ArtNews Feb 2007

Linda Nochlin wrote an article "Why there are no great woman artist" in this magazine dating back to the early 1970's. It talked about women not given the same opprotunities in education, and attention that their famous male artist recieve. In her most recent interviw she discusses the subtle changes that have progressed as women advance with their own distinct identity. Museums and and collectors are begining to recognize women artist as a distinct and important part of the art world. She argues however their is still work to be done.

Bethann Mullen

I put this question to my fellow students:

Are self portrait's, taken by digital camera and compiled into video, worthy of being called works of art with true artistic merit?

If you are unsure about what I am speaking of, take a trip on the information highway to www.everyday.noahkalina.com. This is an example of a phenomenon among a portion of the masses who use the internet and digital camera's.

Reported by The New York Times as having a large audience as well as many discussions regarding it's qualifications as photographic art.

In my opinion, I can objectively understand the discussion, and identify with both sides of the debate. I reviewed the site, after reading the article, and have to agree with both sides. On one hand photography is beautiful in it's form and as a work of art. It can capture events not normally witnessed or it can capture the exact emotion of the participants while the event is taking place. It can record a life. It can keep the image of a loved one clear in our minds and our life long after that loved one has passed away.
On the other hand, I also have to agree with Mr. Richard Benson, a photographer, printer, and professor of photography at Yale University. He states that they are a waste of time and completely boring. If you have seen the website, you may agree that viewing an individual face 2,356 times with only minor changes such as haircut and daily clothing, even with a rare change in background could be enough to make you scream. It can have a point but is it necessary; would it appeal more art worthy if it was hung in a gallery?
Some think that its revolutionary and at the least evolutionary. The slight variances I noted are fundamental to some critics.They think it is remarkable and a new style of art that attracts a multitude of viewers and appreciators. I for one enjoy attending an art gallery as well as having an interest in photography but would have to shy away from the internet photo's and considering them a style of art.

I was reading a article in the philadelphia inquirer and it was titled "Registry helps track stolen artwork: In the last 10 years, the Art Loss Register has helped recover a number of paintings". It was about a guy in London named Lioyd. Lloyd's underwriters had been approached to insure the movement of seven paintings, including one by Paul Cézanne, from Russia to London for evaluation and sale. What the insurance company discovered in 1999 was that the works, including Cézanne's Fruit and Jug, had been stolen in 1978 from the home of American collector Michael Bakwin in Massachusetts. Thus began a long investigation, including Art Loss Register researchers and negotiators, that resulted in the FBI announcing last month the arrest of a lawyer. He allegedly had obtained the art from the thief, who had been murdered by another criminal after the robbery. In the end, Bakwin got his paintings back and sold the Cézanne for $35 million. Now the Art Loss Register is on the trail of two Picasso paintings recently stolen in Paris. When thieves stole Pablo Picasso's Maya With Doll (1938) and Portrait of Jacqueline (1961) from his granddaughter's home in Paris, their description and photo were added to the company's database within hours. The paintings are valued together at around $65 million, but the information in the register severely curtails their resale prospects and could help lead police to the thieves. In the last 10 years, information supplied by the Art Loss Register has helped recover paintings by Edouard Manet, Eugene Delacroix, Alberto Giacometti and John Constable; a Queen Anne cabinet; and a Roman marble head of Dionysius.
After reading this article I couldn't believe that people actually go through what they go through just for a painting. I mean what did they think, people wasn't going to look for these very important paintings?

-Sabrina Coulter

Allen McCollum is a brilliant, albeit, ridiculously OCD artist. His latest work entitled Shapes Project consists of 214,000 individual computer generated shapes. Each one created to represent a single being among the world's population. The end goal and formula capacity, will result in 31 billion shapes. This number signifies the estimated population peak to hit in 2050. Astounding, truly mind boggling is this man's work and the short yet elegantly written article by Nancy Princenthal of Art in America titled: "Shape Shifter", which sums up the creative process and point of McCollum as an artist and of this particular composition as a whole. The approach thus far is three fold. A trifecta of monumental proportions, each one deliberate and cryptic, figuratively and literally, in meaning. McCollum's obsession with death speaks to me in a crystal clear narrative through his cartoon like simplicity and differing choices of medium. By setting up his lacquered birch representations of Shape Project in a deliberate socially conscious way, McCollum forces viewers to walk through his installation treading the same paths walked each day in a cramped personal interaction such as a party or city street. By navigating ones way through the forms each viewer is forced to confront themselves in calculated form as well as every other individual they have ever come in contact with. A meet and great so cleverly arranged that most may over look the depth of its perplexity. The very nature of these pieces takes a mirror and shoves our noses up against the cool reflective pane of reality. Inevitability wrapped in an existential blanket theory. Everything is everything and yet everything is nothing. We are all uniquely the same and fated to identical inevitable exit.

McClary