1 GRAPHITEERS EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Leela Subramaniam Christine Haroutounian EDITORS J.R. Valenzuela Kimberly Henry Sharon Zoldan Maureen Palmer Ruth Chun DESIGN Gustavo Cordova Priscilla Brinshot Lexi Visco PRINTER Copypage, Los Angeles, !" Issue 1° © 2010, Los Angeles, !" #$"%&'() interdisciplinary journal of the arts All rights reserved. No part of this journal may be reproduced in any in any form by any electronic or mechanical means, without permission in writing from #$"%&'(). [email protected] #$"%&'() a journal created through the &"**)$ Museum and the &"**)$ Student Association of UCLA. 2 3 DANICA NATASHA JESSICA LEELA 10GOMES 18SUBRAMANIAM 22TAN 36SUBRAMANIAM The Art of Activating the Definitely in the Air Speaking with Ed Fella Theatricality and Viewer: Richard Serra’s Cagean Aesthetics: La Splash Pieces Monte Young’s “Dream House” ANALIA ALLISON ALLISON JACQUELINE 50SABAN 52CORTSON 54SCHULNIK 56CEDAR ALISA KOKO J.R. KRYSTEN 60LAPIDUS 62HOVAGUIMIAN 66VALENZUELA 68CUNNINGHAM NICOLAS CHRISTINE LAWRENCE SHARON 70HAROUTOUNIAN 78LEE 92ZOLDAN 96LINNERT Heinrich Schütz’s The Object of the Gaze: The Reproduced & “O süsser, o freundlicher” from Object of Desire Reappropriated: “Kleine Geistliche Konzerte” Pietro Germi’s Seduced Consumer Society in Calvino’s and Abandoned If on a winter’s night a traveler TRENT TANYA 102BAILEY 110YORKS Alfredo Jaar: Unmasking the Flaw: On the Questioning of The Intention & the Effect Photographic Display of Eugène Atget & Diane Arbus 4 5 GRAPHITE interdisciplinary journal of the arts The decision to produce GRAPHITE interdisciplinary journal of the arts emerged Man seems to live life along a simple line—a thread of birth, experience, and from a desire to see the first printed arts journal on the UCLA campus— death. It’s the same line for all of us, only viewed from different sides. Despite our one which does not consider art under the header of one particular discipline. On differences, it is a a crucial, albeit daunting, task to retain an unabashed sense of our campus the departments of art, art history, design and media arts, musicology, curiosity in surveying a multitude of perspectives so that one can develop a fuller world arts and cultures, architecture, film and theatre, and comparative literature understanding of the world, much like how a lone string can be transformed into are divided institutionally and discursively, and yet these disciplines are by no an intricate tapestry, with time and added effort. GRAPHITE serves this purpose means informed insularly. It is our hope that by presenting both scholarly work and acts as a springboard of inquiry by overcoming the divided categorization of and printed art work, that we will engage our readers with a re-contextualized art on the UCLA campus. Whether through Pietro Germi’s intentional male gaze understanding of the arts in the contemporary and globalized art world. While at or Ed Fella’s surprising application of the pencil in a technological field, we must first perhaps the material within GRAPHITE may seem disparate, a great deal of always challenge the most complex, novel, or even mundane of viewpoints with insight can be found in connecting the grey lines between each essay. The artists one simple question: Through what lens? we have chosen rhythmically and elegantly complement the questions presented by each writer. After a year of work, I am incredibly proud that this journal has Christine Haroutounian finally been made for UCLA, thanks to the gracious support of the HAMMER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF museum. The first printed arts journal, and the beginning of a new history. Leela Subramaniam EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 6 7 8 9 It’s how we do what we do that confers meaning on what we confront defies all of these assumptions. we’ve done. Serra stands in the middle of the image, yet THE ART —Richard Serra he is not so much standing as in a stance. His arms are flung away from his torso, right arm jutting out like the he question of meaning always seems to be central in bar held for balance by tightrope walkers. His left arm a discussion of art. After all, it is meaning that makes is held over and behind his head and he is holding some OF ACTIVATING something worth looking at, isn’t it? So what is a viewer medieval-looking tool comprised of a rod for a handle to do when the artist tells him that there is no meaning in with a partial sphere on the end of it. He is in some sort the piece, at least no meaning that the artist has supplied of artistic windup, his legs apart and knees slightly bent, prior to the viewer’s encounter with the piece? This is the bracing himself for a tremendous launch of energy that is THE VIEWER: question that is raised in the work of Richard Serra, about to come, as signaled by his upheld left arm, which specifically in his splash pieces made from molten lead is at the ready. Silhouetted against the fluorescent-lit in the late 1960s, as well as his other works surrounding background of the Castelli Warehouse, in New York, he these pieces. With these pieces, Serra works to appears almost as if he were peeled off the side of an decentralize the meaning, denying any sort of interior ancient Greek black-figure vase depicting a mythical structure, logic, or impetus. In doing so, he shifts the focus battle scene. of his pieces outward, toward the viewer. Yet in order to So he is a mythic figure, right? Well that makes understand the monumental shift that occurs, we must sense; the “artist at work” image is the Ur-figure of the Richard Serra’s Splash Pieces begin by looking at Serra himself. strength of human creativity. But looking further at the The image of the artist at work—it is a prototype photograph, we realize that this is not what we are that permeates our concepts of art, indeed furthers seeing. Rather than being transcendently mythic and them. Seeing the artist at work, holed up in his studio, artistic, Serra is intensely earthbound and grounded, immersed in all of the trappings of his artistic practice, surrounded by the industrial trappings of his practice and we find ourselves comfortably reassured of the validity set within the industrial warehouse space. He himself of the artistic endeavor as a whole. We see the artist. We bears the trappings of industry, wearing a protective see the artist making. We see the artist making the work, mask, goggles, and hat. This industrial iconography does and in doing so we assume that there is some sort of more than protect, it literally masks the visage of the transference occurring in this making, some sort interior artist within this “artist at work” image. This function quality that is emerging from the artist and onto the work is what Rosalind Krauss cites as the mask’s “challenge he is creating. So it is with this set of assumptions that to psychology,” defining this challenge as “a refusal of we gaze upon the photograph entitled “Richard Serra the personal, individualized, privatized interior space.”1 throwing lead” (1968) but we are then jarred out of the Rather than showing the face of the artist, which alludes comforting sense of familiarity and realize that the image to his inner state, the mask defines him as thoroughly 10 11 external, occluding his interior state, as the mask is capable of constructing a work.”4 The infinitive form of Calling the Splash pieces a performance is a itself, after discussing the process of sculpting in such “delivered to him from outside the boundaries of his the verb serves to universalize it, to open it up to external misnomer. Those lead casts were made ladle-full detail. For, as stated before, what is unseen in the image ‘private’ self.”2 This push outward of the opaque figure of forces and applications. by ladle-full—it was spoon against the wall, spoon of Serra in the warehouse is the actual work that he is the artist turns our attention to the fact that this image of Looking again at the image of Serra in the against the wall, a continuous repetition to build up a producing—”Casting” (1969)—a piece in which Serra the artist at work does not show the actual work that he Castelli warehouse, we realize that the mask he wears ton of lead. Those pieces were built up incrementally. repeatedly threw molten lead in the area of the ware- is making. Rather, Serra, in his battle stance, is oriented serves the same grammatical function as the “to” of They did not mimic Pollock’s drip. They may look like house where floor meets wall. Once the lead was built up toward something outside the frame, something invisible “Verb List”—it opens him up, makes him a general image the result of a gesture but they weren’t made that enough to create an actual form, Serra let it harden in its to us. And if the work is invisible, then it must not be of a verb. The only trace of Serra is in the title: “Richard way. I never thought about them that way. readymade, environmental “mold.” After it was hardened, the subject. Indeed, Serra, or rather the dramatic stance Serra throwing lead.” But the masked figure in the image he pulled it away from the wall, freeing the mold to be (I hesitate to call it a “gesture” for reasons that will be negates that possibility of identification, so the picture As Serra describes the making as “ladle-full by ladle-full used to make another casting. Just as the throwing of explained later) is the subject.