4: Contemporary Art Concepts

Maya Deren’s 1943 work Meshes of the Afternoon presents a world of double-meaning. While the film is over 13 minutes, the time passed in the movie is not clear. As the viewer, we see the same scenes multiple times, a layering of the story. Slight variations occur each time and ask us to question reality. Are we observing this looping and progressively deteriorating nightmare or are we participating in it?

In the first scene, the stage is set for the future horror. The dropped key is an early sign that all is not right. After seeing the key inserted in the door, the interior shot of the knife, stuck in the bread then falling to the table, creates a connection between the objects. Extreme close-ups alert the viewer to the upcoming significance of these objects. Deren’s use of the ordinary in this key, knife, a flower, telephone, and record player presents a domestic nightmare.

As the first cycle ends, the woman falls asleep in the house. We begin to watch out the window and the cycle restarts. A hooded figure on the sidewalk turns to reveal a mirrored face. The woman is then entering the house again. The keys, dropped on the stairs outside, now become the knife, dropped on the stairs inside the house.

The knife and the key continue to appear, switching back and forth, as the nightmare replays. A shot of the key coming from the woman’s mouth as the sequence unravels is unnerving. While the similarity between the mouth and the earlier image of the lock is clear, it suggests further horror. In the next iteration, will it be the knife that is coming out of her mouth?

The scenes becoming increasing frantic and frightening as they cycle again. The woman becomes a spider, floating around, observing herself asleep in the chair, and further disruptions in her domestic life. The hooded mirror person returns, as do more copies of herself, shadows of figures, and a man. Has the man invaded her subconscious vision to help or to hurt? Some of the versions of the woman are powerful, commanding, even if they wield a knife near the throat or projecting from the chest. Others are passive, scared, and unable to control themselves, as if drugged or dreaming. She watches helplessly, both as outsider and participant, as her world spirals out of control.

The knife in her bed signifies violent intimacy. Her goggled self takes the knife to her sleeping self, but transforms into the kiss of the man. He fixes the disruptions in her home, putting the phone back on the receiver. The scenes echo back to the beginning. His face is seen in a mirror. Is he a welcome addition to her home? Can he be trusted? Her nightmare, meshed together during an afternoon nap, suggests otherwise. But in the end, he is the figure finding the flower outside, using the key, opening the door, noticing the disturbance in the house, and finding her broken body asleep in the chair.
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Xu Bing 徐冰 is a Chinese artist working in the international art scene. A child of a professor and librarian, he spent much of his childhood among books at Peking University. “In his work, the artist uses tradition to subvert culture, recasting the cultural meaning and the authority of language” (http://www.artistsrespond.org/artists/xu/). His early work was an exploration of his native language, creating “characters” that look familiar and follow traditional Chinese forms, but are illegible, verbal nonsense. The formal investigations are not able to be read and do not attempt to signify any word.

While much of his work involves printmaking and calligraphy, traditional media in Chinese art, it is not bound by one medium. Instead, the hybridity of his work is characteristic of contemporary art, as expressed by Gude in “Postmodern Principles: In Search of a 21st Century Art Education.” Monkeys Grasp for the Moon, 2001, draws on calligraphy, paper cutting, and sculpture to create a 90 ft installation. Contemporary storytelling, the artwork explores a traditional Chinese fable in the multicultural setting. Xu creates concrete poems from the word “monkey” in many languages; the forms of the words visually communicate a monkey’s body, whether or not the viewer is literate in the language. This interaction of text and image is not about juxtaposing two disparate ideas, but a redundancy in image and word.

Square Calligraphy Classroom, 1994, is an interactive installation. At first glance, the characters in Xu’s world appear foreign. The participant views it as other. While gazing at the other is often a Western-imposed relationship of power and judgment, the view Xu presents leaves Westerners powerless, illiterate, and an outsider. Some might begin to belittle the “nonsense” of such a language, but slowly Xu lets you into his secret: The other is not as foreign as you think. New English Calligraphy is his system for writing English words in the square calligraphy style of the Chinese language. In this world, the text and image are interwoven into one visual experience that appropriates Chinese tools, techniques, and style to recontextualizes the familiar word. “As people attempt to recognize and write these words, some of the thinking patterns that have been ingrained in them since they learned to read are challenged. It is the artists' belief that people must have their routine thinking attacked in this way. While undergoing this process of estrangement and re-familiarization with one's written language, the audience is reminded that the sensation of distance between other systems of language and one's own is largely self-induced” (from the artist’s website). Xu uses this system to write anything from children’s nursery rhymes to Western family names. The more familiar the content, the stronger the reaction when the viewer is able to decode the seemingly other into the language of their culture.

Assignment: Analyze Maya Deren’s 1943 experimental film "Meshes of the Afternoon" in terms of contemporary art concepts. Next select a contemporary artwork and discuss the work using contemporary art concepts.

References:
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/deren-2/
http://www.artistsrespond.org/artists/xu/
Gude, O. (2004). Postmodern principles: In search of a 21st century art education, Art Education, 57(1), 6-14.
http://www.xubing.com/index.php
http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/xubing/default.html

Film Still: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/deren-2/
Monkey Image: http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/xubing/default.html
Classroom Images: http://www.xubing.com/index.php/site/projects/year/1994/square_calligraphy_classroom
Gender Signs: http://www.echinaart.com/Advisor/xubing/adv_xubing_gallery04.htm