Response to Walker and Barret

Walker

In Big Ideas and Art Making, Walker discusses how art is an extension of the artists themselves and how they/we use art to actually ask and unearth more questions then answers. The way in which he talked about how the questions that owe their existence to art actually go beyond the formal, technical choices that the artists make.  This was in a sense quite revealing to me in that I always looked at art as more of an example of the artists abilities and then considered why they made the decisions they did, whereas after reading this it almost makes the technical decisions be of no consequence in comparison to the message and question the artist is asking.

I found difficult his explanation of the differentiation between theme and big idea.  Using the Robert Motherwell example, Walker talks about how while he had over 100 paintings in which Motherwell depicted death, it was not death but human emotion that was his theme.  To me this seems skewed in the focus of his work.  The only explanation I can think of is that without having knowingly seen any of Motherwell's work, the paintings express the emotions felt by those after the death occurs.

Barret

Being a marketing major, I have spent days of my life going over a broad range of advertisements on a wide selection of mediums.  Barret's differentiation between denotations and connotations was an eye opener for me, instead of merely looking at and advertisement and looking for strengths/weaknesses and judging the applicability of the broadcasted message, I picked up an ad and searched for the denotations and connotations it possessed and was startled to realize things that I had never really 'seen' in them before.

I did have a problem with how the Michael Ray Charles section of the article was handled.  As Barret went on to talk about the examples and forms of denotations and connotations Charles used, it appeared that he didn't even consider the fact that not everyone is as racist and biased as he made them out to be.  This skewing of people's connotations, for me, weakened Charles' efforts at showcasing the perception of African Americans.  I did quite like the art students dissection the Rolling Stones cover, the way they pulled apart the image and broke down what was really being said without being said was excellent.