Reviews for Vision of Venice in Watercolour: Ken Howard

The average rating for Vision of Venice in Watercolour: Ken Howard based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-03-17 00:00:00 Jacquelline Escobar Some key ideas: Our culture is dominated not by fine arts but by mass media. Changes brought about by the industrial revolution, by the development of a capitalist economic system, and by emergence of an urban, consumer society, have irrevocably altered the social context in which fine arts operate. Mass media expands the study field of art historians. It is impossible to understand art as a social phenomenon without examining its links with ideology that takes place where certain artwork is being produced. Fine arts - it is not about technology of making itself, rather about the way in which materials and tools are habitually used, social institutions within which works are produced, distributed, categorised and consumed. Art itself can be regarded as social invention. Context of displaying is crucial. For instance if artworks are displayed in the museum in chronological order, it fosters the idea that works of art developed autonomous, growing primarily out of earlier rather than out of external social demands. A specific set of practice, training schemes, organisations, institutions, etc ensures the particular identity and continuity of fine arts. Machines and their outputs enables wider communication to take place, but they also stand in between audience and performer. A television programme is watched by millions, though their experience is not collective one. The mass media atomise and demobilise their audiences. The mass media functions vertically - messages are transmitted in one direction only. The older media tend to become the content of the newest. The mass media reproduce dominant ideology and are thus a conservative or counter-revolutionary force; they encounter passivity and aphaty; it is concentrated in the hands of few people who are motivated by self-interest, private profit or social control. Fundamental painting can be seen as the last attempt to protect the identity of the painting in the face of competition of the mass media. We live in media saturated environment. Raymond Williams - „The culture of distance" - the audience is distanced from the actual event, protected from reality by the antiseptic style of representation (pop art). Hamilton's aim - to monumentalise the everyday world of the bourgeoisie (same as Dutch painters of the 17th c., Impressionists and Seurat). He is a person who adopts an anthropological attitude to a cultural phenomenon. It is non sufficient for an artist to incorporate popular imagery to become part of mass culture; the whole production, distribution and consumption also needs to challenge. Mass production does enable the consumer goods to be enjoyed virtually everyone in an industrial society, it does produce a level of culture, a uniformity of social habits. What artist says about his/her work should be noted, but also critically evaluated. A critic should necessarily accept expression of intention, or explanations of meaning, by the artist as 'truth' of a work of art. Warhol - produce industrial art to industrial society. Warhol introduced 'mistakes' to his paintings in order to produce unique marks which would consider the painting as unique. The shock value of the image is progressively diminishing, image acquires the character of stereotype because of it being exposed multiple times. Warhol is an artist who has worked in the full glare of publicity and instead of being destroyed by it, he has exploited it for his of purpose. He celebrates the values of western countries as realists of soviet ones. The truthful depiction will necessarily reveal the faults and contradictions of that society. Lichtenstein and Jones transmitted despised material from trash to art. Courbet was also using popular culture as his field of interest. The influence of mass media can reveal itself by what artists avoid doing. In our society every human is formed by the stereotypes of mass culture. Laurie Anderson's works are based upon awareness of language and other communication codes, and on understanding the ways in which the mass media filter information and mediate between us and external reality, and between people. Our relationship to art is being transformed by mass media. It transforms the very nature of art and since our experience is being mediated by mass media, it is way different from that of pre-industrial cultures. Artworks mediated by mass media can be detached from their original social and cultural context. Stereotypes by which artist are presented by mass culture (f.e. mad genius). Mass media absorbs and utilizes the fine arts in variety of ways. From the point of view of the mass media, the fine arts are simply one set of social activities amongst any others, they take a not of them, but generally regard them as far less important than sport. Benjamin Walters argument: the traditional work of art had a presence, an aura, which was the result of it's uniqueness - 'its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be' - an authenticity. Exhibition value may have replaced cult-value, but the function of museums is surely to preserve the aura of a work of art - in fact, enternalize it. Malraux argument: (a) the existence of museums has altered the way in which art is experienced; (b) the millions of art reproductions constitute a musée imaginaire, a museum of imagination and of images, a museum without walls; (c) hence the imaginary museum extends the process set in motion by the physical museum and makes available to the private individual the art of all times of all people - though at the cost of decontextualisation and providing substitutes for originals. Marshall McLuhan argument: invention of major new media alters our existing sensory modalities and, furthermore, that new media change the standard relationship of older media (f.e., by challenging their individual integrity, by endowing them with an art status, and by upsetting the balance power between them). Benjamin: artist should not supply apparatus of production without simultaneously seeking ti change it in the direction of socialism. 'Functional transformation'. Benjamin also proposed that artist's activity should have organising function and provide the instruction if he or she seeks to challenge or change social environment. F.e. Brecht's theatre. 19th c. fashion for collecting 'primative' artefacts was a cultural phenomena closely linked to Europe's colonial and imperialist exploitation of vast areas of the globe. In this way Europe renewed itself both economically and spiritually. Adorno - artists are spcialists of representation, therefore they are the ones who examine how is it being done at certain period in relation to on going technical changes.' While artists started working 'between styles' (post-modernism), they started challenging our most deep-rooted orientations to the world whether they are in terms of art/culture, elite/popular, or male/female. The ability to poke fun at the cliches, stereotypes and conventions of advertising commercials within an advertising commercials, implies a distanced and knowing relationship to the material. Example: symbol of Nazi can be used as a shock effect tool rather than acknowledging oneself to Nazism. It is difference between sign meaning and actual beliefs. Artists are active producers of culture, not passive consumers of it. Artists generate their own representations of reality and consequently are not dependent as non-artists on the representation supplied by mass media. Artists want and can establish relationship with audience different from mass media. Mass media can be a source of raw material which is then subjected to reworking in order to effect an ideological critique. Deconstructing the language or inventing a new one - one of may ways artists may take in order to communicate with their audience. Amateur photographers do not try to show world the way it is. Rather, they concentrate on beautiful and picturesque.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-11-28 00:00:00 Tom Hofer This was out of print for a while. I was so pleased when I was able to buy it from Amazon at a reasonable price. For a while there it was going on Ebay for hundreds of dollars. If you like Robt. Williams, you pretty much have to have this.