Author: Brown, Elizabeth A.

Publication Year:

Media Type: Periodical (article)

Summary:

Abstract:

In this article I consider the possible application of catharsis to recent vanguard art. I use as examples two artists in their early forties, Lari Pittman from Los Angeles and Kiki Smith from New York. The notion of catharsis requires several components: an intense stimulus and an equally intense response resulting in some type of purification or resolution. In fact, I believe that much vanguard art can bear emotion and big subjects more effectively in some ways than any other form. I would like to focus my argument on a distinction between personal and public address and on two artists whose work touches on an extremely wide range of affect. Pittman and Smith make very different work and have never been equated or even shown together. Yet they are among those current artists whose work is most involved with a wide range of deep emotions. Both furthermore position their work in opposition to a straight white male norm, Pittman stressing a queer identity. Smith articulating a feminist focus. Both choose a femme approach and articulate their ultimate goal as making things as beautiful as I can. At the same time each seeks to engage the widest range of sensation and association - sounds, textures, smells and tastes, as well as cognitive, somatic, and oneiric associations. But also available to them is a series of dense, complex languages of style and of process, the inherited meanings of the history of art and its criticism. To read their work through any of the wide range of aesthetic discourses is to double its meaning each time. (p. 26)

Inclues Notes [bibliography].

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Arts Education