Art and Environment with Carla Bengston

            The most memorable thing about Carla Bengston’s guest lecture during week seven was the huge amount of amazing quotes that she provided for us, whether they were typed on the power point, or fresh out of her own mouth. It wasn’t the most exciting presentation of the term, but I could tell that this woman new her media like the back of her hand. One of the main questions she presented us with at the beginning of class was if we thought of humans as being part of nature, not part of nature at all, or if we thought they could be in both categories. I agree with people when they think that humans are not part of nature, because we are the main cause of all the stress being put on our fragile planet, but personally, I think we are definitely part of nature, because we are creatures living and working with our environment just like everything else. A main quote that I remember being shown to us also dealt with the ideas of humans versus nature. “If culture is always with us in nature, is nature always with us when we’re in culture?” To me, it is obvious that nature is always with us when we’re in culture, because I think that everything in our lives is based off of nature. Everything we own, everything we eat, everything we do, all involves nature in some way, shape, or form.           

            I always complain about how the guest speakers never show enough of their own work, and this week is no different, but I understand she was short on time. Something that I thought was amazing was how she incorporated nature into her art by letting ants step in paint and spread it around over the material. I never would have thought of this concept, and to see it in action on her personal video was incredible. I also liked how she decided to leave the materials with the ants, because they were using it now, and she didn’t want to take away what she had given them. Her videos and images all around were very interesting. The video that gave an insight on the journey of a cockroach was unbelievable, and it almost gave me a real ‘Bug’s Life’ point of view. There are so many movies out there that try to put you into the eyes of the insects, but the detail in this clip went above and beyond that.

            The thing I liked about Kiki Smith is that she referred to her family as being similar to the Addams family, and before she even said that, I totally thought of scary movies when I got my first glance at her dark eyes, scraggly hair, and crooked teeth. She is one of those artists that really fits into the mold of what she is trying to portray, and I like that, because an important quality in a good artist is staying true to his or herself. The imagery of the dead animals freaked me out and intrigued me all at the same time. I didn’t have an issue with the death part of the work at all, but I was bothered to think about what goes through this woman’s mind. This work with the animals was her link to nature, like we spoke about in lecture. I was fascinated with Kiki’s work because she truly engages with her art, like when she used the cast of her own face and body parts for the person huddled up and dead on the ground. She had the same extreme passion and love for her work that I could see in Carla Bengston.

I started by reading “Barthes for Beginners” because after listening in lecture, I was afraid to read the real one, but I didn’t understand what it meant at all. So, I prepared myself, and moved on to reading the real thing. Even though it was only four pages, it was loaded with brilliant concepts, and I didn’t fully grasp those concepts until our discussion on Thursday. In short, Roland is trying to say that a million people can look at one piece of art, or read one piece of literature, and each will have a completely different idea and personal understanding of what that material is about. Ty asked, “does it really matter what the artist intends?” My answer to that is yes, of course it matters, but the opinions that the viewer makes about it and the meaning that they take out of it is equally important. This talk in lecture also works perfectly for the online materials for William Kentridge, because the purpose for his own work was important, but the students had to make their own opinions and meaning about his work. I am generally interested by everything we see in this class, whether it is my style or not, but I have to say that I have never hated any art more than William’s. I can’t even tell you exactly what it was, and I felt like I was the only one in the whole auditorium feeling that way, but I honestly almost had to leave because I hated his videos so much. I couldn’t stand the darkness, I couldn’t stand his illustrations and cartoons, and I was disturbed by the dark feelings it gave me to watch those images. I’m not really sure what he intends the meaning to be for his work, but all I saw were gloomy and depressing themes that didn’t interest me at all.

On a brighter note, since I liked Carla’s ant paintings so much, the art I chose this week was a video of elephants painting on a canvas. In a way, it’s nature involved in art. Most people have seen these videos before, but it’s still amazing to me how smart animals can be.

Elephants Painting