While we were away I was thinking about the differences between values and status. I have been thinking about values, regarding a self portrait, and have found it difficult to identify why other people would value me. My ideas about valuing people is all about how people are observed to behave and whether it connects to my ideas of what is worthwhile. However, in the media, I think people who are the focus of attention are often depicted because of their status. I have been reading a little about status.
Status can be ascribed or achieved. Ascribed status is defined by things that cannot be changed; what we are born with - gender, race, colour, orientation(?), disability etc. So does this fit with the equality agenda, with which I am familiar? Achieved status is defined by things that are achieved by own effort - marital status, education and qualifications, ownership of possessions (house, car, money). This interests me.
I have also had a day at the Conceptual Art exhibition at Tate Britain. I found it moderately interesting while I was there, but at often happens, it exercised my mind more afterwards. It focussed on Conceptual Art from 1964-79 (largely Labour Governments during this time), and reflected on how art is a trigger for social engagement (i.e. right up my street). At the beginning of this period the Art & Language Group were playing around with the idea that meaning does not lie with the material object, but with the theoretical argument underpinning it. Theorising is not subsidiary to art, but a primary activity for artists. This suits how I operate - my artwork is what I do when thinking about a concept, in order to make sense of it. Then in the mid 1970s the role of Conceptual Art was to re-engage with the wider world - to have a constructive or polemic purpose in society. My art is about enabling the practical contributions of people in a diversity of roles to be recognised and valued. I think this can be defined as 'constructive".
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| Courtesy of Tate Britain |
Next I was running around the City Lit website, and found an art class I wanted to do. Focussing on Nancy Spero - Female Archetypes. Four Mondays, 10-1315 from 10 September 2016. Nancy Spero was a feminist artist from the 1960s to 2009 who focussed on the female form, violence, and war, and who was influence by Greek friezes, and worked in collage and print (partly due to disabling arthritis), used script and interesting use of space. The course specification stated attendees would need an A5 concertina sketchbook available from Cass Art. I love things that are either long and narrow, or wide and shallow, and this really appealed to me.
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"Masha Bruskina / Gestapo Victim," 1994
Handprinting and printed collage on paper, 19 x 26 inches. Photo by David Reynolds. © Nancy Spero, courtesy the artist and Galerie Lelong, New York |
I have been reading around Nancy Spero and her art, and find her works very inspiring, although often not to my taste. However, with my analysis of my own situation with ascribed and achieved status, and linking this with value systems from my own family, I think I could produce a very interesting sketchbook.
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| Nancy Spero, "The Hours of the Night II," 2001. Handprinting and printed collage on paper, 11 panels approximately 9 x 22 feet overall. |
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| Nancy Spero, Notes in Time, 1979 |
Add into this, what I have learned at the Conceptual Art exhibition about the use of language and script, and my own focus on value and status of women, and I have some interesting ingredients to put into a class. I bought 2 sketchbooks and am tempted to do one sketchbook in my own time during August on how I see my status, and another one in class about how others see my value. I think the Value sketchbook is much harder, as it requires input from others, and I don't want it to be narcissistic - it needs some discomfort (rather than flattery) for me to be able to do the self-portrait. Using one of the quotes from the Conceptual Art exhibition, 'When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that make the art.'
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