The sundering of High Culture and Popular Culture is an underwhelming and missed opportunity within the classroom. While I personally have benefited from analysing Cubism features of Picasso and Braque in school, the conversations and educational opportunities that could arise from these daring artworks are endless. Artists like Banksy and Cutts raise important issues that could often be overlooked or suppressed by dominant populations. They are sickly insightful and cleverly assembled. The messages and questions posed would provide a forum about ambient concepts and every day “first world problems” - explicit and implicit. Now of course, not everyone will like his work. But the curious part of me is why? Not your taste? Vulgar? Confusing? Or is it because it is so true and depicts the deepest darkness of society and unspoken fears of the un-evolved mankind. The way I see it there are 4 types of people in society’s conundrums: 1. The people that are aware and struggle with it. 2. The people that aren’t aware but should be. 3. The people that are aware and choose to forget/ignore. 4. The people that are aware and are okay with it. In my opinion, one is worse than the next. Like all brilliant minds, I definitely understand there are those moments where boundaries are tested well past any ones comfortability. His YouTube videos/animations are definitely…confronting. Cutt’s official website has a lot of “Adventure Time” style animations, which is a shame because I severely dislike Adventure Time. But, hey! It may be your thing. To be honest, the ‘Anytime is Ice-Cream time” video completely freaked me out and it was quite distressing. I had no idea what was going on and if you have sensory problems DO not listen to it with music/sound effects. Below is a...somewhat less provoking one. With this fear that arises about alternative ideas, what are we educationally missing out on by ignoring the opportunity. Obviously, it would need to be a well-structured approach with carefully chosen content, involving administration and parent concept - but it is a possibility. There are far too many ignorant, self obsessed, short-sighted, unjustified pretentious humans in the world. Can we, as a society, really afford another generation of it.
Therefore, right here right now, I’d like to dub this new art movement “Frankism” (Frank - get it?). Thanks to Pop Culture, the internet and technology, Frankism has the possibility and probability of expanding so quickly and widely across countries and reaching people who don’t even need to leave their couches. It is only this reason that I found Steve Cutt’s page mixed amongst my Facebook feed. So, let’s continue. Don’t be a person who fears change. Don’t be that fourth type of person. Embrace scary depictions of our society or else before we know it, things like Art won’t even exist anymore. P.S. If you are interested, Jeff Hong is another artist to have a look at. His intertwined Frankism and Disney characters would provide a platform for provoking conversation with younger audiences, such as middle school.
2 Comments
Hi Bec! Wow, what an interesting blog, the pictures are all so cool and interesting! I definitely think you are onto something here with a way to engage youths with some of the issues affecting our society. It isn’t always easy to engage with youths but art seems like a viable option especially if it shared using digital media like Facebook or twitter. They can use their participatory culture where they are comfortable and explore these social or ‘first world problems’ as you say. I particularly like your final reference to Jeff Hong who actually combines pop culture within his art and really highlights the problems that will be affecting youths in their future. Wouldn’t it be great if we could promote more art like this in a normal classroom settings where teachers are discussing the environment, changing cultures, health issues and more? By involving art in the everyday lives of youths we could not only engage them with important issues but also keep art alive
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Bec
10/20/2015 10:23:55 pm
Hey Madelin,
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