"Art on Paper" (November/December 2009)

My entry this afternoon will be about the November/December 2009 issue of Art on Paper. I'm interested to see how it compares to Art Journal and ARTnews, and what I will learn from reading it today.

I know this is probably meaningless, but for some reason, I like the fact that it's smaller than the other two journals I've read this week. It appears to be about 8 by 6 inches, so it's nice and small. It starts with a few exhibit ads and then goes straight to the Table of Contents page, which gives information about this issue's features, columns, and other articles. I'm already seeing some articles listed in the Table of Contents that look interesting. Oh and one page after the Table of Contents is an advertisement of an art auction and one of the pieces shown is a Lichtenstein! It's really cool to look through these journals and see art and artists that I recognize from class.

I think the article I want to start with is a column called Paper Cut. The topic for this issue is "Sight Unseen" and is about an exhibition of photographs taken by people with visual disabilities. About a week ago, a friend and I were watching part of of a Grey's Anatomy rerun on Lifetime, and the dramatic issue of the episode was that a photographer had been in a serious accident and might never see again. Our response to the show was something like, "Oh, of course, it would be the photographer who gets in the accident and ends up unable to see ever again!", and out of disgust with the predictability of the show, we turned off the television. But now I'm thinking about it, and to be honest, I'm wondering what it means to be an artist when you cannot see or when your vision is impaired. How much of art is the visual aspect? In class, recently, we've been discussing what it means to be a woman, a person of color, or gay in the art world, and though not as controversial as those questions, it does make me wonder what it means to be blind in the art world.

On my way to this article, I'm seeing a news section and many more exhibit ads. And now, here I am: "Sight Unseen." From the first paragraph, I'm already incredibly intrigued. The author, Leah Ollman, points out the fact that many of us have the apparatus necessary for seeing, but we do not use it in a profound way: "We are visual, but we lack vision." Ollman raises another good point from the very start. Lacking a certain sense causes our other senses to compensate and become stronger. Therefore, if we do possess all the senses, they can each afford to relax a bit and not fully perform their functions. So we end up consuming images thoughtlessly; "we see without really seeing."

"Sight Unseen" is an exhibit at the University of California, Riverside/California Museum of Photography that hopes to motivate people to pay more attention. The exhibit features eleven individuals and one collective who had childhood accidents or have degenerative diseases, which have left them with visual disabilities. However, all differences aside, these individuals possess a common trait: they are each determined to maintain a strong connection to the world of images. And the images these artist have created are photographs that address the conditions of blindness explicitly, "images made in terms of the artist's identity as blind, rather than in spite of it."

One of the artists whom I find most interesting is Gerardo Nigenda. Nigenda has been blind since the age of ten, and each of his photographs contains lines of braille on the image itself, which I find fascinating. Nigenda intends for the images to be seen, touched, and read, combining visual and tactile experiences, and creating a level playing field for the sighted and the blind because no one (except for sighted people who can read Braille) will be able to perceive all the components of each image.

At the end of the article, Ollman uses Nigenda's art as evidence that there are multiple ways of seeing, that we are all simultaneously endowed and limited. The question of what it means to have a visual disability in a field that tends to put a great deal of emphasis on visual abilities is an interesting addition to the discussions we've had recently in class.

Flipping further through this journal, I'm getting the feeling that it is definitely a casual Friday afternoon read, lucky for me! I've now arrived at what is entitled "The Sixth Annual New Prints Review", a selection of the most compelling prints published worldwide over the past year. I'm already seeing a few that I would love to purchase and hang on the walls of my apartment.

Batucada, Beatriz Milhazes, 2009

From the "Auras" series, Susan Hiller, 2008

All in all, I've enjoyed looking through this short journal this afternoon, learning about new exhibits, and the "best" prints of the past year. So far, this has been the most interesting magazine I've explored for this art journal!

Ollman, Leah. "Sight Unseen." Art on Paper 14 (2009): 33-36.