A Paper on the Everlasting

Below is a recent paper on effigies and some ideas on their relationship to a larger understanding of art:

The Everlasting: Art, Death, and Permanence

The effigy is a kind of image that persists through human history. It takes on a variety of forms depending on the culture being examined. These forms may be tombs, shrines, small coins, or miniature sculptures to name a few. Despite the variety, the basic function of effigies remains the same: to memorialize and immortalize the existence of an individual – an existence limited by the corporeal body, but extended by the effigy.

The critique of the Dinner project

Wednesday we discussed the Dinner project. There was alot of good response to this project, perhaps influenced by the way the class all knows each other. People generally seemed to find it interesting that a project like this seems to work so hard to blur art and life. There were references to Allan Kaprow, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and several other conceptual artists that concerned themselves with where “life” stops and “art” begins and vice versa.