{"id":7119,"date":"2021-08-11T08:39:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-11T12:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/?p=7119"},"modified":"2021-08-12T09:28:50","modified_gmt":"2021-08-12T13:28:50","slug":"visual-culture-is-fundamental-in-every-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/2021\/08\/11\/visual-culture-is-fundamental-in-every-way\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Visual Culture Is Fundamental in Every Way\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Photo by Laura Barisonzi<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Growing up, Gregory Volk \u201981 spent his summers in charge of the penny arcade at Sherman\u2019s Amusement Park in the Adirondack Mountains. It was a family business, and everyone had a job to do. Volk made change for customers and repaired the arcade machines. The experience, Volk says, laid the groundwork for his career writing about art. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur modest, out-of-the-way town was lit up with the glowing Ferris wheel and the carousel with its original horses,\u201d he says. \u201cThat was my first real experience of transformative visual culture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Volk never took an art class at Colgate, but he still reflects on what he learned in his literature classes with Peter Balakian, the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor in humanities and professor of English. \u201cColgate prepared me to develop my interest in art, literature, and creativity by honing my critical acumen,\u201d Volk says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After earning a master\u2019s degree in English and American literature from Columbia University, he landed a job transcribing poems for poet Stanley Moss, who was also an art dealer. Seeing paintings up close \u2014 Volk once hauled an El Greco up the stairs \u2014 ignited a passion. He was soon writing about art for a small Brooklyn newspaper. An editor for ARTnews spotted one of Volk\u2019s articles and hired him. This eventually led to extensive writing for Art in America and the online journal Hyperallergic. He has also penned many artists\u2019 catalogs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Volk considers himself an art writer, not a critic. He writes about exhibitions, artists, and artwork that he believes are important and wants readers to understand. In today\u2019s world, \u201cvisual culture is fundamental in every way,\u201d he says. \u201cWe are inundated with images.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Volk lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, alongside a community of talented artists, many of whom he has befriended. It was there that he met German painter Katharina Grosse in 1995, at the beginning of her career. In his new book, Katharina Grosse (Lund Humphries Publishers, 2020), he focuses on her signature works: intensely colorful, large-scale painting installations, which are spray-painted on walls, floors, ceilings, stairs, windows, and outdoor spaces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For her piece titled Rockaway, Grosse spray-painted \u2014 in red, white, and magenta \u2014 a derelict former military building in New York City that had been damaged by a storm linked to global warming. The work, Volk says, conjured sunsets, ocean spray, sweeping wind, and surging tides. At an art space in Australia, she covered a 27,000-square-foot area with spray-painted fabric in swirling colors. Grosse\u2019s installations, most of which are temporary, \u201cfunction as enticing social spaces in which people gather, converse, rejoice, and are rejuvenated,\u201d Volk writes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the pandemic, Volk has missed the trips he takes each year to see exhibitions in other countries, especially Poland and Iceland, about which he has written often. He recently made one of his first forays back to seeing art in person outside New York when he drove 13 hours to Louisville, Ky., to see the Speed Art Museum\u2019s exhibition reflecting on the life of Breonna Taylor and her killing in 2020. \u201cArt can shift one\u2019s consciousness and induce not just pleasure but catharsis and transformation,\u201d he says. \u201cIt engages our fraught and complicated times.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gregory Volk \u201981 is a writer who covers exhibitions, artists, and art work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1221,"featured_media":7565,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[37],"coauthors":[572],"class_list":["post-7119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-alumni-updates","tag-art"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-1QP","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2021\/08\/DSC4981finalflat.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7119"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7569,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7119\/revisions\/7569"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7119"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}