One Number Too Many: A Review of Chris Jordan’s “Running the Numbers”

With his exhibit, “Running the Numbers,” Chris Jordan puts into pictures the staggering amount of material consumed by Americans on a regular basis. His technique of repetition, patterning, and photoshopping blends monumental numbers of everyday objects together while at the same time, keeping them separate—something Jordan calls the “one versus many” effect. While a simple written statistic or picture of wasted objects would generally be ignored, Jordan uses a combination of both in the hopes that his pieces will inspire a renewed awareness of overall social consumption to the individual viewer. This unique approach gives them a special significance in providing the viewer with an overall “in-your-face” illustrated statistic of their own wastefulness. However, looking more closely at Jordan’s works reveals a better perspective on the how effective his aesthetic approach and the portrayal of his social criticism really are.

Certainly, Jordan’s exhibit contained some noteworthy portions in regards to artistic ingenuity. Cans Seurat, for example, gives a creative modern twist to the famous French impressionist painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, by Georges Seurat. This well-known and highly regarded painting of a lakeside picnic is given a whole new meaning as one realizes its components are made up of not tiny paint dots, but of 106,000 tiny aluminum cans representing the number used in the U.S. every 30 seconds. By keeping the familiar image of the original painting but changing the fundamental components of the work, Jordan manages to create a small shock effect as the viewer processes the juxtaposition of the elements of the piece. The overall result is an effective portrayal of the statistic he is trying to convey, very much more so than if he had simply shown the number of cans in a mass amount.

Jordan’s Toothpicks also expertly blends his opinion with artistic technique, combining sheer volume with a landscape scene. The result is the illusion of a wheat field composed of 100 million toothpicks, an image that the viewer can easily recognize but is at the same time is contrasting to what they usually expect. Jordan skillfully fades the toothpicks into the horizon, hinting even more to the mass overuse of trees for something as unimportant as junk mail. Even the dark sky clouds ominously over the field of toothpicks, giving the viewer a sense of the looming consequences of their consumerist actions. Jordan combines these many elements to work towards a complex image of wastefulness.

However, despite its artistic merit, the exhibit ultimately gets to be too much by the end and it loses its effectiveness. While some pieces like Cans Seurat and Toothpicks do display a message of social criticism in an effective way, most of Jordan’s works simply contain too much patterning to give have continuing efficacy in piquing the viewers’ interest. The viewer will most likely get lost in the trance of repetition instead of taking in Jordan’s message, coming to expect the same overbearing statistic and repeated object in the next work that they saw in the last. This expectation can work opposite to Jordan’s intention, bringing increasingly less meaning to the works as the viewer’s senses get overwhelmed with large statistics.

Also contributing to the decreased efficacy of Jordan’s message in his works is the negative overall connotation attached to his exhibit. Jordan brings the viewers’ attention to the excessive consumption of America as a whole—in theory a helpful idea—but does not bolster his statistics with ideas on how to improve upon the consumption. Although Jordan’s message is given in an unembellished manner, the viewer is still left with a feeling of powerlessness, that they are simply one person who can do nothing against the millions of consumers in America.

Ultimately, despite good intention and artistic ability, Jordan’s exhibit falls short of its goal. For the most part, its message will suffer the same fate as his statistics, getting lost amongst the incomprehensible numbers that are just too much to process. But although most will walk out leaving the dreary significance of the exhibit on the walls, perhaps one or two conscientious souls will be inspired to cut back on their waste, and Jordan’s mission to raise awareness about America’s mass wastefulness will be justified.

Blog Four: Kant's "Critique of Judgment"

In his essay, Kant puts together an argument on what beauty is and how it can be accurately judged by an observer. He writes that our thoughts on beauty and what is good are bound to a representation of what the object is in our minds. Looking at an object might give us some kind of pleasure because the object provokes some kind of subjective sensation, but “the satisfaction in the beautiful must depend on the reflection upon an object, leading to [a] concept” (100). He claims that concepts are pre-conceived notions of an object that will hinder the individual’s ability to get away from the “sensible” appearances of objects that they create in their minds and be able to take a disinterested approach to judgment. I took this to mean that a concept is sort of the physical, concrete idea of what something is, but that is only one side of the object/art. In order to really pass true judgment, a person also needs some kind of intuition and mental understanding along with the concept. With this “universal voice,” one can then have the “the possibility of an aesthetical judgment that can…be regarded as valid by everyone” (106).
I was reminded a little of previous philosophers when I read Kant. Plato thought everything physical we saw was a representation of a true Idea, and I was reminded a little of this thought in part of Kant’s arguments. Kant thought that when we looked at an object, it was based upon a representation or concept we had in our mind already. I was also reminded of Hume a little when I read Kant’s comments on the “taste” that is inherent and different for everyone. Hume had stated that “The difference, it is said, is very wide between judgment and sentiment. All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself…it only marks a certain conformity or relation between the object the organs or faculties of the mind” (80). Kant says in his essay, when talking about sensation that is elicited when looking at an object, that “as regards the pleasant, therefore, the fundamental proposition is valid; everyone has his own tastes” (104). Each of them believe for the most part that there are some inferences that men make about art that are unique to themselves and must always be right because they are their own opinion. However, both believe that there are some kinds of inherent, more valid parts of the man that make him able to provide a true judgment. It seems to me that a lot of the arguments of philosophers’ arguments about art that we’ve read so far center on some of the same general concepts—like the fact that man has some kind of internal sense of what is “beauty” and “taste,” and they also try to categorize art and art analyzation into categories. I appreciate their attempts, but they all seem to run into some road blocks and ask the audience to just accept the things they say as being the way they are. I find parts of each of their arguments to be good points, but at the end of it all, I don’t really think that anyone will ever be able to put their finger on the exact “right” way we can truly judge a piece of art.

Blog Three: Of the Standard Of Taste

Hume’s essay, “Of the Standard of Taste,” attempts to set up some parameters around “tasteful” art, and the ways in which one can truly judge if an artwork has taste or not. He claims that every man passes judgment on art based upon their own experiences, but only a man with the “delicacy of taste” is able to effectively give an unbiased verdict on a work. What I really liked about Hume’s argument is that he tried to give a thorough definition of why men try to analyze art and what makes a man worthy of judging an artwork. The flow of this explanation set up some valid points that I agree with on art and the art world.
Hume began at a logical starting point: defining the difference between judgment and sentiment in making opinions about art. Sentiment, he says, is always right, for it comes from a man’s own experiences, thoughts, and understandings. It is a feeling unique to each man and is considered to be right because it doesn’t really say what is true about the artwork, only a connection between the piece and the workings of the mind of the man. Hume sums this up by saying “Beauty…exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.” Not only did this remind me a little of Plato’s argument that art is only a man’s thrice-removed, personal representation of the true Idea, but it also clarifies why so many people can have differing opinions on the same piece of art.
However, Hume goes on to say that true judgment is the only thing that can evaluate taste. This judgment stems from Hume’s observation that there are some universal ideas that every man has to allow him to judge art. These ideas, combined with practice and really delicate, tuned senses, make a man able to judge taste. I think that this could be a plausible point. Just like in any field of study, there are always people who understand it and perform in it the best because their minds or bodies are molded in such a way to make this possible. Not everyone in the world is capable of doing the kind of work that would garner a Nobel Prize—that is why those that do are so great; they understand their line of work so well that they are able to perform the best in it. The same, I think, can apply to art. There are a select few people that retain the keen observational and analytical skills that, when combined with much practice in looking at art, are able to give a much better opinion on taste than those who do not have these things. These kinds of people become art critics and curators because of their abilities.
To this argument, one might wonder how one can discern between those with good and bad judgment. Hume brings this up in his essay—“Authority or prejudice may give a temporary vogue to a bad poet or orator, but his reputation will never be durable or general.” I think that although this doesn’t give an immediate fix to the problem of weeding out the individual with bad judgment, it does give a long term solution. The one who is pulling judgment out of the air instead of from practiced knowledge will eventually be found out and will not be considered highly anymore (just as with artwork).
This brings me to answering this week’s blog question on whether the two paintings are tasteful. According to Hume, I am not able to pass judgment on the pieces, because I both do not have the practice in analyzing artwork, nor do I have the “delicacy of taste and senses” that one needs to give an unbiased critique of art. I can use the technique of comparison that Hume refers to in his essay, though. Compared to other artworks I have seen, the clown painting has no background I can go off of to tell me why this painting is meaningful. I guess the monkey painting (if the frame is included) is kind of clever. Usually a man (or woman) would be in the center of a portrait, but by putting a monkey there (a well-painted monkey at that), it makes the audience stop and think for a bit, which I think makes it a better piece of art than the clown painting. However, I am not sure whether or not the points I brought up qualify as being “tasteful” since I both do not have the capacity to judge correctly, and also because Hume didn’t leave us with an explicit definition of what tastefulness is.