They have full rotary motion in the wrist, and their wrists break backward to show the strain of exertion, just as men's hands do.

The issue I have with this argument made on page 65 is that it all revolves on a comparison to men. Artemesia's women's hands don't have to look like the hands of men in order to have agency, they are simply more accurate and realistically painted, because her hand as an artist has agency and power. Her success has nothing to do with a comparison to men.

Some new vocab on the first page, here's the oxford definition for 'scopophilic':

Pleasure in looking; in Freudian psychoanalytic theory, an infantile instinct. In relation to the dominance of the male gaze in classical Hollywood cinema, Mulvey refers to scopophilia as the pleasure involved in looking at other people's bodies as (particularly, erotic) objects without being seen either by those on screen or by other members of the audience. Mulvey argues that cinema viewing conditions facilitate both the voyeuristic process of the objectification of female characters and also the narcissistic process of identification with an ideal ego seen on the screen. See also male gaze; voyeurism; compare fetishism.

Pg 181: I think the author uses the term "Real Hermaphrodite" throughout, to mean what would more accurately be called Intersex today. I've linked an article that explains what intersex means here: https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/gender-identity/sex-gender-identity/whats-intersex

Pg 182 "especially in the warm countries"

This is a weird comment within this quote, seems like its possibly rooted in prejudice rather than science.

pg 191: The quote on this page is interesting because I read it as sarcastic at first, must be my 21st century perspective, but it felt like a critique to me, not a description.

Pg 188: "As if my sex was eternally condemned to mediocrity"

what even IS the female gaze? especially in a time when the construct of gender is being critiqued

I am cracking up at the concept of unicorns symbolizing virginity, I love history.

meaning: place of commerce, Commercial

This is interesting in itself because the few examples of male portraiture during this time were just of their heads, and forgo the inclusion of their bodies.

Though I find the wording a bit confusing,I think this is an interesting point. Developments are more about how to improve tech to work on what humans use the technology for already than the development of the new technology in general. This has a direct connection to art, progress in art is often based on what the masses want, and what in culture there is to make art about, its not about just improving and developing the progression of art movements, the movements are built around the cultural environment.

At a time when the landscape is changing so much due to the environmental crisis,I think capturing the landscapes while we still have them is important, because it is very unlikely that humans will be able to stop the damage we are doing to the planet.

Interdisciplinary studies are becoming more and more important in colleges as people realize the importance of the blending of studies. If we communicate and learn from people who study different things, we can make connections and learn from each other and perhaps even progress quicker.

This is an interesting note to leave on, it makes me rethink my interpretation in the first annotation. Maybe abstract art is always in its golden age, because it looks toward the future.

This statement is interesting to me because there are already so many limits created by attempting to define art historical moments, and trying to put a name to events that are happening now is pretty much impossible.

Yes! I always think it is weird that artists are referred to by their race, unless they are white. Seems like another way of making non-white people feel like the "other"

So interesting, after all we have learned about globalization and homogenization that occurs because of it, it is important to acknowledge this. Culture isn't dead just because it is different, culture changes all the time.

This theme park metaphor is interesting to me, in connection with my own section in the book. Though it is not a direct connection, I am writing about how large interactive spaces draw in more of a crowd because they create a sense of community, but they also function well as adult 'playgrounds.' On the trip tp deCordova last week, we wanted to jump and touch the works of art because they felt so big an exciting, like children in a playground, we were disappointed with the works that had labels forbidding this kind of exploration.

"pompous or extravagant in language, style, or manner, especially in a way that is intended to impress." Honestly I find this word entirely ironic, i think its the type of thing that only a grandiloquent person would say.

I'm not surprised that the collector would seemingly poke fun at himself in this way, because it only puts more attention and authority on him, adding to his significance.

So interesting that it is not art historians or artists who name their movements (at least in this case), but instead the collector. The power of collectors in this art market is a bit scary to me, as someone who isn't a huge fan of capitalism.

Throwing in this definition because I hear this word fairly often but never thought to look it up: "enjoying an activity that appears to be painful or tedious."

Such an interesting metaphor, it seems like an art fair would be an artist's dream to attend, especially since typical 'fairs' are usually seen as common and affordable events, yet his seems elitist and separated from the actual artists, they are not given proper credit.

This piece is especially interesting to me because it is done in a series of miniatures, which are normally not placed in the same settings as fine art because they are considered more of a craft than a fine art, but the political message and the cultural interest could make this piece more crucial to this show.

This is very interesting, the critics completely lost interest after Castro was no longer a part of the equation.

https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/471885/mulatto-its-not-a-cool-word/ Check out this video on the problems with this term. Politically correct language would be mixed-race.

The curators likely saw themselves in the role of the all too common "white savior" narrative, where white people take actions to bring attention to black folks only as victims and not as people who have their own legitimate narratives.

This is cool- relates to what we talked about with government funding, people's work can be policed, and they are forced to conform, but since there are no institutions to police their work, what they make can be more honest.

This is interesting because sometimes visual art makes crucial impact, yet it is still seen as less influential and less important than literature, but through art movements like that of the AIDS crisis, we see how impactful art can be in issues of social justice.

I think this is an interesting way to subvert the words of propaganda to make a statement.

Thinking of art made by the people as the art of the moment is interesting because this hasn't been done much throughout art history.

Reminds me of the post-modernist trend of passages between cultures, how the superflatness is expanding from Japan to the west.

"visual esperanto" Esperanto definition: an artificial language devised in 1887 as an international medium of communication, based on roots from the chief European languages.

"Globalisation, then, can be thought of as naming a process or situation which is the focus for a number of complex but related debates about the state of the world at the end of the twentieth century but related debates about the state of the world at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first."- I just wanted to highlight this sentence because it is the most simplified answer to "what is globalisation?"

(pg 281) The trend of video art is also interesting to me, especially in this context of the beginning of discussions about globalisation, as well as bringing up debates about capitalism because film was at the time an expensive medium, both to create and to consume, which, I would think, make it far less "global."

(pg 278) The tradition or repetition of the Documenta show is very interesting to me because many gallery shows are not interested in globalism, and tend to be laser focussed on one particular region or movement in contemporary or modern art.

just find this interesting

I don't know how i feel about this, is it really any more special than any other artistic experience? I feel like it is becoming more about the anecdote and the buzz around the work, than about generating art that is truly interesting and responsive to the world around us. If it is purely for the experience of entertainment, why is it different from going to a concert or a play?

This kind of art is entirely dependent upon what the viewer is willing to get out and go see. Not unlike concerts, where the audience is crucial to the art form.

This reminds me of clothing drops, where a brand will release a very small amount of an item to create hype around it and make it seem more special (air jordans, supreme). This theme may be more about the hype and the exclusivity than about the art itself today.

"a thing that has already happened or been decided before those affected hear about it, leaving them with no option but to accept it."

I have noticed this so many times throughout my life, a certain group of people will use the rhetoric of a group that they do not usually support to reinforce their own arguments, essentially lying to generate their desired results. This is why it is important to give voices to everybody, even when we find issues with them.

I disagree that the 'sameness' of the artist and the subject both being male makes the representation any less objectifying, and while this has something to do with the subject being black and the artist being white I don't believe that there needs to be a dichotomy for someone to objectify another person. I think that objectification happens because there are people who believe that they should be allowed to 'look' without being seen, and often this is called the 'male gaze' because historically, men have been raised to believe it is their right to look and sexualize bodies, but there are also women who believe the same.

pg 230: Often, what is easy or accessible to the public taste is not what is important, so it is important for art to be curated by those in the art community, not the politicians who control NEA funding who have no education in the arts.

pg 223: I think it is upsetting that politicians can have any say in what goes into the gallery. By disrupting the funding of an exhibit, they can effectively prevent audiences from seeing any art they want, which is really scary when art is often a crucial representative of progressive ideas.

I already knew a bit about the AIDS epidemic, and was especially angered when I learned that Ronald Reagan refused to speak the word AIDS until his 8th year of presidency, and condemned it when he finally addressed the issue that was killing his people. I also think about how gay marriage was only legalized in 2015, and I am amazed that it was ever illegal in the first place, but homophobia was so deep in this country, and the response to the AIDS epidemic is just an example of how horrific it was only 35 years ago.

This is an incredible quote, the government turned a blind eye to AIDS because it was killing people they felt indifferent, or even hateful toward. This is an example of the lack of empathy, especially toward gay men and drug addicts.

to add to this note, the FDA still has a ban on gay men donating blood because of the inherent homophobia of the government throughout the AIDS epidemic. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/proposed-fda-blood-policy_b_7284508

"to contest the myths of high art, to declare art, like all other forms of endeavor, to be contingent upon the real, historical world." Art should be about more than the world around us, especially because photography was developed to keep records, so paint was no longer necessary for history keeping.

"only paint is genuinely liberal" is quite an intense statement, why isn't sculpture? or drawing? what is the argument behind paint being the only medium that is free?

"What makes it possible to see a painting as a painting?" I think this is interesting in the discussion of Buren's paintings because they are so simple, they could be seen as something other than a painting, like a textile.

There are many mentions of style/fashion here, and about acceptance of the bourgeoisie as both subject matter and the works themselves. This reminds me of what we discussed last class about Warhol, his work is produced (screen printed) rather than painted, making fine art into an industry rather than something for the higher class. The work becomes more materialized, but also more accessible. Of course, this part is discussing the work of David Salle, who uses the fashionability of his style to bring attention to his imagery.

After reading about Barbara Rose's exhibit, I was itching to see what exactly was shown in this exhibit. I feel like reading all of this isn't super helpful without see what is being talked about, I was able to find that Richard Hennessy's "There Was a Growing Awareness" was one of the paintings in this particular show. see it here: http://theshorecollection.com/Hennessy_Richard.html

"at the end of life"

technology was a huge theme we brought up in the discussion we had as a class about what makes us contemporary, and at the end of this chapter the increase in technology in the arts played a large part in postmodernism, but of course, the way artists use the medium of technology is much different than how it was used in the 70s and 80s, and there is so much more that we can do with it. I wonder if contemporary art as we know it will even be looked back on as a significant movement in the use of technology and art in the future, because technology moves and improves so quickly, it may be looked at in the same way we look at the invention of paint, it isn't really thought of at all, and we can barely picture a time before it existed.

the mix of modern art and nature created an entirely new or 'contemporary' art, each new art form builds off of the one before it, but also tries t challenge that which came before it.

the idea that postmodernism was an escape or retreat from modernism is an interesting critique because isn't that what all new movements are? an escape or rebellion from that which came before them?

Postmodernism was all about ditching themes of anxiety and solitude to embrace the popular culture, it was new because it represented itself through use of the popular culture

I find the analysis of Van Gogh’s peasant shoes as a utopian fantasy very interesting, I had never considered this reading of the piece, they are painted with lush and beautiful objects, but they represent the labor of the people who wore them.

“High modernism is thus created with the destruction of the fabric of the traditional city and its older neighborhood culture (by way of the radical disjunction of the new Utopian high-modernist building from its surrounding context), while the prophetic elitism and authoritarianism of the modern movement are remorselessly identified in the imperious gesture of the charismatic Master”

Honestly this is one of the most needlessly complicated wording I have ever read so I attempted to translate what I think it is trying to say: high modernism in architecture was created through the destruction of tradition, the modern movement is elitist and not empathetic to those who cannot keep up with it, I think the “charismatic Master” here is just a personification of this elitism, unless it is meant to refer to a specific leader of the movement.

I like the way this is worded, an interesting way of discussing the influence of the past on new art, or newness in general.

this is interesting, especially in the context of the counter argument that was presented in the paragraph above

Contemporary art is also often about the social and political movements of their time.

This is a much stricter definition than the looser idea that all art of the moment is contemporary or that all art has ben contemporary.

This reminds me of what we talked about in class when we were coming up with ideas of what makes us contemporary, we are all contemporary because we are of this moment.