Week 13 - Video Review

For each video list/discuss the key concepts you learned.

 In the first video, The Lowdown on Lowbrow: West Coast Pop Art, I learned that this art is a really extreme type of pop art. With this art many artists feel like they are different from the snotty art gallery people they view in the world. A lowbrow artist is a person that is regarded as uncultivated and lacking in taste, I never even heard of the word so this was a major part of my learning experience. In the second video, Displaying Modern Art: The Tate Approach; is about an art gallery that had over 4 million viewers that came to see its gallery in its first year. The next film, Bones of Contention: Native American Archaeology, I learned that some Native Americans did not want their ancestors dug up for archaeologists to research the genetic make-up to see how they were back then. The last video, George Eastman House: Picture Perfect; is about George Eastman and how his house became the mecca of film and photography. I found out that George Eastman made photography as simple as possible and the George Eastman House has everything in it – from his life to the history of film and photography.

Do the videos relate to the creation of your Art Exhibition project? If yes, explain how. If no, explain why not.

 The first two videos, The Lowdown on Lowbrow: West Coast Pop Art and Displaying Modern Art: The Tate Approach, both relate to the creation of my Art Exhibition project. The reason is because I am doing a modern art exhibit and these two videos gave me some more inspiration to complete my project.

What is your opinion of the films? Do they add depth to understanding of the art concepts you practiced while creating your curation project?

 I liked the first video a lot because it was the most unusual video I have seen so far in this semester and I really didn’t get bored watching it. The first video did add some depth to my understanding of some art concepts because it opened my eyes to new and extreme art.

Video Review: Modern Artists and the Modern Era

Explain why you selected each of the FOUR videos you choose from the selection listed above.

-          I selected each of the four videos all for very different reasons, but mostly to learn about what each video had to offer. The video Abstract Expressionism and Pop: Art of the ‘50s and ‘60s seemed interesting because I thought before viewing the film that it would have many of the artists that I learned about when I was younger. For the next video, Uncertainty: Modernity and Art, I didn’t understand the title at all and it confused me so I wanted to know more about it and understand its concept better. Next to Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol is one of my favorite artists; I didn’t know what the video Andy Warhol: Images of an Image had in store for me but I wanted to find out. Maybe the film would have had his famous 100 Cans painting or maybe it would have had Marilyn Monroe in it, but I did know for sure I wanted to find out. The last video I chose was Isamu Noguchi: The Sculpture of Spaces, I chose this film because I do not know of that many sculptors so the more I would view and study the better knowledge I would have about them.

For each video list / discuss the key concepts you learned.

-          The key concepts I learned in the first video, Abstract Expressionism and Pop: Art of the ‘50s and ‘60s, talked about six different artists. The six artists that were featured in this film were Franz Kline, who focused on color in his abstract paintings. Helen Frankenthaler, who became very popular and famous after painting Mountains and Sea, which influenced a whole generation of American artists. Willem de Kooning, who said that even abstract shapes must have a likeness. Next the video talked about Jasper Johns, who seemed anxious and basically destroyed all of his work before he painted Flag. Andy Warhol, I learned that he was a commercial illustrator in the NY advertising industry before becoming a painter. Lastly the video goes to Roy Lichtenstein who commissioned a comic book like painting that has abstract pattern taken over his painting.

-          In the next video, Uncertainty: Modernity and Art, this film went through more of the history of art from the ancient Greeks to Jackson Pollock. Before modern times many artists wanted to create art to show humans on what they thought we should be, but nowadays many artists want us to feel the art and focus on our feelings.

-          The next video, Andy Warhol: Images of an Image focused on Andy Warhol and his different style on creating art. He painted many famous people, but the two women he painted were my favorite in history, Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor. After painting Marilyn he became famous, he just took one of her photos from a newspaper and made copies of them. Also his painting of Liz Taylor the viewer can see a white dot in different places of the painting.

-          The last video was a little bit confusing, I really didn’t understand it. Isamu Noguchi: The Sculpture of Spaces was a video that took a different approach to the sculptor’s life. This artist took an anti-sculpture quest and landed in Japan to create a beautiful work of art. Also I found out that he worked up until his 80s, where he was commissioning a great sculpture that would take about 8 to 10 years to complete.

How do the videos relate to the readings in the text?

-          Every video at least has a reason for relating to the text. The text is basically a summarization of the videos and gives me an introduction to what I will watch and learn about. The text talks about modern art and what artists are doing now. In the videos that I chose many of the artists were born in the modern era and each have an important place in modern art.

What is your opinion of the films? How do they add depth to understanding of the readings and art concepts?

-          I liked the Andy Warhol video a lot, mainly because I like Andy Warhol and his paintings. My least favorite film was of Isamu Noguchi, that video seemed a little bit dull and hard to follow. But I do have to give the sculptor credit for having the strength and determination to focus on artwork well into his 80s. The videos to add depth because the text just summarizes the concepts for me and the videos add to that.

Second Art Gallery Visit

Step 1: The Exhibition

What is the title of the exhibit?
Wall Drawing #1268: Scribbles: Staircase (AKAG)
Conceived 2006, executed 2010
Graphic on three walls
Sol DeWitt (American 1928-2007)

What is the theme of the exhibition?
The theme of the exhibition is to create a 3D view on the walls of the art gallery.

Step 2: The Gallery

What type of lighting is used?

- The lighting that is used in the gallery is general lighting throughout the whole place. But there is added lighting at certain areas of the gallery to effect for featured pieces of art.

What colors are used on the walls?

- The color white is used all over the art gallery so the background walls do not disturb the viewing of the artworks.

What materials are used in the interior architecture of the space?

- There is open space all over the gallery but there are walls to add different areas of the gallery which makes up the materials that are used in the interior of the space.

How is movement of the viewer through the gallery space?

- The movement has a slow steady pace where the viewer is able to enjoy viewing a piece of artwork closely without worrying disturbing someone else.

Step 3: The Artwork

How are the artworks organized?

-          The artworks are organized in one room near eachother.

How are the artworks similar?

-          The artworks are similar because they are all done by Argentine artists, done in the same year, and they all have the same use of geometrical shapes in the concept of the paintings.

How are the artworks different?

-          The artworks are different because all of them have different colored backgrounds, they use different geometric shapes, and each artist was trying to get a different point across for them.

How are the artworks framed?

-          All of the artworks are framed with a metal frame around the paintings and all of them have no glass in front of them.

How are the artworks identified and labeled?

-          Each artwork has the name of painting, the name of the artist, the type of medium, and who gave the painting to the art gallery as a gift.

What is the proximity of the artwork to each other?

-          All of the paintings are in the same room, Pintura Generativa and Pintura are next to each other. And Focos de Luz is across the room from the other two.

Pintura Generatva (Generative Painting) 1969
Eduardo Macentyre - Born in Argentine 1929
Acrylic on Canvas

Focos de luz (Focus of Light) 1969
Miguel Angel Vidal - Born in Argentine 1928
Acrylic on Canvas

Pintura (Painting) 1969
Rogelio Polesello - born in Argentine 1939
Acrylic on Canvas

Step 4: Art Criticism Exercise

Artist: László Moholy-Nagy

Title of work: D IV

Media: Oil on Canvas

Date: 1922

Size: 37 x 29 ½ inches

Description: This abstract painting show geometric shapes that are on top of a black background.

Formal Analysis: Line and shape are the main elements of this painting, the lines form shapes which the main figures are shown here. As for the principles of the painting I see emphasis, and asymmetrical balance. The emphasis in the painting is the many little geometric shapes that make the painting. With asymmetrical balance both sides of the artwork are different.

Bracketing: This painting reminds me of when I was little in art class I would glue shapes to a black sheet of construction paper and call it artwork.

Interpretation: I think the artist was trying to say that people should go back to when the simplest things mattered.

Artist: Francis Picabia

Title of work: Figure Triste (sad figure)

Media: Oil on Canvas

Date: 1912

Size: 46 ½ x 47 inches

Description: This abstract painting is composed of lines and shades to make up this work of art.

Formal Analysis: The elements of the painting are color, shape and line. There are a lot of different shades of blue and gray that makes up the artwork. Some of the lines in the painting are thick and curved which make up snake like shapes. The principles in the painting that are shown are unity and variety, balance, and rhythm.  Unity and variety are created in the painting because even though the shapes and lines are different they generate this flow that works. Balance also is present in here because the lines are very curvy and they are distributed evenly around the painting. Rhythm is also shown here because there is a repetition of lines and shapes throughout the painting.

Bracketing: This painting reminds me of big waves in the ocean that are about to smash a big rock in its way.

Interpretation: My interpretation of the painting is that the artist was saying that there are new beginnings with everything.

Artist: Jean Metzinger

Title of work: Danseuse au Café (Dancer in a Café)

Media: Oil on canvas

Date:  1912

Size: 63 x 50 3/8 x 3 ½ inches

Description: This work of art faintly shows five figures gathering around and having a good time.

Formal Analysis: The elements of the painting are line, shape, and light. The lines that are present in here make up the background in an uneven way and the lines also represent the people’s faces. The shapes of the people in the painting are very faint and the viewer can barely make out all five figures. One would have to look very closely at the painting to make-out each person. Light also plays an important role in this work of art because there are some figures here that have a hint of white light shining on them, which helps the viewer see the faces these people make.

Bracketing: This painting reminds me of the burlesques dances that women back then use to do.

Interpretation: The artist was trying to show the viewer the everyday life of people in France during the early 1900s.

What did you think of visiting the Gallery and purposefully looking at the exhibition from a different perspective – the physical space, the architecture, theme, etc?
I thought that purposefully looking at the exhibition gave me an excuse to really focus on it. I did notice more of it and noticed that parts of the exhibition were going in different directions and it looked 3D from far away. I thought that the exhibition took a lot of physical space but that was really cool, something so big really can have a huge impact on the eye and mind.

Video Reviews of Art Movements

Explain why you selected each of the FOUR videos you choose from the selected listed above.

-          I selected the following videos because I seemed more interested and I wanted to learn more. I chose the video Matisse and Picasso because I knew about each of the painters but I wanted to know why they would be featured together. I chose the video Dada and Surrealism because I have always been intrigued with Surrealism so any video that had that word in it must be interesting. For the video, Expressionism, I chose it because I had a feeling that Edvard Munch would be featured in there so it was worth a shot to check out. I wanted to pick a style of art that I didn’t know really anything about, so I chose the video The Impact of Cubism and I was excited to see what that it had in store for me.
 

For each video list / discuss the key concepts you learned.

-          While watching the video Matisse and Picasso, I was very surprised while I was viewing it. I learned that both men had a very unusual relationship. At one point in the video the narrator says that Picasso is Matisse’s brother in anguish. Both these men reflected each other because their muses were women; these women were sleeping or naked. Their style of painting is what kept them different.
-          In the Dada and Surrealism video I learned that there were six major artists that led this revolution in art. Kurt Schwitters started out as a still life artist but after making collages he never looked back, this new way opened his mind to use all types of media. Hanna Höch was part of the Dada movement and her artwork, Cut with the Kitchen Knife, was more like a history lesson then it was art. George Grosz was always mad and had a bitter sense of humor when he poked fun of his enemies in his painting, Pillar of Society. Joan Miró made a parody painting of a 17^th century Dutch painting; he wanted it to take on a whole new meaning of its own. Salvador Dali was a master of psychological suspense and I learned that he had this weird obsession with crutches that he used in many of his paintings. The last artist that I learned about in this video was Man Ray. I found out that he published a picture of a sewing machine and a umbrella.
-          In the video Expressionism it focuses on the life and works of five different artists. Edvard Munch had horrible experiences as a child that stayed with him all his life and then he ended up having a mental breakdown because of it. Franz Marc thought that animals were more beautiful than people so in his painting, The Tiger, he wanted to focus on the animal and its features. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was another artist that had mental problems and he as well had a nervous breakdown because of it. Max Beckmann had one style of painting but after the First World War, that style had changed. And the last artist of the video I learned about was Georg Baselitz, he was an artist that added brutality and anxiety into his paintings, and I that intrigued me.
-          In the video The Impact of Cubism I learned it focused on the life and works of six different artists. The first artist was Juan Gris, who wanted to take abstract shapes and planes and end it with a situation we know from everyday life. The second artist was Marcel Duchamp, he made the painting Sad Young Man on a Train, he said that it was a self-portrait, but some people questioned that. Next was Robert Delaunay who depicted the Eiffel Tower in different ways. The next artist in the video was Sonia Delaunay, who wore a dress that matched her painting, Electric Prisms. Another artist was Kazmir Malevich that made the painting, An Englishman in Moscow, when I looked at this painting in the video I got lost viewing it and that was his intention, for the viewer to feel like the Englishman felt…lost. The last artist was Umberto Boccini who made a very complex painting visually, The Departure, and the viewer does not know where to look first when seeing it.

  How do the videos relate to the readings in the text?

-          The videos relate to the readings in the text because the text talks about all of the modern types of art. Even though the text just touches on the types of art it still gets to the point when talking about the concepts. With the video being added after reading the text you can get a better understanding of the concepts.

What is your opinion of the films? How do they add depth to understanding of the readings and art concepts?

-          Even though the videos were very long, these videos had to be to talk about the important figures of each movement. After watching these videos I was better able to understand the readings because the videos added the detail I needed for the concepts.

Mask Making

Upload the three (3) inspiration images to your Blog (or link to your Photobucket account). Explain why you selected the inspiration pieces.

Carnival, Oruro, Bolivia Devil Mask
Choose this piece because it looked weird

Colombia, South American Character Mask
Choose this piece because of the different colors

Oruro, Bolivia, South America Bolivian China Supay Mask
I chose this piece because it just jumped out at me



Include the analysis and description (art criticism steps) of the three (3) inspiration pieces.

Artist: Colombian artists
Title: Character Mask
Media: Wood
Date: N/A
Title of Work: Character Mask of Colombia South America
Source of picture (URL): http://www.masksoftheworld.com/SoAmerica/Colombian%20Character%20Mask.htm
Description: The mask has very colorful features in it that was made from the indigenous cultures in Colombia.
Analysis: The mask has the element of color that shows the different parts of the face. The principle that his shown in the mask is the symmetrical balance the face has for the eyes, nose, and mouth.
 
Artist: Bolivian artists
Title: Bolivian China Supay Mask
Media: Fiber-glass, papier mache, paint, sequins, and glitter
Date: N/A
Size: 14 inches
Source of picture (URL): http://www.masksoftheworld.com/SoAmerica/Bolivia%20Mask%201.htm
Description: This mask is used at the Oruro, Bolivia Carnival. This mask is not used for tourist trade.
Analysis: The elements of the mask are color and line. The plain pink color in the background lets the other colors stand out. With the plain pink color in the background the lines are about to stand out to show the different parts of the dragons. The principles of the mask are balance and variety. The balance is the way the two dragons are equal on each side. The variety is that the dragons also represent something different on the mask.
 
Artist: Bolivian artists
Title: Devil mask
Media: plastered cloth
Date: N/A
Size: 9.5 inches
Source of picture (URL): http://www.masksoftheworld.com/SoAmerica/Bolivian%20Diablo%20Mask%203.htm
Description: This mask captures the essence of the Oruro Carnival to represent the devil.
Analysis: The elements of the mask are color, line, and shape. The black color on the mask represents the devil. The lines show the emphasis of the eyes and mouth. And the unusual shape make the mask one of a kind.

Upload images of your sketches and finished piece.

Explain how you used the Elements and Principles in your finished mask.

I looked at my mask and at the tumbnails and I thought real hard on how to create something different. The element that I wanted to focus on was color because, like the previous masks that I got inspiration from I saw that color was a major player in those masks. The princple that I wanted to focus on was the emphasis in the middle of the mask. The respresentation of the butterfly, even though this mask is just sitting on a table, the butterfly in the middle will lift it to new and exciting places.

Share your opinion of your finished mask and what you thought about creating the mask

My opinion of the finished mask was that I wish it did have real powers to lift me to new and exciting places. I may sit behind the mask but when I put it on I think of somewhere else and I know that the mask will give me the strength to get there, someday...



Video Review: Cultures Around the World

1)    Explain why you selected each of the FOUR videos you choose from the selection listed above. - I chose the video African Art: Legacy of Oppression because I do not know that much about the oppression of Africa so I wanted to know more about it. I chose the video African Art because like the first video I did not know that much about Africa let alone its art so I wanted to know more about it. I chose the video Hinduism because I am very interested in the Hindu religion so learning more about it would interest me. I chose the video Buddhism because if I wanted to change my religion it would be to Buddhism so I want to learn as much as possible on it.

2)  For each video list/discuss the key concepts you learned.
- In the video African Art: Legacy of Oppression the key concepts I learned was that soldiers in the Congo area use to cut the hands off of villagers, dead or alive, every time a bullet was fired. I thought that was so sad and scary to live in that time in history; that part of the film shocked me. The video African Art I learned that many of the masks that were made didn’t last too long because they were made of wood or straw, the oldest masks are about 200 years old. People can find the oldest existing African art in the driest part of Africa, mostly because there is no humidity to ruin the art. In the video Hinduism I learned that everything in Hinduism is symbolic, even the dead bodies was full of symbolism to the believer. Also the Kandariya Mahadev Temple was built during the golden age of Hindu art and architecture. This temple was built to worship Shiva, the god of death who lived in the mountains, and that is why the temple looks like a mountain. In the video Buddhism I learned that after the death of Buddha, some would say, that it was the end of the golden age of Buddhism. Also I learned that the Borobudur Temple took almost 100 years to build but only lasted 30 years before a volcano erupted covering it up for over 800 years, then it was rediscovered in 1815 and finally restored in the 1990s.

3) How do the videos relate to the readings in the text?
- The videos relate to the readings in the text because each explains the concepts clearly and I was able to better understand the cultures of the different parts of the world. Both, the reading and the videos, had interesting facts that kept my attention and I felt better after reading and watching them.

4)  What is your opinion of the films? How do they add depth to understanding of the readings and art concepts?
- I really liked the films because I was more informed about each of the cultures around the world. After viewing the videos it did add depth to my understanding of the readings and art concepts because I learned some key concepts for the African, Hindu, and Buddhist culture.