Rebekah Modrak

Last updated

Rebekah Modrak
Rebekah Modrak.jpg
Image of Rebekah Modrak
Born1971 (age 5253)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
NationalityAmerican
EducationMasters of Fine Arts
Alma materSyracuse University
Notable workReframing Photography, 2011

Rebekah Modrak is an American artist, author, and educator, born in 1971, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. [1]

Contents

She studied painting and photography at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, in Alfred, New York and subsequently received an Masters of Fine Arts at Syracuse University in Photography. She was a visiting artist on the faculty at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, before joining the full-time faculty at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, where she taught as Associate Professor of Photography until 2003 when she joined the faculty at the University of Michigan School of Art & Design. Rebekah Modrak's work has been exhibited at The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh Incident Report and the Sculpture Center in Cleveland. She is a professor at the University of Michigan Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design. [2]

Early work

Rebekah Modrak's work as a visual artist involves a struggle between the expected uses of a particular technology or history and her desire to employ that knowledge or system in unintended ways that support the messier dynamics of life. Modrak's original experiments in photography led her to question how the one-point perspective of "reality through a viewfinder" presumes to represent our experience of sight. This work, incorporating photographic images applied to three-dimensional forms, ranges from a series of over life-sized figures to portrait busts. The photographic "skin" in combination with the soft three-dimensional structure it was applied to creates complex portraits of individuals, revealing empathetic character traits through sculptural position, while employing photography's descriptive potential through compound images that document the minutiae of a given sitter with the hyper detail seen through the lens as it captures not only facial expression, but visceral specifics of hair texture and skin quality. As Modrak manipulated photographs to the will of the three-dimensional creatures, she recognized a lapse between this approach to media and the available texts about photography studio practice. In 2011, Modrak published, Reframing Photography, a book that redefines photography (theory, history, and technique) as a more expansive practice utilized by various types of artists, some who do not necessarily define themselves as photographers. [3]

Critical Commerce

Modrak's work explores interests in shared concerns between art and commerce – each involving questions of labor, production and distribution. Her artworks on eBay offer recreations of historic photographs, each incorporating an implausible garment as the main event. Original Fluxus stretchy pants mentioned in the post Stolen Ebayaday presented a pair of stretchy pants that (Modrak proposed) had been worn by Yoko Ono during her Cut Piece, by VALIE EXPORT in her street gestures, and by the members of Hi Red Center during their street cleaning event. Original Vito Acconci 04:30, December 21, 2011 (UTC) parasol with photographs adds an ornamental parasol to five seminal Vito Acconci performances. [4]

In ebayaday, Modrak along with Zack Denfeld, and Aaron Ahuvia (Professor, University of Michigan-Dearborn, School of Business) curated a month-long art exhibition featuring site-specific work by twenty-five artists, the first curated exhibition of artwork imbedded within eBay.com that uses eBay as a gallery with which to present an exhibition of artwork, instead of simply displaying and selling them. [5]

Modrak is the artist behind the artwork Re Made Co., a web-based work (http://remadeco.org/) that appears to be an artisanal toilet plunger company, and what blogger Mark Maynard calls " a brilliant piece of satire directed at the company Best Made and its line of high-end, artisanal axes." [6] The artwork intentionally treats browsers as potential consumers by presenting them with a fully functioning company website that mirrors Best Made's content from 2013 through 2017, complete with a collection of $350 plungers in "The Plunger Shop" (in lieu of "The Axe Shop"), brand narration of "adventures" in manual labor at a Nebraskan farm or at the campground in Plumbland (in lieu of Best Made's (Lumberland"), and enticing events for building community. In the book The Routledge Companion to Criticality in Art, Architecture, and Design, Modrak describes Re Made as "a dynamic, malleable [work], changing in real-time within the online environment. Browser posts and emails, and Best Made’s redesigns, legal actions, and product messaging compel new creative and ethical decisions: how to respond to a tobacco company’s request to feature Re Made in their digital showcase; how to correspond in a ‘manly’ way when posing as avatar Peter Smith-Buchanan; what voice to use to reply to an order for thirty Captain Perley Frazer Hudson Bay Plungers." [7]

Re Made Co. critiques the appropriation of manual labor by affluent urban hipsters and the lumbersexual, and exposes and challenges Best Made, and the media that publicize this brand, as still promoting a version of masculinity embedded in the pioneer myth and symbolic violence. According to Professor Laurie Meamber, "The Best Made Co. brand myth is tied to the idea of the male pioneer that explores and conquers nature. As noted previously, the list of cultural referents utilized by the brand is diverse, and the Best Made Co. brand unabashedly associates well-known men with posed photos of archetypal outdoorsmen, such as fishermen and farmers, with a range of symbols such as the American flag and whiskey bottles. Examined individually, once again, the images are ripe for questioning. For example, many of the masculine, pioneering figures referenced in the brand myth may have a tenuous relationship to the outdoors (e.g. musicians, a civil rights leader). Yet, taken together, these references are viewed as a coherent brand identity that speaks to urban hipsters." [8]

In Design Observer, journalist Rob Walker described Re Made Co. and the Re Made brand video in particular, as, "An overtly ridiculous product pitch for an artisanal plunger (fictional, of course), the clip effectively satirizes the products of a much-lauded brand called Best Made, whose flagship offering is a (nonfictional) line of really fancy and expensive axes. [It's] a very pointed, and useful, example of object-as-critique, setting off a very serious line of questioning about the ideologies and biases embedded in designed things." [9] In "Learning to Talk Like an Urban Woodsman," Modrak reveals the only part of the Re Made website that deviates from Best Made's is the "Add to Cart" button. She writes that "any browser showing their readiness to spend money on a stylized plunger by clicking on 'Add To Cart' is dropped into the chamber of Thorstein Veblen. In this 'chamber,' staged to evoke a Re Made campfire, Veblen chronicles the activities of the gentleman of leisure who cultivates a lifestyle full of 'manly beverages and trinkets,' apparel, weapons and other goods that establish his notable taste and draw attention to his capacity (in time and money) for cultivating leisure." [10]

Reframing Photography

Published in 2010 by Routledge, Reframing Photography, [11] written by Rebekah Modrak with Bill Anthes, looks at the history of photography through the approach of bridging technical and theoretical concerns in a broad, all encompassing way. [12] The book "doesn’t abstract photography from its social context, discussing issues such as censorship in military operation, the place of photography in social networks like facebook, or comparing notions of originality and reproduction in photography to the same notions in genetics, etc." [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Performance art</span> Artwork created through actions of an artist or other participants

Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a public in a fine art context in an interdisciplinary mode. Also known as artistic action, it has been developed through the years as a genre of its own in which art is presented live. It had an important and fundamental role in 20th century avant-garde art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Smithson</span> 20th-century American artist

Robert Smithson was an American artist known for sculpture and land art who often used drawing and photography in relation to the spatial arts. His work has been internationally exhibited in galleries and museums and is held in public collections. He was one of the founders of the land art movement whose best known work is the Spiral Jetty (1970).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Site-specific art</span> Artwork created for a certain place

Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork. Site-specific art is produced both by commercial artists, and independently, and can include some instances of work such as sculpture, stencil graffiti, rock balancing, and other art forms. Installations can be in urban areas, remote natural settings, or underwater.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vito Acconci</span> American performance artist (1940–2017)

Vito Acconci was an American performance, video and installation artist, whose diverse practice eventually included sculpture, architectural design, and landscape design. His performance and video art was characterized by "existential unease," exhibitionism, discomfort, transgression and provocation, as well as wit and audacity, and often involved crossing boundaries such as public–private, consensual–nonconsensual, and real world–art world. His work is considered to have influenced artists including Laurie Anderson, Karen Finley, Bruce Nauman, and Tracey Emin, among others.

Intermedia is an art theory term coined in the mid-1960s by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins to describe the strategies of interdisciplinarity that occur within artworks existing between artistic genres. It was also used by John Brockman to refer to works in expanded cinema that were associated with Jonas Mekas' Film-Makers’ Cinematheque. Gene Youngblood also described intermedia, beginning in his Intermedia column for the Los Angeles Free Press beginning in 1967 as a part of a global network of multiple media that was expanding consciousness. Youngblood gathered and expanded upon intermedia ideas from this series of columns in his 1970 book Expanded Cinema, with an introduction by Buckminster Fuller. Over the years, intermedia has been used almost interchangeably with multi-media and more recently with the categories of digital media, technoetics, electronic media and post-conceptualism.

Public art is art in any media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and physically accessible to the public; it is installed in public space in both outdoor and indoor settings. Public art seeks to embody public or universal concepts rather than commercial, partisan, or personal concepts or interests. Notably, public art is also the direct or indirect product of a public process of creation, procurement, and/or maintenance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museology</span> Study of museums

Museology is the study of museums. It explores the history of museums and their role in society, as well as the activities they engage in, including curating, preservation, public programming, and education.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Environmental art</span> Genre of art engaging nature and ecology

Environmental art is a range of artistic practices encompassing both historical approaches to nature in art and more recent ecological and politically motivated types of works. Environmental art has evolved away from formal concerns, for example monumental earthworks using earth as a sculptural material, towards a deeper relationship to systems, processes and phenomena in relationship to social concerns. Integrated social and ecological approaches developed as an ethical, restorative stance emerged in the 1990s. Over the past ten years environmental art has become a focal point of exhibitions around the world as the social and cultural aspects of climate change come to the forefront.

Art intervention is an interaction with a previously existing artwork, audience, venue/space or situation. It is in the category of conceptual art and is commonly a form of performance art. It is associated with Letterist International, Situationist International, Viennese Actionists, the Dada movement and Neo-Dadaists. More latterly, intervention art has delivered Guerrilla art, street art plus the Stuckists have made extensive use of it to affect perceptions of artworks they oppose and as a protest against existing interventions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lightbox</span> Translucent surface illuminated from behind

A lightbox is a translucent surface illuminated from behind, used for situations where a shape laid upon the surface needs to be seen with high contrast.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feminist art</span> Art that reflects womens lives and experiences

Feminist art is a category of art associated with the feminist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. Feminist art highlights the societal and political differences women experience in their lives. The goal of this art form is to bring a positive and understanding change to the world, leading to equality or liberation. Media used range from traditional art forms, such as painting, to more unorthodox methods such as performance art, conceptual art, body art, craftivism, video, film, and fiber art. Feminist art has served as an innovative driving force toward expanding the definition of art by incorporating new media and a new perspective.

In art, appropriation is the use of pre-existing objects or images with little or no transformation applied to them. The use of appropriation has played a significant role in the history of the arts. In the visual arts, "to appropriate" means to properly adopt, borrow, recycle or sample aspects of human-made visual culture. Notable in this respect are the readymades of Marcel Duchamp.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Art history</span> Academic study of objects of art in their historical development

Art history is, briefly, the history of art—or the study of a specific type of objects created in the past.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design</span> Art school of the University of Michigan

The Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design is the school of art and design of the University of Michigan located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The school offers graduate and undergraduate degrees in art and design.

A superfiction is a visual or conceptual artwork that uses fiction and appropriation to blur the lines between facts and reality about organizations, business structures, and/or the lives of invented individuals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marc Tasman</span> American Intermedia artist (born 1971)

Marc Tasman is an American Intermedia artist who works in a variety of media, including interactive art, performance art, video art, and photography. He is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in the Department of Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeroen Jongeleen</span> Dutch artist

Jeroen Jongeleen is a Dutch artist. His artwork has been influenced by graffiti art and textual art and is often created in public spaces. In his artworks Jongeleen criticizes today’s over regulated society.

Post-conceptual, postconceptual, post-conceptualism or postconceptualism is an art theory that builds upon the legacy of conceptual art in contemporary art, where the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work takes some precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. The term first came into art school parlance through the influence of John Baldessari at the California Institute of the Arts in the early 1970s. The writer Eldritch Priest, specifically ties John Baldessari's piece Throwing four balls in the air to get a square from 1973 as an early example of post-conceptual art. It is now often connected to generative art and digital art production.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MTA Arts & Design</span> NYC region transit art program

MTA Arts & Design, formerly known as Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit and Arts for Transit and Urban Design, is a commissioned art program directed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for the transportation systems serving New York City and the surrounding region. Since 1985, the program has installed art in more than 260 transit stations. The art is intended to be site-specific and to improve the journey for New Yorkers and visitors alike.

Alex M. Lee (artist) is an American and South Korean artist who lives and works in Phoenix, Arizona. He is assistant professor of animation at Arizona State University's Herberger Institute for Design & Art and faculty affiliate at ASU's Mesa City Media and Immersive eXperience Center (MIX). His work uses 3D animation, game engines and virtual reality to explore temporality, language, perception and human interpretation in our technological society. His work has been presented at the Goethe Institut, SIGGRAPH, Toronto Digifest, anti-utopias amongst other international venues.

References

  1. Meamber, Laurie (June 29, 2015). "Commentary on learning to talk like an (urban) woodsman: an artistic intervention". Consumption Markets & Culture. 18 (6): 559–568. doi:10.1080/10253866.2015.1053661 . Retrieved September 29, 2023.
  2. "Professor Rebekah Modrak, Stamps School". Stamps School of Art & Design. March 2, 2022. Retrieved March 2, 2022.
  3. "Reframing Photography". Reframing Photography / Routledge. March 2, 2022. Retrieved March 2, 2022.
  4. "A&D Profile: Rebekah Modrak". Art-design.umich.edu. March 13, 2011. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  5. Provenzano, Frank "eBayaday: Curators transform Web auction site into art gallery" (article) The University Record January 4, 2007 Archived March 10, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  6. Maynard, Mark (May 4, 2014). "Food, Sex and Trauma: Mark Maynard Shoots the Shit with the Most Important Artists of Our Day … Episode 2: Rebekah Modrak". Mark Maynard.
  7. Thiessen, Myra (2018). The Routledge Companion to Criticality in Art, Architecture, and Design. London: Routledge. pp. part IV, 21. ISBN   9781138189232.
  8. Meamber, Laurie (June 2015). "Commentary on Learning to Talk Like an (Urban) Woodsman: An Artistic Intervention". Consumption Markets & Culture. 18 (6): 559–568. doi:10.1080/10253866.2015.1053661. S2CID   145170003 via TandFonline.
  9. Walker, Rob (May 12, 2014). "Object Vs. Object". Design Observer.
  10. Modrak, Rebekah (2015). "Learning to Talk Like An Urban Woodsman: An Artistic Intervention". Consumption Markets & Culture. 18 (6): 539–558. doi:10.1080/10253866.2015.1052968. S2CID   143127936 via Taylor Francis Online.
  11. Modrak, Rebekah (November 23, 2010). "Reframing Photography: Theory and Practice (Paperback)". Routledge. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  12. Jan (December 1, 2010). "Leonardo Reviews Home". Leonardo.info. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  13. Debatty, Regine (July 23, 2012). "Review: Reframing Photography". We Make Money Not Art. Retrieved March 2, 2022.