Breaking the Grid and Kanye West
After reading the piece on breaking the grid, I
started to think about how often I see examples of it
around in the world. It seems that in order to get
noticed nowadays, the grid has to be broken, whether
it’s in Art, advertising, movies, TV, really any form
of creative media. Thinking outside the box, so to
speak, has now become the norm, it is the bar in which
any creative medium is compared to, you might even say
it is the new grid.
Breaking the grid stems from stepping out of the
normal confines of a canvas. Rather than just a
straight forward two dimensional sheet with set
boundaries, breaking the grid is realigning and
cutting certain areas, using type in a photograph or
painting, interaction between text and images, use of
randomness, physical three dimensions, and conceptual
deconstruction. But breaking the grid has also become
a metaphor for a sort of counter culture, or an
aversion to what is seen as the norm or accepted. It
relies on shock and awe in order to draw attention and
get a message across. It requires rethinking the
everyday occurrences and changing them ever so
slightly to deconstruct the hegemonic view of
“normal.” For example, a chair is one of the most
common, everyday objects that we have. There are few
things more accepted and overlooked. However, you
change the way you sit in it, such as those chairs
where you rest your knees and have no back, or how it
is used, you begin to deconstruct the popular ideal
that the chair is a natural thing, and it will begin
to seem strange. This is where Kanye West comes in.
To most people, Kanye West is simply a slightly
eccentric rapper who is full of himself (for good
reason because he is a genius). However, he has a
blog on his web page that shows a whole new side to
him that many do not see,
http://www.kanyeuniversecity.com/blog/ . In this
blog, he occasionally has what you might think would
be on there, plugs for his shows/cds, messages to his
fans, fashion, etc. But what the majority of it is
about is showcasing these artists who break the grid.
He has everything from architecture, to photographers,
to performance artists, to designers who tweak
everyday things like dumbbells. Many of these do
their part to deconstruct the usual way things are
seen and break down the forms of normal objects, just
like I described above. For example, right now he
features an designer who challenges the idea of fancy
wine glasses by designing glasses made to look like
those plastic cups you drink punch out of at a school
play. He also features a bean bag chair made of
steel, completely deconstructing everything a bean bag
chair is.
To me, Kanye is a genius, not only musically but he
also always finds ways to shock and awe the public.
This is what Art is about, it may not make you the
most popular, but it will demand respect from those in
the know. Check out his blog and see what I mean.
Royce Bowman