image manipulation outside the humanities

Since our visit to the Neuroimaging lab, I have spent quite some time thinking about the importance of images outside of the humanities (which is admittedly my comfort zone!).  As we discussed briefly in class, I found it fascinating that aesthetics do eventually play an essential role in the work of Dan Stettler and his colleagues, as that which is published must necessarily be in some way visually appealing in order to capture the attention of journal-readers and conference attendees.  I had never considered that “beauty” – as subjective an idea as that may be – could find its way into what I had imagined to be the much more objective arena of neuroscience.  

After reading Christine Rosen’s article “The Image Culture,” which I presented in class, I began to wonder if digital manipulation is ever a problem in science-based imaging, which can, as Dan indicated, be so important to the advancement of one’s career.  Rosen discusses how manipulation has been used for decades to “visually settle scores,” often in the arena of politics, and how the advent of Photoshop in 1990 has had significant implications for our ability to trust what we see.

In researching cases of image manipulation in the sciences, I came across an article entitled "The Ethics of Digital Manipulation" which crystallized many of the issues we discussed in class.  The author is a practitioner of digital astrophotography, a field in which photographers have a vested interest in developing photographs of faraway galaxies which are visually appealing for publication, and the site demonstrates the difference between an unedited image of the night sky (red) and one which has been digitally enhanced (blue).

I also came across an article in the scientific journal Nature News entitled "Science Journals Crack Down on Image Manipulation," indicating that occurrences of such manipulation have increased in the past few years.  The United States Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Research Integrity (ORI), the agency tasked with reviewing submissions for publication in scholarly journals, noted that image manipulation "has escalated over the past two years" and that it is a "growing problem that needs to be dealt with."  The executive editor of Nature notes that "people don't  understand the difference between the beautification of an image and fraud."  The following graph accompanied the article was quite illustrative of the increase in such cases over the years, raising some interesting questions for me:

As digital manipulation technology becomes more sophisticated, does our tendency to use it for insidious purposes increase?  How do ethics play into this issue? Because everyone theoretically has access to these technologies, does the use of them constitute "fair game?"

armory show redux

I had not been to the Armory Show in a few years, and it was a pleasure to return yesterday.  Art fairs can be overwhelming experiences, and this one was no different - it is a challenge to focus on the works on display while attempting to weave one's way through hundreds of visitors (and, in a few cases, former colleagues) doing the same; however, I did manage to identify a number of works that were of interest to me and enjoyed being in the presence of such diverse offerings.

To me, the show represented the ideal mix of work by established and emerging artists.  The Armory Show's focus is highly contemporary, and thus the works on display skewed rather heavily towards the latter group. Works by more established artists were relatively few and far between (I spotted a large Damien Hirst skull painting at White Cube, a few works by Vik Muniz, and a Serrano photograph), and I enjoyed discovering photographs, drawings, paintings, and sculpture by names which were entirely unfamiliar to me.

Our class discussion of Broys' Art Power, with its discussions of the role of curators and critics, brought up some interesting issues for me.  I came to realize that I tend to compare the experience of walking through the Armory Show to that of wandering through a contemporary art museum exhibition, though intellectually I am well aware that the functions of the two events are entirely disparate.  While the Armory serves an entirely commercial purpose, exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial and shows at such contemporary spaces at the New Museum are mounted in the interest of capturing what is, in fact, the "art of our time."

I also find it interesting that critics consistently provide commentary on art fairs, as though they are comparable to carefully curated museum exhibitions.  A fair which represents the independent choices of over a hundred dealers showcasing the work of the artists in their stable is different from a cohesive exhibition in an institution which has employed curators to organize a group of works around a central purpose or theme.  Nonetheless, the press often treats them in a similar fashion.  Below are links to the New York Times reviews of both.

New York Times review of the Armory Show

New York Times review of the Whitney Biennial

armory show 2010 - initial thoughts

In looking at the works I selected to photograph at the Armory Show I was struck by how many of them were reminiscent (or overtly derivative) of works by other artists whose work I enjoy.

This Gavin Turk painting was a riff on Robert Indiana's "Love" (and certainly brings to mind the issue of whether Turk's appropriation constitutes fair use of Indiana's original)...

...this "Bad Beuys" painting is in some way critical of (or an homage to) the work of performance artist and sculptor Joseph Beuys...

...the milk-drop photograph by an artist whose name I did not record is simply an inverted version of Harold Edgerton's "Milkdrop Coronet" of 1957 (again, the fair use question)...

...this sculpture was a humorous take on Degas' "Little Dancer, Age Fourteen" (1881), and represented what might happen if the young girl were to stumble off her pedestal...

...Vik Muniz's drawing was derivative of one by 18th century Italian artist Giovanni Batista Piranesi.  Muniz is one of my favorite artists - I was fortunate enough to visit his Brooklyn studio last summer - and this work was unlike anything of his I had ever seen before in its demonstration of his extraordinary abilities as a draughtsman...

...In its barrenness, this small work reminded me of Ed Ruscha's lonely 1966 painting "Standard Station..."

...and even the Hirst skull painting from 2007, with its perspectival lines and rough surface, reminded me of a Francis Bacon I had recently seen in a retrospective at the Metropolitan.

Upon returning home and looking at the set of images with which I emerged from Pier 94, the following themes became evident:

- I apparently choose to engage with certain images more than others because they possess an aura of familiarity to me (the above comparisons make this quite clear!).  I admire the work of Francis Bacon as well as that of Piranesi, thus is stands to reason that I should enjoy works which are quite obviously derivative of theirs.  


Are the artists whose work I saw today consciously commenting on the work of their predecessors (or, in some cases, contemporaries)?  Or am I projecting my own preferences and misinterpreting them entirely?  I believe there is a continuum - in some cases, as in the Gavin Turk, there is a rather overt co-opting of the "original" artist's work.  Turk has appropriated works by Warhol as well for his own purposes, and refers to his own work as "highly clichéd."  In the case of the "Standard Station" analogy, however, I am not certain that the artist consciously sought to produce an image which evoked Ruscha's 1966 original.

- I appear to eschew abstraction in favor of realism.  I find it easier and more interesting to engage with works of art when they represent something which is comprehensible to me, which might explain my predilection for photography.  On the whole, there was quite a bit of realism to be seen at the Armory Show, a fact which I believe represents a shift from previous years, when abstraction appeared to be the norm.  

- I enjoy works which juxtapose the old with the new or the expected with the unexpected, imbuing them with an element of the surreal.  The below photographs were appealing to me for precisely this reason.  On the left, a church-like building contains plaster casts (or marble sculptures) of the human figure - while at the outset this does not seem surprising, it soon becomes clear that the primary visual elements are taken from two entirely different time periods.  On the right, the classical lion is covered in modern-day graffiti, resulting in the desecration (or adornment?) of this powerful figure.

expectations...

I am a second-year student in the M.A. Program in Arts Administration Program at Teachers College.  My academic and professional background is in the visual arts - I received a B.A. in Art History from Dartmouth and an M.A. in Modern Art from Christie's Education in New York, then worked for three and a half years in the Impressionist and Modern Department at Christie's prior to entering TC.  Over the past year, I have interned in the Marketing Department at MoMA and am currently interning in Development at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I just completed my thesis, entitled "Creative Collaboration or Corporate Conquest?: A Study of the Art Exhibition Programs of JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America," and look forward to graduating in May.

My interest in this course stems from my desire to reconnect with the art historical theories I enjoyed studying during college and my previous M.A. program.  While working at Christie's, I interacted with works of art every day, and while learning the more practical skills of the arts manager over the past two years I have felt rather distanced from the art itself.  Ultimately, I hope to work in a museum, where I will be surrounded by images every day.  I have never taken a course devoted specifically to visual culture studies, and I look forward to learning about the ever-changing role of images in society.  I am particularly interested in the role of images in new media and popular culture.

While it would be impossible to provide a comprehensive list of my favorite artists, I am fascinated by the work of James Casebere, Richard Diebenkorn, Henri Matisse, Thomas Struth, Pablo Picasso, Gerhard Richter, Joan Miro, Jean Dubuffet, Damien Hirst (in spite of myself!), Liza Lou, Yves Tanguy, Wayne Thiebaud, Henry Moore, and Robert Gober.

me...