Justin

Week 2: Tues. Jan. 19

Notes:

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Yoko Ono & John Lennon

https://youtu.be/f7hxfGf7lyA

• Ono & Lennon were looking for a way that both their practices could meet, to them their worlds of being an Avant-garde artist and a Rocker star conflicted, So they decided to narrow down their common interests. This common interest ended up being “Love”, in which was an idea that allowed them to conceive of a common goal: World peace.
• “And that love was peace. So, we decided to work for world peace”.
• They work towards their goal, they employed tactics used by governments, advertising agencies and the Beatles themselves. This is what Lennon called the “advertising Method”.
  • “you gotta sell…like a mantra.” That is paraphrasing but John goes to some extent to say that they’re using advertisement to push an agenda.
• “Poster Event”
  • To both Ono and Lennon, the War is Over! poster was a last minute plug for World peace before christmas.

Barbara Kruger

https://youtu.be/8xi9qQb2SHU

• Studied being a designer, then worked for a magazine
• Says that the work they had done was cut and paste. Worked primary on layout, text and images.
• The work is pretty graphic and focused, there is a sense of assemblage.
• “Direct Address”? Krugar is talking about how the work engages with the beholder, whether it be facing theming in a pictorial sense or calling them out from the text.
• “Phrase or Idioms”,

https://youtu.be/bVxtKcDOHYc

• Placed Lettering in Bold Futura typeface.
• Slogans, and how Lennon phrased it, “Mantras”.

https://youtu.be/IJ3WIZeBRZg

• “Pleasure, but yet, brutal culture” Made me think of the words Decadence and Brutalism, is this intentional?
• They believe that text contain with them an inherit meaning that signifies their history and power in the event of using them.
• Krugar’s work does not seek to make any big claims but instead aims to generate commentary around the society they finds themselves in. Sometimes rearranging common phrases and idioms, adding more iconographic layers to their meaning; Kruger also responses to work that appropriates her own.

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Select TWO artworks from above to write about. Compare and contrast the different ways the artists use media (materials, platform, format) to express their message. How is the medium relevant to the message in each case? How are viewers expected to relate to the text in each case?

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For this exercise, I have chosen to compare Yoko Ono and Barbara Kruger, both of whom use advertising as a way to express conceptual ideas, but I would argue, for two separate reasons. Both artists make use of text to signal out an idea and desire, with the expecting a response from the viewer. This clear by the local of the works in space, they find themselves display out in the open, in public.

Specifically, the work of Ono, their posters are display on billboards, while I think Kruger deviants by having work displayed on vehicles, galleries, and magazines. Although, images of the War is over! may circulate through those venues that Kruger’s work is also in, they are not made with the format in mind. Barbara Kruger comes to her practice with a history in design and working in magazines and advertising, while Ono is primary from an “Art World” perspective (Kruger would has gone on the record to say that they were late to discovering the art world, and even visiting galleries).

The poster work of Ono was to signify the relationship she had with John Lennon, To what seemed was difficult to imagine until they decide to purse a common goal -that what they both wanted was love, and that love also meant peace, an ultimate goal they both had of world piece. For her partner, the billboard was a gift of this arrangement. Lennon had seen that the advertising of politicians and commercial agencies, even the Beatles, had a power too it and He imagined this kind of platform to be useful for their goals of love and piece. To me, this reads as propaganda to sell an ideology, and that is what Lennon elaborates on, that they are selling the idea of love and peace to the public. The war is over piece also addresses the viewer by letting them know that their is a choice, that war is one of them. It is a defeat that can be celebrated, if they want.

Understanding how these works of art came to be is important in the process of distinguishing artists these two artists. Kruger is all about cutting up and pasting together, appropriating the culture around them, while Yoko Ono was about exploiting advertisement to push their own agenda to the masses.