Chris Jordan Research Paper Outline
Body Outline:
I. About Jordan’s work.
a. About Chris Jordan.
b. Intolerable Beauty Series
c. In Katrina’s Wake Series
d. Running the Numbers Series
II. Beautifying Ugliness
a. Chris Referring to his work:
-”There’s this contrast between the beauty in the images and the underlying grotesqueness of the subjects. And it’s something that I put in there intentionally.”-http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09212007/profile4.html
-“Chris Jordan: I am frequently surprised by how little negative feedback I get for my criticism of the American way of life. Maybe it is because we all know it is true: that we are living insane lives governed by materialism and greed. Or maybe the lack of resistance is a reflection of the depth of our denial. When I exhibit my work and talk about our rampant consumerism, no one ever seems to think I am talking about them.”- http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/70/
b. Critics Refering to his work:
-“American artist Chris Jordan’s large-scale images of human consumption in his current photographic series Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait look at US culture through the lens of statistics […through] a kind of neo-Pointillist composition. Yet the images sit awkwardly between lamenting and celebrating our colossal capacity for wastefulness and for guzzling the earth’s fossil fuels.”
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/thinktank/peterhall.html
III. The Problem of Beautifying Americas Waste
-“Mr Jordan is an openly passionate advocate—or maybe a protester. While he is aiming for visually resolved images as an artist, the point is to heighten awareness about our collective environmental disregard. But art and advocacy can be at odds, the goals of one often canceling out the other. “My goal,” [Jordan] said, “is to try to face the complexity of the issue and honor it.” –from New York Times article by Philip Gefter, “A Great Big Beautiful Pile of Junk”.
-Criticality of America’s situation from Jordan’s perspective and others.
-Who views his work
-What are their perceptions of America before and after viewing his works?
-How is Jordan’s work actually effecting the public?
