knowledge part 3 intuited knowledge ... - visual art...
TRANSCRIPT
Knowledge – part 3
Intuited Knowledge through
Surreal Art and Abstract Expressionism
Intuited knowledge is the internal realm of the mind and the metaphysical world.
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy based on first principles,
underlying a particular study of inquiry which includes
ontology, cosmology and intimately connected with epistemology.
Ontology studies the nature of existence or of being.
Cosmology deals with the origin and general structure of the universe,
space and time.
Epistemology investigates the origin, nature, methods and limits
of human knowledge.
Salvador Dalí
Swans Reflecting Elephants 1937
Surreal Art explored the unconscious, especially through dream imagery.
Sigmund Freud was an influential source through his writings of psychoanalysis and the
understanding of dreams, the conscious and the unconscious; the ego, super ego & the id.
Surreal Art
Philippe Halsman
Dalí Atomicus Film still 1948
Dalí experienced with Philippe Halsman, Luis Buñuel, Walt Disney and others film makers.
On Utube – view a 6-minute late 1940s collaboration between Dalí and Disney titled Destino
Salvador Dalí
Fifty Abstract
Paintings
Which as
Seen from
Two Yards
Change into
Three Lenins
Masquerading
as Chinese
and as Seen
from Six
Yards Appear
as the Head
of a Royal
Bengal Tiger
1963
Surrealist, René Magritte aimed to change
your habitual way of thinking about
imagery and words.
The Treachery of Images
1928
Attempting the Impossible 1928
René Magritte
The False Mirror 1929 William Golden
CBS Television logo 1952
Many artists and graphic designers have appropriated Magritte
and the idea of the all seeing eye, be it conscious or unconscious.
René Magritte
The Human Condition 1948
Influenced by Sigmund Freud, Magritte aimed to explain the meaning of Plato’s Cave.
Son of Man 1964
The Listening Room 1952
René Magritte
What do your think these apple
representations mean? Look at the title too.
Jackson Pollock
Blue Poles 1952
Abstract Expressionists practiced Existentialism, a new philosophy which stressed
absolute freedom of choice in art and in life as a human commitment. It could be a
way to gain self-knowledge through the process of making art.
Lee Krasner
Right Bird Left
1965
Helen Frankthaler
Nature Abhors a Vacuum
1973
Abstract
Expressionism
Abstract Expressionism was a way to lose yourself in
the process of “action painting” as a technique.
This style became known as Color-Field Paintings.
Creating fields of color to be
tranquil or contemplative.
Allow the color to envelope you.
Robert Motherwell
The Blueness of Blue 1974
Mark Rothko
Blue Orange Red 1961
The Critique of Learning
A few artists may look critically at human knowledge.
As humans, we aim to accumulate and struggle to acquire and preserve
human knowledge, yet books and their contents can disintegrate.
All human endeavor is cyclical like nature;
it is subject to periods of decline and entropy
that eventually lead to regeneration.
Knowledge is a critical basis for an understanding
politics and social constructs.
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something,
which can include facts, information, descriptions or skills
acquired through experience or education.
Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive processes:
perception, communication, association and reasoning;
while knowledge is also said to be related to
the capacity of acknowledgment in human beings.
José Clemente Orozco / Social Realism
Anglo-America & Hispano-America
Panels 15 & 16 – An Epic of American Civilization, Dartmouth College
1932 -1934 fresco 126” x 176”
José Clemente Orozco / Social Realism
Gods of the Modern World
Panel 17 - An Epic of American Civilization, Dartmouth College
Orozco warns against the academic who is completely occupied with sterile research or learning
that has no value outside of academia. Sterile education passing for knowledge, but actually
keeping the young busy without giving them any real wisdom or understanding.
Anselm Kiefer
Breaking of the Vessels
1990 17’h
Lead, iron, glass, copper wire,
charcoal and aquatec
Old books are not always storehouses of knowledge.
They may make knowledge inaccessible or books
may rot and fall apart.
The title symbolized the introduction
of evil into the world.
It also refers to the atrocities of
Kristallnacht (the Night of Crystal or Broken Glass),
when the Nazis vandalized and terrorized
Jewish neighborhoods in Germany and Austria
in November 1938.
Enrique Chagoya
Against the Common Good II
1983
A smirking President Reagan, as King Ferdinand VII, in an appropriated Francisco de Goya print.
He is equipped with bat wings and reads the new constitution which was considered
a dangerous canker on the politics of Europe, not dissimilar to Reagan’s effect on American policy.
Enrique Chagoya integrates diverse elements from pre-Columbian mythology, Western religious iconography,
ethnic stereotypes, ideological propaganda from various times and places, American popular culture, etc.
The art becomes a product of collisions between historical visions, ancient and modern, marginal and dominant
paradigms; a thesis and an anti-thesis that end in a synthesis in the mind of the viewer.
Enrique Chagoya
Illegal Alien's Guide to Critical Theory 2007
Chagoya’s latest works have been a series of paintings exploring issues of illegal immigration,
racial stereotypes and xenophobia (the fear of strangers or foreign people) in a post 9/11world.
Sandra Wascher
Memes 2011
Inkjet on archival paper
61” w x 14” l
Memes are like genes. Genes are duplicated through our DNA.
Memes are transferred through culture by behaviors, beliefs and ideas.
The term was coined in 1978 by Richard Dawkins in the Selfish Gene.
Each letter here represents one category – cultural, religion, political, media & scientific.
Sandra Wascher
Semantic Loops
2010 Inkjet on paper
Media Loop
↓Propaganda – Reification –
False Consciousness – Power
↑Facts – Truth - Self-Empowerment
Political Loop
↓Fear – Confusion –
Aggression – Cognitive Dissonance
↑Liberty – Truth - Self-Determination
Religious Loop
↓Guilt – Faith – Immortality – Ignorance
↑Rationality – Truth - Self-Realization
Which loop are you on?
The exterior loop (moving downward) or the interior
one (moving upward)? See arrows on each loop.