![\"ItsBetterThisWay](\"http:\/\/static1.squarespace.com\/static\/537a4a9ce4b065b57c127f65\/537f9969e4b0496904feec34\/537f998be4b0c75c80b060a1\/1400871310332\/ItsBetterThisWay+copy.jpg?format=1000w\")
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Sometimes I get worried about teaching art. \u00a0Particularly in reference to showing artworks to students. \u00a0The conventional way is by showing slides of famous works. \u00a0Often in an institution students see the same slide of the same artwork for decades without any variation of perspective or context. \u00a0This is more than a pedagogical issue of how to make artworks truely exist for students, for me it is an emotional obligation to be faithful to larger things of which I have become part.<\/span><\/p>\n When I look at certain artworks they make me actually miss the makers (and often I have never met them and never will). \u00a0I miss them like dear friends I knew, I loved, and have since passed away. \u00a0These artworks are friends who have passed on, and I feel a strong loyalty mixed with tenderness towards showing them as an instructor. \u00a0I feel as if I were accountable to them, as if I could make them proud or disappointed of me and my actions.<\/span><\/p>\n Its better this way<\/em>, along with the entire body of my artwork presented here<\/a><\/span>, is a response to that space of loss and non-representability. \u00a0In these works I am asking how to proceed with authenticity towards some of the things I love the most, want to share the most, but often cannot represent for others.<\/span><\/p>\n Slides are\/ were the jeweled skins of the things and places they image, not pixels and not prints. \u00a0They are the fragile positives of light bouncing off the original artworks themselves (in the best case, otherwise they were duplicates of images in books).<\/span><\/p>\n My photocopied slides are emphatic about their status as a stand in for the real. \u00a0They are a copy, of a duplicate, of the living artworks in the world. \u00a0Artworks labored upon and loved by others.<\/span><\/p>\n The photocopies I present are fair. \u00a0Fair in the matte black opacity they offer in lieu of the seductive transparencies that slides put forth. \u00a0What is lost, obscured, or even forbidden by slides is the experience of seeing an artwork:<\/span><\/p>\n Walking up marble steps rubbed away by generations. \u00a0Noticing well dressed, sophisticated patrons, feeling insecurity, and then maybe stumbling upon Gonz\u00e1lez-Torres\u2019s Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA)<\/em>, and eating some. \u00a0Sneaking a gentle touch of the surface of one of Van Gogh\u2019s paintings of his bedroom. \u00a0Becoming infatuated by Callahan\u2019s humble 8×10 photographs of his wife. \u00a0Missing Andy Warhol, and knowing he was sweet and severe as you look upon his Silver Car Crash<\/em>. \u00a0The surreality of being eye level with Tasset\u2019s Cherry Tree<\/em>, and the matter of fact cheat of gazing upon any Ruscha book under glass, but not being able to touch it’s pages.<\/span><\/p>\n I can go on and on. \u00a0The only time slides are fair for to me is with iconic performative works from likes of Beuys, Bas Jan Ader, and Ambramovic. \u00a0Slides of these performances are appropriately dual failures and potencies. \u00a0Slides of these artworks are anamolies in that they can potently distill an entire work into a single rectangle. \u00a0Each slide becomes a willing and conscious participant in representing something that is now only<\/em> a representation. \u00a0I like these slides but I feel as if they should be called by another name to mark them as separate from the flat, charlatan reproductions of artworks like \u00c9tant donn\u00e9s<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n So when I teach and show slides I feel it always as a deep slight to the artist and the viewer.<\/span><\/p>\n The only response I could muster to this problem of looking at art was to pick 20 slides, (not my top 20 but what I had at the time), and photocopy the image away leaving the identifying text. \u00a0A fair-ish version of looking at artworks properly. \u00a0As you look at the sheet of 20 slides they read as a block of small cells darkened while their occupants rest. \u00a0Eventually, as you linger over each copied slide you see a dense black that has a palpable depth and texture like a room you wake in at night.<\/span><\/p>\n Benjamin Martinkus , artist & educator<\/span><\/p>\n www.benjaminmartinkus.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes I get worried about teaching art. \u00a0Particularly in reference to showing artworks to students. \u00a0The conventional way is by showing slides of famous works. \u00a0Often in an institution students see the same slide of the same artwork for decades without any variation of perspective or context. \u00a0This is more than a pedagogical issue of…Read more It’s better this way<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,13,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-artwork","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.22thesesonarteducation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.22thesesonarteducation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.22thesesonarteducation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.22thesesonarteducation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.22thesesonarteducation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=413"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.22thesesonarteducation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":432,"href":"http:\/\/www.22thesesonarteducation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions\/432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.22thesesonarteducation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.22thesesonarteducation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.22thesesonarteducation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}