Archive for the ‘Meta-Art and Architecture’ Category
The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City: Diego Rivera’s Meta-Mural
In 1931, Diego Rivera (actually Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez — whew, what a name!) painted The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City at the San Francisco Art Institute. The mural is a meta-mural because it is a mural about murals and because it represents its creators in the act of creating the fresco itself.
A Meta-Mural on Clarion Alley: Lo Llevas por Dentro by Jet Martinez
Clarion Alley in the Mission District of San Francisco used to be a shady street where junkies would shoot up. In October 1992, a volunteer collective of residents organized the Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP) to bring art and color to the alley. The murals of Balmy Alley, which are focused on Central American struggle, inspired the project, but the murals of Clarion Alley are generally more playful and cartoon-like, although they deal with serious social issues as well (“What I Know is What I Owe,” says one mural and another, now painted over, challenged the “Demonocracy” of the United States). Many murals explore the rich culture of the Mission, especially, of course, the predominate Latino culture.
One mural, called El Misísimo Diablo, said, “The life of any street art is short,” but begged visitors to respect the murals. This very same devil has, alas, been painted over and recently many of the best murals in Clarion Alley have been covered over by sloppy graffiti. For many years, graffiti artists respected the paintings, yet a wave of tagging has wiped out many works of art. Still, one of my favorites has survived, a meta-painting, or we should say a meta-mural: Lo Llevas por Dentro by Jet Martinez.
Halfway: A Meta-Painting by Tofu St. John
Halfway by Tofu St. John is a meta-painting because it is a painting about painting. The picture is a self-portrait of the painter doing what a painter does. However, the figure is not holding an artist’s brush, as you might expect, but a decorator’s roller. Painting a wall with a solid color – in this case sky blue — is not usually considered artistic, so this piece creates a tension between painting as art and painting as decoration.
The artist (or decorator) in the picture, with one hand casually tucked into his pocket, has covered up about half of a white stucco wall from the bottom up, reminding us of the title of the piece: Halfway. The work also marks the halfway point in Tofu’s project, whose aim is to produce one 4″ by 4″ painting everyday in 2011. Many of the pictures in the series refer to historical events that happened on that day, current events, personal events, or holidays; in this case, the work was painted on July 2nd, the 183rd day, the middle of the year.
Abstract Paintings are Meta-Paintings
All abstract paintings are meta-paintings. A meta-painting is a painting about painting. A meta-painting may represent itself, the process of its creation, its materiality, the conventions of art, the gallery where it is hung, the artwork around it, and the place of art and artist in society. Diego Velasquez’s Las Meninas does all these things and more, but Velasquez’s painting is a meta-painting because of its subject matter, rather than its form or style. Most other paintings by Velasquez are not meta, but are naturalistic representations. Abstract paintings, in contrast, are inherently meta.
Abstract paintings are meta because they are about themselves. The titles of many abstract paintings show that they are their own subject matter, for example Constructivist Painting No. 8 by Joaquin Torres-Garcia from 1938. The metapainting also emphasizes the process of its creation, namely its construction in the word “Constructivist.” Similarly, Jackson Pollock’s Square Painting refers to paint being poured into a square (the process being what matters most for Pollock). All abstract paintings are meta-paintings.
The Danger of Meta: Pompidou and David Foster Wallace’s “Octet”
Centre Georges Pompidou demonstrates the danger of meta:
The Parisian art museum built in 1977 is meta-architecture because it exposes elements of a building that are usually hidden, placing them on the exterior. It teaches us to see a building as a material object made up of structure, support, pipes, wires. In the picture below some pipes are painted different colors, suggesting different systems, thus “exposing the device,” showing us how the building works. Very interesting, no doubt. So what’s the problem?
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The Lack of Blank Spaces: Cage’s 4’33″ and Rauschenberg’s “White Paintings”
Well, that didn’t work. I intended to leave this post blank — thirty empty lines followed by the “more” function (“Read the rest of the entry”), then two hundred and sixty three blank lines, another “more,” and one hundred sixty lines, each line representing a second of silence in John Cage’s famous song “4’33,” three movements of no music totaling four minutes and thirty three seconds, composed for any instrument or combination of instruments. However, WordPress will not allow any blank lines. Although cyberspace is relatively cheap and there is an apparently limitless supply of it, the program edits out the empty spaces. On WordPress, I can write anything I want, except nothing. So, I will have to break the silence Cage created.
David Hockney’s Metaphotocollage
The metaphotocollage (how about that word!) by David Hockney, “Luncheon at British Embassy, Tokyo, Feb. 16, 1983,” is meta because it upsets several assumptions about photographs, refers to the photographer, and captures the act of taking photographs.
Metaphotos of a Metasculpture
Omar Rodriguez Rodriguez’s Metaphotos of Josiah McElheny’s Metasculpture Model for Total Reflective Abstraction (after Buckminster Fuller & Isamu Noguchi), 2003.
Blown glass objects, mirrored glass, and wood base.
If Not a Pipe, Then What?: Magritte’s Meta-Painting
When first I came across René Magritte’s famous painting, which says in French “This is not a pipe,” I was quite confused. Of course it is a pipe. Just look at the painting. I propose a simple test to check: put something in the pipe and smoke it. You can’t? Why not? If not a pipe, then what is it?
Las Meninas: A Meta-Painting
Las Meninas is a meta-painting, a painting about paintings. (Thanks to Alejo Sauras for pointing this out to me!) I decided to post Velasquez’s masterpiece with a quick explanation of what makes it meta, but as I have been studying the (digitally reproduced) oil painting and writing about it, I have noticed more and more self-references and so my explanation keeps expanding. At this point I count at least 23 meta aspects. Take a look at the painting yourself and see if you can identify them:
