Film Review; Week 9

The first video, Lowdown on Lowbrow, introduced and discussed the Lowbrow genre. Lowbrow is similar to pop art, but is generally surreal, and often includes television characters. It often included naked women and automobiles, and animated art that didn't fit other categories. Some people argue that it should be named Lowbrow Surrealism, and it reminds me of the surrealist paintings in the book. This helps with our project because these are works that didn't really fit into other categories. With the choosing of our works, we're arguing why they should fit into our theme.


The second video discusses the approach to displaying modern art in the Tate gallery. Art of the 20th century was displayed chronologically. They broke their works up into four groups, or exhibits, which each piece is carefully categorized. The movie focuses on grouping of artworks and the job of a curator breaking up the works into groups and themes. This relates to the project and trying to categorize our works, and the overall understanding of a curators job, and how the works should be displayed.


The video about Native American Archaeology features a woman making a stand for the protection of Indian burial grounds. They fought for the protection of bones and remains being dug up, and for the ones being held in museums around the country. The remains tell a great deal about the past, and should not be destroyed. By researching the bones, and where they lay, a lot was determined about the past and Indian culture. Research about skulls and brain size in relationship to intelligence were done based on these remains. The video was interesting, but not as strong of a connection to our Art Exhibit project as the rest.


The last video is about the George Eastman House in Rochester. It discusses his creation of the first camera, and the collection the visual history of photography. It talks about the thousands of different kinds of cameras and lenses, and works from over 14,000 photographers. I could relate this video back to the Exhibit project, as we could be using photographs in our made up exhibits. It talks about the actual house, and the rooms in which the works are exhibited, which is an important part of how the works are portrayed.


I thought all of the videos were interesting. I think the second one was definitely the most helpful as far as the project goes, but the video about Lowbrow art was very informative as well because I was unsure what it was, and I think a few of the works I looked at while searching could be in that category. Overall, very informational, but I felt the Native American one was very repetitive and not well related to the project.