Video review week 10

The Lowdown on Lowbrow: West Coast Pop Art

This video was interesting to me because it talked about an aspect of art I wasn’t familiar with: Lowbrow art. It is a style to that is reactionary to the highbrow culture. In the beginning stages, this art mainly depicted cars and naked women. Robert Williams was the one who coined the phrase Low Brow Art in his book published in 1979. Things that inspired this art were B rated movies, car culture, surf scene, Malibu Beach Scene, McCarthyism and the threat of Communism. Ed Roth, Von Dutch and Robert Williams are the three big artists of this style.
As far as famous museums go, there doesn't seem to be any Low Brow art in them. These artists created their own scene and put on their own art shows. Over the last ten years Low brow art has gained more recognition and acceptance, however. The growth and value of this type of art has been growing by leaps and bounds.

Displaying Modern Art: The Tate Approach

During the first it was opened, there have been 4 million visitors making it the most famous Modern Art Museum in the world. Gender, ethnicity and sexuality roles in the acceptance of artworks was looked at. Tate Modern had to come up with a different way to display art. They displayed art in four sections, each section will provide a theme for works of art. Landscape, still life, history and the nude are the themes which link directly to the genre of art from the 17th century french academy. The Tate approach does not go in chronological order and will have an abrupt transition between pieces and the artists. This type of display allows viewers to have no previous knowledge of art is also seen as a form of entertainment. The exhibits are set up so that people will not get bored. The pieces mean to compliment each other and transition well. Hanging art thematically encourages a type of viewing that can leap out and thought of less as a narrative. The idea is to avoid having to be too distracted and concentrating too much on what is being viewed.

Bones of Contention: Native American Archeology

During the US genocide against Native Americans over the past 150 years, their bones have been collected and Anthropologists have tried to figure out whether or not these bones should be returned to the Native Americans. Roadwork in Iowa disturbed a cemetery, and 26 Anglo people were later re-buried but one Native American and her baby were sent back for study. Because of discrimination, Iowa ended up passing a law protecting Native American remains remains. Such groups of people as the Europeans encountered burial mounds, and then collected the remains but afterward they thought the mound builders were too intelligent to be Native Americans. In all, over 4000 skulls of Native Americans were collected. One woman Susan Harjo fought for the Native peoples objects to be returned to them. The Smithsonian has held the bones of 18,000 Native Americans, also. IN 1989, inventories were taken in the museums and they were told that the remains must be given back to those tribes. Scientists tired to document all the remains before they were given back to the tribes for re-burial. Now burial sites remain untouched and are avoided by construction crews at all costs.


George Eastman House: Picture Perfect

George Eastman was considered to be the father of Photography. He was described as a visionary and also as marketing genius. He was actually the inventor of motion picture film. His house has since been turned into a museum. Eastman created a process that made photography available to everyone. His Brownie camera revolutionized photography, also. The Brownie was made for 70 years. The Tech collection in the Eastman house contains around 16,000 objects, of which 5,000 are cameras. He strove to make the camera as convenient as possible. Kodak became one of the best known brands all over the world and an interesting fact is that he just made the name up. In 1996 the Eastman House established the first school to teach the restoration, preservation, and archiving of motion pictures. The Eastman collection can also be viewed online now. In the end, Mr. Eastman took his own life because he didn't want his disease to be his demise, he wanted to control his life and death.

I really enjoyed the Low Brow and George Eastman videos. I never knew much about either of these topics previous to the videos. The Tate Museum is very interesting also. I thought it was interesting that the creators wanted art to just be enjoyed for what it is, and now as if it were a chronological history book.  The least interesting to me was the video about the Native Americans because it just is not a topic that peaks my interest.