Video Review Week 9

I chose the Abstract Expressionism and Pop because I like Abstract paintings.  I also like Modern art so I watched the video on Modernity and Art.

Abstract Expressionism and Pop: Art of the 50s and 60s

Abstract art is compared to figurative art.  Franz Kline – C & O.  Helen Frankenthaler – Mountains and Sea.  Wilem de Kooning – Morning: The Springs.  Jasper Johns – Flag.  Andy Warhol – The Texan: Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg.  Roy Lichtenstein – Girl with Hair Ribbon.  Abstract Expressionism joined attitudes in American art and European avant-garde art.  Avant-garde – each generation, believed it was their duty to go further than the one before.

Uncertainty: Modernity and Art

The program stretches into contemporary art to ask: What can we still believe in?  Modern art is contemporary society’s version of Delphic Oracles.  Art has its own memory of itself, its own psychic strata.  Modern art underlying message is uncertainty.  Modern art is a complete break from art of the past that was inspirational, idealized.  Modern Art keeps responding to modern life.   Modern art has become an icon for moral goodness.  Abstract art asks questions, and it provides no answers.  Paul Klee is one of the original creators of the abstract look.  Pop art represents a change in thinking from the 50s to the 60s.  Pop art suggests that things and people are thrown away because things keep changing.  Art is about impulse, whim and casualness.  What is the message of art today? Answers lie within, not without.

The videos related to the chapters reading.  The videos were interesting to watch and see the detailed paintings and the people associated with these cultures and religions.

Video Review

I chose the Dance at the Moulin de la Galette because it was about Paris and Dada movement was interesting reading in the book.

Dance at the Moulin de la Galette – most joyful painting of Paris, it transport the viewer back to Paris.  It sold at an auction for a record price.   It depicts a sunny Sunday afternoon at a dance hall and windmills.   It represented two worlds: bohemian and fashionable men and lower class women.  People socialized in classless harmony.  Other artist Federico Zandomeneghi, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, and Van Gogh painted the dance hall differently depict sinister, somber and dark versions.  Rod Stewart’s used the painting on the cover of his 1976 album cover.

Dada and Surrealism – Dada movement was born as a reaction to WWI.  Most of the paintings in the video were in the text book.  Hannah Hoch used art to attach the society she detests and attacks the political figures of the Weimar regime.  Joan Miro paints only the abstract structures of its composition.  Salvador Dali was a surrealist painter, and probed the darkest regions of the human subconscious. 

The videos related to the chapters and discussed the Dada and Surrealism movements.  The videos were interesting to watch and see the detailed sculptures and the people associated with these cultures and religions.

Mask Making

The first mask I chose is one my grandfather got while on vacation and he had it on displayed in his home.  The mask is made of leather; there is no artist or title of the work though it appears to be handmade.  The principles and elements are: texture, forms, emphasis.  It reminds me of a native girl.  The artist may have been creating a mask out of leather to show the hard life this women had.  The second mask is from Bali, Indonesia called Patih Keras, made by Ida Ketut Berati, master carver.  It is 8 inches, painted wood, hair, mother –of-pearl, jewelry. It is well carved and finished with many coats of paint with great attention to detail. It’s can rival the Noh masks in quality.  The last mask is called Huaco mask from Latacunga, Ecuador.  It’s 9 inches and made from paper mache.  Huaco is the second most important character in La Fiesta de la Mama Negro, a popular annual celebration in the Ecuador.  They have a non-commercial, folk-art look. 

The mask I created using the forms element for the three-dimensional shape, color with the different value and intensity, and texture smooth and rough.  I wasn’t sure what to create but after I started it just came together, I wanted it to be colorful so I used acrylic paints.

 http://www.masksoftheworld.com/Bali/Bali%20Java%20Mask%20Group.htm

http://www.masksoftheworld.com/SoAmerica/Ecuadorian%20Huaco%20mask.htm

Week Eight - Video Blog

I choose the two African videos because the project in this chapter is about masks and the other two were just randomly chosen.

African Art: Legacy of Oppression

Belgium’s Tervuren Museum contains the world’s largest collection of Central African Art, containing about 250,000 pieces.  The shocking expressions and body positions leads to abstract art.  Interesting masks were displayed, one half white for healthy and the other half black for sickness.  Masks were created to frighten enemies.  Also talked about the fact they had to bring back the right hand of victim for every bullet fired. 

African Art – Its Cultural meaning

The video showed expressing in dress, hair style, and forms of ornamentation, rituals and performance art.  Wood and straw were used to make sculptures.  Also included in the video it shows the symbolism, aesthetics and functionality of African art.  Explored African religious beliefs explored through rituals, a spiritual form of performance art and Funerary statuary.  African art includes bronze casting of Nigeria date from the 15^th century.  Masks are highly stylized and embellished.  Costumes are designed to be used by fire light. 

Buddhism

Buddhism began in India and spread to other lands.  Bodh Gaya is like Jerusalem.  Bodhi tree was used to mediate.  Tanha, is the gateway to the temple.  Buddhism split into 2 groups:  hinayana and mahanyana.   The Great Stupa has an umbrella on the top.  Buddha is the man who refused to be a god.  The walkway wines around the temple.  The three levels of the umbrella symbolize the three levels of heaven.  Chuang Yen Monastery is a complex of building dedicated to Buddhism.  Stress kindness to all. 

Hinduism

Hinduism is exotic and erotic.  Varanasi is the holiest city in India and the River Ganges is the symbol of life, death and rebirth.  Hindus can worship anywhere.    Cremation in Varanasi on the Ganges is assurance of direct access to heaven.  Shines in Mamallapuram are lavishly decorated and carved from single boulders.  You can’t take it with you, give up worldly items.   Believes we will all arrive at the same place.  Hindus’ cannot touch a dead body the outcast must. 
The videos about African art relate to chapter 18 and chapter 19 relates to Buddhism and Hinduism.

The videos were interesting to watch and see the detailed sculptures and the people associated with these cultures and religions.

Art gallery Visit 2

The title of the exhibit is Video Sphere.  The theme of the exhibition is cinematic medium, visual media, audio and video. 

The gallery lighting used was bright florescent.  The color used on the walls was mostly white with black crown and base molding.  The materials used in the interior architecture of the space were marble and tile.  The movement of the viewer through the gallery space was free and random.

The artworks were randomly organized.  The artworks were similar because they were either wall mounted or statues.  The artworks were different in size, style, framing and material.  The artworks were framed all different styles by artists.  The artworks were identified and labeled with the name and artist with a brief description of the work.  The works were each given its own space.

Isaac Julien, British, born 1960 is known for his extravagant and breathtaking filmic installations.  Western Union: Small Boats, 2007 is the final installment in a series of three films that focus on cross-cultural and continental journeys. 

Western Union: Small Boats, 2007, three screen projections of the elements of forms and proportion are used to explore the beautiful cinematic installations related to identity, history, race, memory and the passage of time.  This work is a reminder of the struggles of immigrants.

While visiting the art gallery and viewing the exhibition: With 3 different screens going at once to evoke the feeling of being in the same place as the character makes the story told not by words but through visuals and sounds of music to really get the feeling of the scene.  Everything boils down to the metaphor; all different characters come to same conclusion.

Sarah Morris, American, born 1967 her works often based on different cities, are derivative of Morris’s close inspection of architectural details and her desire to explore the psychology of a place.  Her most recent stand-alone film, Points on a Line, 2010, focuses on two twentieth-century modernist architectural icons, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House and Philip Johnson’s Glass House. 

Points on a Line, 2010

Sarah captured “the intellectual and design resonance” between the structures.  The film shows the two building structures and she wants to change the way people think about a house, a form and a context. In the film the elements displayed are shape, forms, space, and balance.  The artist is trying to say that even structures built in different areas are alike. 

Bruce Nauman, American, born 1941his work Green Horses 1988, an empty leather chair sits between two video monitors showing him riding a horse in the distance.  The chair allows you to feel the movement of being on the horse.  While the film is inverted the viewer feels that the horse is riding the man. 

Exploring Line drawing hands

Using my hands as the subject for the project was interesting and easier than I thought it was going to be but it was also harder using my non-dominant hand than I had expected.  I selected the pencil for my media for drawing my hands, since pencil is easier to erase than charcoal.  With my non-dominate hand it was harder to control the pencil I had to erase more than with my dominate hand.  The one drawn with the dominate hand was done better than the one drawn with my non-dominate hand.  I think I did a good job considering this is my first shot at drawing other than what we’ve already done in this class.  I would consider using my non-dominate hand possible for part of another artwork in the future.

Video Reviews - Week Seven

I choose Michelangelo because my grandfather told me about his vacation when he went to the Sistine Chapel.  I choose Leonardo da Vinci because he painted the Mona Lisa.  The last two I just choose for no reason.

The Drawings of Michelangelo: The British Museum – 90 drawing of Michelangelo.  Michelangelo the creator, drawings are sensual and bring us closer to the master.  Born in Florence, became a prentice at 12.  Analysis the Pieta, the colossal David, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, The Last Judgment, the Medici tomb, and St Peter’s Basilica.  He used both sides of his paper and took his papers with him.  The Pieta is the only signed sculpture.  Michelangelo died before the dome was built for the painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.  Drew little sketches then had to make it bigger (4 times bigger) to put it on the ceiling.  It’s showed the drawing and then the sculpture, it was pretty amazing to see how much alike they are.  

Leonardo da Vinci: The Mind of the Renaissance - Leonardo da Vinci (1452) from birth to his final years in Cloux his life and works.  He was a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and student of anatomy, physiology, botany, architecture, hydrodynamics, aeronautics, and other disciplines; he was the quintessential “Renaissance man”.  He was left handed.  The head from one the eyes from another and the ears from a third.  He caricatures the faces of the men involved in the slander against him.  He studies machine to create better machines.  Leonardo goes to the court of Milan as a musician.  When he arrives he presents himself as a military engineer armed with drawings of weapons and machinery.  Leonardo believes proportion and balance must flow from the artist’s knowledge of his subjects.  Beauty and harmony are of the divine nature.  In 1503 he returns to Florence with the Mona Lisa.  In 1516 he becomes the first painter, engineer and architect to the King.

Albrecht Durer: Image of a Master - The greatest artist of the northern Renaissance Albrecht Durer introduced the Italian Renaissance forms and ideas to Germany that was dominated by the Gothic tradition.  He was a painter, printmaker. He mother had 18 children and buried 15 of them.   Durer is considered the first true landscape artist.  Durer swayed from traditional woodcuts to the engraving on copper.  He last painting of 4 of the apostles.

Velazquez - Velazquez was a court painter to his friend King Phillip IV of Spain.  He was influenced by the Italian masters.  He was born in 1599 and died in 1660.  Captures the timeless moments in his paintings: light, air, moments those that disappear.  Some of his works are: Sybil, Prince Baltazar Carlos, Las Meninas, Phillip IV and Las Hilanderas.  He painted slowly and one at a time. 

All of the videos related to the chapters we read, some of the information was the same. 

I like all the videos somehow watching and seeing the sketches and the finish painting or sculpture pulls it all together.