Since I've missed a class, I am slightly behind on class activities. However, most recently, we have been working on drawing. During my last attended class, we drew from a live female model. The experience was very enjoyable. Once you are in the zone, you feel comfortable and actually realize your style better. My favorite part of the drawing was when the professor told us to try drawing in charcoal. It made the lines feel a little more fluid for me and changed the way my hand moved across the page.
Afterward when we turned our figures into collages, I found it hard to make something sensible. There were sketches where I only focused on one part of the body because there wasn't enough time to do more. Or I would focus on the line of the back or the shoulder line. It's hard to cut out something sensible from something so unrecognizable.
The drawing experience gave me a better feel for drawing in the subject matter. I've never felt very comfortable drawing because I was never as trained as my peers, but doing it alone and really practicing using basic techniques was a tactful approach.
The reading for last week was an excerpt from John Berger, Ways of Seeing, was an interesting look at how we correlate sight and words. The painting by Magritte is something, that without your knowledge is testing an experiment. It's funny to see how your mind reacts to such a strange request. Will it process the the image or the word first? The experiment proved useful when it showed that the view almost always chose the side of image sight before word sight.
My favorite part of the reading was the introduction of the camera. The idea that an image can be captured in time and outlast even the subject matter itself it a cool concept.
For my three artists for the project I would like to work with Frida Kahlo, an hispanic painter, Tom Thomson, a Canadian graphics artist and painter, and Van Gogh, whom most of you are familiar with.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
What is Time? Momento?
When discussing time, I didn't fully understand my take on it. I don't have any specific religion beliefs that associate with time. Who knows when someone's time comes to an end. That's part of the mystery of the universe.
The film Memento fit in well with the time discussion. Not only was the viewer's idea of time altered by the rearrangement of plot sequence, but the story was altered. If the motion picture were viewed in correct time line, then there would have been no way of showing the entire story of the man who'd lost his wife. By showing the film backwards it was only necessary to see part of his investigation towards the murder. By the end of the film it became clear that his investigation was never ending.
Time has a large affect on the mindsets of each person. Although I don't fully understand my placement on the subject, I do believe that each individual person has a different perception of time.
Recently we've been doing drawings in and out of class. The take home assignment of drawing our dreams was a very distasteful task for me. As a result of it, I managed time to complete another assignment based on dreams. For my Printmaking class I made a codex book using my dreams and nightmares in real life and expressed how they fade. Dreams have a different take on time because they come from a place where time doesn't exist. Dreams can seem both never ending, as in nightmares, or they can seem so short that it felt like you just shut your eyes. These visions during sleep distort perception and images making the unreal a temporary reality.
The drawing exercises in class where we attempted to draw with different hands, our eyes closed, and our eyes fixed on an object was fun in a way that educated me in how other people compare to me in the sight of object. Sorry, ugh, run on weird sentence.
The second exercise that we did this past Tuesday was one that I have never attempted before. I realized that when I was asked to draw 20 different lines, I had trouble just drawing 20... fun and easy! What was really interesting was deciding how to rate the lines after everyone was finished drawing. Everyone had a different opinion on the matter.
What happens when time doesn't exist anymore? When there is no such thing as time? Do we go back to a more primal form and tell it by light and dark?
The film Memento fit in well with the time discussion. Not only was the viewer's idea of time altered by the rearrangement of plot sequence, but the story was altered. If the motion picture were viewed in correct time line, then there would have been no way of showing the entire story of the man who'd lost his wife. By showing the film backwards it was only necessary to see part of his investigation towards the murder. By the end of the film it became clear that his investigation was never ending.
Time has a large affect on the mindsets of each person. Although I don't fully understand my placement on the subject, I do believe that each individual person has a different perception of time.
Recently we've been doing drawings in and out of class. The take home assignment of drawing our dreams was a very distasteful task for me. As a result of it, I managed time to complete another assignment based on dreams. For my Printmaking class I made a codex book using my dreams and nightmares in real life and expressed how they fade. Dreams have a different take on time because they come from a place where time doesn't exist. Dreams can seem both never ending, as in nightmares, or they can seem so short that it felt like you just shut your eyes. These visions during sleep distort perception and images making the unreal a temporary reality.
The drawing exercises in class where we attempted to draw with different hands, our eyes closed, and our eyes fixed on an object was fun in a way that educated me in how other people compare to me in the sight of object. Sorry, ugh, run on weird sentence.
The second exercise that we did this past Tuesday was one that I have never attempted before. I realized that when I was asked to draw 20 different lines, I had trouble just drawing 20... fun and easy! What was really interesting was deciding how to rate the lines after everyone was finished drawing. Everyone had a different opinion on the matter.
What happens when time doesn't exist anymore? When there is no such thing as time? Do we go back to a more primal form and tell it by light and dark?
Monday, January 25, 2010
What is Art?
During the first class of the semester, we discussed time-based works of art. I found the music video clips to be a helpful beginning to the class. The repetition of motion exemplifies the ideas surrounding the music as well as the beat. As we looked through classic fine art and new media art, we analyzed the use of time and the class reactions.
By the second class I had a new look on art. After reading the article by Bart Rosier, I had a more solid position on the art argument. I discovered that I think of everything as art and that it is determined by the viewer and the artist. Other ideas introduced in class were the ideas that society decides what art is, that it is art if it is displayed as such, and that only something with merit is considered art. The reading was a helpful tool in directing the conversation as were the photographs of major works. For example, when we looked at the Andy Warhol boxes, some of my classmates mentioned the appearance of art based on the metaphor surrounding it, while others considered it art based on the fact that it was sculpted and placed by chance, not necessarily choice.
Steve Mithen regards art as a form of communication. We first looked at a caveman painting in France. The painting, to me, is a work of art because it is made with aesthetic intention and has a form of beauty to some person. The communication only adds to the artistic value because it is sending a message not only to the view but through space and time.
Later, the reading suggests that something is only art if a member of the artistic community has created it. I believe this to be false based on the fact that someone without the intention of creating something to be art, can in fact create art. For example, in class we discussed the possibility that a power plant is a work of art and that the engineer is the artist. Without intention, the engineer has made what some may deem as art. This argument alone brings together the fourth criterion of art being that art has to be made intentionally as art.
The next criterion suggests that all art is a matter of throwing symbols together to communicate. I propose that sometimes something beautiful can communicate an emotion. Just as Rosier stated, the tree in my backyard communicates natural and organic motives making it a symbol of nature. However, this work of art was not planted by an artist with the intention of setting the viewer in a position of an organic emotional state.
Art is a mystery and is read different by each person. It is this mystery which keeps it intriguing.
Why does Bart Rosier make criterion for art when he know that 1) it contradicts itself, and 2) anything can be a work of art?
Does all art necessarily have a direct meaning? Is what the artist communicates from the piece have to mean something to the viewer, as well?
I was a little curious about Andy Warhol's take on the brillo pad boxes. He described what he wanted as "something ordinary" and it had o greatly contrast the typical abstract expressionist paintings of the time.
http://edu.warhol.org/aract_brillo.html
By the second class I had a new look on art. After reading the article by Bart Rosier, I had a more solid position on the art argument. I discovered that I think of everything as art and that it is determined by the viewer and the artist. Other ideas introduced in class were the ideas that society decides what art is, that it is art if it is displayed as such, and that only something with merit is considered art. The reading was a helpful tool in directing the conversation as were the photographs of major works. For example, when we looked at the Andy Warhol boxes, some of my classmates mentioned the appearance of art based on the metaphor surrounding it, while others considered it art based on the fact that it was sculpted and placed by chance, not necessarily choice.
Steve Mithen regards art as a form of communication. We first looked at a caveman painting in France. The painting, to me, is a work of art because it is made with aesthetic intention and has a form of beauty to some person. The communication only adds to the artistic value because it is sending a message not only to the view but through space and time.
Later, the reading suggests that something is only art if a member of the artistic community has created it. I believe this to be false based on the fact that someone without the intention of creating something to be art, can in fact create art. For example, in class we discussed the possibility that a power plant is a work of art and that the engineer is the artist. Without intention, the engineer has made what some may deem as art. This argument alone brings together the fourth criterion of art being that art has to be made intentionally as art.
The next criterion suggests that all art is a matter of throwing symbols together to communicate. I propose that sometimes something beautiful can communicate an emotion. Just as Rosier stated, the tree in my backyard communicates natural and organic motives making it a symbol of nature. However, this work of art was not planted by an artist with the intention of setting the viewer in a position of an organic emotional state.
Art is a mystery and is read different by each person. It is this mystery which keeps it intriguing.
Why does Bart Rosier make criterion for art when he know that 1) it contradicts itself, and 2) anything can be a work of art?
Does all art necessarily have a direct meaning? Is what the artist communicates from the piece have to mean something to the viewer, as well?
I was a little curious about Andy Warhol's take on the brillo pad boxes. He described what he wanted as "something ordinary" and it had o greatly contrast the typical abstract expressionist paintings of the time.
http://edu.warhol.org/aract_brillo.html
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