John D'Agostino's The Grass Over Graves » Uncategorized

Killer Kitsch

grass — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:51:46 +0000

A Creative Conversation by John D’Agostino

Could Kitsch Be Dangerous?

In Mary Shelley’s story, Frankenstein’s Monster is sewn together from the parts of different dead bodies, much like a postmodern pastiche of Kitsch works of art we know and love today. A common staple of today’s artistic practice is the appropriation of various pop culture material, often with an ironic attitude to the styles before. On the surface, Kitsch appears to be just harmless fun. It may however, conceal a darker agenda.

From Marcel Duchamp’s call “to use a Rembrandt as an ironing board,” to Robert Rauschenberg’s erased DeKooning, to Ai WeiWei’s smashing of a Han dynasty vase, artists of the past 100 years have engaged in a tradition of actively demeaning & attacking other art. Much like the eradication of the Native American way of life as a countervailing economic system in Western expansion, history reminds us that alien value systems often cannot co-exist, even if one is not an actual threat. Kitsch may be sugary sweet, but could it also play for keeps?

Interestingly, the seemingly hostile attitude of Western Kitsch may be in stark contrast to the Eastern notion of Kitsch, (which in Japan and elsewhere) is much more agreeable to co-exist with the more traditional. So as Rodney King once opined, “Can’t we all just get along?” Or is it necessarily a zero sum game, where ideas & aesthetics fall out of fashion, never to return?

This discussion group will tackle some of the darker implications behind Kitsch, and encourage its participants to discuss more deeply the larger Darwinian “struggle” for the supremacy of style that lurks behind the competing major art movements of the past century.


Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q. postcard, 1919.

Peter Gronquist, Louis Vuitton Chainsaw

Ai Wei Wei, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995.

	Leg Lamp For Sale, Amazon.com

Phil Toledano, from the Kim Jong Phil series

	Walton Ford, I dont like looking at him, Jack, 2011.

M.I.A., XXXO video.

Kaprow’s Vector

grass — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:50:23 +0000

Has Art Committed Suicide?

“Once the task of the artist was to make good art; now it is to avoid making art of any kind.” - Allan Kaprow

At The Museum of Modern Art on the evening of March 17, 1960, art quite literally – committed suicide. Jean Tinguely’s Homage to New York was a towering 27 foot high contraption of parts, refuse & instruments, what the artist called a “self-destroying work of art.” Once activated, the device proceeded to set on fire and destruct. Nevertheless this symbolic coup de gras, today there may be a different, perhaps more sinister, form of artistic suicide.

Today’s contemporary artists employ a suite of provocative and experimental techniques to create new works, from working blindly in darkrooms, to emergent software that generates its own forms, to painters who use printers to ‘paint’, to interactive designers who allow the audience to create their works. And yet, there is a built-in ambiguity to this new modus operandi, for as as much as these new processes are innovative and exciting, they may also oddly be very disempowering to the actual artist himself, who is now content to let the machine take over. So much so in fact, that is now become vogue for the artist to disavow any involvement whatsoever.

Has the artist finally become a machine, as Warhol predicted? Or does the machine now make a “better” work of art than a human being? Just how important is it we know ‘how’ a work of art is made? Does it matter? Or is our new technology actually a handicap if the artist is no longer confident, capable or willing to control it?

This discussion group will debate Man versus the Machine, and the processes & practices of the contemporary artist, engaging in a meaninfgul dialogue about the promises and perils of the new modus operandi of the 21st century.


Jean Tinguely, Homage to New York, 1960.

Wade Guyton, ‘painting’ made with Epson printer

Illustration of Carl Andre and his famous bricks, by Chris Garratt

Walead Beshty, Fedex, 2005.

Philip Worthington, Shadow Monsters, interactive design at MoMA

Greg Stimac, Inkjet Print of Car Windshield collecting bugs and debris from Sante Fe to Billings, NM

Jason Salavon, Print made with software averaging the Hals Portraits

Re/Mix! – Innovators, Appropriators & Copyright Criminals

grass — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:32:05 +0000


Re/Mix! *Innovators, Appropriators & Copyright Criminals* A Course by John D’Agostino
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Cornell Remixes Bronzino: Joseph Cornell, Medici Princess, 1952-54, Angelo Bronzino, Portrait of Medici Girl, 1542.			Oft-times an overlooked & misunderstood tradition, the art of sampling historical source material into new works of art and music is a rewarding, sophisticated and ingenious practice rife with departures, ruptures & contradictory possibilities.
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Joseph Cornell, Medici Boy, 1943. Wood box construction using elements from Pinturicchio’s Portrait of a Boy, ca. 1500.			Raw material for artists to re-combine can be found literally anywhere, from archaic media, vinyl records, and trash, to photographs or finished works like painting. Challenging, subverting, co-opting, even re-inventing mediums, the Re-Mix in assemblage art, collage, Hip Hop music, photography and more is a tour de force of creative practice in the 21st century, encompassing an entire spectrum of originality (or lack thereof), from one-dimensional Appropriators, to Hackers, cover artists and mashups, to entirely new, emergent digital artforms. Featured artists include: Joseph Cornell, Romare Bearden, Yves Klein, Vik Muniz, Thomas Ruff, John Stezaker, Louis Comfort Tiffany, E.J. Bellocq, Dr. Lakra, Idris Khan, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Kurt Schwitters, Robert Rauschenberg, Wangechi Mutu, Marcel Duchamp and Kehinde Wiley, among many others.
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			Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych, 1962. Acrylic on canvas, using an original publicity still of Marilyn Monroe from the film Niagara, 1953.
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Louis Comfort Tiffany, At the New Circus, ca. 1894. Favrile stained glass, using Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s watercolor At the Nouveau Cirque, 1892.			Re/Mix! will employ the art of sample-based Hip Hop as the quintessential paradigm for the visual artist. From the very first DJ’s of the South Bronx employing turntables and a mixer, sampling in Hip Hop music is the foundation of the genre. Much like their visual counterparts, its most innovative practitioners exemplify a selective, three-dimensional and highly sophisticated synthesis of old material into new, from producers like Prince Paul, DJ Premier and Da Beatminerz, to acts like De La Soul or Beastie Boys, to those that sample their own sounds, such as Portishead.
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Enrique Gomez de Molina, Rhinoplasty, 2010. Hybrid taxidermy sculpture, using jewel beetle wings, peacock feathers and buffalo horn. John Stezaker, He II, 2008. Photo collage, using old film portraits.			Course Schedule Week 1: The Innovators Featured Artists: Joseph Cornell · Andy Warhol · Romare Bearden · Kurt Schwitters · Yves Klein · Laszlo Moholy-Nagy · Louis Comfort Tiffany · John Stezaker Week 2: The Appropriators Featured Artists: Roy Lichtenstein · Marcel Broodthaers ·Sherrie Levine · Claes Oldenburg · Cindy Sherman · Vik Muniz · Jeff Koons · Banksy Week 3: Copyright Criminals Featured Artists: Danger Mouse · Shepard Fairey · Da Beatminerz · Richard Prince ·Prince Paul · Hank Willis Thomas · Beastie Boys · Cory Arcangel Week 4: The Bricoleurs Featured Artists: Jacques de La Villegle · Max Ernst · Wangechi Mutu · Conrad Marca-Relli · Robert Rauschenberg · Robert Heinecken · Marcel Duchamp · Dr. Lakra Week 5: The Hackers Featured Artists: Alvin Langdon Coburn · Thomas Ruff · Adam Fuss · Walead Beshty · Lucas Samaras · Wade Guyton · Marco Breuer
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This course is currently in development for venues TBA 2013. For more information, please contact John D’Agostino.

Promiscuous Visions: The Hackers At The Heart of Photography

grass — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:31:31 +0000


Promiscuous Visions: *The Hackers At The Heart of Photography* A Course by John D’Agostino
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Detail: Mario Giacomelli, Marche Countryside, ca. 1954.			“Ma Bell is a System I want to explore.” -Captain Crunch, legendary Phone Phreaker.
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Man Ray, Rayograph, 1925.			Photographers have been hacking into the medium of photography from its very inception. Confined not just to the world of computers, “Hack Value” describes the creative ethos of an artist interested in fully exploring a System to stretch its capabilities, as opposed to an ordinary user, who prefers to use the system as originally designed, and learn only the minimum necessary. From the first ‘Phone Phreakers’ who whistled into telephones to make free calls, to the Apple I, a bare bones circuit board designed to be re-configured, Hackers of all different genres enjoy exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of experimentation, innovation, cleverness, finesse and brilliance. Susan Sontag once characterized the nature of photography as a promiscuous vision, a way of seeing that is not faithful to a single Modus Operandi or material, but rather, promiscuously seeks out divergent technologies, media, and new ways of making images.
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			Matthew Brandt, From the series Rivers, Lakes & Reservoirs, 2010. C-Print soaked in source water.
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John Chiara, 8th at Hooper, 2003. Dye Destruction Photograph.			Photographic Hackers delight in solving artistic problems in unanticipated ways. A short list of these innovations include camera-less photograms and the threat of abstraction, multiple exposures, liquid spills, scrapes and solar burns, cameras without film or lenses, printmaking with literally anything but silver halide or ink (from breakfast cereal to body fluids), bizarre print surfaces from leaves to cloth to canvas, or using energy sources to make exposures, such as heat, cold or radiation – even the motion of live animals such as bees or snakes. This course will investigate many of the novel solutions that the most creative photographers employ to deconstruct and re-configure the idea of the photograph. Each week, students will participate in this experimental process by reverse-engineering a different component part of the photograph, re-imagining elements taken for granted, and deepening their understanding of the more dynamic ways photographs can evolve and innovate.
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Kim Keever, River Keeper, 2003. C-Print made with fishtank diorama. Eileen Quinlan, Yellow Goya, 2007. Folded chromogenic paper.			Course Schedule Week 1: Dégredés Featured Artists: Joseph Nicephore Niecpe · Marco Breuer · Lillian Bassman · E.J. Bellocq Curtis Mann · Edmund Teske · Jacques Villeglé · John Chiara · Chris McCaw Week 2: The Threat of Abstraction Featured Artists: Man Ray · Jaroslav Rossler · Barbara Kasten ·Roger Catherineau · Laszlo Moholy-Nagy · Walead Beshty · Aaron Siskind · Frederick Sommer · Eileen Quinlan Week 3: Printers, Painters & Pictorialists Featured Artists: Mario Giacomelli · Jan Saudek · Alvin Langdon Coburn · Wade Guyton · Lucas Samaras · Robert Demachy · Matthew Brandt · Matt Saunders · Henry Peach Robinson Week 4: Fire & Ice Featured Artists: Adam Fuss · Susan Derges · Yves Klein ·Hiroshi Sugimoto · Jorma Puranen · Kim Keever ·Wilson Bentley · Dupreez & Jones · Christopher Colville Week 5: Digitalis Hybrida Featured Artists: Thomas Ruff · Jason Salavon · Andreas Gursky ·Idris Khan · Andreas Gefeller · Carter Mull ·Richard Misrach · Aziz + Cucher · Loretta Lux
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This course is currently in development for venues TBA 2013. For more information, please contact John D’Agostino.

John D'Agostino's The Grass Over Graves » Uncategorized

Killer Kitsch

Kaprow’s Vector

Re/Mix! – Innovators, Appropriators & Copyright Criminals

Re/Mix! Innovators, Appropriators & Copyright Criminals

Promiscuous Visions: The Hackers At The Heart of Photography

Promiscuous Visions:

The Hackers At The Heart of Photography

Re/Mix!
Innovators, Appropriators & Copyright Criminals