Bill Viola's "Acceptance" analyzed

Bill Viola’s 2010 video installation titled “Acceptance” is one that resonated strongly with me. The black and white video begins as a blurry image of a person looks as if lights are being cast down on it. As the video goes on the audience learns that it is actually water that is being rained down upon the figure. This figure gets easier to see and now the figure has transformed into a woman, the video continues and slowly the woman’s head begins to change. The audience sees the body of the naked lady but now, with what looks like Bill Viola’s head. The water slows to an almost stop towards the end of the video and the woman body with a man’s head walks forward through the water starring straight towards the audience.

When I began watching this video I had the word “acceptance” in my mind due to the title so I tried to associate what I was seeing with the definition. Acceptance defined is “in human psychology a person's assent to the reality of a situation, recognizing a process or condition (often a negative or uncomfortable situation) without attempting to change it, protest”. As the video went on I just tried to “accept” the images I was looking at. I think Viola was commenting not only to accept other people’s choices and appearances but also to accept yourself for who you are. The blurriness in the beginning makes our brains search for some kind of meaning to the unclear picture and then the naked woman emerges clearly and we see her walking through the “waterfall”. After watching a few times, I see that the woman is walking through the water possibly on her journey to becoming her “true self” which is the final image of a man with the body of a woman. It is possible that Viola was specifically touching upon transgender people’s struggles to be accepted and understood by others and by themselves.  Also a broader idea of to just accept what is in front of you without a further reason other than it is simply reality.  The naked body of the woman walking through the water might make some uncomfortable and the woman seems to be screaming during her “transformation” which indicates she could be in pain. This symbolizes that the path to changing and thus accepting these changes are not necessarily easy. The idea of accepting might also be an uncomfortable concept for people to grasp therefore it is important to be conscious of your psychological rejection of things that are unknown to us or not “normal” and to refrain from doing this. Discomfort and pain can be a part of growing and understanding the reality around you but at the end of the video the audience sees the calm, clear image of the naked woman with the head of a man, fully emerged from the water and moving forward.

Visual Art Final Essay: Pippilotti Rist’s “Selbstlos im Lavabad (Selfless in the Bath of Lava)”

            The visual and audio installation by Pippilotti Rist titled “Selbstlos im Lavabad (Selfless in the Bath of Lava)” has found a permanent home at the Moma PS1 in Queens.  This very small piece of art is embedded in the floor of the lobby. This video was first exhibited in Basel, Switzerland in 1994. In a later exhibition in Zürich, Switzerland, the video was shown at the foot of a Madonna and Child sculpture. In the video, Rist is featured naked swimming in a glowing lava bath and cries out “I am a worm and you are a flower!” It catches people off guard because it is so small yet loud enough to hear while standing by it. You have to search for the small hole to see where the voice is coming from.

            This piece is very interesting to me. I enjoy a lot of Rist’s work and this one especially brings about an important social issue. From research, I learned that Rist was brought up Christian and once she grew up rejected the religion. She did not like the way Christianity made people think they are less than other beings (God). This particular piece refers to the religious notion of damnation. In Christian belief, damnation is the condemnation to eternal punishment in hell. I think when making “Selfless in the Bath of Lava”, she could have been thinking about how people might feel like others are better than them and how that makes people feel very small, like depicted in this tiny visual installation. Her screaming out to people who would be just walking by also indicates that she is hoping for someone who is higher up than her (God) to stop and rescue her from eternal damnation in the small hole.

            Pipilotti Rist is definitely a unique character. This piece evokes a lot of feelings especially if you are someone who believes in Heaven and Hell. If you do something that is considered to be a sin you are casted to Hell which is just fire and rock and you are never allowed to leave.  When this belief is taught to children it can shape how they act, think, feel and view themselves. Having God as an overseer to your life and telling you how life should be conducted can make one feel very restricted or even controlled. Knowing that Rist is a free spirit who promotes self-love and recognizes the beauty in all things natural I can confidently say that “Selfless in the Bath of Lava” can be viewed as how not to live one’s life. To live life in fear of eternally living out your afterlife in Hell would waste the wonderful experiences and natural process of growing up and making mistakes. If more people believed that it is not necessary to totally outcast people when they do something that doesn’t fit a requirement of the Bible or another religion then there might not be so many self-conscious people. I am not sure exactly if this is what Rist intended for her viewers to think about but I think regardless it is important for people of all ages to recognize that they are human and will make mistakes and will survive through the consequences of their actions and hopefully learn from them without being held in an eternal Hell by themselves, or by other people or other Gods.

Pipilotti Rist Oral Presentation Outline

Oral Presentation Outline

Introduction: Who is Pipilotti Rist?

Pipilotti Rist, original name Elizabeth Charlotte Rist was born on June 21^st 1962 in Grabs, Switzerland. She is a video installation artist known for work about sexuality, gender, and the human body. The name Pipilotti is a fusion of her nickname, Lotti, with Pippi Longstocking created by Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren. She began making super 8 films while in college and now uses high definition film. By the late 1980s, she was producing vivid and slickly made videos which lasted only a few minutes, and contained alterations in their colors, speed, and sound. Since the early 1990s, her films and installations have been shown in museums and galleries internationally.

Unlike other conceptual artists who take a more intellectual approach, she conveys the critical element of her work by creating an intensely sensual experience. She is renowned for bridging the gulf between popular culture and art, and for merging various media. Although her work is regarded as feminist by some art critics, her colorful visual art transmits a sense of happiness and simplicity to its audience. Throughout her career, her multimedia installations have been capturing the many contradictions and anxieties of modern society. Her experimental works which have been both successful and influential are exhibited at many important art collections worldwide. With her innovative style she has emerged as one of the most recognizable names in contemporary video art. Her work drew deliberately on MTV-style pop music videos, but she added a reflective element of her own.

Themes

-body image

-beauty of the natural state of things

-nature and purity; flowing water, flowers

-animals and food

-vivid, bright colors

-humor

-hallucinating elements

-denies explicit feminist agenda yet her work is filled with women body parts and powerful images of women and their bodies.

Inspiration

-Yoko Ono and Nam June Paik=Paik being the “father” of video art and the Fluxus movement, anti-elite emphasis on involving the viewer in the art piece, connecting art and everyday life.

Pipilotti Rist on her working methods march 2004

-She prefers working in small groups, largest 8 people at most because she wants to be involved in filming and editing process. She enjoys video work because it is social and it takes other professions to create full a project. Video also allows for experimental aspect when shooting a scene over and over again getting exactly how she wants it to be.

Visual Examples

1. Sip My Ocean

2. Ever is Over All

3. Pour Your Body

4. Pepperminta Preview

Discussion of Rist’s Art –information taken from video sources-

Pipilotti Rist’s “Pour your body out” at MoMA (Dec-Feb 2008) Timeout NY interview

This is a video insulation that was 200 feet across, 25 feet high and wrapped around the room on second floor of MoMa when it was being shown in 2008. She is known for vivid imagery of the body and landscape, the body as landscape and nature footage. To create her videos she cuts scenes into pieces, and will mix and match footage together.

This piece and most of her artwork makes you experience art, images are very large which can evoke positive feelings and a change of perception, the large images make people feel insignificant compared to the whole process of nature, most of her video insulations like this one have vivid color and sound. There was a giant round couch that resembled an eyeball from above also. At some points the room was all red from the images which symbolized bleeding and the menstruation cycle. The movement of the body is how she tried to make the images across the walls move.

Pipilotti Rist Interview at ACCA, I Packed the Postcard in My Suitcase, 2011-2012

Rist wants people to take time to bond their bodies with soul, she wants to give people different perspectives, wants to give people the opportunity to reflect differently in the atmosphere she has created, give space and landscape to immerse into art. She would like her living room to hold art insulation so that she can be inspired every day to live life as if there are no limits set on her decisions. She says that her work is 50% prepared 50% freestyle.

She speaks of how video is a bad copy of our eyes therefore she never tried to show reality which is always sharper, so she creates videos which show her perception and the natural time frame people think in. (ex: how in memory sometimes a month goes by what feels like very slow or when a year seems to have flown by very fast.) She uses colors to show real true color because in memories the color is faded and wants the reality of memories to be noticed; the bigger the projection is the slower the images move so she adjusts them by hand and adjusts color individuality because no two projectors are the same.  Now she uses high definition film but she used to use 8 mm film only. Rist uses internet to research and share which she likes. bad copies of human brain. She’s humans a very complicated beautiful creatures, how everyone so dedicated and full of humor and professional feel, if you putt100 hours into one minute of film and then person who views the 1 minute gets 100 hours out of it.

6 artists on decisive moments behind their work by Louisiana Channel

Using “Ever is Over all” 1997 as an example her  inspiration comes from random events, some are very well thought over, no two projects are the same inspirational events, a guy at a newspaper gave her the okay to create her own spread and she wanted to have an old lady as the front picture and they wanted her to change the picture so she got upset and wanted to smash his car, so the aggression and destruction she felt she made a positive thing by creating art and the girl being very calm as if she does this every day, car is symbol of given things, not long ago that people did not have cars people get used to things very quickly and she wants to be a counter force against that.

Major Works

-In 1998, she was one of six finalists for the Hugo Boss Prize, an award administered every two years by the Guggenheim Foundation for significant achievement in contemporary art, and her single-channel video installation ‘Sip My Ocean’ (1996) was shown at the ‘Guggenheim Museum SoHo’ in New York City.

-Her work has been the subject of solo shows at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; AroS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Århus, Denmark; Fondazione Prada, Milan; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Tex.; and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Léon, Spain.

Awards and Achievements

- In 1999, she received the prestigious ‘Wolfgang Hahn Prize’ for her distinguished visual works.

-In 2001, she was honored with the ‘Art Prize’ of the City of Zurich.

-She was the recipient of Zürcher Kunstpreis, Stadt Zürich, Switzerland, in 2001 and an award from the Universität der Kunst, Berlin, in 2004.

-In 2009, her video "Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters)" won the award for ‘Best Exhibition Of Digital, Video, or Film’ at the 26th annual awards presented by ‘The International Association of Art Critics (AICA)’. The same year, she also won the ‘Joan Miró Prize’ in Barcelona.

-In 2010, she won the ‘Cutting the Edge Award’ at the 27th Annual Miami International Film Festival.

-In 2012, she won the title of ‘International Artist of the Year’ by the Bazaar Art, Hong Kong, China.

-In 2014, she received the Best Site Development award from Baukoma Awards for Marketing and Architectur

Bibliography

1.                  Kennedy, Randy. "The World’s Most Colorful Video Artist." The New York Times Magazine. The New York Times, 11 Nov. 2011. Web. 2 Dec. 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/magazine/15rist-t.html?_r=0>.

2.                  Pipilotti Rist Talks about Her Working Methods. Perf. Pipilotti Rist. SF Moma, 2011. Art Forum, 2011. Web. 2 Dec. 2015. <http://artforum.com/video/mode=large&id=28762>.

3.                  Conner, Jill. "Pipilotti Rist: Rooms With Many Views." Interview Magazine. N.p., 20 Sept. 2010. Web. 3 Dec. 2015. <http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/pipilotti-rist-luhring-augustine#_>.

4.                  6 Artists on Decisive Moments behind Their Work. Perf. Jonathan Meese,Bill Viola,Leigh Ledare,”Elina Brotherus,Yajoi Kusama,Pipilotti Ris. Museum of Modern Art Louisiana, n.d. Web. 3 Dec. 2015. <http://channel.louisiana.dk/video/six-artists-decisive-moments>.

5.                  "Pipilotti Rist Interview at ACCA, I Packed the Postcard in My Suitcase ,2011-2012." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z_-ofYzkqE>.

6.                  "Pipilotti Rist at MoMA." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LjjC-jx1Ys>.

Museum of Modern Art Visit

Max Ernst

Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale

1924

    In the creation “Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale” by Max Ernst we see a few unexpected objects that look almost glued onto flat painted surfaces. This piece was created in 1924 which is the year that Surrealism was founded. There is a small red house accompanied by an open red gate. Through the small gate the large blue sky is revealed and we can see two people. One is a female who looks like is running in the front yard of the house fending off the bird in the sky. The other person is a man carrying a baby on top of the house touching a large button or grabbing an oversized knob, which is one of the items like looks glued onto the picture. There is a lumped over image on the floor next to the girl running what could be another person. Ernst has said that the nightingale is a reference to the death of his sister in 1897 and also a reference e to a hallucination he experienced when suffering from a fever of the wood on a panel near his bed turning into a menacing nightingale. Apparently birds often appear in Ernst’s work. All of the people are black and white while the rest of the image is color which is interesting.  The house, gate and scenic sky and lawn all make sense to be a part of the same picture but the large knob attached to the frame of the picture is out of place.  Ernst created volume and depth by attaching the gate and knob to the flat image of the sky and sprawled out landscape.  Even though we can look at this piece and see that it is unrealistic, the way Ernst added just a few out of place items that are different dimensions give a different feel to the air. The image seems like it could be a dream or a memory that is being pieced together incorrectly.  Ernst was involved in the Dada movement and later became one of the forefathers of Surrealism.

Gino Severini

Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin

1912

In the painting “Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin” by Gino Severini we see Cubism exhibited. Severini draws a woman with brown curls and a white, blue and pink dress dancing to music in at Paris nightclub Bal Tabarin. The different images in the picture are references to the time period, around 1912. There is an Arab riding a camel which refers to the Turco-Italian War of 1911 and flags incorporated into the picture symbolize nationalism.  The cubist style makes our eyes jump around and have to work on piecing the images together but nonetheless Severini has captured movement.  There are many warm colors used in this oil painting and it is hard to tell through pictures but there are also sequins used to add texture. We see the word “polka” on the left side of the image which is a Central European dance and genre of dance music throughout Europe and America which originated in the middle of the 19th century. Also in the bottom right corner the word “valse” meaning waltz in French is visible. This image is similar to the Max Ernst image, even though different styles, both pictures look like collages. 

Dada Creation

      I think that the way I enlarged the penguins to be larger than the desert scene behind them brings an emphasis to the animals. I used a desert scene as the background because it is such a contrast to this particular animals natural habitat. When I thought of this idea I wanted to bring attention to climate issues. The penguins are used to very cold climates and would not do well in a desert environment. These penguins seem like they are conversing with each other by the way they are positioned and the fading out of their images shows that they will die unless the climate issues are given more attention. The penguins are in black and white while the desert is not completely black and white but have less color than the animals so that the audience can see that the land will always be something that is here whether we take care of it or not. The land will continue to change accordingly in either positive or negative ways , but the animals that depend on the land will have a hard time adapting quickly enough and will eventually go extinct.

Impressionism and Post-impressionism

Everyday activities and nature’s unaltered beauty began to be more interesting to people instead of depicting scientific or academic scenes around 1874. Impressionist artists turned their attention to the life around them. They would sketch very fast and would copy down what they saw with their own eyes. They did not paint pictures of any moral message; they just painted simply the image in front of them and used lighting and various colors to make an image. Some of these artist used repetition like in the series of works titled “Haystacks” by Claude Monet. The different time of day is reflected in the art and different angles and lighting helps the audience know the time he was painting the image and what viewpoint the image is being painted from. Small fast strokes make up the larger picture for the artwork created during the Impressionist period.

Monet is famous for this style of art. He used small strokes of paint that if seen up close looked like individual markings and would cast a blurry image. When looked at from a distance the small strokes came together to form vivid pictures and left a bold image in mind which was different from the traditional mixing of colored paint first and then painting with it. This was a huge shift in the way artist caught the eye of the audience. The impressionist were all about light and color and formed more saturated pictures because of the way they did not mix colors they simply put them on the palate close to each other in small dots or strokes and let the human eye mix the colors themselves almost like an optical illusion. Japanese prints and the invention of photography led to new ways of structuring paintings as well. The “open form” or cropping of an image was introduced to the art world during this period as well. The spread of colonization changed the cultural art of European groups during this time as well. Many non-western cultures were invaded which allowed native people’s traditional art to come in contact with western and European artists. These art forms influenced artists and shifted art into the Post-Impressionist period.

The painting here by Monet is titled “Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies” and is from the Impressionism period. You can see by looking at the image closely how small the strokes are. The image looks almost dream-like and fragile but nonetheless is clearly a bridge over a lily pond. There is no deeper meaning here that Monet is trying to convey. He is simply painting what he sees in front of him. The natural beauty of the lily’s reflection in the pond and the bridge over it is the artist’s only message.

The post-impressionist period is characterized by suggesting deeper meaning of a natural scene which started around 1886. These artists used impressionistic techniques but they also incorporated more passion and expression in their work by using colors. They allowed their personal interest to be incorporated into their art and used color to influence the audience’s mood and emotion about what they were viewing.

In Paul Gauguin’s Post-Impressionist painting “Two Tahitian Women”, we see him use bold colors and flat perspective to convey the beauty of these women.  He used facial expression here to give the image a serene feel and there is a sense of confidence portrayed with these women barring their chest and not seeming to care. It seems like Gauguin was trying to show appreciation and admiration of these women’s confidence of their naiveté.  This like Monet’s “Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies” is a depiction of what the artist is viewing in real life but Gauguin adds in his own personal feel and allows the audience to take away a more moral message rather than just appreciate the beauty of his art.

Renaissance & Baroque

The Renaissance was a period in history beginning around 14th century and ending close to the 17th century.  Before the Renaissance, the Middle Ages riddled Europe with territorial battles and lacked focus on much else. The meaning of the word Renaissance is “born anew” which accurately describes this period since it is one of the most significant times of growth leading mankind into modern history. Another equally important era for art especially was between the Renaissance and modern times which is called the Baroque period.

During the Renaissance and continuing into the Baroque period, new techniques and forms of expression through artwork birthed that people had never seen before. Secularism was introduced in this time period which allowed for people to explore art, literature, philosophy, music, politics, science, and religion with different eyes. With all these new ideas being introduced, Renaissance scholars guided their studies through a humanist scope, which led to depictions of real life forms and human emotion in art created during this time. Humanism was a distinct cultural movement because it broke the medieval tradition of having solely a devout religious motivation for creating art or literature. Humanists were concerned with secular subjects rather than just religious themes which was a huge change. There are certain people in history who were key to the expansion of these new ideas. The Medici family were the most important and influential besides the artist themselves during this period in Italy. The Medici’s are dubbed the “Godfathers of the Renaissance” due to their funding of crucial architectural projects and artwork. A pirate wishing to become a part of the Vatican was the catalyst to the rise of the Medici’s who ended up repaying the family heavily when he later became Pope John the 23rd.

Diana Bathing 1565

In the painting “Diana Bathing” by François Clouet, we see classic and important Renaissance methods used. This mythological scene represents Diane de Poitiers, Henri II’s mistress surrounded by nymphs and satyrs. In the background on the left the imaginary equestrian portrait of Henri II is painted. Henri II was born in the Royal Château at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France and he is the son of François I and Claude de France. Catherine de' Medici, who was the daughter of Lorenzo II de' Medici and Madeleine de La Tour d'Auvergne, was arranged to marry Henri II on October 28th 1533 when both were 14 years old. Henri II and Diane continued their affair well into his marriage to Catherine. This painting represents the rise to power of the Guise family years later as Henri II lay on his death bed. The Guises were the most powerful family in France after the death of the last Valois King, Henri II. Through the family’s influence with the French crown, Marie Guise had been chosen to marry James V of Scotland leading to the birth of Mary Queen of Scots.

This painting was a reference to a story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In the story, Diana the huntress, seen in the middle being robed, was disturbed by the hunter, Acteon who is on the left painted as Henri II on the horse, as she bathed in a forest stream. She turned him into a stag and he was killed by his own hounds. The dead stag is seen on the right side of the painting. Clouet used political satire which was introduced during the Renaissance by the book Dante’s Inferno. Clouet shows Marie, who is depicted as Diana, naked and being clothed by nymphs in Royal crimson robes. Catherine is depicted naked also, sitting and weeping due to her husband Henri II’s death (the dead stag). The others, dressing Diana, are thought to be Anne d’Este, the young Duchess of Guise and Marie’s mother who is also naked.  They are surrounded by the Guise brothers as satyrs praising Diana’s actions. It was dangerous to paint people in the nude, especially those of royal decent, which probably represents how the artist felt of the Guise’s quick rise to power.

The influences of Humanism are seen in this painting as well. We see can point out individual figures being depicted instead of just stereotyped symbolic figures. The figures look very realistic and emotion can be seen on their faces in contrast to Byzantine art which was nonrealistic and had no use of perspective. Also, instead of just religious figures being painted, the use of real people like in “Diana Bathing” reflected the growing idea that man and the Divine are allowed to be merged. Clouet played with the exploration of virtue and the almost dangerous portrayal of the events happening around him in this oil painting. 

           Baroque is the term used to describe European art created from about 1600 to 1750.  Classic Baroque works depict reality and also are characterized with being extremely dramatic and rich with emotion and vivid colors. Baroque artists made a point to focus on size, lighting patterns, and interior decoration. They also used bold colors, a variety of materials and many other techniques to appeal to the viewer’s senses and perception. One of the Baroque period’s most famous artists was Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), an architect, sculptor, theater set designer and painter. He was also the person who reintroduced the baldachin to architect, the spiral columns that are on top of the altar of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and the walkway in front of that church. Another famous Baroque artist is Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Caravaggio was very talented and created many paintings during this period. As his success grew so did his inner turmoil. The painter was known to be violent and had issues with drinking and gambling which led to him killing a man during a bar fight.

David with the Head of Goliath 1610

In Caravaggio’s painting “David with the Head of Goliath” he uses classic Baroque techniques. The center is the brightest part with extreme contrast to the almost black background and corners. On the faces of these two figures we see a lot of emotion which was a key element used to create Baroque art. Caravaggio depicted light being shed on parts of David’s body and a part of Goliath’s head to bring focus there. This illuminated/white light quality is seen in a lot of Baroque styled art to control focal points. There is immense detail in this painting to create a very vivid life like quality and evoke emotional responses. Baroque art is identified as being very dramatic and during the time period art was used to restore Catholicism as the dominant religion.  Here we see a story from the bible, David the young true King of Israel looks sad holding the head of the slayed giant Goliath. It seems as if he is not pleased with his victory of defeating his enemy. It is said that in this painting Goliath is actually a self-portrait of Caravaggio himself. Some argue that both figures are representative of Caravaggio. For that viewpoint they say young David represents young Caravaggio, and the bloody head of Goliath represents Caravaggio as an adult. We see how Renaissance art introduced a more realistic detailed mindset for artists while Baroque art added on to that as even more realistic with a focus more on dramatic elements and intense emotion.