a.c. frabetti

Gnovis article on Graffiti

2011-12-08T18:29:00.001-08:00

Please consider reading my online article on Graffiti at:http://gnovisjournal.org/2011/11/21/a-c-frabetti-journal/Here is the abstract:Driven by the need for the increased reception (and the conservation) of their tags, graffiti writers document their productions online on blogs, photo sites, and pro-graffiti forums. For the purposes of this paper, the term “writer” is part of the argot of graffiti; it refers to producers of graffiti. These sites, though accessible to the general public, are secluded, as they are frequented predominantly by graffiti enthusiasts and practitioners. Inspired by responses to his or her postings on such sites by an anonymous, international, virtual community, the tagger continues an activity that might otherwise dissipate from inattention and lack of audience. In this context, this paper first presents the performative nature of tagging and its essential relationship to masculinity. It then proposes some consequences of the virtual community’s new assumed role as the tagger’s primary audience.

review and discussion of masculinity in art by Rob Anderson

2011-05-25T08:26:00.001-07:00

http://aeqai.com/main/2011/05/new-male-portraiture-at-the-carnegie/

Article on Keith Haring

2011-04-22T10:30:00.000-07:00

http://aeqai.com/main/2011/04/harings-creative-approach-and-its-reception/

The Art of my Uncle at the Sandra Small Gallery

2010-06-09T20:18:00.000-07:00

For many artists and art lovers, it may be difficult to trace the single most important influence on their development; for me that is not the case. The art which surrounded my life, from my infancy through adolescence, was that of my uncle (and godfather) David Bumbeck.

Anyone who has had an artist in the family most likely will have received gifts in the form of his or her art. (For the arts are a vow of poverty; the works are given perhaps as a substitute for some commercially bought contrivance, but they are not a substitute. On the contrary, such gifts are that which commercial contrivances seek to substitute.) This was also the case with my family; our house was adorned with the works of my uncle. The works accompanied the long stages of his development. A master printmaker, he had first dabbled in roughly 'sketched' figures on plates for his lithographs, imitating the pen stroke. His later work, elaborately detailed, would reflect his intense work ethic: rising at 4AM to watch the sun rise, only to stay in his studio until nightfall. He told me once that the sunrise gave him the force and inspiration to work all day. It remains the ideal for me even now.

Sometimes, even his most whimsical work made its way into my parents' house. Apparently, one day at the beach, he made several faces--their negative forms, instant moulds, essentially--in the sand, perhaps as a kind of playful exercise. He then poured plaster into the moulds and produced three rough faces, somewhat stylized. Apparently, he thought little of them, but my mother treasured them. These faces would adorn my parents' living room for many years, and still sit in their small condominium. I loved them; they seemed peaceful, simple, and somewhat curious. They are a small example of how even simple gestures of artists can move people.

Recently, when I came to Cincinnati to start the arts journal AEQAI, my aunt recommended I contact Danny Brown. It turned out that Daniel and my Uncle had known each other form many years, and the catalog of my uncle's prints hosted an introduction by Daniel. Hence my uncle's presence was felt again: he united me with a mentor-critic, and assisted me, in this indirect way, on another stage of development.

Hence it is with great joy that the Sandra Small Gallery in Covington, KY recently hosted my uncle's prints (curated, of course, by Daniel Brown). Perhaps in some way my presence here had help rekindle the friendship between the two, and hence the exhibition; it is a gentle way of gratitude for all that his work has given me throughout my life. I encourage all to view the show if possible; it features his master printworks, as well as a courageous exploration into color painting.

The Genius of David Bumbeck: Prints, Sculptures, Paintings, Collages and Drawings; curated by Daniel Brown, at the Sandra Small Gallery, 124 W. PIKE STREET COVINGTON, KY 41011.HOURS: Thursday 3-8pm, Friday 1-5pm & Saturday 10-5 pm - 859.291.2345. Through June 25th 2010.

Art and Spirituality lecture

2010-06-01T09:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=125514804143840

Please consider joining me for this lecture. It is a broad theme, so I plan to approach it from a unique perspective. In many ways, this is THE theme that has occupied all my thought since the beginnings of my involvement in the arts.

New review on AEQAI

2010-05-08T19:25:00.000-07:00

I invite you to read my review of Sungsoo Kim's exhibition at the Marta Hewitt Gallery in Cincinnati, OH. The article is called 'Diaphanous Negation.' Here is an excerpt:

Sungsoo Kim. Rediscovery 100302 (2009).
Kiln cast glass, 13"h x 8.5"w x 3.5"d.
Photo Courtesy of the Marta Hewitt Gallery.

Part of the aesthetic experience of Kim's work is a reliance on the idiosyncratic combination of form and material. The intellect naturally takes delight in this reversal of usage, here from packing material to aesthetic object (think how often artists exploit the term 'repurpose'). The result is that the two objects—the initial source styrofoam and the final sculpture—have diametrically opposite qualities. Styrofoam is designed to absorb impact, protecting the object resting in its negative spaces. The foam is the inessential, the object it protects is the essential. Styrofoam—typically white, somewhat translucent, lightweight, and inexpensive—is easily disregarded, especially given its cheap cost and non-archival qualities. On the other hand, Kim's glass sculptures are fragile; the production of the piece is far more labor-intensive; the solid aspect becomes the essential and creates a relationship to the negative space; and the lightness of the styrofoam is replaced by the purer translucence and weightiness of the glass. The precious object that was the function of the source packing material is now represented by a negation. In this negation lies the symbol of the whole transformation.
[Full Article]

Role of the Beholder at the Fitton Center

2010-04-14T13:34:00.000-07:00

Join me tonight for an enjoyable lecture/discussion on the role of the beholder in the visual arts. We will discuss briefly a variety of approaches that have demystified the status of the art object. This will include receptionist aesthetics, the limits of stereometric thinking, interactive art, and more.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=109202239104256&index=1

Humanities Doctoral Program

2010-04-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce that I have been accepted into the University of Louisville's Humanities Doctoral Program. I will need to relocate to Louisville until the completion of the program. I look forward to the challenges that it has to offer.
Fortunately, Louisville is not far from Cincinnati; I will be able to stay behind some of my main initiatives here, such as AEQAI.

New article on AEQAI.com

2010-03-31T21:13:00.000-07:00

As Part II of my work on Shepard Fairey, I focused this time on the graffiti art scene here in Cincinnati as examples of the issues in street art. I offer a unique angle in understanding the main points of debate. I hope you find the article stimulating.

Here is the link:
"Notes on Graffiti"

2010-03-01T12:09:00.000-08:00

I authored the feature article on this month's edition of AEQAI.com. In it, I critique the work of Shepard Fairey, currently showing at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. I hope you find it stimulating.
Special thanks to Daniel Brown for his suggestions for the article.

2010-02-26T11:24:00.000-08:00

Thank you to the attendees at the Fitton Center presentation of Process Art. True to the title of the lecture, I had kept part of the presentation open to development in response to the people attending. We had great interventions, from discussions of Mandelbrot sets to an early grasp of the process of experience.

I look forward to returning there in April.

Lecture at Fitton Center

2010-02-13T22:31:00.000-08:00

Please consider attending my first lecture at the Fitton Center:

February 24, 7-8pm: "Process Art: Revisiting a Facet of Modernism"

Many forms of what we may call a Realist approach to the arts begin with an idea or image for the artist within their mind which is then subsequently rendered outwardly. Process art is a mode of creating in which the discovery takes place while the work is being executed. In order for this mode of creating to be successful, there are multiple features that an artist may wish to learn about that should or could take place.

Fitton Center for the Arts, $5/members, $8/non-members

101 South Monument Ave., Hamilton, OH 45011-2833.

links

2009-02-14T22:43:00.002-08:00

AEQAI: Critical Thinking, Review & Reflective Prose on Contemporary Art in Greater Cincinnati

Lucid site: a cheap service I offer for assistance in manipulating Blogger
Sample Artist Web Site: As above, but for artists

Alton Falcone: I masquerade as a sculptor under this pseudonym

more forthcoming

contact

2009-02-14T22:43:00.001-08:00

email: altonfrabetti AT gmail.com

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about

2009-02-14T22:43:00.000-08:00

A.C Frabetti founded and directed his own private art gallery in San Gimignano, Italy, where he resided for ten years. In 2007 he earned an MFA, an MA (Philosophy/Aesthetics) and a Certificate in Art and Philosophy from Stony Brook University and its Manhattan program. His studies included a seminar with the renowned art critic Donald Kuspit. He also taught in the university's Program in Writing and Rhetoric.

He contributed feature articles for the Boston-based online journal ArtsEditor.com. He is the founder, designer (along with assistance from Dustin Pike) and editor of ÆQAI. A newcomer to the Cincinnati region (late 2008), he enjoys the accessibility of the art scene as well as the depths and strengths of its artists and curators.

This blog serves as an update for occasional appearances in the form of lectures, panels and juried shows. It also may feature the occasional writing.

Thank you for visiting.

Special thanks to Petr Kratochvil for the background abbey image.

offerings

2009-02-14T22:42:00.000-08:00

The following are lectures either in preparation or have already been given. Please contact me at altonfrabetti AT gmail.com for more information.

Transactionalism, or The Role of the Beholder
Redefines art in terms of its relationship with the beholder. This is externally clear in the case of interactive art, but what of the more subtle relationships that are not seen? Cultural shifts in taste, receptionist aesthetics (in which the work of art is defined as such through the aesthetic experience of the viewer), experience of beauty/sublimity in nature (which Kant found as the only justification for teleology), the importance of criticism, even the esoteric 'completion' of the work through its being beheld (John Dewey and even Martin Buber) like in literature, and more. Artists tend to see the work as something solidly expressing them; transactionalism subverts this concept and challenges them to think about their work in terms of reception.

Thought and the Arts
Postmodernism did not end Modernism but was in fact an aspect of it (it even semantically defined itself in relationship to modernism: post-such). What ended was not Modernism per se but the broad-sweeping metanaratives. In the void, interestingly, is the overiding assumption of the superiority or inferiority of thought itself. Like two opposing phalanxes, some artists side with art full of thoughts to the point of being purely conceptual whereas others prefer an intuitive, imaginative artistic expression. Yet thought itself is little understood, least of all by people who produce mountains of it. I suggest a discussion of what Nietzsche characterized as the Socratic influence on Greek tragedy as a possible angle in understanding this tension.
I gave this as a lecture late last semester there. It could be a repeat for some students.

Art and Spirituality
Today, anything can qualify as a work of art. Yet, the artist who stands out is the one who consciously seeks to elaborate a personal aesthetic that also transcends their limited selfhood. This is the spiritual in art, a topic certainly not in fashion to discuss. Religion was a terrible yoke on art for most of its history; hence there is reluctance to revisit this topic. What constitutes the spiritual? Topics may include the difference between the Greek, Medieval, and contemporary spirit; the Kantian elevation of aesthetic experience until its greatest expression in Schiller's letters, the Maritaine school of Thomasian aesthetics and the Medieval concept of the Splendoring; Kandinsky and the Rudolf Steiner school, and more. It is a broad topic, really too much for a single lecture, but we can pick a few key topics here.

Process Art: Revisiting a Facet of Modernism
Many forms of what we may call a Realist approach to the arts begin with an idea or image for the artist within their mind which is then subsequently rendered outwardly. Process art is a mode of creating in which the discovery takes place while the work is being executed. In order for this mode of creating to be successful, there are multiple features that an artist may wish to learn about that should or could take place.

Art and Moral Transformation
Political art seeks to make a social transformation through its content and the strong mode of its delivery. Art which strives for the Beautiful seeks to act upon the viewer's moral character through elevated contemplation. Both are ultimately valid approaches and find their grounding throughout the history of art and philosophy. Both are also in fundamental contradiction to each other.

publications

2009-02-14T22:41:00.001-08:00

The following are a selection of publications. Each is linked directly to an online version of the article, if available:

"Notes on Graffiti, ÆQAI, Apr 2010
"Shepard Fairey: Propaganda, and the Preempting of Criticism," ÆQAI, Mar 2010
"Aaron Morse at the Country Club: Varying Perspectives," ÆQAI, Dec 2009.
"Jungian Perspectives," ÆQAI, Nov 2009.
"Elegy and the The Romantic Mood," ÆQAI, Oct 2009.
"The Aesthetics of Confronting Loss," ÆQAI, Sept 2009.
"Creativity and Criticism," Awakenings, September, 2009.
"Some Effects of Small Scale," ÆQAI, Jul 2009.
"The Eureka Effect," ÆQAI, Mar 2009.
"Reflections on NeoPorkopolis," ÆQAI, Jan 2009.
"Layered Mimesis," ArtsEditor, June 2008.
"Unquelled Persona," ArtsEditor, May 2008.

I also post numerous short reviews on ADUMBRATIONES. For a complete list of such articles, please visit my writer's page there.

schedule (reverse chronological order)

2009-02-14T22:41:00.000-08:00

April 14, 7-8pm: "Role of the Beholder"
In a spiritually decadent and materialistic fashion one may assume that the visual art object (such as a sculpture or painting) is complete in itself. This lecture will examine the role of the beholder and the concept of transactionalism. The overused paradigm of the tree-falling-in-the-forest-sound argument is ridiculous when applied to, well, trees, but very accurate when applied to art. For the experience of art is a purely human phenomenon. Without us, it does not take place.
Fitton Center for the Arts, $5/members, $8/non-members

101 South Monument Ave., Hamilton, OH 45011-2833.

March 8. Juror for NKU student art.

February 24, 7-8pm: "Process Art: Revisiting a Facet of Modernism"

Many forms of what we may call a Realist approach to the arts begin with an idea or image for the artist within their mind which is then subsequently rendered outwardly. Process art is a mode of creating in which the discovery takes place while the work is being executed. In order for this mode of creating to be successful, there are multiple features that an artist may wish to learn about that should or could take place.

Fitton Center for the Arts, $5/members, $8/non-members

101 South Monument Ave., Hamilton, OH 45011-2833.

2009-01-02T21:05:00.000-08:00