University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

2001--2003: Statement and addendums

(USC Thesis Other)

2001--2003: Statement and addendums

PDF

Download

Open document

Flip pages

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content 2001 - 2003: STATEMENT AND ADDENDUMS
Copyright 2003
by
Kate Costello
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirement for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(FINE ARTS)
December 2003
Kate Costello
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
U M I N um ber: 1 4 2 0 3 6 3
INFORMATION TO USERS
The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy
submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and
photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper
alignment can adversely affect reproduction.
In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript
and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized
copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.
®
UMI
UMI Microform 1420363
Copyright 2004 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.
ProQuest Information and Learning Company
300 North Zeeb Road
P.O. Box 1346
Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
U N IVER SITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90989-1695
This thesis, written by
Code-Ho
under the direction of h & X thesis committee, and
approved by all its members, has been presented to and
accepted by the Director of Graduate and Professional
Programs, in partial fulfillment of the requirements fo r the
degree of
irector
Date
Thesis Coi
Chair
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures iii
Abstract iv
Statement and Addendums 2
Bibliography 16
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
LIST OF FIGURES
MFA Thesis Show at F Space, May 2003, Installation view
2
Panels
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
ABSTRACT
The subject of this thesis is the work presented in my MFA graduate exhibition in
May of 2003 and the course of these works’ development through the previous two
years.
The writing began with an Artist’s Statement and a body of Addendums. The
statement accounts the considerations and aims of my practice. The composition
and declarative tone of the statement implicate a public position. The addendums
provide another frame for the work, allowing insight to a more personal,
associative and experiential dialogue. The thesis presented is a combination of
these two texts. The work itself includes similar alliances between abstract and
specific moments. The intention in mixing the Statement and Addendums is to
provide the reader of the thesis with an experience that parallels that of the viewer
of the MFA exhibition.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
I! is not declared but it is possible that all the photographs in Fischli and Weiss’s series,
GSrten, were taken in the same garden. And that the pair tended this garden. It is a home
garden in the country, planted with vegetables and flowers for cutting. The photographs
follow the growing season, spring to fali, the blooming and waning of the plants. The
photographs include a history of the gardeners’ planning: pouring over seed catalogues;
preparing the beds for planting; the timing of plantings in conjunction with the seasons;
watching for the first sprouts; weeding away the aggressive interlopers; appreciating the
new buds; picking the first crop; arranging flowers inside; cooking meals, maybe even a
canning; sharing the overflow with neighbors; and the fading of the plants, finally a cold
snap and tips turning brown, suddenly sped up, they die and decay. And this all becomes
practice, one year moves into another. The memory of one year's good crop is overlaid on
the next year’s disappointment. The garden is a visual trail of the cycle of a year and an
embodiment of the habit of days.
My work is reflexive of a history of art and reflective of the habitual world.
It is a re-examination of the established.
i
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
MFA Thesis Show at F Space, May 2003
installation view
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
“Things in the world can, under certain special circumstances, enter the realm of art.”
West
Over the past two years, I have continually returned to the question of how to
identify and reflect the present. In an effort to find this intangible, I have tracked
my own emergence, looking back to artists, and styles which were influential upon
the growth of my aesthetic, and of the values and requirements I place upon a
work of art.
As a group, the works could be seen as a typology of ways of making a sculpture: additive,
subtractive, assemblage, found objects, surrealism, realism, hybrid with design... the style
of the work is consistent but disjointed.
Collectively, the works are not subordinating to a style or signature - in the connection of
these works, what emerges is not a material style but a relating impulse.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Aesthetic: appreciative of, responsive to, or zealous about the beautiful
Esthetic: variation
.Affect: to produce a material influence upon
Effect: to bring about
In a suburb of Mexico City, there is a museum built by Diego Rivera to house his collection
of Pre-Columbian art. The building Is a pyramid, though not modeled after those at nearby
Teotihuacan. it is constructed of enormous porous black, volcanic rock bricks. The walls
are at least a foot thick. The small figures and objects are arranged and iit on shelves set
into the walls and sealed with glass. The galleries are narrow rooms with small windows
cut through the walls, opening out to the surrounding suburban neighborhood and the
large, empty plaza at the base of the building. In their famed murals, Diego and his
contemporaries were concerned with depicting an explicit and proud Mexican identity
which privileged the cultural influences of the native and the worker.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
MFA Thesis Show at F Space, May 2003
Figure
5
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Scale, the role of abstraction, and a staging of objects, build the sculptures and are
the essential materials. The works contain multiple levels of reference and
association, memory and distilled sentiments. How connections between things
construct identities, the discussion of ways of being that arise, how expectations
are fulfilled or denied, are the questions the sculptures compel.
The form of the animal/ornament was arrived at through reduction, exaggeration, and
mutation. In this process, the telling details were sloughed off and lost, though enough of
an identity remains for the viewer to feel the lack and try to find a key; this quality leaves
room for the viewer. The figure is an embodiment of an ambiguity, in the viewers’ relation
to it; there is a conscious process of attempting to establish criteria for an evaluation.
6
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
‘It is like a finger pointing at the moon.
Do not concentrate too closely on the finger or you will loose sight of ail that heavenly
glory."
Enter the Dragon
IN the middle of the night during a cross-country bus trip in a southerly country, I was
struck with absolute certainty, with a new understanding of the relationship between time
and space. That the feeling of, the material of, the experience of time was strongly
affected by space. At that moment, it feit like the kind of epiphany which re-routes a life
towards its calling. However, with distance from that night and locafe, it seems that this
realization did not reflect a measurable change but was an internal understanding of a
rather mundane truth, brought be experience, that a person can be re-socialized. What
one knows of the world can be affected, even changed by not space, but rather piaoe.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
“[it is] not just an external landscape but someone’s mind. You can fee! the inner workings
of memory, imagination and emotion. You gain access to an intimate geography.”
Goodeve
Within my work, there has been a recent move, from an interest in creating
separate and complete spaces that can be projected into, towards working within
existent space. I choose resonant details from my surroundings to treat and then
return to this environment. They are hybrid objects in hybridized spaces. The
relationships created continue to multiply, between me and the world, me and the
work, the work and the world, one work and another, the viewer and the work, the
viewer and me.
a
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
MFA Thesis Show at F Space, May 2003
installation view
9
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
“ ...this ‘Untitled1 sequence refers to nameless locations which have not been defined more
precisely, to untitled locations, the type which are to be found ‘ all over the place’ ... it is this
reference to a no-man’ s land, a non-location, a place which could be called ‘u-topia, ’ a
fundamental concept in what we call Modernity.
[The title] reflects both the art forms and the everyday aesthetics of 20h century society..."
Syring
When viewing the pedestal piece, a visual line is drawn from the painted, shiny tip of one of
the small ornamental objects, over the bright surface to the point where the matte gray of
the pedestal overlaps and slopes down to the flat top of the box. The line turns at the
edge, down the side and out onto the fioor where it encounters the slightly larger ceramic
ornament and the rest of the room. And the viewer understands that these objects are
certainly aware of where they sit, and are conscious of what is outside.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Consider the difference between describing people in a theoretical way, as an entity, and
the way people actually are. On one side there is design which assigns activities and a life
to people based on statements about living, and is built to meet those ideals, and on the
other side, the chaos of a real, daily life, ft is customary for the gap between fantasy and
truth to be wide but within the built world, there is a concrete structure to prove it. The
impulse toward a complete creation is understandable. Such an enticing idea, absolute
decisions about every line, object and surface within an environment. Positioning the
structure within a perfect environment, independent of people, living out its own life.
The construction of a building comes out of a specific need; it is made solidly in anticipation
of meeting future needs. An optimistic practice, based on a belief in one's ability to
anticipate a want or need and to meet or surpass it. Then there is ornament to honor this
capability.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Regarding the importance of “the relation of human beings and their environment' in the
work of Louise Bourgeois:
I think of one’s environment as their immediate physical surroundings, and also as a
mental landscape, populated by ideas encountered through conversations or read, ideas
that occupy space in one’s mind, Ideas which generate images which then take on visuai
and physical presence. Ideas that generate images and become things that one has a
tangible relationship to, things which can be measured in a physical way.
A value of abstraction is to give representation to these ideas which become so important
that they must take a physical form.
I am drawn in by the life and character of a shape or a color or a pattern.
Forms and designs have their own presence and the potential for interaction with
their surroundings.
12
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
MFA Thesis Show at F Space, May 2003
Panels
13
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
I grew up in northeast Georgia, near the Echota Valley, an area once occupied by the
Cherokee nation. For several summers S went to a camp outside the town of Chicopee, it
was a minimal concern, set in a couple hundred acre swath of woods, with a few trails cut
and a clearing with split logs circling the perimeter where we would gather, eat lunch, etc.
The day would be occupied by outdoor activities: discussions on the appropriate treatment
of trees, identifying edible plants, topographically organized treasure hunts, and a stop at
the creek for a little R&R. My favorite pastime was to choose a stone, grind it down to the
shape of an arrowhead, and then leave it in the creek for another person to find and
mistake as an artifact.
The panels mimic the form of a revolving door, implying choice or a comparison between
the images presented. The images conflate design and painting as one source to draw
upon. One pattern contaminates another. Patterns connect the viewer to a system’s
development. The reference to systems, methods of rendering images, etc. introduces the
subject of expectations, and their consideration, especially the expectations of a work of
art.
14
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
“Listen, you are a creature, artistic, i can fell, that somehow got hung up on the issue of
language. Forget it It’s thinking, if you can think of a thought in a most pathetic
language. ..Look what I have to do in order to think of thoughts, i have to forget
language. ..Iff could think of a thought that has never been thought of before, then it
could be in a language that was never read before, if you can think of something,
the language will fall into place in the most fantastic way, but the thought is what’s
going to do it. The language is shit, I mean it's only there to support a
thought... Whatever new thoughts you can think of that the world needs will be
automatically clothed in the most radiant language imaginable."
Smith
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brown, Julia “ Poetic Objects” Robert Therrien, MoCA: Los Angeles, 1984.
Carver, Raymond “ What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” Where I'm
Calling From, Atlantic Press: New York, 1998.
Enter the Dragon, 1973, Robert Clouse, dir.
Fischfi, Peter and David Weiss, Garten, Oktagon: Cologne, 1998.
Goodeve, Thyrza Nichols “ The Mobile Muse: Giuliana Bruno Walks With Her
Tongue Through Her ‘Atlas of Emotion’” Parkettno. 66, 2002.
Helfenstein, Josef “ Louise Bourgeois: Architecture as a Study in Memory”
LouiseBourgeois: Memory and Architecture, Museo Nacionai Centro de Arte Reina
Sofia: Madrid, 2000.
Kudielka, Robert, editor, “Interview with Neil McGregor” Bridget Riley: Dialogues
on Art, Zwemmer: London, 1995.
Smith, Jack “Uncle Fishook and the Sacred Baby Poo Poo of Art” (Interview with
Sylvere Lotringer) Wait For Me at the Bottom of the Pool: The Writings of Jack
Smith, J. Hoberman and Edward Leffingwell, eds. High Risk Books: New York,
1997.
Steinbach, Haim “ Two Owls" Haim Steinbach, Charta: Milan, 2000.
Syrlng, Mary Louise “ Where is ‘Untitled’?: On Locations and the Lack of them in
Gursky’s Photographs” Andreas Gursky- Photos 1984 to Present, Neues: New
York, 2000.
Webster’ s Third New International Dictionary G & C Merriam Co.: Springfield, MA.
1967.
West, Franz “1000 Words: Franz West” ArtForum, February 1999, vo! 37, p 84.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Creamy or chunky: The pursuit of consumer bliss and the application of paint

PDF

Everything Went Silent and Suddenly the Grey Mattered

PDF

Beyond cultural: Global approach in visual art

PDF

Drag-bike: The story of Steve Gaskey's bicycle dragster with text by the artist

PDF

Being within versus without

PDF

Falling through the cracks: Two years of work

PDF

A selection of work

PDF

Back down to the body: The uncanny, the abject and the carnival

PDF

A medley of metaphors

PDF

An artist's response to...

PDF

Foundations of art: Communication, the visual, persuasion

PDF

Drawings and videos

PDF

Invisibility and black identity in the work of Carrie Mae Weems and Lorna Simpson

PDF

Constructions of Americanism: Three case studies

PDF

"La Gazette du Bon Ton: Arts, Modes, and Frivolites": An analysis of fashion and modernity through the lens of a French journal de luxe

PDF

Intragroup evaluations, attitude source, and in-group member derogation

PDF

A prolegomenon to a Los Angeles arts and culture magazine

PDF

Effects of threat and self-focus on consensual bias in majorities

PDF

Effects of personal resource sufficiency on perceived difficulty and desirability of earthquake preparedness

PDF

Black widows, Irish invaders and the Duchess of Doom: The women of professional pool

Asset Metadata

Creator Costello, Kate (author)

Core Title 2001--2003: Statement and addendums

School Graduate School

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Fine Arts

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Fine Arts,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor [illegible] (committee chair), [illegible] (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-310570

Unique identifier UC11328990

Identifier 1420363.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-310570 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 1420363.pdf

Dmrecord 310570

Document Type Thesis

Rights Costello, Kate

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA