MOMA Visit. Half Final Post.

MoMa’s Visit

  After a semester learning how to look at a piece of art and its style really made me realized that visiting museum can be a very enjoyable thing. Practically, it just feels good to know myself understand art better than the ones who stand next to me and have their arms crossed on their chest. At least, most of them.

  Dada and abstract expressionism are fun to write about and important to contemporary art. First from Dada, Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel is an iconic artwork of Dadaism. Only the name itself describe half of this art piece. It is simply a bicycle wheel and a kitchen stool. The metal wheel is about 63.8cm diam., on top on a60.2cm high painted wood stool, both are common objects acquired from ordinary life of us which really help us to get a grasp of the actual size. The time span of this piece was long. Because the lost of original at 1913, Marcel Duchamp made its third version at 1951, almost 40 years later. And Dada was an art movement of the European avant-grade in the early 20^th century. Although Duchamp was not the first one bringing day to day living objects into art making, he definitely sent out the idea of Readymade. Dadaist believe many objects around people are readymade art. With a negative feeling and reaction to the horrors of world ward 1 at that time, Dadaist subverted the concept and value of art making process. On top of this idea, artwork like Bicycle Wheel can be massive produced. The selections of materials at making art became less essential very much. This piece, and similar ones are a negative, disappointment expression of the world which people were lived in at that time. Several objects were combined together, but have no use of anything. Despite the fact Dada was an informal international movement, it is the groundwork to abstract art and surrealism, even influence on pop art.

Abstract expressionism on the other hand, was an American post World War 2 art movement. Its influence made an impact internationally and located New York City as the middle of the western art world. 1944, Clyfford Still painted 1944-N NO.2. It is oil on unprimed canvas, enormous, about 8’8.25x7’3.25. with black impasto as back ground, added red and yellow only. The red color cuts almost from top to the bottom vertically as the shape of a thunder. Another 2 yellow marks lay on the red line, and leaves an empty expanse space on this painting. Because the size of this piece of work is large, the emptiness and color creates no depth feeling in space, but still as if it is making us wondering: what else is there? Clyfford Still tried to avoid any recognizable imagery appears in his work, and that was most abstract expressionists did at that time. The most they would apply were simple signs and symbols.  Color filed painting is the other name of the style of Still’s work. They were simple in shapes and colors irregularly, in favor of large scale of canvas. This painting, for example, jagged red and yellow‘s juxtaposition does not create different layers and depth, but the colors are about to torn this painting apart. This feelings are elevated without any imagery of emotion or signs and symbols.

  The abstract impressionism weights in indefinite. Vague and unknown, even unfinished. It can also be very personal, because impression is personal, within ourselves.  

PS1 Visit: Animatograph Odins Parsipark

Odins Parsipark is an installation artwork assembled in the 3^rd floor of MOMA PS1. It contains pictures, objects, stage, literature, sounds and TV shows etc. Its size about 1.000x1.000x400 cm, also called multimedia installation.

  What struck me about this piece was not about its various use of objects, but the sentiment it creates with its surroundings and sounds.

  Firstly, walking in the door of Odins’ Parsipark faces the other door which cannot be opened. A wall in front of you with unorganized images, characters, lines and drawings. But the room is too dim to let me figure out what is on the wall. After giving up of trying to interpret, and turn to the other side of the wall, it contains a plain, flat, nothing but few lamps on the floor, lightening up the place. This was where my mind made a shape turn. From a complicated map of lives, history, etc. to purely nothing. As if it wants your mind to rest after a wind blow. And prepare for a thunderstorm. Of course, I did not know what was coming after.

  Turn to the last side of the room. There is a huge cage with a revolving stage inside. Some TV sets give the room a better brightness. Pictures hanging on the wall, and several military airplane cabin parts and stairs put together on the slowly revolving stage. It is madness, and chaos. If there was a time machine, this is the one you would not wish to take. Inside its cabin, contains sexual context and topics such as German history, Nazis, Hitler. And definitely the sense of irony.

  The artist, in my opinion, is trying to use a dark, negative tone of color and sound sending a message that our world has always been a filthy place. He also trying to say that people looked for brightness under lights, but ended up on a stage of cruelness infinitely. The spinning stage makes us wonder if we had ever gotten out of this circle before, or if we ever will. And it is a disturbing thought to have in mind.

Bill Viola

"Bill Viola - Artists - James Cohan Gallery." Bill Viola - Artists - James Cohan Gallery. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2014.

"Bill Viola ARTIST BIOGRAPHY." Http://www.billviola.com/. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2014.

"Bill Viola - Artists - James Cohan Gallery." Bill Viola - Artists - James Cohan Gallery. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2014.

1.       The presentation will directly unfold the qualities of this artist’s artwork. Avoid excessive introduction of the artist himself.

2.       Display shorten footage of bill viola’s work. At least 2 different kinds: videotapes and architectural video installations.

3.       Analyze Bill viola’s work at the angels of their materials, influences, backgrounds, themes etc.

PS:

Site-specific or Environmental art refers to an artist's intervention in a specific locale, creating a work that is integrated with its surroundings and that explores its relationship to the topography of its locale, whether indoors or out, urban, desert, marine, or otherwise.

ART THOUGHTZ: Performance Art

In Hernnesse Youngman’s youtube video, Performance art, his satire of the content of performance art since the 1900 helps us rethink, even redefine the ideas of what is performance art and how to make one. His satire strikes us at three points. First, performance art’s origin versus its definition. Second, art created in different times and affected by historical events. Lastly, the internet alternates the meaning of performance art.

  Hernnesse believes explaining an art form’s origin only complicates the matter, he posts some pictures that enough to make people laugh to tears in order to demonstrate that people’s actions and materials they use in an artwork would do better explaining what is actually happening.

  The world has been in a series of political turbulence and it has always been. Performance art can sometimes being very time-sensitive, or territorial, reflects certain social events. Or simply a kind of unsatisfactory from civilians. Mostly anger and depression. To Hernnesse, creating performance art becomes easier than flipping your own hand, because what you have to do is to act out unreasonably. Crazier than what is already crazy.

  He constantly talking and posting pictures of people acting hilariously in front of their computer’s webcam. He criticize the misuse of the internet has blurry the line of performance art and performance on a screen. However, it also means the distance between professional artists and ordinary people in creating arts is alternated. Maybe, we just have to add the word “piece” to all of our batty, disturbing ideas and make it an art.

Collage

Dada and jacob

 hannah hoch c. 1920 Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany. Collage of pasted papaers.

  Hannah Hoch c was the tip of spear of this particular art form known as photomontage. After World War one started, several continents were in the states of chaos. In protest against this chaos of interwar period, Dada was introduced to overturn the conventional arts, redefine values in arts, and create meaningless arts as new art. As one of the most important Dadaists of Dada movement in Berlin, Hoch’s photomontages addressed many social phenomenon critically at that time. In this artwork particularly, Weimar New Woman’s liberation and disconnected levels of societies in Weimar Germany.

  Hoch placed one of her images on the left corner below with a map of Europe, shows a progress of woman’s liberty revolution. This is her statement of vision that women, as well as Dada, has to become an impact of modern society. Combining images from magazines, newspapers, cutting them apart and reordering them. Hoch sardonically reflected the various, but disconnected societies broken down in Weimar Germany. 

  Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series is also related to World War 1.  In this painting, a unity was created through the use of similar shapes and colors. Repetition of lines on the floor, same colors of worker’s uniforms, rectangle shapes of all tools all together and serve the purpose of bringing a sense of unity. The figures of workers becomes larger from left to right, this creates a small directional force in vision.

  Jacob Lawrence received numbers of significant recognitions through his life. Not only he was the most celebrated African-American painters in 20^th-century, more importantly, his legacies are able to be found in many museums near us, and continuously, influence us through his artworks and history within them.

The M Museum Visit

Renaissance

  It is breath taking to see these masterpieces from epic periods of time. Whenever we mention the Renaissance, names like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo; artworks like <Mona Lisa>, <David> comes to mind. For many people, Renaissance itself is a name of western art.

Rafael was definitely one of the most reputable artist. Despite his short life-37 years- 300 paintings must have considered as fertile. There are many paintings of Virgin and Madonna under Rafael’s stroke. This is The Grand Duke's Madonna, circa 1504-05. Giclee Print - 18 x 24 inch. Rafael painted this not long after he arrived Florence. There is no other decorations, such as beds, chairs, vases, thrones behind Madonna. The lines are soft and the dark background makes us focus more on the character. Rafael did not make her smile, instead she looks down, as if she has gain a lot of composure. This composure is heavy and stable, and somewhat represent the religious believe deep inside of Rafael. However, not just Rafael, masters from the same time were soaked all in the religious atmosphere. Virgins, children, Gods, Jesus had become the typical elements in the paintings of that time. And apparently, Baroque drove a different path.

Baroque

  Compare to Renaissance, Artworks from Baroque not only acquired various objects, it extended to many different fields, such as sculptures, architecture, literature, dancing and music etc. The baroque style also specialized in details. Portraits, for example, reflects the qualities of people’s lives and their indulged leisure activities. The Baroque based on Renaissance which gave it a color or religion, but it is also prosperous and full of passion. Kind of romantic, full of imagination. This is the Portrait of a Man Rising from His chair.  1633, from Rembrandt van Rijn, oil on canvas. Moist skin color and very detailed mixture of black and white. It is not simply a contrast, if we look closely, the man’s black cloth actually sewed with complicated patterns. A kind of cloth may only wore by highborn. Not just colors, lights are also significant. Rembrandt, especially, liked to use lights to lead us. He used lights to create depth, shapes. Sometimes, although with very limited lights on a person’s face, it expressed unlimited sense of emotion beyond description. 

impressionism and post-impressionism

Compare to conventional paintings, common qualities of impressionism artworks use small, point, short strokes. Its composition often have infinite background, and emphasis on the changes of lights over different periods of time. Impressionism painting introduced with more ordinary subjects in human’s day to day lives. Thus, the lights, the relationship between lights and colors, especially the impression implants in people’s mind with this relationship has become a crucial element of impressionism painting. 

 This is a modern impressionism palette knife oil painting. Artiest unknow. Evidently, it inherits certain important qualities of impressionism and design elements. It’s outdoor painting. Colors are darker near us, then lights up further away. On top of that, the size of these subjects, trees, for example, creates a depth and infinite feeling in this image.   The symmetric balance in this painting helps us easily locate the focal point; color changes gradually, but not vigorous or sudden. It creates a mood of calm and relaxing.

Post-impressionism evolved from impressionism. Late 1880s, artist were not content with the pursuit of light nor changes of color, instead, they believe arts should be created more subjectively, or at the very least, subjectively create from objective point of view. At this period of time, artists’ emotions and personal experience became the important elements of a painting. 

This is “the Waiting for The Spring”, 2010, from Sergey Lgnatenko. The presentation of wrinkled sheet does not have to make logical sense in various lights, but changes of color and lines creates a feeling of complication. As it of the girl’s mind, stewed in the irritation of waiting. The use of color is very limited. Plain and flatten, leads viewers to a solitary state of mind. We can almost feel an anxiety, an unstable touch growing underneath that white, grey cloth. And how much longer will it take? 

Rembrandt

Rembrandt

“They were made for each other, the painter and the city.” As it says in the flick of Simon Schama’s Rembrandt. If Rembrandt’s turbulent life was firmly tight with the city of Amsterdam, his paintings were connected with patrons. Especially portraits, for instance, the Nicolaes Ruts. Under Rembrandt’s strokes, this paintings acquires the essentials of any business men’s characters. While it has branded Nicolaes’s business, the use of light gives grasp of solidness and a shadow behind him. His eyes, brushed and slightly spaced out, imaging he is thinking of his trades. Delicate and thoughtful. This painting is in possession of a typical business man’s traits. It's the business man’s hero.

  The 83 years old woman is certainly in a mood of sorrow. The details surrounds her eyes, such as the trending down eyebrows, droopy eyelids and depressed sights have showed us her sense of vulnerability. And the solid background of hers creates a contrast on her soften face, makes her suffer what is in front of her.

      In his painting of Sampson & Delilah, Rembrandt was trying to express the relationships between characters and their fates within by highlighting gestures. Except the man in the further dark side, bright light is placed on Sampson’s back, Delilah’s face, hands and the standing man’s weapon-holding-hand. The facial expression of Delilah and the way she is touching Sampson’s hairs shows how much Sampson is in lack of strength. Showing nothing but Sampson’s back has also telling us that how vulnerable he has become. In his cloth, seems like he is trying to hide away from what is going to happen. Look at the man’s hand with brightness and veins popping out on the skin, it enhance the mood of madness, and stresses among everyone in the painting. 

House of de' Medici

  The existence of the Medici family was very much significant not only were a great number of fine artworks created; prestige artists were introduced during the period of Renaissance, the Medici family’s highly involvement in the city of Florence’s financials and politics had built a great fundamental for the blooms of art and architecture.

  The Medici family’s partnership, sponsorship supported numerous artists and their works. As at that time, artworks were created after a commission was paid. And the Medici certainly held a modest attitude for those artist who was really entitle of ability and creativity. Masters such as Michelangelo Buonarroti, Leonardo da Vinci etc.

  Looking at the Medicis’ relationship among socialites, artists and mainstream elite families during the Renaissance, we can easily discover that because Florence and its reign was driven to a prosperous stage, people were seeking for balances and accomplishment beyond food and clothing in a spiritual level. Fine arts and architecture had found their green house.

  And we are being able to see the shadow of a similar, typical society structure today. Developed countries’ citizen have always anticipate into art activities more frequently rather than developing, undeveloped ones. 

  One of the noblest artists affiliated with the Medicis was Donatello. And we shall not miss the statue David when it comes to Donatello. Its unprecedented attempting of creativity had become a representation of Renaissance’s artwork reaching its peak of times. David is in possession of several first attempting, such as first freestanding work, first nude male. On top of that, David’s helmet, feather and gestures were also given meanings. For instance, if we look at David from the side or his back, he could be identify as a woman when his leg or hip is blocking his genitals.

Design Principles of Artworks

  Lines, shapes, colors and sizes are significant elements of a piece of artwork. And cutting through these edges help us analyzing, understand an image comprehensively from a design principle perspective.

  And I like to illustrate some techniques of how artists resembling viewers’ feelings by utilize design principles in artworks.

 

Size is definitely the very first thing an artist would consider while creating a piece of art. The Following piece is called “Toy Tank”, presented by Amy Cheung from Hong Kong contemporary art at Saatchi Gallery, London, 2013. This is a full size wooden tank, and there is actual space inside of the tank for people to get in and operate. By assembling a same scale wooden tank as a real one, she was creating a sense of condescending that a war can be so near to people, even fit into a room with ones. The use of material, for instance, is also diversifying the meaning of war itself, that the intrinsic of a battle can be changed on top of its location.

  This image below is fulfilled of meanings by using the contrast of scales. It’s named Boy Reading to Elephant, by Gregory Colbert. This form of art often called anthropomorphic. Viewers are easily relate themselves as the boy, because we are all human. And the elephant is anthropomorphic, because it is given a gesture of kneeing down. By using the contrast of scales between the boy and the elephant, and different languages between species, knowing the elephant must not understand the words of mankind, he is expressing the power and strength of knowledge. The plain flat background also helps to stand out his point of view.

 

 

  A feeling of unity can also be given by colors and shapes used in an artwork. In one below, Mediterranean Landscape by Pablo Picasso. Similar shape and colors are utilized in this painting. The repetitive use of triangles throughout the whole picture as if everything there is made out of triangles. And constantly use of color yellow, not only brings a unity to the image, but diversifies it by applying color yellow on irregular shapes besides triangle.

 

 

 

 

  There are many ways to create a sense of unity in an artwork. In this printing, named Twisting Love, by Megan Aroon Duncanson. It is giving us a feeling of unity through the repetition use of curves. The moon is round as well as the branches. The waves of colors are also following this practice as if the whole piece of work is finished by nothing but curves.

  Another way of sending a feeling of unity in art is to create symmetrical balance. And a most common method of achieving that is by leading viewers to its focal point. Though most people naturally go for a vision focal point by locating the center of an artwork, parallel lines and circles are the easier way to balance left and right, above and below.  This is Vitruvian Man (c. 1485) Accademia, Venice by Leonardo da Vinci. The rectangle and circle creates a symmetrical balance. And the focal point is in the middle.

  Asymmetrical balance is certainly more complicated. It's a different level of technique, but artists like to use it. We will be able to find different scale of forms in the artwork, or different weight of use in color. However, artists tend to balance those small forms to accomplish a bigger balance and unity in an work. the artwork below is a complex sample of asymmetrical balance. First, the eye-catching red to the left of the painting is balanced by the tan yellow of the human body to the right. Warm colors have heavier weight rather than cool colors. Both red and yellow composed for left and right. On top of that, the light pink color at the right corner also arouse a sense of balance with blue sky to the left top. Second,  we can easily find something call directional forces in this painting. The civilians crawls from right to the left, following the sight from the woman in blue, and the baby in white is going towards his mother. Then the mother's hand is waving to the sky. Over there, we can see not only the emperor is looking at the same direction, another woman is waving her hand toward left. This is a combination of directional forces and repetition.

  There is an other way to find the asymmetrical balance in this artwork. The man in the red is a dominant form in this image, he is balanced by a sub-dominant form which is the man in dull tan skin. by waving towards each other in the middle of the image, this man is balance by a smaller sub-dominant form which the woman in green. At the end, the focal point falls on the women who is slightly to the right on the painting.

  Small forms balance in an artwork often create an asymmetrical balance for the whole image.

 

1 HW: Egyptian, Greek & Roman styles

 Egyptian, Greek & Roman styles

  This is a statue of King Shaure and a Nome God. The solitary three dimensional artwork of Sahure in the metropolitan museum. In this statue, both King Sahure and the Nome God had one foot forward, this gesture has been an identical aspect in a great number of Egyptian artworks. With a Nome God’s accompany, animal figures continue to be found. Two falcons above the Nome God’s head, and a cobra around King Sahure’s brow. The combination of falcons and cobra is often a symbol of kingship. King Shaure and Nome God were carved out of a stone, although two, or more than two different substances makes the stone appears in different colors, it reveals a strength and clarity of bodies throughout the sculptures’ carve lines.

  Marble, limestone, sliver, not only the use or materials became diversified, the focus of the artworks themselves were shifted in the time of the epic period. The Greek and Roman arts aroused resonance by bringing more focus on groups of people, like families, or crowds of festivity gatherings, but royal emperors and gods. More importantly, the representation of human bodies became less ideal but more realistic due to society and political environment people were live in. compare to ancient Egyptian arts, new gods were brought in, new stories were reveled and preserved. and new forms of art adopted to those changes. aside the differences, both Egyptian arts and Greek, roman arts have highlight the strength of human body, combination of mankind and animals. 

First post

this is such an abstract matter

if art has ever accommodated our needs above, we shall turn everything around us into art. And we probably already did that, because who does not live in the shade between comfort and discomfort?