The Lowdown on Lowbrow: West Coast Pop Art:
Lowbrow means different things to different artists. The actual term for lowbrow is a person regarded as uncultivated and lacking in taste. Who is to judge what is a lowbrow though? Generally lowbrow images were images of naked girls and cars and urinals and things like that. Lowbrow is pop culture, car culture, and a people thing. Lowbrow artists have a common ground, a common experience. People can relate because there is a historical reference, that is more personal than something that is esoteric. Everyone, average workers, became artists.
Displaying Modern Art: The Tate Approach:
The Tate Modern houses modern art in four sections. Each of the sections has a specific theme and selection of modern art. History is embodied in the collections. Art should be more than entertainment. Artists wanted to use aesthetic effects, using emotion. Viewers should keep an empty mind, without any previous knowledge. Each room was dedicated to specific artists or a specific theme. Art was self contained. The movements evolved in reaction to each other.
Bones of Contention: Native American Archaeology:
Bones of tens of thousands of Native Americans have accumulated during the collection of the genocide in the U.S. against the Indians. The Indians want the remains of their ancestors back. The Indians felt discriminated in 1971 when a women's husband was a construction engineer that found a cemetery that was found, with 26 white people. They were taken out of the graves by the state archaeologists and they were reburied, but the Indian women and her baby were taken for studying and were not reburied. The Indian people felt discriminated and the wife was told that she needed to stand up for what she believed in. She demanded the remains of her ancestors. A law was established in Iowa that protected Indian burial sites. Other states followed with the law. Brain studies were constructed that concluded that the size of a person's cranium has relation to intelligence. So, Indian skulls have been collected and put in museums for storage. Native American's don't want what the scientists' have to say about their ancestor's remains.
An Acquiring Mind: Phillipe de Montebello and the Metropolitan:
Montebello guided the acquisition of more than 84,000 works of art. He is the longest tenured director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The video states that a museum is not ever finished. The museum would grow to represent all cultures and all eras under Montebello. No one can know all of the history of art around the world, but one man says that Montebello comes close. Nearly 2 million objects are contained at the Med's glowing collection.
For my theme for the art curation exhibition, I chose animals. I feel that animals are just as in depth as humans and they are present in a lot of artworks. I would say that the only video that relates to my theme would be the lowdown video because the style of lowdown is a more personal style and everyone can relate. Everyone has or has had an animal or has had experience with animals, whether it be good or bad, and that is what lowdown art is based on; a common ground, a common experience.
I thought the films were interesting, to an extent. The first and the third video were the most interesting. I have never heard of lowdown art before and was very interested in learning about it from the video. I like that every artist has their own definition for it. I like the Native American video because I have learned quite a bit about Native Americans in all my years of school, but have never learned of the controversy of digging up the grave cites and having the bones be taken in for studying. Native Americans are people too and I can understand how they feel discriminated through such acts.
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