Visual Arts and Film Studies - Term Paper Example

Visual Arts and Film Studies Introduction According to Connors ment in his 1979 interview, the art world is ineffective in communicating a message over a long period of time. Connor(2006) asserts that art is a largely unprofitable business that serves the interest of the audience for a short time before they lose interest (Conner 2006). In reference to his own paintings he says nobody wanted to buy them and they were soon replaced by fresher paintings in their exhibition over time. However, some artists are very effective in creating an artwork that captures the imagination of a whole culture and keeps them interested with art for a long time. One of the artists who have created very effective art in recent times is Giuseppe (2012) Pellicano. Giuseppe work is quite the opposite of the ineffective artist as described by Connor (2006), and his artistic work does not need to be defended. As a conceptual artists Giuseppe has been able to attract the attention of the masses to issues that are critical to the society. One of Giuseppe (2012)’s artwork the The Left.Left. Rigtht. Left. Porcelain has been able to attain critical acclaim for the artiste and cannot be said to be ineffectual as Connor (2006) claims. Under a concept similar to Eleanor Antin’s 100 boots concept, Giuseppe (2006) developed the Left. Left. Left, right, left exhibition to remember the American soldiers who lost their lives in the Iraq war. The Left.Left. Rigth. Left Installation According to Giuseppe (2012), the title emanates from a cadence call in the military used in ordering soldiers into marching formations. This call is made by the leading soldiers then the others repeat behind him in unison. The title was symbolic as it echoes with the Camaraderie and unity among the soldiers who fought in Operation Iraq freedom , Operation New Dawn and Operation Enduring Freedom. The artwork was created by using porcelain moulded into the shape of military boots. Initially, Giuseppe (2012) set out to mould a boot for every soldier who had lost their life in the three operations. The combat boot had five parts that made up the various side of a boot. The boot was made by bandying the five parts of the boot together and the pouring the mixed Porcelain into the mould. The mould was then allowed to shape for three hours before the mould was unfastened to release the boot that looks like the real life boot. The porcelain was allowed to dry further before removing the seams at the junction of the moulds. The surface is then thoroughly smoothed and cleansed to improve its aesthetic appeal. Before, taking the boots to the kiln, a hole was made in the tongue of the boots and Dog tags were fastened through the hole in the tongue. According to the creator, Porcelain was chosen as the material to be creating the boots as its the best among clay bodies and would represent the absolute respect the creator wished to show the soldiers. Porcelain remains white even after firing a colour the creator felt represents stillness and silence used to pay the last respect to a fallen soldier. According to Giuseppe (2012) the same material and slip casting was chosen for making the boots to make sure their represent the view that humans are all equal. According to Giuseppe (2012) the similarities in design would mirror the fact that each soldier was made of blood and flesh, regardless of religion, sex or race. The need to create boots from the same cast explains why the creator was unable to mould more than a 100 boots, as the cast has a short lifespan that can only create a limited number of boots. The idea to fasten dog tags on the boots was taken from another artwork also used to commemorate the lives of fallen soldier in a previous war. This artwork is named Above and Beyond and is displayed at the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum. It is 10-by-40- foot sculpture and is fastened with soldiers name bearing the names of every soldier who fell in the Vietnam War. Similarly, Giuseppe (2012) used dog tags bearing the name, date of death and the branch the fallen soldier served in. Normally, Dog tags are worn around a soldier’s neck, but in Combat situations they may be required to place it in the right boot. Thus, each pair of the 100 boots moulded by Giuseppe (2012) for the exhibition carried a dog tag on the right boot. Background of the Artwork’s creation The artiste describes the Camaraderie he experienced in the US military where he served for five years, having enlisted in 2000. According to Giuseppe (2012) the member of the force always treated each other like family. He speaks with administration that the soldiers had chosen to serve in the military out of voluntary will regardless of the risk involved in making the decision. During the short stint in the military Giuseppe (2012) describes a place where a person experienced conflicting emotions, Giuseppe is quoted as calling the experiences extremely happy and equally difficult at times. According to the artist the connection, respect and love soldiers develop in each other during their service last a lifetime. Giuseppe talks of the sorrow he felt every time a soldier died in the service of his country and the need to commemorate their lives, which he justifies as the reason for creating the exhibition. Initially, Giuseppe’s idea was to create a replica boot for every soldier but the numbers, but the number of soldiers returning from the operations were just too high. The boots were meant to symbolize the courage of each soldier who died fighting for his country. The significance of the boots was the fact that Soldier’s combat boots could be equalled to Soldiers gun and are always with him wherever he goes. The Porcelain boot were be used to represent each soldiers step final step in the living world. Giuseppe (2012) views every soldier’s life as very important and thus each boots had to be delicately treated before it was presented to families of the soldiers. The creator equates the process of cleaning the Porcelain boots with the process of cleaning the soldier’s body. His wounds would be properly cleaned and dressed up to make sure the soldier’s body would be presentable at the memorial service. Giuseppe (2012) also briefly reflects on the role of the dog tags in making the boots giving the military background of their usage. In the Army, Navy, Airforce and the Marines tags are used for identifying a soldier. Normal military tags contain the rank, name, date of birth, social security number, blood type and religion of the serviceman. To signify the equality of the soldier’s, some of the details had to be left out and to make sure viewers of the work concentrated on the principle objective of the work. The success of Giuseppe’s work is surprising in a society that supports Connors view of artwork. According Savage (2010), commemorative artwork was a leftover from the days of the monarchy and superstition. As early as the 1800, America had already started to view artwork as ineffectual and a congressman famously remarked that democracy has no monuments. According to John Quincy Adams true remembrance is in the heart and cannot be set in artwork but live in the beating hearts of men. However, commemoration took an important role in American society in recent times. Giuseppe (2012)’s artwork is among the new ways of commemoration pioneered by Americans. Giuseppe (2012) Artwork can be equated to such effectual commemoration artwork as the monument for the Columbia crew who perished on voyage to mars. How effectual is Giuseppe (2012)’s work As a commemorative artwork, Giuseppe’s boots sharply contradict the views of Connor on the ineffectiveness of artwork. Commemoration is defined as a Call to rememberance to a significant event. Giuseppe’s boots are very effective in calling the American public to remember the soldiers who have fallen while defending their homeland. Giuseppe (2012)’s artwork is an authoritative prod to the collective memory of the hardship soldiers face in combat and in facing death bravery (Bodnar 1992). Giuseppe’s artwork calls the American public to remember that the soldiers who lay their life in defence of their country cannot be forgotten. It is an authoritative call for the American’s to personalise the wars those soldiers were involved in and realize those soldiers were not history but human beings (Kirk 1999). The boots forces anybody who views them to see the reality of the sad death those soldiers unfortunately met in combat. Giuseppe’s artwork calls the American to show a unity of purpose in remembering the brave soldiers who lost their lives in the three Operations. It forces every the smallest family in the United States to commemorate the lives of the fallen soldiers. Giuseppe’s boots makes an immense contribution to both official and vernacular memory as decribed by John Bodnar in Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (1992). Giuseppe (2012)’s work is equal to the critically acclaimed pieces in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Giussepe’s artwork is different from the other memory pieces that present official history as seen by the eyes of the ruling elite. The success of Giuseppe (2012)s’s boots as commemorative art is enabled by the its interwoving of both official and vernacular memory similar to that reflected by exhibitions in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Selz 1998). According to Paolo (2009), an artwork driven by the need of citizen to commemorate a person or an event is refered to as vernacular memory. While official memory is described as the need of a state to mythogoloze its history and retain the loyalty of its citizenry (Dickinson, Blair and Ott 1998). Giuseppe (2012)’s boots are artwork that reconciles the official and vernacular memory creating a partriotic artwork with whose sentimental purpose is finely balanced with its polotical purpose. According to Duxbury (2011), a commemorative artwork should not just involve physical materials only. In naming the exhibition of the boots, Giuseppe (2012) choose the Left.left.left.right.left military call which symbolizes the ritual of marching in formation. It represents a partriotic parade as made by US soldiers in their military camp. Giuseppe (2012)’s artwork ineffectiveness is its ability to stay above partisan and class division as shown by the artists preference for only the details that do not reflect these divisions in the dog tags used in the exhibition (Mills and Simpson 2003). Thus. Giusepppe artwork most alluring factor is its ability to cement a national identity. Quite distinct from modern methods of communication the boots moulded by Giuseppe (2012) enables the soldiers and their families tell their own version of events. The author describes how appreciative and emotional the families of the fallen soldiers were for the opportunity to commemorate their fallen one. The installation enables the families turn their domestic grieving for the fallen soldiers into a public event.  Conclusion Giuseppe (2012)’s installation sharply contradicts the views of Connor that artwork is largely ineffective. The success of the installation goes a long way to show that there are people who still appreciate artwork but the purpose the artwork was created is importance. The exhibition shows clearly the role artwork can play in modern society by allowing diverse groups commemorate their own version of history. The porcelain boots provide the families with pieces of memory they can remember their loved one with. Therefore, the purpose of any artwork is what determines if an artwork is ineffectual and its wrong to dismiss all artwork as needing to be defended. References Bodnar, J 1992. Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (1992). Montgomery: University of Alabama. Conner, B. 2006. Interview with Mia Culpa. In Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, ed K. Stiles 382. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006), 382. Dickinson, G., Carole Blair, C. & Ott, B. 1998. Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials; Albma Rhetoric Cult & Soc Crit. Montgomery: University of Alabama press. Duxbury, L. 2011. Picture This: Transforming artworks into exegetical texts to create new insights. ACCESS: Critical Perspectives On Communication, Cultural & Policy Studies 30, no. 2: 35 Giusseppe, P. 2012, Left. Left. Left, right, left. 2012 Porcelain. http://www.laboratoriodiGiuseppe (2012).com/left-left-left-right-left.html (accessed 1st December 2012) Kirk, S. 1999. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves. Princeton: Princeton University Press Mills, C. & Simpson, P. 2003. Monuments To The Lost Cause: Women, Art, And The Landscapes Of Southern Memory. Jackson Town: university of Tennessee Paolo, M. 2009. The Contemporary Artwork Between Meaning and Cultural Identity. Ceroart: Conservation, Exposition, Restauration Dobjets Dart no. 4 Savage, K. 2010. Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape. Montgomery: University of Alabama. Selz. P. 1998. Beyond the Mainstream: Essays on Modern and Contemporary Art: Contemporary Artists and their Critics. Jackson Town: University of Tennessee press Read More