1 book, 13 naked ladies.

So, I've been reading "Believing is Seeing" which is the book form of a slide show created by Mary Anne Staniszewski for undergrad students at RISD in the early 90's. Actually, it was a pretty fun read, though it resembles in structure, as well as in content in parts, the far superior John Berger book/ video "Ways of Seeing." I should reread (or watch on You tube) the Berger again soon, for one thing it has a whole helluva lot more naked ladies.

I dutifully dog-eared, because, as I'm finding with all my readings, my retention rate is low (thank god for blogging, or it would all pass in one ear and right out the other.

Firstly, there was an interesting observation that we remember reproductions of art more than the actual art. Remembering a postcard of a Michaelangelo rather that the actual experience of seeing a Michaelangelo. Which, since I grew up with the "Dress Me David" refrigerator magnets I'm prone to agree with. I remember seeing the actual David and being amazed at just how, well, flat it looked in its niche in the gallery. But am I remembering the reproduction aspect or the interaction aspect? I spent hours with the magnets, playing with them, as well as just having them right there in my everyday world.

Which brings me to the second concept- that Art was created sometime in the 18th-19th century, as people began collecting stuff. Before that you had images that you interacted with in church, or the cave, or in your pocket, as objects, not art. Much as I was interacting with my magnets. So, the author is saying that art became something that you only saw in a gallery, and therefore affected very few people, and I'm saying (I think) that with reproductions readily available of the masterpieces now conceived of as art, we are all allowed to interact with a Michaelangelo possibly in a similar way to the a stone-age man and his totemic stone Venus figure.

Then we get into the "why we create art" part of the book. She points out that Leonardo Davinci created drawings and paintings as a way to better understand what he was seeing. She seems to think that this way of painting, or illustrating, was a renaissance phenomenon. Which leads me to think she doesn't draw or paint.

"The term "ART" as we now understand it began to take on its modern meaning in the 18th century; an original creation, produced by an individual gifted by genius... Not solely political propaganda, not a religeous nor sacred object, neither magic nor craft, this thing called Art did not exist before the modern era." So, what do we call the things that are magically crafty, political and/or sacred? What is the original Obama Hope poster if not a fantastic combination of all those things? And Art?

There's a great couple of paragraphs tracing the history of this supposed Art (which, we come to understand really mostly means PAINTING, sculpture, some architecture and some photography)and lumping it together with fencing and optics and mechanics. I especially like this, since so many artists now do things like mechanics or horseback riding under the auspices of art. I mean, surviving in a hotel room with a wolf for a couple of days is art, right?

One thing that was revealed to me by this particular book was perhaps an answer to the question of what feminine art would look like. Apparently, importantly, women's artworks tend to be heavily reliant on concept to rationalize creation. I'm thinking of Mary Kelly's Post-Partum Document, or Cindy Sherman's Film Stills. These ladies are not making art for the pleasure of it, but the purpose. Maybe that's why I've always found them to be tediously unsensual, ugly and pedantic. Give me an ugly DeKooning any day- at least I don't get told by the painting itself what to think of it.

"The commercial counterpart of the gallery and museum is the boutique and the department store." Ah! that's why I love going to Target so much!