4. Contemporary art and design often look at the idea of constructed binaries, such as man/woman, soft/hard, straight/gay, dirty/clean, organic/synthetic. Considering the history of these âpairsâ, how can art and design interrogate these binaries and offers new insights?
Following on from my findings in assessment 1 my work focuses on the binaries which exist in the art world relating specifically to high and low art. âThere is a hierarchy in the arts: decorative art at the bottom, and the human form at the top. Because we are men.â âLe Corbusier and AmĂŠdĂŠe Ozenfant, 1918
I wished to explore why this hierarchal relationship exists and whether or not it was still relevant in modern society.
Although I knew my basic concept from the beginning as a result of already having the chance to explore it in Assessment 1, week 8 of class really allowed me to solidify my idea. In week 8 we discussed the idea of value and how art and most everyday things are commodified within a consumerist society. From this realization, I then reached further into the idea of value and how this may be influenced by a variety of contributing factors. One of the larger factors, in my opinion, is that of historical context. For instance when looking at the rise of paintings similar to âGirl with a Pearl Earringâ we can see that is largely due to the historical, economic and political context during the 17thcentury. As the Netherlands rallied to become an autonomous political republic and a new merchant class was introduced there was a new target market for which the subject matter of art would need to adapt to. This pattern has continued throughout the centuries and art has continued to transform and adapt according to its historical context. From this study, we can see that art is therefore often valued in contemporary culture for the history in which it can be contextualized and the world events it may represent. This is not to say that craft, specifically women's was not founded in historical events and that is the reason it is often considered to be of less value, in fact, embroidery Is deeply embedded in cultural heritage. Ancient Egyptian paintings reveal that clothes, tents and other textiles were often adorned with embroidered embellishments. When studying the Battle of Marathon during my HSC I also remember learning the Persians often quilted garments and created special dyes similar to the Greeks to decorate their armor. My work seeks to incorporate embroidery into educational institutions by intervening in systems which often perpetuate the domination of certain art forms over others. For this reason, I decided to embroid into history pages and connect them through the excess cotton string.
If embroidery is so historically evident why is it that it is often unvalued or left out are education resources? A reason for this historical displacement may be seen more as an issue with the medium of embroidery. Before the women movements in the 60âs and 70âs âwomens workâ such as quilting or embroidery was often considered craft, denied the term fine art or high is because the techniques and culture behind the craft were often disenfranchised by western patriarchy and this has continued effects in today's society to some extent. In the âFull Flight, Ruzicka Parker and Griselda Pollock, Old Mistress: Women, Art and Ideologyâ Carol Shepard explain the often hierarchal organization of art determined by its medium. She explains that because of the history of embroidery and craft, the medium has gained connotations of being 'the expression of the feminine spirit in art.â As a result, the art form is often considered to only uphold certain domestic and aesthetic needs rather than having the capability of conveying any concepts of merit. When studying Tracey Emin's I could appreciate how she steps away from the traditionally maternal and domestic ideas that are often related to women's work, instead of charging her quilt with aggression and a deeper conceptual understanding. I also took time to study Alex Seton who I thought was important for my work when exploring and understanding the concept of value. In his work, he often takes mundane objects or things seeming to hold no value and recreates them using materials such as marble, traditionally associated with fine art. I enjoyed his investigation of the relationship Â
In assessment one, I decided to recreate the Creation of Adam using my limited embroidery skills. Although I found this to be effective to some extent I felt as though it still conveyed the idea that this piece could only be valued because it mimicked a highly valued work. This is similar to the work of Mary Linwood who I discovered also explored the appropriation of famous artworks and incorporation of often less valuable practices. âMiss Linwood has awakened from its long sleep the art which gave birth to paintingâ (Library of Anecdote, quoted Jourdain, 1910, pp.171-2). During further research, however, I realized that this idea was rather contradictory to my statement as it still implies that this piece could only be valued because it mimicked a highly valued work. As a consequence, I also decided to incorporate pages of art history books and instead of entirely mimicking the art they displayed I incorporated a strategy of disturbance and intervention in order to distort the audience's view of the image. In this way, the work was more about the embroidery itself rather than the original painting.
