On April 17, I
attended Linda Weintraub’s lecture called “WHAT’S NEXT: Eco Materialism and
Contemporary Art”. Linda is an American art writer, educator and curator. She has
written some books about contemporary art. Also, she addresses environmental
consciousness that defines the ways cultures approach art, science and many
aspects. Her lecture at UCLA was at Broad Art Center. There were not so many
people attended this lecture, and also we were supplied chips drinks. Those
made the lecture great, and I felt like it is a small workshop instead of a
large lecture.
During lecture,
Linda talked about several artists and their paintings to illustrate eco
materialism and contemporary art. One of the artist was Kazimir Malevich and
his painting “White on White”. The painting depicted a white square on the
ground. Malevich used many characteristics to represent art with no sense of
color, depth, or volume. It was very sample. Like he said: “I have ripped
through the blue lampshade of color. I have come out into white. Follow me,
comrade aviators, sail on into the depths”, he used the sample square shape and
white color to represent a feeling of floating, and the slight tilt of square
suggests movement.
Another
point that I was interested in was neo materialism and feminism. The artist
related to this is Ana Mendieta. Much of Mendieta’s work could strongly
represent feminism. In here early performance art, the work was violence
against the female body, but later, Mendieta focused on the connection between
a physical and the land. As Mendieta said: “My art is grounded on the belief in
one universal energy which runs through everything; from insect to man, from
mam to specter, from specter to plant, from plant to galaxy”.
After
Mendieta’s lecture, I have a new understanding about materialism, and I realize
that many objects can represent many feelings and can represent many aspect in
the nature. Before this lecture, I only know that a good painting is beautiful
and good skilled, but now I know that the most important meaning in the
painting is the representation the work can represent
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