Sunday, April 6, 2025
MUSEUM FIELD TRIP TO THE UCSB AD&A MUSEUM ON WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9 FROM 12:30-1:45
Thursday, April 3, 2025
UNDERSTANDING MEDIATION: JOHN BERGER & WALTER BENJAMIN
John Berger, who was an art critic, is most well known for his seminal work, Ways of Seeing (1972). This revolutionary book, and the accompanying four part BBC film series, has been a cultural phenomenon for decades, and it has helped shape the way in which we see and perceive art. Chapter 1, which you will be writing about this week, is largely inspired by Walter Benjamin's essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, but unlike Benjamin's dense text– Berger writes in a very approachable way. Therefore, please watch the 4 film installments (HERE), and read the book (particularly Chapter 1) before you tackle Benjamin's essay.
Walter Benjamin, who wrote The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936), was a German philosopher from The Frankfurt School. He is best known for his studies of literature and mass culture, and he became among one of the most celebrated philosophers from the 1960s to the present.In this essay he essentially tracks the cultural shift, and thus the displacement of original works of art, through the abundance of mechanically reproduced copies of them. He suggests that which makes works of art unique cannot be transferred to its copies, and that the abundance of copies interferes with our ability to experience the original. He posits that we no longer approach the original work through the lens of its own cultural and historical context, but instead that the abundance of copies serves to divorce it from its history and essentially decontextualizes it.
Questions to ask yourself while reading The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction:
1) What does Benjamin mean by the "aura of the original"?
2) How does he frame the way in which one experiences a work of art in person when compared to the way in which it is experienced through its copies (made through mechanical reproduction technologies– i.e. photographs, JPEGs etc. of those works of art)?
3) What does Benjamin mean when he makes the distinction between cult value and exhibition value?
4) What concerns does he express about the use of reproduction technologies to disseminate propagandistic or politically biased information?
GREAT RESOURCES TO GAIN INSIGHTS INTO BENJAMIN'S ESSAY:
1) For more on Walter Benjamin, visit Stanford University's Encyclopedia of Philosophy HERE.
2) For a very approachable description of the basic themes in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, visit this Yale University Campus Press article HERE.
3) Watch this helpful video (9:29) because it clearly distills and contextualizes many very important ideas in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction HERE, and embedded right below Berger's Ways of Seeing videos.
Friday, February 14, 2025
Welcome to Art 1A Spring Quarter 2025
Hello everyone,
Welcome to Art 1A: Visual Literacy! I wanted to reach out to let you know that everything that you need to know about Art 1A will be posted here on the Art 1A website, not on Canvas, but your Teaching Assistant may opt to use Canvas. Please read everything carefully, I will go over this information in class when we meet, and I will answer any questions that you may have.Art 1A lectures and sections will be taught in-person. However, the first lecture, on Monday, March 31 will be taught via Zoom. Zoom link: https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/83111992304
Please fill out the Art 1A Questionnaire (HERE), and return it to me and your TA ASAP. This will help us get to know you, and it will also let us know whether you are having any technology issues. You can find our contact information HERE.
Monday, January 27, 2025
MUSEUM FIELD TRIPS FOR ART 1A SPRING 2025
This quarter we have two spectacular field trips planned. Our first field trip is to the Getty Center and the second field trip is to LACMA. There are simply too many important exhibitions between these two museums, and therefore we will have two field trips. These field trips are all day events, and they are in lieu of the lectures that week. If you are unable to go to the Getty Center or LACMA, there is an alternative field trip for you to attend on your own during the week of our LACMA or Getty Trips. The alternative trip is to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (details below). You must attend one of the Los Angeles field trips, and can do the other in Santa Barbara, if you can't make the trip to LA twice. It is preferable that you attend both Los Angeles field trips.
PLEASE FILL OUT ALL THREE OF THE LIABILITY WAIVERS ASAP:
All three liability waivers are in this one link. Be sure to sign and date all three, and you must use your first and last name. LINK: https://powerforms.docusign.net/f69f1832-2f52-408b-b9e8-89879d8c4c73?env=na3&acct=36d87d60-c882-4887-835a-bc389fb776dd&accountId=36d87d60-c882-4887-835a-bc389fb776dd
A FEW TIPS TO PREPARE FOR OUR FIELD TRIPS:
FIELD TRIP #1: GETTY ON SATURDAY, APRIL 19
FIELD TRIP #2: LACMA ON SATURDAY, MAY 10
MANDATORY LIABILITY WAIVERS (PLEASE FILL OUT ALL OF THEM TO BE ELIGIBLE FOR ALL OF THE FIELD TRIPS):
All three liability waivers are in this one link: HERE. Be sure to sign and date all three: https://powerforms.docusign.net/f69f1832-2f52-408b-b9e8-89879d8c4c73?env=na3&acct=36d87d60-c882-4887-835a-bc389fb776dd&accountId=36d87d60-c882-4887-835a-bc389fb776dd
Students must submit the liability waiver forms for each trip, and will not receive free admission without them. If you show up to the museum without having done this, you will have to pay full admission and you will not legally be recognized as part of the UCSB Department of Art field trip. If you have difficulty filling out your DocuSign Liability Waiver, then email your professor and our Undergraduate Advisor, Hannah Vainstein: arts-undergraduate@ucsb.edu.
1200 Getty Center Dr.
Los Angeles, CA 90049
Parking and Transportation Information HERE
FIELD TRIP #1 ON SATURDAY, MAY 10: LACMA AT 12:00PM:
Students must submit the liability waiver form, and will not receive free admission to LACMA without it. If you show up to the museum without having done this, you will have to pay full admission and you will not legally be recognized as part of the UCSB Department of Art field trip. If you have difficulty filling out your DocuSign Liability Waiver, then email your professor and our Undergraduate Advisor, Hannah Vainstein: arts-undergraduate@ucsb.edu.
MEETING AT LACMA:
1130 State Street
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
Phone: 805.963.4364
@sbmuseart
Tues - Sun 11 am - 5 pm
Thurs 11 am - 8 pm
Closed Mondays and holidays
Monday, December 2, 2024
Art 1A Artist Talk on Wednesday, December 4 Featuring Vivek Karthikeyan
Artist Bio:
Vivek (b. 1986, Abu Dhabi) is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and filmmaker of South Asian-Indian ethnicity working at the intersection of moving image, spoken word, sound, text, devised performance and digital art. Working predominantly in an experimental idiom that emphasizes contingency of process and a visceral subjective experience for the viewer, Vivek is interested in extending the moving image beyond the screen into an immersive, “expanded cinema” experience that incorporates the spatiality of newer forms like projection mapping, xR, 3D modeling and computational imagery. His work often deals with themes such as the ambiguities of the creative process, the predicament of subjectivity in the digital age, technological dystopia, urban alienation and angst (thanks in no small part to years of living a double life as artist and tech worker.)
Vivek trained in cinematography at the prestigious Mindscreen Film Institute in Chennai, India and has worked on several independent films screened at venues including International Film Festival of Rotterdam, Scary Cow Film Festival in San Francisco, and Mono X Festival in New York, among others. Born and raised as an Indian diasporic kid in the Middle East before moving to the US as a young adult, he feels both at home and forever in exile everywhere he goes.