Blind Courage & Panic Fears Analysis with Flash Cards

I chose to write my gallery assIgnment on the exhibition, Blind Courage and Panic Fears, by LIsa Murray. The titte of the work is called Flash Cards and was done in 2000. The medium that was used tor the six flash cards, that are portrayed in the exhibition, was silk screening on canvas. Each of the prints are paired with one image and a label, which is why they are called flash cards. Lisa’s flash cards are very similar to the style and format of children’s flashcards, in which, if a flash card is shown to someone we would recognize the picture and have an understanding for the concept of the Visual symbol.

Although, with Lisa’s flash cards, they are very puzzling, humorous, and ambiguous when we try to decipher and categorize each individual flash card. Therefore, the subject matter in this exhibition is what each individual flash card suggests or symbolizes. With Lisa’s flash cards, they all represent some method of science, mapping, or classification.

The content of Lisa Murray’s work is the caption that is paired with the picture. Even though the caption tels you wnat the picture is, it still doesnt make you fuly understand exactiy wnat it means. She breaks down form vs. content in simple terms, and “even suggesting that this binary thinking is inadequate to really understand the world, Murray suggests that other forms of knowledge have value.”i The content of the painting has the viewer compelled with her work and confused because of the puzzling and ambiguous objects.

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It can be somewhat dificult to understand how she came up with the caption for each picture and what it actually means. she got a lot of her ideas from “medieval cartography, perceptual processes, dreams, and advances in medical technology.” I think that it Would be easier for a child to say what they see better than an adult because we are more analytical, whereas a child is more abstract. One of the formal elements that Lisa Murray makes use of is line. Her line is not very technical, I find that it is a lot like Keth Haring’s work and how he draws.I see the line as being somewhat child-like and smooth and quite simple in its outlines. I also find that her pictures somewhat resemble the line in PIcasso’s, Pitcher, Candle, and Casserole painting.

With Lisa’s paintings she fills the outines in with colour, and you can see this in her flash card titled Intake Slot. You can also see in the flash card, Screwed Sheep, that she uses great detail With her line and seems quite delicate.
One of the principles of design that Lisa Murray makes use of is unity and variety. In her work we see great organization and it provides a sense of a unified and balanced whole. Even though she does use different colors, forms, and lines in each picture and caption, they all work to together to form a feeling of completeness. All of her flash cards, to some, may not be compelling visually, but they do provoke our sense of thought as to what she is trying to tell us through her tlash cards. I found that Lisa Murray’s work was quite similar to a couple of artists. The first artist that her work is quite similar to is Lorna Simpson. Lorna Simpson produced The Park, which was also done in silk Screening, but it was on felt. Both Murray and Simpson “deal with the ways in which words and images function together to make meaning. ”

When the caption of the flash cards, or the wall text with Simpson’s images, are read, it changes our perception of the image and it’s meaning.
Als0, like I said before, I found that some of Lisa Murray’s images were quite Similar to Keith Haring’s work. They both have the same kind of line and texture. Both Haring’s and Murray’s images portray toy-like or cartoon-like images. Lisa Murray’s flash cards also have a somewhat scientific meaning behind them, in which they refer to perceptual processes, medical history, and philosophy.” My initial response to Lisa Murray’s Flash Cards was, what am I looking at and is this really art? I did not really find anything appealing about it and I had no clue what it meant. In a way,I still do not know what it means. I just sat in front of all those flash cards and tried to analyze them as much as I could.

Too me, it almost seemed that some of the images had a Dit of sexual innuendo benind them. one of the first flash cards that l noticed this with was Intake slot. After I noticed her other exhibits in the gallery, I figured that I could be quite possibly right. Or maybe I am totally out of the loop. Judging and interpreting pieces of art definitely has not been a strong point of mine, butI guess t doesnt hurt to try. One of the reasons thatI did grow to like Lisa’s work was that it really made me think of what was looking at and I found the pictures to be somewhat amusing. I think it is her art that I have ever spent the most time looking at and trying to interpret.

I think the gallery did an excellent job in how they displayed Lisa’s work and T loved how she had her pictures and captions look so much like flash cards. There was a part of me that was thinking to myself, when I saw the flash cards, that I was so glad that I didn’t have these flash cards when I was growing up. Who knows, maybe I would have been able to interpret them better as a child thanI can now.