Arch/Rep/Nat

Architecture

1. Why are most new (last 15 years or so) American low to middle income housing projects, at least locally, look so utilitarian in concept and devoid of aesthetics? Is this the influence of the Bauhaus as well, poverty, what?

2. I have been seeing monotonous grey and beige houses going up everywhere. Are people afraid of color or is it just more expensive? Is this due to a breaking down of the Art Education in our public schools?

3. Did Marc Dion make a comment on this? His work above.

Representation

4. Photography was thought to have freed painting. It actually added another dimension for painters to work with.

Elizabeth Peyton

David Hockney

5. MIMESIS:

A basic theoretical principle in the creation of art. The word is Greek and means “imitation” (though in the sense of “re-presentation” rather than of “copying”). Plato and Aristotle spoke of mimesis as the re-presentation of nature. According to Plato, all artistic creation is a form of imitation: that which really exists (in the “world of ideas”) is a type created by God; the concrete things man perceives in his existence are shadowy representations of this ideal type. Therefore, the painter, the tragedian, and the musician are imitators of an imitation, twice removed from the truth. Aristotle, speaking of tragedy, stressed the point that it was an “imitation of an action”—that of a man falling from a higher to a lower estate. Shakespeare, in Hamlet’s speech to the actors, referred to the purpose of playing as being “ . . . to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.” Thus, an artist, by skillfully selecting and presenting his material, may purposefully seek to “imitate” the action of life.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/383233/mimesis

Vija Celmins

Nature

6. It seems the lines between sciences, nature and arts can be successfully blurred in much of this fantastic new sculpture. Many of these artists manage to combine visual beauty, mystery, poetry with machines however some work we have seen, seem to be interested solely in the concept. The question is: if a piece of art makes you think, regardless of its lack of aesthetic qualities, does it still fall into the realm of visual art or is it in fact a whole new category?

Lee Bul

Mark Dion

Roxy paine

7. Where is the line between art and science and should it even be drawn?

8. How is the compartmentalizing of the traditional role of art as commodity and science as something generally sponsored as a serious study affecting their merger?