Idea - Solipsism

“Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. The term comes from Latin solus (alone) and ipse (self). Solipsism is an epistemological or ontological position that knowledge of anything outside one's own specific mind is unjustified. The external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist. In the history of philosophy, solipsism has served as a skeptical hypothesis.”

www.wikipedia.org

"Was everyone else really as alive as she was?...If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone's thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone's claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was." - Ian McEwan, Atonement

Solipsism

Laurence J. Lafleur

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20123287

“There are two common attitudes towards Solipsism to which all serious philosophers should object.  One is that attitude which takes it as a fictional speculation, a convenient way in which the adolescent mind may pleasantly day-dream; the other is the related attitude of those philosophers who dismiss the doctrine with as much levity as the adolescent holds it.”

“Every man experiences dreams and imaginations, the nature of which is admittedly subjective.  It is perfectly possible for me to propose that this same lack of objectivity may characterize all experience.  I may conceive that I am a god making the world for my own amusement, being real beyond the reality of this my dream.  But this imagined god-head is merely the dream of an idle moment, for I cannot seriously suppose that were I to dream I would dream in exactly this way.  Had I the making of this world, it would be a braver, better world than it is….”

Lafleur, Laurence J. "Solipsism." The Review of Metaphysics 5.4 (1952): 523-528.

     JSTOR. Web. 24 Nov. 2010.

Why Not Solipsism?

Elliott Sober

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2108438

“Solipsism poses a familiar epistemological problem.  Each of us has beliefs about a world that allegedly exists outside our own minds.  The problem is to justify these nonsolipsistic convictions. One standard approach is to argue that the existence of things outside our own sensations may reasonably be inferred from regularities that obtain within our sensations.”

Sober, Elliott. "Why Not Solipsism." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

     55.3 (1995): 547-566. JSTOR. Web. 24 Nov. 2010.

Although solipsism can be psychologically and philosophically complicated, I am drawn to the idea of your own mind being the creator of all of your own world.  It can be seen as a mental illness, but also as a way of thinking within your own mind, similar to surrealism.  It may not make sense in the "real" world, but it does to the creator. I can create whatever I want because it is real and influential to me.

Artist - Marcel Duchamp

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/duchamp_marcel.html

http://www.understandingduchamp.com/

http://www.marcelduchamp.net/

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), the painter and mixed media artist, was associated with Cubism, Dadaism, and Surrealism, though he avoided any alliances.  Duchamp’s work is characterized by its humor, the variety and unconventionality of its media, and its incessant probing of the boundaries of art.  His legacy includes the insight that art can be about ideas instead of worldly things, a revolutionary notion that would resonate with later generations of artists.

http://www.understandingduchamp.com/

"Rrose Sélavy was one of the pseudonyms of artist Marcel Duchamp. The name, a pun, sounds like the French phrase "Eros, c'est la vie", which translates to English as "eros, that's life". It has also been read as "arroser la vie" ("to make a toast to life")."

www.wikipedia.org

“Why not Sneeze, Rose Sélavy? is a 1921 "readymade" sculpture by Marcel Duchamp.

Duchamp made the piece as a birdcage containing a thermometer, a piece of cuttlebone and 152 marble cubes. He crafted the cubes to look like sugar cubes. Only when lifting the cage does it become clear that it is much heavier than it would be if the cubes were made of sugar.

About the sculpture, Duchamp said:

It is a Readymade in which the sugar is changed to marble. It is sort of a mythological effect.

Andre Breton wrote about Why not Sneeze, Rose Sélavy?:

"I have in mind the occasion when Marcel Duchamp got hold of some friends to show them a cage which seemed to have no birds in it, but to be half-full of lumps of sugar. He asked them to lift the cage and they were surprised at its heaviness. What they had taken for lumps of sugar were really small lumps of marble which at great expense Duchamp had had sawn up specially for the purpose. The trick in my opinion is no worse than any other, and I would even say that it is worth nearly all the tricks of art put together."

The Philadelphia Museum of Art displays the original as part of the Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection. Several replicas exist, made by Duchamp, but only in the original are the cubes stamped "Made in France".”

www.wikipedia.org

Marcel Duchamp speaks about his work


I am researching Marcel Duchamp for his use of an alter ego and also his readymade objects.  Duchamp created this Selavy character in order to express another aspect of his mind, a different side, a way of thinking.  The two are separate yet neither can be thought of without thinking of the other.  I am also intrigued by his readymade objects in relation to the objects that I photographed.  I had a hard time with those photographs in the beginnning, as I just rephotographed what was already there, but Duchamp's work makes those objects able to stand alone as art.

Why Not Sneeze Rose Sélavy?

 1921/64. 

Readymade: 152 marble cubes in the form of sugar cubes with thermometer and cuttlefishbone in a birdcage. 

12.4 x 22.2 x 16.2 cm

Rrose Selavy

1921

Photograph by Man Ray

Art direction by Marcel Duchamp

Silver print; 5 7/8" x 3 7/8"

Fountain

1917 (original lost)

Readymade: porcelain urinal

Height 60 cm

Bicycle Wheel

1913

Readymade: bicycle wheel; diameter 64.8 cm, mounted on a stool, 60.2 cm high

Original lost

Idea - Surrealism

"Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members.

Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur; however, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works being an artifact. Leader Andre Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary movement.

Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities of World War I and the most important center of the movement was Paris. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, eventually affecting the visual arts, literature, film and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy and social theory."

www.wikipedia.org

"Influenced by psychological theories, Breton defined Surrealism as "pure psychic automatism, by which an attempt is made to express, either verbally, in writing or in any other manner, the true functioning of thought. The dictation of thought, in the absence of all control by reason, excluding any aesthetic or moral preoccupation." In the Second Manifesto Breton stated that the surrealists strive to attain a "mental vantage-point (point de l'esprit) from which life and death, the real and the imaginary, past and future, communicable and incommunicable, high and low, will no longer be perceived as contradictions.""

Petri Liukkonen and Ari Pesonen on Andre Breton

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/abreton.htm

From Dada to Surrealism

John G. Frey

http://www.jstor.org/stable/771260

“… Breton, the leading theorist of Surrealism, first opposed the real to the unreal and discovered the challenging, mysterious beauty of the dream world. From this time on…became preoccupied with the attempt to exploit the hidden forces of the subconscious, and the artist, absorbed in listening to the “inner voice,” was reduced to the status of a medium, “a modest registering machine, the silent receptacle of many echoes.””

“The development of Surrealism in the pictorial field is typical of the general trend of Surrealism from a passive attitude of enjoyment of dream-states and reveries to an active attitude, the typical case of which would the paranoiac attack on “reality.”  Surrealism in its later phases was conceived of as an active and irrational intervention into the sphere of “reality,” a development which manifested itself on the literary level as a transition form the trances of the “period of sleeping-fits” to Breton’s attempts at the simulation of mental diseases…”

Frey, John G. "From Dada to Surrealism." Panassus 8.7 (1936): 12-15. JSTOR. Web.

     24 Nov. 2010.

Dada, Surrealism, and the Academy of the Avant-Garde

Charles W. Millard

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3849231

“In the great deal that has recently been written about Dada and Surrealism, it has not been sufficiently noted that both were movements trading on previous styles, and both were attempts to modify modernism to make it “easier” and to reintroduce literary content into art.”

“Surrealism intellectualized Dada by using Freudian rather than artistic or mechanical references, and the search for subconscious meaning led to attempts at calling up specific emotions…and eventually to the exploration of dream imagery.”

“Every tendency of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been toward definition and atomization, toward the establishment of art as one thing and life as another, and toward the distinction of the arts one from another.  It its nostalgic effort to return to the past when boundaries were not so clear, Surrealism constantly sough to make art of life and to make of life an art...make objects of art out the facts of internal life, painting dreams, etc., and by introducing into life and art objects with no clear relationship to either.”

Millard, Charles W. "Dada, Surrealism, and the Academy of the Avant-Garde."

     The Hudson Review 22.1 (1969): 111-117. JSTOR. Web. 24 Nov. 2010.

I have been looking to surrealism for its dreamlike and non-sequitur imagery and ideas.  I feel as if surrealism is all about fooling the viewer, and presenting a world that is unlike anything they have ever seen, a world that is imagined and created by the artist.  The viewer is only given certain information, and it is completely up to them how they interpret the interaction between the limited information and themselves.  I want to attempt to make a connection like this.  Not necessarily through wild imagery that defies reality, but through limited, carefully placed information.

Salvador Dali

The Persistence of Memory

1931

Oil on Canvas

24 cm x 33 cm

Artist - Jef Bourgeau

http://jefbourgeau.com/index.htm

There is an interesting description, somewhat of an extended biography, of the artist on this page by Jan van der Marck.

http://jefbourgeau.com/Press/art_damage_mona_press.htm

Jef Bourgeau is the director of Detroit’s Museum of New Art.

BIOGRAPHY 

"Jef Bourgeau was born in Detroit in 1950. At the age of thirteen, he began to illustrate and write short fiction. At nineteen, he was invited to create a ten-page layout of block prints for a Canadian art journal. Bourgeau sold his first novel the next year, but, unhappy with this freshman effort, pulled out of the contract and destroyed the manuscript. He spent the next ten years experimenting with his writing and painting, and soon was exploring film and video as well.

In 1980 he first encountered the early potential of computers and multi-media art. By 1986, as part of a show dedicated to Diego Rivera in celebration of his 50^th anniversary of the Detroit Industry frescoes, Bourgeau presented three films and ten digital-based paintings at Meadow Brook Art Gallery’s Muscle and Machine Dream.

In 1990, Kiichi Usui, that same gallery’s director, offered Bourgeau a solo show (Boxes) of new work generated entirely from computers and video.

Having finally developed all these varied mediums into a satisfactory form of installation work, Bourgeau began his gallery career in 1991: first with Feigenson/Preston then next at O.K. Harris Works of Art. Within a few short years of that, his work had been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States, and from Europe through Asia."

http://jefbourgeau.com/pages/A_User's_Manual.htm

USER'S MANUAL

Jef Bourgeau has a User's Manual, used as "the ideal guide for anyone wishing to approach the art of Jef Bourgeau.  It is a one-of-a-kind manual providing those crucial parts necessary to reassemble the artist’s life and work."

"Throughout his career Jef Bourgeau has fashioned his own identity as one might manipulate an artistic medium, helping to launch a fundamental model of post-20^th century theory: not so much preoccupied with the issue of identity as suspending it.

In accordance, there is not one Jef Bourgeau but many. Not only has he adopted several post-modernist and more advanced idioms in quick succession, but he has also invented several contradictory alter egos. Bourgeau has presented himself as artist and art dealer, conceptualist and craftsman, pragmatist and dreamer, bully and recluse. He is the ultimate fabulist, challenging our assumptions about art.

Yet within all these shifting strategies Bourgeau has set up a powerful negative logic, aimed at questioning the nature of art and art institutions. And, most profoundly, the culture that builds and decides them.

So to that end this book would present his work as an on-going narrative, yet without a story. Or, at the least, without resolution. There is a tension in his work that is relentless; like all good art, never entirely allowing the viewer the comfort of seeing it complete." - Jan van der Marck

http://jefbourgeau.com/Jef_Bourgeau/Bourgeau_spread.pdf

QUOTES

"Maybe it’s just the passing of time, but I’m evaluating people who have touched my life over the years. I must say that Jef Bourgeau has made a dent in my thinking. I always somehow mistrust the word “genius” but I think if I were going to use it for an artist in this place and time, it would be for Bourgeau. I think his ideas and his philosophy need time to reach people, to seep through the armor that walls off our brains. I’ve been in turn annoyed, angry, dazzled, amused, nonplussed, outraged, intimidated, bewildered and a host of other emotions that his work calls up." - Joy Hakanson Colby

"In accordance, there is not one Jef Bourgeau but many. Not only has he adopted several post-modernist and more advanced idioms in quick succession, but he has also invented several contradictory alter egos. Bourgeau has presented himself as artist and art dealer, conceptualist and craftsman, pragmatist and dreamer, bully and recluse. He is the ultimate fabulist, challenging our assumptions about art." - Jan van der Marck

Interview with Jan van der Marck discussing the work and art of Jef Bourgeau.

Connecting Hirst’s Dots

1996-2008

Figurative

Abstract 5

Exhibition View

Oakland University Art Gallery

1992

Renovations

Includes 70 major works in painting, photography, installation and film

Jef Bourgeau interests me because he has the ability to reach outside of his own mind and create others.  He remakes, interprets, questions, highlights, etc, aspects of the art world.  He even has his own museum so that he can show what he wants to show, and curates it as well.  In relation to my practice, I admire his ability to be more than simply himself, and wish to continue with that idea in my work.  Sometimes you and your life and ideas are simply not good enough to fulfill the whole human experience, maybe because its boring, or awful, and creating other beings to fill those gaps is an interesting concept.

Idea - Alter Ego

"An alter-ego (Latin "the other I") is a second self, a second personality or persona within a person, who is often oblivious to the persona's actions. It was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists.  A person with an alter-ego is said to lead a double life.

A distinct meaning for alter-ego can be found in literary analysis, wherein it describes characters in different works who are psychologically similar, or a fictional character whose behavior, speech or thoughts intentionally represent those of the author. Similarly, alter-ego can be applied to the role or persona taken on by an actor or by other types of performers.

Alter-ego is also used to refer to the different behaviors any person may display in various situations. Related concepts include avatar, doppelgänger, impersonator, and split personality."

From Wikipedia.org

How to create an alter ego:

http://www.wikihow.com/Create-an-Alter-Ego

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article3304163.ece

 Pitman, Joanna. "Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray: Dada in drag." The Times. Times

     Newspapers, 9 Feb. 2008. Web. 17 Nov. 2010.

In this article, author Joanna Pitman discusses the use of alter egos from artists Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. 

“Long before a man in dress landed the Turner Prize, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray adopted transvestite alter egos to push the art world’s boundaries.”

“[Francis] Naumann doesn’t believe “that the alter ego was intended purely as a joke – rather, it was a serious attempt, on Duchamp’s part, to expand the possibilities of what constituted a work of art, as he had so ingeniously done a few years earlier with his introduction of the readymade.””

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/arts/design/20ray.html

Rosenburg, Karen. "Mercurial Jester, Revealing and Concealing." The New York

     Times. The New York Times, 19 Nov. 2009. Web. 17 Nov. 2010.

This article discusses how Man Ray came to be and how he was influenced and inspired.

“He chose art, changed his name and never looked back.”

““Alias Man Ray” makes you wonder how much control artists are allowed to exert over their biographies. If you believe that the shift to Man Ray from Emmanuel Radnitzky is itself a work of art, like Duchamp’s alter ego Rrose Sélavy, this show begins to look like an act of sabotage.

Yet we benefit from it. This show doesn’t challenge the long-held view that photography was Man Ray’s most enduring contribution to modernism. But it does change our picture of the artist. Duchamp was supposed to be the elusive one, but here it is Man Ray who slips among cities and mediums and personas — and, finally, out of Duchamp’s shadow.”

I became interested in the idea of an alter ego after Zoe Beloff's lecture, and her completely made up society and characters.  She has the ability to talk about it in such a way that it is incredibly convincing and backs all of her information up with drawings, film clips, ideas, etc.  In relation to my work, the idea of an alter ego brings me back to the photographs I did of recreating Judy, my uncle's lover.  I feel like the images I have already created need the support of the original photograph to make sense, so I have considered removing information by using a minimal backdrop and staging scenes.  Possibly as Judy, possibly as other family characters.  The information doesn't have to necessarily correct, it can be whatever I want it to be.

Alexandre Singh Question/Response

I have noticed that you tend to work in many different mediums.  How do you come to choose a medium? Do you prefer one over the other? Do you consider yourself an artist or a teacher, or perhaps both?

Much of your work requires time to view and understand what you are getting across, such as long videos or lectures.  Is this type of extended experience necessary for your work? Do you think that there are ways to briefly get your point across?

I found Alexandre Singh’s presence and work to be entrancing, confident, and complex.  I loved his description of why he’s interested in the dream/drug world, as it is “a beautiful place where contradictory things coexist.”  I found all of his work to be intriguing, but perhaps a bit confusing.  But, this does answer one of my questions.  His practice can not really be fully described in a short period of time.  Well, it can, but he feels like it would almost be a “fuck you” to the audience.  His ideas are much more complex and his imagery requires time to view and contemplate.  As far as use of mediums goes, he does what is appropriate for each idea, similar to how Zoe Beloff approaches her work.  I found his object installation interesting, as he is personifying this idle objects to tell a story, one which pokes fun at himself and his work.  He is artist and critic, teacher, storyteller, narrator, etc.

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I entered two contests, PDN Student Photo Contest 2011 and Photographer's Forum Best of College Photography 2011.