This article is all about art criticism. It introduces several types of art criticism adding appropriate examples which are real articles written from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each of articles as an example is easy to understand. Reading this, I was able to get to know that what art critique is, how itshould be written and what kind of perspective I should have about art critique. What is important is not to be exclusive among types of art criticism.
Paul Pfeiffer
"Long Count"
I am attracted by Paul Pfeiffer’s Long Count because I can learn that things deleted and the evidence of erasure can be something attractive but nothing.
Paul is a media artist who succeeded in a different attempt in terms of erasing images but adding them. One of his art pieces, Long Count, shows a scene of boxing match which is held on a boxing ring. Things showed in Long Count are two boxers’ silhouette and the background which is a large audience and the ring than the movement of them. For me, this scene is fresh and makes me question myself many things; why the artist chooses boxing match, why he deletes two figures who are main subjects and what makes him leave the shadow of boxers. I could suppose the answers about the questions I ask even though the answers might not be correct. Two boxers in Long Count seem to reflect people living in current society that is the boxers beating each other can match people competing to survive in infinitely competing society. The figures erased can be our portrait losing humanity and silhouette remained can be a nature of human beings which the artist seeks for and means pure and unable to carry untruth. While erasing the figures frame by frame, he could find something new and it is clearer than those that are not erased. That is, the boxing match losing main subject image is more memorable than normal one. Also, I wonder what if the artist erases both the boxers and the shadow of them. Would it have same effect like Long Count? I guess not. Essential impression of shadow itself is natural and intact (although there are more) and in this piece this impression seems to be stressed.
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2 comments:
Paul Pfeiffer: Comment –Epak
It’s really true that the boxers are representing us. People have to be competitive for study, love, money, job and life. For who or what are they living? Most of time, it is not difficult to say that people who live for themselves is very rare in these day. They are living and fighting for others and losing their own authenticity or desire. They become beings constructed by others and objects of others’ desires.
In the work of the “Long Count”, boxers are fighting on the ring but they are transparence or invisible figure. Through them, I can see spectators who go crazy over the fighting. After that, an only trophy seems to move itself since winner who is holding a trophy is expressed as the invisible man. Fighting for others’ need and wealth or fame for themselves, they are a kind of victims, they are losing their substantiality. They are nothing except for the superficial values.
Through this work, Paul Pfeiffer seems to stress out his own cynical perspective. How he friendly represents contemporary social issues is readily discernable. He makes me remind what we should live for. Don’t be a any others’ victim and be yourself.
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