted to become a “real” artist recognised by museums and critics. It is for this reason in particular that he invented the emerging Pop art style, drawing inspiration from mass culture, with its emphasis on low cost and mass produced products. The latter style rejected traditional art subjects, including realistic portraits, landscapes, mythological scenes and other subjects thought of by institutions such as museums and art critics as unique “art” (Figs 1,2 and 3).
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(Figure 1 - Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam, c.1512, fresco, The Sistine Chapel.)
(Figure 3 - Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon Crossing the Alps, 1800-01,oil on canvas, Chateau de Malmaison.)
(Figure 2 - Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa (La Gioconda), 1503-1517, oil on canvas, The Louvre.)
(Figure 4 - Claes Oldenburg, Floor Cake, 1962, synthetic polymer paint and latex on canvas, The MoMA.)
Instead, taking images from anything - comic books, advertising, to other elements of pop culture outside the ‘art world’, as well as using humour and irony to comment on mass production and consumerism dominating life and culture in America was favoured (Figs 4 and 5). This artistic ambition to eradicate all traces of their art-making and individuality in their mediums, processes and displays was an attempt to make the pop art object look mechanical and mass-produced like the subject it is portraying.
Warhol opened a small show, his rst solo exhibition, in Los Angeles - thirty-two paintings of Campbell’s Soup, each one a di erent avour displayed together like lines of products at a shop (Fig 6). Though they appear identical to the product they are imitating, Warhol created them by projecting the images onto his canvas, tracing the details, and then carefully lling them in. Then, for consistency, he used a hand stamp to make the pattern around the label’s bottom edge. However, there are still minor details, human touches and mistakes, such as tiny splashes of paint, and the stamps being uneven, that made Warhol’s handiwork evident to the viewer, and created a feeling that did not quite contradict his intentions of being a machine-like entity, but rather slipped in a human element, an inevitable split up that can only come from a human attempting mass perfection.
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(Figure 6 - Andy Warhol, Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962, synthetic polymer paint on 32 canvases, The MoMA.)
(Figure 5 - Robert Rauschenberg, Sweet Dreams, Baby!, 1970, screenprints, Smithsonian American Art Museum.)
GALLERY OF HONOUR
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A very special thanks to the individuals who made this third edition of the art newsletter possible:
Andy Raza ndralambo
Emily Duncan
Famke Wanningen
Fatih Fayed
Gigi Pengilley
Jana Samy Sayed Abdelhafez
Kathryn McGuire Yaken Muammar
ART AMBASSADORS:
ART DEPARTMENT:
Daniel Emery
Jayne Newsam
Monica Zakka
Thomas Smith