Review of Lecture of Mark Bradford

He appropriates imagery from his surroundings, pairing an examination of the formal issues of abstraction and figuration with sociological questions regarding systems of culture, communication, and exchange in his Los Angeles neighborhood. Found elements incorporated into his work include permanent-wave endpapers, foil, scraps of paper, and remnants of posters from abandoned lots, telephone poles, and fences.

A Pair of Boots VS Diamond Dust Shoes

A pair of shoes lies in the centre of the painting. The left One of them is overturned. Nothing special, if nobody told me that it was one of many masterpieces by Vincent Van Gogh, I would never pay attention to this tiny piece of work. It is just a pair of shoes, precisely a pair of old shoes. The usage of light and shadow makes it look like something real, but different from the real which Da vinci pursued.
As to Andy Warhol's Diamond Dust Shoes, what I saw are several shoes with different colours, I don't know why they were defined "diamond" and "dust". It seems like they are some symbols trying to tell people something, or they are some symbol separated from any meanings. I am not sure about any points I made. It seems that everything I saw were fake, I doubt.

Methodology

When I looked for Benjamin’s work, the google linked me to a Marxist website, and to my surprise, I found Barthes and Benjamin were both listed as the Marxist writers. Thus, I think interpreting from the angle of their philosophy is a good way to do the analysis and interpretation. Making them as a group and Eco as a non-Marxist, I can make some comparison and find some similarity and difference between the group and Eco, at the same time, the comparison between two persons in the group is available as well. To this point, the main ideas are gathered, and can be applied to the artwork I study.
Concretely, let me select some important sentences from these three essays. “a certain change has taken place in our conception of language” (Barthes 155), which can be applied to Mike Bradford’s A Truly Rich Man Is One Whose Children Run Into His Arms When His Hands Are Empty. When you first see this “painting”, there’s nothing you can see from it, even you can’t connect the content with the name. The painting is a language, the reason why this “junk” artwork can be accepted and awarded is that a certain change has taken place in our conception. Meanwhile, “Over against the traditional notion of the work, for long -- and still -- conceived of in a, so to speak, Newtonian way, there is now the requirement of a new object, obtained by the sliding or overturning of former categories.”(Barthes) express the same idea that the traditional notion of work must be replaced by new text.
“One might subsume the eliminated element in the term “aura” and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.” (Benjamin )The particular production of “aura” and its way of feeling history make it alive in art work, which represents a harmony communication between audiences and works of art. I noticed that every artwork made by Bradford has a long name, which in my opinion is for a better expression of the “aura”, and keeping harmony communication between audiences and himself through the artworks, because all these artworks are so abstract that without the assistance of names, “no one” can understand what he wants to express. As to Barthes, who can be a philosopher other than a pure writer has given out more fundamental explanations. “The Text is not a co-existence of meanings but a passage, an overcrossing.” This can be thought as the bridge between audiences and artists. Let’s go back to previous point that in order to convey the “aura” to audience, we need the help of the “text”. Thus, as long as corresponding the methodology, we can "ask Barthes to come out” to make explanation. If it is relevant to reality and expression, Eco will help. As to Benjamin, he is the bridge between methodology and reality.

Summery of From work to text

This essay mainly talks about the view of the author. The theme - textual analysis from which we can find that the meaning must be created by the reader through a process of textual analysis. Thus a text must be open to analysis and allow different interpretations.
Over against the traditional notion of the work, for long -- and still -- conceived of in a, so to speak, Newtonian way, there is now the requirement of a new object, obtained by the sliding or overturning of former categories.
The author thinks traditional notion of work must be replaced by new Text.
the Text is that space where no language has a hold over any other, where languages circulate.
The text is the information which author wants to express, and language can only convey information for readers to interpret.
The Text is not a co-existence of meanings but a passage, an overcrossing.
The text is not a co-exsitence of meanings but a passage for readers to obtain own meanings and interpretations, an overcrossing which will never end.

China movie portal

It is a silver print sewn with thread which according to the title is a portal of cinema in China. I think it must be an advertisement of a black-and-white movie. In the picture, there are three people and a tiger from left to right inside. These three persons dressed differently, they may be considered as a monk, a warrior and a student respectively. The names of actor and actress were put in the blank area, and we can see part of the movie’s name. As I know it is a famous story in a classic novel in ancient China, which was the story of a revolution. Besides it must be a cinema in early 80s.

Ten punching bags (Last supper)

It is really weird that Jesus Christ’s images were put on punching bags for people to box. Ten punching bags hang from the ceiling which indicated an inauspicious atmosphere with Jesus Christ’s image which is from Da Vinci’s Last Supper’s central image portrayed on the surface of each punching bag in bold black along with big bold capital word “JUDGE”, but each punching bag has its own feature which might demonstrate its specific meaning. For instance, the last one has a “UD” on it; the last third one’s “judge” has a “crown” above. It seems that the artist thoroughly ignores the Christian world that the mainstreamed in western world, as he seems to want to judge Christ. Or he wants to arose others’ attention.

Toilet

It is a water-based painting painted on linen with rough black lines which constituted all this art work. The main object is a toilet bout with many anomalous veins on it, which includes circles, spirals, triangles, rectangles, lines etc. Some of them combined and become some patterns, which can be imagined as animals clouds or other things. The others seem to be fissures and spots of dirt, which mainly centralize at the bottom of the bout. In addition, above the bout, there is a rectangle, which I think is a window, and a drip is falling down from the window.