Video Art, Commercialism and Animation

This reading bothered me for a couple of reasons. For one, I found it rather precarious that Rush's dividing line between "art" and the "artistic" was whether or not the piece in question is being created to make a profit. In my opinion, that is always a slippery slope. He makes this claim on page 83, claiming "Art lies in the intentionality of the artist: to make or conceive of something without the constraint of some other purpose." I believe half of that statement to be true. Of course art should have intentionality, some sort of personal expression that the artist is trying to make. But the presence of another purpose (even a monetary one) does not mean that the whole work is no longer art. Some of the most iconic films throughout history have been produced by studios seeking to make money. But the directors and actors who created those films were not solely in it for the money. Many of them were trying to make something beautiful and legitimate, with a personal message attached to it. Take classics such as Casablanca or Citizen Kane. These were distributed by Warner Bros. and RKO Radio Pictures, respectively. But if the fact that admission to these films was sold for the price of a ticket makes them not art, then I don't know what art is.

I also found it problematic that Rush claimed  "it is curatorial museum culture that has become the ultimate validating source for all works of art." (page 83) Talk about an exclusive institution that is highly obsessed with revenue. If museum culture decides what is and isn't art, then Rush's argument against art vs. the artistic thus contradicts itself.

I understand that the primary target of Rush's argument is television and I will concede that most of what is shown on television today (especially network TV) is crap. I do appreciate the work of video artists such as Richard Serra's Television Delivers People and IImura's Double Portrait. We definitely need artists who understand the evils of mass media and are willing to confront its numbing effects. But I also feel we need artists and thinkers such as Baldessari, who understand the evils of art and know how to confront it through videos such as I Am Making Art.

I must add that there is television existing today that is not total crap. Independent networks like HBO and Sundance take advantage of their subscription-based privileges by presenting programming with a far more filmic quality than commercial-based TV. Programs like HBO's Mildred Pierce have an artistic integrity and quality to them that cannot be denied. Additionally, the internet has emerged in the past decade as a promising frontier for future video artists. I predict it will no longer be up to "museum culture" to validate what is and isn't art. Thanks to internet video sharing sites, the future of video art will be put in the rightful hands of the masses.

I have long been obsessed by the relationship between art and money, as well as the ways in which mediums explore themselves. These two topics which Rush focused on in this chapter reminded me of filmmaker/animator Don Hertzfeldt. Hertzfeldt is an animator who explores what it means to be animated and what it means to be a video through the painstaking process of analog animation. Each frame of his videos is individually drawn and photographed, and then erased and redrawn over for the next frame. He uses no digital effects, analog technology being the only way he can accomplish his visions. His use of simple doodles confronts the longstanding tradition of animation as a precise, extravagant, highly detailed art focused on beauty (such as in classic works by Disney and newer works by Pixar) in fashion similar to I Am Making Art. At the same time, he incorporates wild effects and beautiful imagery into his work using innovative methods. This combination of techniques produces a work with the roughness of video art combined with the beauty of film.

The following video, The Animation Show, specifically explores what it means to be animated, as well as engaging with what it means to be an animator. At the same time it criticizes commercial videos through its "3D" scene and climactic final battle scene. It is interesting to note that Hertzfeldt has been offered and turned down numerous commercial contracts, and has been the victim of plagiarism by numerous ad campaigns. One you might recognize is Pop-Tarts' "Crazy Good" campaign, which I have also attached to this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZzKAZODy2c&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b0Ry97BgAU