Performance, Conceptual and Big Idea # 182 is Art

But is it Art

Last week Nick Pearson's OPEN Ealing Modern Art course took a small diversion from it's usual painterly  considerations to look at other arts that blossomed particularly in the 1960's and 70s.
Now one of the big advantage of Paintings,  Sculptures and artefacts in general is that they can be displayed and traded without the presence of their creators - Performance art is much more engaging but less portable than this.
The session covered a whole load of people and ideas I'd not heard of including:
The circus trained Yves Klein and his Leap into the Void
The enigmatic ideas of Italian Piero Manzoni
and
the bizarrely outfitted Gilbert and George who as well as being their own art have created quite a  large amount of 'conventional' art.
But perhaps the most intriguing and challenging of these artists are/were Joseph Beuys  ( A German) and Marina Abramovic (A Serbian)


Joseph is we were told an artist who shone in the 20th century with ideas and publicity that almost outshone Warhol and Marina challenged herself and her audience as no other could.

Big Idea number 182 is Art

So a new topic and one that Crofton suggests covers not just the visual but also Music, Literature, Dance and Cinema.
Art is defined as
'The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture'
Art was something that great philosopher Plato grappled with finding them 'threatening'.
 I remember my secondary school art teacher Tom Davies  (I think this might be him now)
A Life Of Art from Anartist Productions on Vimeo.
seeking to define art as pretty much everything (quite radical in 1970s Essex) and Crofton points out that Art does have structures which define it and allow interpretation and engagement (and Marcel Duchamp certainly confronted this issue).
Art was for many years and still is for some cultures about glorification of deities and is considered a craft (artisan?) but the European renaissance and the flowering of Romanticism repositioned the 'great' artist as something more.
In current times artists are more about business and commodity than  the alchemist/ magician mantle they held during their golden age.


(Oh yes and it is of course 'Art'  which is quite a good play  by the playwright Yasmina Reza which was translated from the French original and ran in the West end  with various actors for a few years)

 

 

 

 
 

Kew the visit and big Idea #181 is Psychometrics

Vegetables can make a display

At the moment Kew Gardens have a number of decorative beds around the theme of The IncrEDIBLES - these include Cacti and Gourds as well as just attractive arrangements of vegetables.

Courgette family

Sweet-corn grows to quite a height as can be seen on the left and it was particularly pleasing for me to see enormous beds of Courgettes, Melons (where were/are the cucumbers?) as we have been feeling as though we're the only ones with a glut - I wonder if all the vegetables in Kew will be harvested and used - I hope so it would be a shame for them to be wasted.

Big Idea 181 is Psychometrics

Psychometrics is the  science of measuring mental capacities and processes, the tests compare an individual's performance with others and show the relatively strong and weak areas within a person.

Heavily favoured by employers particularly those with North American tendencies Psychometric testing is derided by some as a means to apply a quasi-scientific analysis to pseudo-psychological (low cost) tests - HR professionals are keen to make the point that there are no correct answers but it is clear that some traits are more desirable than others, so the question occurs  can you be trained to give the 'right' answers?

Consistent psychometric tests look at three basic areas:
1) Abilities: people's capacity to work with numbers, words, diagrams and systems
2) Attainment: what people actually know about an area
3) Personality: how people are typically likely to act.

This can cover a wide range of aspects from  motivations and values to indicate how they might react to authority and their inherent integrity.

Tests are meant to indicate attributes that include emotional intelligence, leadership, and how people think - areas that are directly related to particular jobs. Companies can assess their  people to obtain  an organisational profile which shows  how well your teams work and what particular skills they lack as well as who is going to fit in to various teams.

Francis Galton (1822-1911), who was something of a renaissance man first initiated systematic testing and it's not just about the inkblots!

In Every Dream Home, Cherries etc and Idea #180 is Cognitive Theory

In Ealing's Walpole Park there's a Gallery come Museum called Pitshanger Museum at the moment there are a couple of exhibitions on,

Dream exhibition

One is a school's reaction to the earlier 'Walk On: 40 Years of Art Walking' this collaboration with artists Tim Knowles and Alicja Rogalska  sees the students create their own artworks.

The other is of work by Caroline Walker (there's a book accompanying the show) under the title of 'In Every Dream Home' partly inspired by the Roxy Music song it uses conventional paintings but has a subtext around the roles played by the female protagonists, sometimes the people we are looking at might be the owners of the expensive properties and they have guests relaxing and having fun, but then we see the same people in the role of housekeepers, ground staff - and the models used are actors we are told.

Fresh Cherries

And in every dream home there would be home grown cherries and Ice cream for pudding - well there were in this one yesterday - only just enough for 2 but a treat.

 

 

 

 

 

Big Idea Number 180 is Cognitive Theory

Cognitive Theory is all about the  approach to psychology that emphasizes internal mental processes - that is it's the branch of psychology that's concerned with the acquisition, processing, and storing of information.
Cognitive Psychology  believes that if we want to know what makes people operate then it is necessary to understand the internal processes of their mind.
Cognition  means “knowing” so psychologists using this approach study cognition which is ‘the mental act or process by which knowledge is acquired.’
Cognitive psychology focuses on the way we process information, looking at how information that comes in to the person is treated  this is what behaviourists call stimuli.
Cognitive psychology  looks at how this processing leads to responses.  In other words, they are interested in the variables that mediate between stimulus/input and response/output.  Cognitive psychologists study internal processes including perception, attention, language, memory and thinking.
Ulric Neisser (who died last year at the age of 83) is known by some as the father of cognitive psychology.

New Lords and Big Idea #179 is Evolutionary psychology

A soon to be Lord

Now many consider that the UK (and NI)'s House of Lords is a bit of an anachronism, certainly Nick Clegg's Lib-Dems do but despite this it continues to act as a holding point for legislation allowing some fine tuning and consideration after the Commons have had their say.
So periodically fresh blood is introduced in the HoL and yesterday it was announced that in the latest influx will be Nicholas Bourne (my brother)  -well done Nick thoroughly deserved.

Crofton's big Idea Number 179 is Evolutionary psychology

An existing one

Like evolution generally the view here is that we adapt to the prevailing conditions to optimise our life chances- Language is an example that Evolutionary Psychologists use to indicate what happens - i.e. language benefits the human race and becomes part of our evolution.

Culture can be seen as something of an 'obstacle' within this model and individual languages are considered (to an extent) as cultural constructs.

If you've been worrying about the lack of Melvyn (Lord) Bragg here's a podcast on the subject of Evolutionary psychology from the marvellous  In our time from the BBC .
Here's one of many videos on the subject...