FORMED IN ENTANGLEMENTS
PART II: Workshop segment by Marc instructing attending PGRs to write 3 key questions, and develop one paragraph of writing with an accompanying image:
a. Research based- Reading/writing. Ex. Done in small groups or collectives 3-5 people. Can be local, national, or international
b. Practice based- Execution of studio work. Ex. Either solo or collaborative practice. For me, paintings, artwork, installations
c. Publishing based- Manifestation into the world. Ex. blog, newsletter, exhibitions, printed text (ex. zines, books and/or journal articles), public or private installation.
PART III: Workshop when Marc assigned three groups of three PGRs a 1-hour collective collaboration assignment
We established how we will work together through our personal entanglements with our own research. We were to outline how we move through our context. Then discuss how our entanglements and collaborations facilitate our desire or need to do this research. Each person spoke within the group of three for a total of 5 minutes. Then, after that person's presentation, for the following 5 minutes, the group discussed the experience. I was in a group with Alden and Yvette.
PART IV: Workshop during which time Marc posed a self-interview.
GD-Q1: What is the context for my main research areas and/or interests?
GD-A1: As a full-time art professor at the City University of New York, which posts "Equitable education in a more inquisitive world" as its Vision Statement, I teach painting, art history and theory from inclusive, global, or multi-cultural perspectives. This is my first semester teaching a studio-lecture theory course called Relativity of Color. In preparation for it, my research led me to pose my PhD research questions and answers. Ex. Using my own voice, how can I positively contribute to the historically western, exclusively hegemonic masculine thinking on color?...that is, how can I teach this from a theoretically inclusive position?*
GD-Q2: What is motivating my research, and what is my theoretical perspective?
GD-A2: As a painter and installation artist, my praxis or studio practice and research involves my entanglements with the complex phenomena of light, color, and the contemporary history/practices of female constructed, spiritually based abstract painting. My theoretical approach is from a contemporary art methodological position, including formalism, iconography, Marxism (socioeconomics), feminism, autobiography and biography, structuralism, and Post-Structuralism (Deconstruction), and Psychoanalysis.
GD-Q3: What are my praxis' execution methods?
GD-A3: I propose to produce a *praxis exhibition (ex. show of paintings, and/or an installation...), and to write and publish up to twelve 3,000-word essays, working title: ChromaTheory: Twelve Brief Essays on Color, outlined as follows:
1. Philosophy of Color- Ex. Ancients take on it. Ex. Aristotle and da Vinci published works on color. (Create paintings or a body of work based on this...painting with Aristotle, Plato, and other ancient ideas of color...ref. their palettes…? Do the same from da Vinci's philosophy of color and other Modern color philosophies…apply/interpret his/their color ideas to paintings within the larger body of work. “Philosophy of Color”)
2. Formal Color Theory- or title this essay “Color for color’s sake”…Formal color- ex. Isaac Newton’s ROYGBIV rainbow, RYB based color wheels, RGB and CYMK, Pantone color chart, and digital models. (Create a body of work based on this) blog.hubspot.com/marketing/color-theory…
3. Color Iconographies (The Underlying Meaning of Color)- ex. Iconographic and Iconological Color- discuss colors, color palettes or color programs, and what they mean symbolically. Ex. color psychology (Create a body of work based on this...maybe a color installation that works like "stations" of the rainbow...one piece for each color in gradient or striated expression (not graphic but painterly) …or maybe solid...present each on its own full length half-tube like concave shaped “canvas”. To obtain a color bath or a “color recalibration”, stand in or in front of one. And/or paint one that is rainbow/chakra based.
4. Gendered Color- Ex. Chart the history of how various cultures (from ancients on) associate which/various colors w/ various genders. Ex. Anc. Egyptian, Anc. Greek, Middle Ages, Renaissance/modern color: gender in art-history.
5. Color and Sexuality- Write and/or create artwork on colors and how or why they are associated with various sexual orientations. Ex. Consider the LGBTQ2 rainbow flag.
6. Socioeconomics and Color- Ex. Calculate how and why $/class/wealth/power, and lack thereof, effects access to various colors. Make body of “socio-economic colors-based paintings” Ex. Ancient Egyptian gold for pharaohs, Ancient Roman red (robe) on emperors, Pompeii Red from frescoes “belonged” to the elites, early Christian mosaics define the power of the church, early Middle Ages gold is associated w/ Christian Carolingian church’s increased wealth/power, Gothic blue (stained glass and manuscript illumination) associated w/ (French) kings/royalty.
7. Autobiographical/Biographical Color- write an essay on artists/designers…people who created a color or a palette that “still sticks” to them/defines them and their work. Ex. “Yves Klein blue”, Guston’s “fat pink”. Create a portfolio of biographical/autobiographical based works using on one's own interpretation of their skin tone. I consider gathering information by creating and circulating, possibly via process blog or an email, to one of my TT research collectives, a version of the “Fitzpatrick Scale”, with the request of those willing to participating to use the chart to “self-identify” their own skin tone/s. I will participate in the research study myself, and include, through social conditioning, how I/we have learned to self-identify or label my/our own skin tone. (I am thinking again about how “liminality” pertains to my own ethnic heritage, which produced my olive skin tone. Ex. On the Fitzpatrick Scale, my skin tone is between a Type III, Medium White to Olive and a Type IV, Olive Moderate Brown. It's curious how not simply "olive" option is charted?)
8. Ethno-biographical Colors- Skin Pigmentation (historical “scientific” race theory) w/ charts, diagrams, maps, etc. 19th-20th C. Fake scientists, and their racism that is behind race theories, which scientifically does not actually exist. Race is a socially constructed idea (as is color, gender, language, mathematics, etc.) the idea of race is based on skin, eye, and other human pigmentation. Create a body of work based on conceptual/abstracted skin pigmented paintings...paint and skin share the similar spaces) Ref: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Luschan%27s_c…
...and its historical antecedent: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropometry
9. Color Linguistics- Ex. The Big Bang of Color… “in the beginning was the word and the word was with God, and the word was God”, and “…let there be light…” …presumably in that instant, color was also born. Ex. (Create a body of work based on this...ex. Color inventory and/or diagrams…maybe ancient color references (Aristotle’s color ideas) fit here too?), AND/OR Post structural Color, OR Color Deconstructed- It is said that color is born of light. Is it, or is light born of color? :) (Create a body of work based on this...maybe a colored light installation)
10. Digital Colors- Ex. the internet, digital reality, and the proliferation/democratization of (ephemeral) color…or is it? (One can configure the Adobe Color Picker that allows for web-safe color selections or for specific color systems color selections. You can also access an HDR (high dynamic range) picker to choose colors for use in HDR images. Create a body of work based on this… (employ David Batchelor’s Chromophobia Theory) helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/choosin…
11. Global Colors- or Ethnobiographics of Color- Which colors do various ethnic groups identify as their colors/palettes? And/or write on the history national Flag color schemes (of all 195 internationally “recognized” countries/nations?) Write about and/or create a body of work based on these ideas.
12. Color Futurists- write about and/or create a body of artwork/paintings based on “Color Forecasting” …annual or seasonal CAUS (Color Association United States) oldest color-forecasting service, or by Color Council, or by Trend Union.
