We are excited to welcome Jenn Korolenko to the SEAD Gallery for our next SEAD After Dark course, Art Appreciation. The first class of this three part series poses the question “What makes it ART?”, a question that has sparked debate throughout the years. Join us on Tuesday, January 23rd from 7 – 9 PM for a conversation about the art around us.
Have you ever stood in front of a piece of art and heard the person next to you mutter “I could’ve made that”? Perhaps you are or have been that person. Historically, art has been something that has both amazed and confused it’s audience. Just as some viewers make that claim that now, people in the past have thought the same thing. Just taking a glance back into the 20th century brings us artists that were questioned for their content and style. The abstract expressionist movement comes to mind, and more specifically Jackson Pollock’s famous drip paintings.
These splatter paint paintings were revolutionary at their time, their large size dominated spaces while accompanied by his energetic “drip style”. Heavily influenced by the Surrealist movement, Pollock’s techniques were not received well by critics. The New York Times reported that “the critic Robert Coates once derided a number of Pollock’s works as ‘mere unorganized explosions of random energy, and therefore meaningless’”. Whereas now these paintings are studied in art history classes and books, at the time these large paintings confused the public and critics. The abstract lines and seemingly random strokes and splatters of Pollock’s work were highly debated by the masses. Traditionally art is viewed as a whole image or picture but the MOMA’s biography of Pollock shares that his art “welcomed gravity, velocity, and improvisation into the artistic process, and allowed line and color to stand alone, functioning entirely independently of form.” Pollock no longer held the traditional laws of what art is supposed to be and it was noticed. With every new and revolutionary idea, the question of the day arises, “what makes this art?”, which we aim to answer this Tuesday.
Jenn Korolenko is the Curator of Education at Forsyth Galleries, Texas A&M. She holds degrees in studio art and art education and is a working artist herself. Before joining UART at TAMU, Jenn was an Education Associate at Grounds For Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey; her early career was in K-12 classrooms. She has been working and teaching in art museums for over a decade.
You must register to attend this event. Tickets are $9.50 for one course, or $25 for all three. To register for this course, click here. We hope to see you there!
