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Sound and fury

Wenrich, Richard Joseph
https://iro.uiowa.edu/esploro/outputs/graduate/Sound-and-fury/9983777280402771/filesAndLinks?index=0

Wenrich, R. J. (2015). Sound and fury [University of Iowa]. https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.3e42gyi5

https://iro.uiowa.edu
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Copyright © 2015 Richard Joseph Wenrich
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Sound and Fury
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
by
 
Richard Joseph Wenrich Jr
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the Masters of
Fine Arts degree in Art
from the Graduate College
of
The University of Iowa
 
 
December 2015
 
 
Thesis Supervisor: Anita Jung
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Copyright by
 
Richard Joseph Wenrich Jr
 
2015
 
All Rights Reserved
 Graduate College
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
 
 
 
 
 
M.F.A. THESIS
 
 
 
 
This is to certify that the M.F.A THESIS of

Richard Joseph Wenrich Jr

has been approved by the Examining Committee for the

thesis requirement for the Master of Fine Arts degree in
Art at the December 2015 graduation.
 
 
Thesis Committee:  
Anita Jung, Thesis Supervisor
 
 
 
Laurel Farrin
 
 
 
James Snitzer
 
 
 
Susan White
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
To my mother: without you, none of this would have been possible.

  ii
 It's true, of course, humor is very important in my life, as you know. That's the only reason
for living, in fact.
Marcel Duchamp

Good artists borrow, great artists steal.

Pablo Picasso

Don’t quote me boy, cause I ain’t said shit.

Eazy-E

  iii  
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
 
 

Thanks to my boyz: Tommy D, Ronnie Masters, Gladiator Ross and Chrissy, Tim,

Tequila Al, Heidi, Cami and even Rub and Tug you guys have kept me sane, or as close as

I can get.

Big up to Master Kang, for keeping my Kung Fu strong.

Shout out to the entire faculty I have been fortunate enough to work with (even you

Bob.). And a special shout out to my committee members; Anita, David, Jim, Susan and

Laurel…you all have been far to kind. Much love goes out to TC; we miss you dog. Laura

Jorgensen, I couldn’t do it without you.

Special thanks goes out to Susan Goldman, this is your entire fault! I used to be so

happy as a painter. Johanna Mueller? Of course you are in here baby! You inspire me so

much. Thank to Helen Frederick and Dr. Lisa Bauman for helping me get here.

Thanks to Lockhart, Darnell, Slater, Starwars, Omo, John Hancock, Frogman’s and so

many people and friends that I have met through printmaking

Hey Sarika, remember when we were just visiting? That seems like yesterday, and so

long ago at the same time.

Sarita (not other Sarika) thank you for being an adult. Thomas and I really appreciated

it.

Rudy and Susanna love y’all (did you know she went to Cornell?). I should have

listened to you Rudy. Ha-ha.

Erin, no hard feelings I still dig you baby.

Erin Broussard, I was talking about another Erin, but it is great to see you in my thesis!

It wouldn’t be the same without you.

  iv  
 Thanks to television and Duck Dynasty, Beavis and Butthead, The Real World, Gossip

Girl, Gilmore Girls, Couples Therapy, Are You the One?, Pardon the Interruption, and Top

Gear for keeping me entertained. The same could be said podcasts like How Did This Get

Made?, Doug Loves Movies, The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz and the Tony

Kornheiser Show.

Mr. Tony, I am a loyal little giving the TK salute in my thesis. Take a left onto highway

one, drive about a mile and turn left into the old Menard’s. A chicken Caesar Salad and

unsweetened ice tea. I don’t know what my neighbors do. $1.72…5 quarters, 3 dimes, 2

nickels and 7 pennies (or about a buck eighty three by Gary’s math). It looks like it might

rain here; could you please tell Michael?

Thanks to Katy Perry, Run the Jewels, Wu Tang Clan, N.W.A., Juicy J, Mr. Ghetto,

Quelle Chris, Jay-Z, Kanye West, 2 Live Crew, Pu$$y Crew, Novelties, Miley Cyrus,

Czarface and, of course, R. Kelly for giving me some sweet jams to listen to. Notorious

B.I.G. R.I.P.

Much love to my peeps in painting (even Karin, who couldn’t be bothered to come to

my critiques), y’all have always been good to me. To my twin Liz Davenport…I miss you

kiddo.

A special “thanks” has to go to many of my “peers” here at the University of

Iowa, who have been so rude and shitty to me most of the time I was here. You know

who you are, and I like many of you personally, but you couldn’t get past your

prejudices (about me or my art) to have an open and constructive conversation about

my work or stop from being just dismissive about what I had to say about yours. You

have been petty and childish and quite frankly you hurt my feelings.

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 And last, but not least: Thank you to Apple, Facebook, Yahoo! and Instagram for

making the technology for my show possible. Thanks to canvasdiscount.com for doing the

prints on canvas. Thanks you pizza for being a delicious reception food, and thanks to

Domino’s Pizza and the Domino’s Pizza App for delivering said pizza. J

  vi  
 PUBLIC ABSTRACT
 
 
This is a thesis that represents an art show that was made on an iPhone and features

images appropriated from Yahoo!, Facebook and Instagram. It is not profound.

Follow me on Instagram @printmacker

#uiowaprint

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
 
   
LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………......…………..…..ix

PREFACE………………………………………………………...………………....xiii

SOUND AND FURY……………………………………..…………...…………….…1

WORKS ON CANVAS………..………………………………………………..……..6

WORKS ON PAPER ………………………………………………………...………38

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 LIST OF FIGURES
 
 
Figure 1…………………………………………………………………………………..7
 
Figure 2…………………………………………………………………………….…….8
 
Figure 3…………………………………………………………………………………..9
 
Figure 4………………………………………………………………………………….10
 
Figure 5………………………………………………………………………………….11
 
Figure 6………………………………………………………………………………….12
 
Figure 7………………………………………………………………………………….13
 
Figure 8………………………………………………………………………………….14
 
Figure 9………………………………………………………………………………….15
 
Figure 10. ……………………………………………………………………………….16

Figure 11..……………………………………………………………………………….17
 
Figure 12………………………..……………………………………………………….18
 
Figure 13…………………………………..…………………………………………….19
 
Figure 14……………………………………..………………………………………….20
 
Figure 15………..…………………………………………………………………...…..21

Figure 16……..………………………………………………………………………….22
 
Figure 17…..…………………………………………………………………………….23
 
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Figure 25………………………………………………………………………………….31
 
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Figure 49………………………………………………………………………………….56

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Figure 50………………………………………………………………………………….57
 
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Figure 53………………………………………………………………………………….60
 
Figure 54………………………………………………………………………………….61
 
Figure 55……………………………………………………………………………...…..62

Figure 56………………………………………………………………………………….63
 
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Figure 72………………………………………………………………………………….79
 
Figure 73………………………………………………………………………………….80
 
Figure 74………………………………………………………………………………….81

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Figure 75………………………………………………………………………………….82
 
Figure 76………………………………………………………………………………….83

  xii  
 PREFACE
 
 
What is art? Is it the object or what the viewer experiences? Without the viewer the

object has no meaning; without the prompt the viewer has no starting point. The object

serves as a physical avatar for the artist’s point of view and is the way the artist

communicates with the observer, subsequently we must infer that art is the communication

between the audience and the artist, and the artwork is the medium. Since art is the

mediated experience, can that be informative in other forms of mediation?

Over the course of the past five years smartphones have become commonplace.

Through calls, e-mails and texts smartphones are becoming the primary way of

communicating. The ability for smartphones to access the libraries of information that are

the Internet results in the ability to reference anything and everything in a near instant. This

includes art. Type an artist’s name into a search engine and up pops a long list of their

images. You can be sitting on your couch with no pants on in Iowa City, IA and see much

of the most recent Richard Prince show in New York City just by making a few simple

clicks on your phone.

On your smartphone, you have access to almost everything you might want to see.

With social media you get to see images that you didn’t know you wanted to see, or did not

want to see. You see pictures of meals and selfies in the same way that one might view

“real art”. Does that legitimize the so-called “low art”? Are these new ways of experiencing

art becoming the new art? After all, the mediation is where the art is.

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     1  

SOUND AND FURY

“Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

I am a thief. In a way all good artists are. You show me an artist that claims to not

have any influences, and I will show you a liar and/or an awful artist. As people, we

continuously take in our surroundings and evaluate our experiences. To acknowledge

influences is to be honest as an artist. It isn’t just artists that you may admire, it is also

just random shit you might like (clothes, music, TV, sports, food, etc.). The rise of social

media has led much of society to lay bare their likes (influences); you can go on

Facebook and see your friend’s likes or on Instagram and see who they are following.

Increasingly, this is done on mobile phones.

For quite some time, I was thinking of doing a series of prints based on Google

image searches, but I never could really settle on a subject mater. When I saw (on my

phone) the reviews of the recent Richard Prince exhibition based on photos taken from

Instagram, it clarified the idea of making art through the means of digital mediation by

using my phone rather than Google. It just seemed more honest; I use my phone to look

up things more than my computer, and the iPhone default search engine is Yahoo! not

Google. I didn’t want to reproduce the Richard Prince show, but rather use it as a

jumping off point for the legitimized appropriation of digital art and use it as a way to

devolve and bastardize it’s meaning. It was like taking a selfie in front of a Koons, or
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posting a picture of a Campbell’s soup can with a #Warhol, appropriating the

appropriation. Except I would take it a step further and use images that others had taken

of the images (or criticism of the images) and use that as my source for my images. In

essence, I am appropriating the appropriating of the appropriation. I was going to do this

for the entire show but decided to widen the scope more broadly towards art and two-

dimensional art making. I did so by doing searches on Yahoo!, Instagram and Siri for art,

painting, printmaking and photography on my iPhone and printing the results.

Formally, the works are screen captures of my iPhone screen, they are composed,

and they are photographs. They are printed using a digital matrix, which makes them

prints. The prints are printed on canvas and stretched over frames giving them the form

of painting. They are simultaneously paintings, prints and photographs, but by taking the

form of painting they are somehow legitimized and reference “high art” These

legitimized works of “high art” serve as a counterpoint to the works on paper, making

those more disposable and banal, because ultimately that is what art does.

The works on canvas are satire, the works on paper are slapstick and farcical. It is

a parody of the conventions and trappings of “art”. “Art” is just an image or collection of

images that means nothing until tastemakers (art critics, gallery owners, art collectors and

other artists) give the work value, which then leads society to give the work value. It is

the perception that gives meaning, but there is no meaning inherent to “art”. “Art” in that

way is analogous to life. Life doesn’t really mean anything until one assigns arbitrary

things to it. Things like: religion, relationships, family, career, etc. are the things that

society tells us are important. What if one is an atheist, has few friends, no romantic

partners (and deemed too outside of the ideal to do so), distained by many, an only child,
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strained relations to half of your parents, overeducated, inexperienced and has no career

prospects? Then very little has any meaning. All one has is the slight ability to take

pleasure in the simple and mundane in order to keep one from dying by one’s own hand.

Why does “art” need to be any different?

I like the banal, and the profane. I take pleasure (as I can) in work that is debased,

scorned and uncared for; it is unpretentious and exists to be itself and not put on airs to

aspire to a higher meaning. It is something I can relate to; it is rejected and unwanted. I

am not egotistical enough to think that pictures of fields, parking lots or gay animals are

going to save or change the world; I can barely get through a day. All I have is stupid

ordinary shit that allows me to get by, so I documented it and use it as a counterpoint for

the “art” on the wall. Will people like it? Meh, they probably won’t. They will probably

be offended, bored, uncaring or just plain not care about it (if they even come at all). Why

would anything change just because I am having a show? So, I made this show for me, as

a document of things that gave me the slightest bits of pleasure and allowed me to make

it to the next day.

I have tried to keep my art practice very clinical and removed, the fewer record of

my hand and myself in the artwork the better. If I remove myself from the art then it is

the artwork that is judged and not me (this is theoretical of course since in my graduate

school experience the opposite has been true), but this time I wanted to inject myself

through the guise of the impartiality of the internet to create a self-portrait that was an

amalgamation of shit I like, makes me smile/laugh or at the very least crap I don’t hate.

It is complete masturbation and overly self indulgent on my part, but I thought it

might be a nice respite from my normal brooding loneness and introspection. Perhaps
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that may have been too much and slightly obtuse in juxtaposition with my nihilistic views

on “art” and the art world, but that is just who I am.

The title of the show, Sound and Fury, should indicate to the viewer that it is

something that doesn’t take itself seriously by mocking both the maker and the artwork in

the title. Perhaps, I give my audience too much credit to think that they have read or are

familiar with Shakespeare or his Scottish play. Out of context it is a stupid and slightly

humorous line, but the context is in mourning the death of Lady Macbeth. This show has

the same sort of irony, where I am beholden and reverent to the traditions and ideals of

art, while at the same time mocking and dismissing it. I find art that claims to answer

questions pompous and uninteresting since they only provide answers that are mostly

agreed upon in liberal circles: global warming is bad, companies are evil, the rust belt is

decaying, bees are good and women and/or homosexuals are people too. I have no

pretense in being profound. I am just an idiot saying nothing.

The exhibition premiered on Instagram. There was a virtual opening before a

physical one. This is how the work was conceived, so this is how it should be born.

Photographs of all the works in the show were posted on Instagram over the course of

two hours and can be seen: @printmacker. After opening the show on Instagram, there

was an opening and reception in the Drewlowe Gallery. The reception was catered by

Domino’s and ordered from a smartphone via their pizza ordering application for the

iPhone. The reception food was meant to supplement the art that is some of the reason

why there were several pieces in the exhibition that had images of pizza in them. It is a

small thing, but something as simple as the food at an opening informs content is part of a
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show. My “peers” mostly didn’t attend the show, but from those that did show up,

the reaction was positive and the pizza was enjoyed.

Before the opening there was controversy that necessitated the editing of a piece.

An individual had come into the space before the show was open and was offended to

see that their name was on one of the works. This person had put their name on

something in

a public forum (by liking a photo on Instagram) and the piece was a record of that.

There was an additional comment that had been edited out due to the constraints of the

piece; there was no malice intended, but offence was taken. This issue was taken to the

administration and I was forced to defend myself and eventually compromise my vision

in order to be allowed to show my work. There is a disconnection with online

interaction; one feels like they are not real because they don’t happen face-to-face. Once

these interactions are made physical there becomes a greater awareness to what one has

said and done. A person becomes embarrassed by having their name on a photo in a

gallery that relatively few people will see, but will open themselves freely to having that

name on a little digital picture that can be seen around the world. There are

consequences to what we do online and we have little ownership what it can become;

this is what results when we put more and more of our lives in a public and virtual

world.

Feel free to come and see my show and follow me on Instagram @printmacker.
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WORKS ON CANVAS
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WORKS ON PAPER
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