Video Blog Week 15

Greenburg on Art Criticism
Clement Greenburg felt that art criticism was much tougher then any other form of criticism.  He also felt that if you were a really good artist you were not going to be liked by many people.  Greenburg went on to discuss the importance of staying open as a critic and not judging a painting just based on if you like it or dislike it but the content and more. 

Greenburg on Pollock
Clement Greenburg discussed Pollock as he came to be a well known painter. Jackson Pollock was considered an outsider is ideas were to farfetched to most.  Pollock wanted to move from to Mural paintings from easel painting but it seemed as if the world was not yet prepared for this endeavor.  Instead, pollock found some common ground and created overly large easel paintings. These large movable pieces had both aspects.  

An Intro to the Italian Renaissance
Giorgio Vasari was the author of Lives of the Artists.  This film was about his thoughts about these artists in his book.  Vasari talks with his apprentices. Through these discussions, we learned about artists such as Giotto, Ghiberti, Donatello, Vocello, Masaccio, della Frascesca, Botticelli, Leonardo, Raffaello, and Michelangelo.  Vasari tells his apprentice about how art is continuously changing.  Through time we can see the progression of some of these artists.  The Romans influenced renaissance art and shifted art techniques and revived it.  Romans reinforced concepts like perspective, balance and realism seen in many artists from above paintings,  like Giotto who brought back the realistic style.

The Critics: Stories from the Inside Page
Artists sometimes feel that critics are out to get them that one minute they can give you a good review but the next they are just waiting for you to mess up.  For critics it this is not true.  Critics are just trying to get people to think instead of just excepting things for what they are, direct viewers to good works, and improve media. Critics help artists, they make them be on their toes.  If a critic writes a good review about an artist on the edge of getting seen then it could get that artist their big break.  The real goal of critics is to make people see the beauty that the see in the work they are viewing, reading, or listening to.

The Colonial Encounter: Views of Non Western Art and Culture
Dahome artwork is very detailed and beautiful especially in it's repetitious patterns.  Though some think of it as a craft it should be viewed as art.  At the worlds fair in Paris, which ran for 8 months, half of the fair was devoted to French imperialism while the other half  was of other nations' colonies.  The Dahome exhibit suggested there was no civilized infrastructure judging by the thatched structures.  to the western cultures the images reinforced ideas of savage and uncivilized culture.

Jackson Pollock: Michael Fried and TJ Clark in Conversation
Both Micheal Fried and TJ Clark are critics.  In this film they discussed Jackson pollock as an artist and some of his artworks.  Clark mostly focused on the historical role of Jackson Pollocks work, while Fried focused on the aesthetics of painting and sculpture.  The two artists attempted to come together to an fid some common ground.  They both look at and discussed the negative and positive impact of Pollock's work.

 2. Most of these videos if not all of them relate to the Art Criticism Project because we need to act like a critic ourselves.  Using some of the tips that the critics said in these films will be very helpful when looking at our peers work and analyzing it. 

3.I learned a lot about Art criticism from these films, they were very insightful. Before I felt that critics were just kind of out there just to dump on people but I see there is more of a science to it.