Esoteric

"Taoism (or Daoism) may be regarded as the esoteric part of the Chinese tradition, and Confucianism as the exoteric. The exoteric is that which is open and available to everyone, whereas the esoteric is hidden and only for those who have the requisite spiritual aptitude" (Tzu, Lao viii).

“The Buddha was not a mystic. His awakening was not a shattering insight into a transcendental truth that revealed to him the mysteries of God. He did not claim to have had an experience that granted him privileged, esoteric knowledge of how the universe ticks" (thinkbuddha.org).

Tzu, Lao, Stephen Addiss, and Stanley Lombardo. Tao Te Ching. Boston: Shambhala, 2007. Print.

Part of what I love about Taoism is the mystery of it. Followers of this philosophy are expected to just go with the flow. If you fight nature and the Tao than you will struggle. The key is to become part of the Tao and than you will understand. It's compared to the flow of water, if you struggle against it you will make no progress. Once you go with the water, you will float gracefully down the stream. The ideas behind this philosophy are so simple yet there is so much you don't know, like what happened before and what is going to happen. I hope that with my work I can capture that feeling of mystery and the hidden. There is the outlying beauty of the images but if you really look at them and let yourself become part of the environment you will realize so much more.

Guo Xi

This artist is a little bit different from other artists I have researched in that he is an ancient Chinese painter. He was the preeminent landscape painter of the late eleventh century. He was revolutionary, using "innovative brushwork and ink [that] [was] rich, almost extravagant, in contrast to the earlier master's severe, spare style" (metmuseum.org). He would use layer upon layer of inks and water in order to make his paintings look misty and blurry, as if the mornings dew had just disappeared.

"Landscape forms simultaneously emerge from and recede into a dense moisture-laden atmosphere: rocks and distant mountains are suggested by outlines, texture strokes, and ink washes that run into one another to create an impression of wet blurry surfaces" (metmuseum.org).

I chose to research this artist because he works in the Taoist style, however I'm not sure if he was a Taoist himself. The way he paints is very reminiscent of the Taoist painters and their style. They were very reverential towards nature, often losing themselves in it and becoming completely immersed in their environment before even attempting to paint a single stroke. This is what I'm doing except I'm using my photography to convey the message of the beauty of immersing yourself in nature. I'm really drawn to the brushstrokes within the paintings because they do seem spontaneous and purposeful at the same time. I'm not quite sure how one would manage to do that but Guo Xi makes it happen.

metmuseum.org

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1981.276

http://www.artrealization.com/traditional_chinese_art/landscape_painting/northern_song/guo_xi.htm

Experience

“Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish." - Hermann Hesse

I heard this quote the other night in my Religions class as we were being lectured on Taoism. I think it goes along with what we talked about that night in class. It's one of the main points of Taoism. The Tao cannot be grasped using our normal vocabulary to convey it; trying to grasp it in words only spoils it. You have to be able to see it or experience it some other way, to feel it. That is what I would like to be able to present in the end. I want my final work to be installed in a way so that it is more than just the images, I want it to be an experience. I'm hoping to be able to fulfill that by using sound as well as projecting moving images on the wall. I didn't realize it until now but I am actually working a lot like the early Taoist artists. In his book, The Illustrated World Religions, Huston Smith states Taoists "teach that human beings are at their best when they are in harmony with their surroundings. It is no accident that the greatest periods of Chinese art have coincided with upsurges of Taoist influence. Before reaching for their brushes, painters would go to nature and lose themselves in it, to become, say, the bamboo that they would paint" (138). Again, this is what I've been practicing as I go out and photograph. I try to become part of nature in order to document my own experiences within it.

Smith, Huston. The Illustrated World's Religions: a Guide to Our Wisdom Traditions. [San Francisco]: HarperOne, 1994. Print.

"Clearing Autumn Skies" 

Kuo Hsi

Ansel Adams

I chose to research Ansel Adams this week because he is one of the greatest landscape photographers ever. It would seem like an obvious choice to choose him since my work has become more landscape based. I love the simple beauty of his images. He doesn't do anything to his environment when he's photographing. He simply captures what he sees. And that is, in essence, what I am trying to accomplish now.

Ansel Adams was born in San Francisco, CA in 1902. He was a photographer as well as an environmental activist. He was an only child and had a somewhat solitary childhood. He had a huge interest in nature and would take long walks near the Golden Gate Bridge. He once stated that his love of nature was "colored and modulated by the great earth gesture" (anseladams.com). He spent a lot of time hiking, climbing, and exploring around Yosemite and the Sierras. He spent a lot of time traveling the country seeking out natural beauty that he could photograph. He was also very involved with promoting photography as a fine art medium. "Adams was the last and defining figure in the romantic tradition of nineteenth-century American landscape painting and photography" (anseladams.com).

"Adams's technical mastery was the stuff of legend. More than any creative photographer, before or since, he reveled in the theory and practice of the medium" (anseladams.com). 

http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/art%20news/905N-000-001.html


www.metmuseum.org


www.anseladams.com

Stephan Cartwright Question/Response

1. A lot of your work is very technical and consists of many numbers and graphs. What kind of artist would you consider yourself to be?
2. What do you want your viewers to get from your work?

I went to the Stephan Cartwright lecture on a whim and I was pleasantly surprised by the experience I had listening to him. He is an avid biker and traveler. That was what initially attracted me to his work. He has traveled all over the world and has done extensive bike trips, one of his biggest trips was something like 9,000 miles! His longest project to date is his "Latitude and Longitude" project. For the past 11.5 years, he has recorded his whereabouts using GPS. He records his whereabouts every hour on the hour. From this data he creates line drawings and maps detailing his travels. He makes graphs as well, with each line representing a different year. This is the premise for most of his work. One of his pieces, the "Life Location Project", was a way for him to figure out his life and where he had been and also to see how his life could have intersected with other peoples'. He uses a line for himself and then he also has lines representing his wife and his immediate family. It's really interesting to see how all of the lines diverge and then intersect at other points and then all diverge again. When I looked at all of the lines flowing together, it made me think about my own life and how it has intersected with so many other people, coming together just for an instant and than breaking away again to go separate paths. My favorite pieces that he did were called "Frequency." He did one for Richmond and one for Philadelphia. It comes back to the GPS coordinates again. He would keep track of everywhere he went within the city. Each location, for every time he was there, equaled one cube. If he went somewhere multiple times, there were cubes for each time he went there, stacked on top of each other. Eventually what he ends up creating, is a cityscape of sorts, made up of all of these cubes. What was really interesting was that he could point to certain cubes and immediately know where the location was. Overall, he was a very interesting and engaging speaker to listen to. I'm really glad I ended up going to this lecture. I've never been to a sculpture lecture before so it was a nice break from all of the photo/film lectures I have seen.

Alternative

Alternative is defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary as "of or relating to behavior that is considered unconventional and is often seen as a challenge to traditional norms."


"It is possible that a photograph may not make a concrete statement or answer a specific question. A photograph is not necessarily about something; rather it is something in and of itself. A photograph may be enigmatic or it may allow a viewer access to something remarkable that could not be perceived or understood in another medium" (Photographic Possibilities: The Expressive Use of Ideas, Materials, and Processes 1).

Since the beginning of my project I have considered alternative methods. First I was thinking about how I could display my final work in a different style than I normally do. And then as I continued photographing I realized I could develop my images in new ways as well. At first I was thinking about making my own photographic paper and from there I discovered new ways of printing my images, methods like photosynthesis, liquid emulsion, or image transfers and lifts. As I continue to make work, I will continue to develop new ways of finalizing my images. My latest idea was to actually print on leaves or pieces of bark, so going through all of the old alternative process books has been really fun. I get to discover old ways of printing and than figure out how I can possibly make these processes work for me as I start finishing up images for the final.

Hirsch, Robert, and John Valentino. Photographic Possibilities: the Expressive Use of Ideas, Materials, and Processes. Boston: Focal, 2001. Print.

Christopher James

Christopher James is an artist and photographer, specializing in painting and alternative process images. His work has been exhibited in numerous galleries all over the world. His work has been shown at the MOMA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art among others. He has written a couple of books on the subject of alternative processing including The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes, which has received critical acclaim. He is currently University Professor, and Chair of Photography, at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. He also works as a graphic designer.

"With digital imaging hosting the new “mushy democracy” of photographic expression; where the equipment finds the faces, exposes for neutral feeling, and then makes the perfect print, there is a (forgive the theater in the next word) hunger for the accident, the raw imperfect light and texture of life. Alternative process image making grows ever stronger in this environment..." (Christopher James, Visual Literacy: Revolutions, Arts, and Mirrors 1).

"In alternative process printmaking, the hand and the eye are equal partners in the art and crafting of the image. The print itself is a sign, a symbol, and a mark … perhaps even a metaphor for the process of making the print" (9).

I've been working with alternative processes throughout my project by using my Diana camera. I've been thinking about trying other processes as well, like making my own paper and transfers. Now I'm thinking about doing emulsion lifts and placing images on objects found in nature, like leaves or pieces of wood. I really like that this artist has a whole body of work devoted to plastic cameras. This artist works with a lot of different alternate processes, some of which I would be interested in trying with my own work.

http://christopherjames-studio.com/build/writing.html
(Book review is the last on the list)

http://www.eastmanhouse.org/index.php

http://christopherjames-studio.com/index.html