Impact

Emily and Brooke said interesting things about the big art lecture this week. Brooke's comments about Kerry Williams remarks about art from the past influencing us as artists, like or it or not, resonates with something Annette LeZotte talked about yesterday during Sophomore review. Someone asked her why graphic designers and studio artists have to take so much art history at WSU. Her major point was that you have to understand art history so that you don't misuse it. She mentioned that you could end up using the wrong image in a graphic design project that could alienate or offend the customer or the public. The same could be said about any images that a studio artist creates. I also think that knowing about other cultures' art history is helpful too, but not just to artists. It helps the public understand and consider new or different kinds of art. Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary painting with a black primitive women, partly covered in elephant dung shocked and angered the New York public when it was exhibited there in the 1990s, but if people had understood that in Nigeria (Ofili's family came to England from there) elephant dung is sacred and used in everything important, perhaps their religious feelings would have been enhanced and re-evoked. Of course, Ofili was banking on causing controversy, but he had to know history to manipulate the audience he wanted to shock. Because of art history, one can argue that James Maplethorpe's nude male photographs are just a form of humanism instead of porn. Anyway, it's amusing that old, dusty ideas from the past are capable of generating lots of "buzz" when they are resurrected in a new way. ann