Presentations for April 28

Timaj:
How is it that you differentiate between the "real" and the "perceived"? What we know is what we perceive, that is as real as we can get... there are, after all, different arrays of color (ultraviolet etc) that humans cannot see, which are just as real as the spectrum that humans can see. The comparison with the camera would be interesting to dissect, since cameras were thought to somewhat "replace" artists because of the camera's ability to instantly replicate a scene, and yet that haystack painting that took several distances into account, and which didn't look very real at all, was supposed to be imitating a camera? That's almost paradoxical...

Brittany:
About the painting of the 'dream seconds before waking up', you would tell us that the tigers looked like the bee, and that the gun represented a bee sting, and that the multi-joined elephant represented desire... but all of that was present in the painting anyway. There was still a pomegranate with a bee around it, there was still a woman in a position that would probably suggest desire, and these things are all much clearer a symbol than the symbols themselves. So then what is the point of the symbols? What relevance does the title actually have to some more complicated reality of surrealist art? Does the arbitrariness of the symbols' presence merely demonstrate how loose connections in our brain can manifest in an instant? Does this focus on arbitrariness take away from any meaning the piece might otherwise have?

Jazzmin:
I had always believed that, in closer knit underground communities anyway, graffitti art was a marker of the artist's presence, rather than serving the artist as a way to express their opinion under the veil of anonymity. Take Basquiat for example, he had a style that was unmistakably his own. As for commissioned pieces, is the artist still anonymous? If it's legal, then the artist can paint in broad daylight... actually I think I remember you saying that some artists didn't like doing commissioned pieces. Speaking about legality of pieces, does the artist really care if their piece gets painted over, if they know they don't have a legal right to paint in that spot? Does the temporary existence of such large, striking murals actually affect the art in a positive way (other than to serve as a thrill to the artist)?