Reflections of AED 200

My expectations were “Through this course, I expect to learn more about art, and how it works. I want to know how to constructively criticize and analyze art.” And yes, I would say that they were met! I would define art the same way I did at the beginning of this course-anything that you perceive as art, is art. I did not have a favorite artist to begin with. I still do not have a favorite. I enjoy all types of art, and different artists. Now, after getting a feel for this course, I think that I still like online courses. It allows you to study at mostly your own pace.

Self Portraits from the Google Arts & Culture Studio

I chose the self-portrait of Frida Kahlo (Frida Kahlo, Self-portrait with Small Monkey, painting, 1945, w415mm x h560mm) because it expresses her feelings towards something she likes, and self-portraits usually portray what the artist is feeling. I selected Vincent van Gogh (Vincent van Gogh, Self-portrait, painting, 1887, 41cm x 32.5cm) because he is well known for this piece and it shows that not all self-portraits have to be a frontal view.  I also chose Nora Heysen (Nora Heysen, Self-portrait, oil on canvas, 1932, 76.2cm x 61.2cm) because she is a beautiful woman, showing what she likes to do-paint. I chose to use pencil when creating my self-portrait. I enjoy using pencil because I can erase mistakes! I encountered some challenge when creating my ‘own face’ that include; not being able to capture the true likeness of my smirk, I could not quite get the shape of my face. I overcame these obstacles by erasing time and time again and trying again and again. This piece represents me because it is my usual half-smile. The elements and principles that I tried to incorporate were shapes, value, forms, color, texture, contrast, unity and proportion. I actually enjoyed doing this project and trying to draw myself. I am actually pretty good with recreating images with looking at them, such as the case with this project. I think that my final artwork is good. i tried to keep the proportion the same from one picture to the other.

Women in Art Exhibition

Women in Art

I chose the paintings that I did because all of them have, although by different artists and with different subjects, women as the focal points. All the women are doing something lady like or perceived as doing something very delicate. The women are depicting the tenderness of their gender and prove why women and their bodies are so attractive to everyone.

I really enjoyed creating this Exhibition of women, because it allowed me to see just how many paintings of women there are in the art world. These paintings prove that women are usually the focal subject of artists paintings.

Mod 13/14-Video Review-Art Curation

The Lowdown on Lowbrow: West Coast Pop Art

• Lowbrow-a person regarded as uncultivated and lacking in taste.
• People can relate to the pop art because it involves all different types.
• Artists started making the pop art genre from the pinup girls on airplanes.
• The decades forties through the seventies are the most popular decades to paint about.
• McCarthyism was willing to point fingers at people that strayed from the norm, and classify them as communists.
• Psychedelic rock posters were created by pop artists.
• Kustom Kulture was a show that first premiered a cartoon pop show.
• Mad Magazine-Humor in the jugular vein.
• Jackson Pollock from a Lowbrow standpoint is just a bunch of mad dots.
• Lowbrow has taken their language and made some very noticeable statements.

Tate Modern

• Tate Modern turned Britain into the booming city it is today.
• Tate Modern is a ten story art gallery.
• On Tate Modern’s curation team, it is important to take care of the artist’s vision and artwork.
• Artists from all over the world are showcased in Tate Modern, and even a specific room dedicated to those from Britain.
• Tate Collective is a form for young creatives figures out how and why young artists create their collections.

An Acquiring Mind: Philippe de Montebello and The Metropolitan

• Knowledge is the engine that makes a museum work.
• A museum is never finished.
• Montebello curated over 80,000 works of art. He would rather not focus on a specific artist.
• Before any work of art is put on display, it goes through a vetting process. The director is the first hurdle in the process.
• The board of trustees decides what finally gets displayed in a museum.

 The videos do relate to the creation of my Exhibition because all these videos each give you a different opinion of how people view art. In each video, in their own way, they help you decide what people what to see in each Exhibition.

I really liked An Acquiring Mind: Phillipe de Montebello and The Metropolitan because it shows the process of how an Exhibition truly comes to life. That is important when designing your own Exhibition.

Module 12

Abstract Expressionism and Pop: Art of the '50s and '60s and Andy Warhol: Images of an Image

I selected Abstract Expressionism and Pop: Art of the ‘50s amd’60s because the 1950s is one of my favorite decades, and I like to learn about it anytime I can. I watched Andy Warhol: Images of an Image because I have heard of Warhol before and I wanted to learn more about him and his art.

 In Abstract Expressionism and Pop: Art of the ‘50s amd’60s I learned:

a.)   Kline claims he painted the color white just as he painted the color black

b.)   Franknthaler was influenced by Jackson Pollock

c.)   You cannot separate what de Kooning has painted from how he has painted it.

d.)   Jasper Johns moved from the impersonal to the personal in his subject matter. In his approach, from rational to emotional. And in his tone, from witty to somber.

e.)   Before Warhol, artists had painted each other before, but no one did it twenty-eight times in a row like Warhol.

f.)    Roy Lichtenstein concentrated on themes that had always stirred human and artistic passions, above all, love and war. To do so, he looked to the world of the comic strip.

In Andy Warhol: Images of an Image I learned:

a.)   Death was his main theme

b.)   Used Marilyn Monroe right after she committed suicide to bring the artist “back to life” for her fans

c.)   Used silk-screening so that he didn’t have to work so hard on the art

d.)   His loft was the hangout for local artists

e.)   He photographed  his friends when they were hanging out at his place and used them as art

f.)    Used Elizabeth Taylor when he thought she was close to death

 On page 503 in Living With Art, De Kooning admitted that he began each painting from a magazine photograph of a beautiful woman. It is also said that in the paintings, De Kooning’s  conscious and unconscious feelings toward women is reflected. Roy Lichtenstein based his early paintings on hand-drawn advertising and comic-book imagery. He was intrigued by the conventions that these forms had developed for depicting the world.

I really liked the Andy Warhol: Images of an Image video. I have silk-screened logos on t-shirts before, and I liked learning about how Warhol created silk-screen works of art. I did not like the other video as much as I thought I would. It was not very interesting. 

Mod 10-African Tribal Mask

I selected these three images as the inspiration behind my mask because i liked the repetition that all three of them possessed. i also liked the lines and the spacing of the designs.

The first mask has a very limited amount of color. There is orange, bronze and white. It is simple as there is only patterns from the eyes down to the mouth, and blank space everywhere else.

The second mask is very colorful and has very little blank spaces. The designs are made up of different sized dots and come together to make different patterns. The mask is very repetitious with the dots.

The third mask was used more for the pattern instead of color. The "hair" out the top starts the movement through the piece. From the hair, the dots on the forehead point down to between the eyes, and from the eyes, the lines draw you down to the bottom of the mask below the mouth.

In my final design, i used repetition throughout with my lines, dots and shells. I had shapes on the nose and forehead of my mask. I had texture on my mask through the form of feathers and straw. I also had the same colors on my mask as were represented in most. Among the African people it is thought that the white may signify the spirit wold of the ancestors, the procreative power of sperm or the nurturing quality of mother's milk. Red might signify the blood shed in warfare or in childbirth, and black may connote the unknown. i had movement on my mask; you start with the feathers, they lead you down to the spot between the eyes and the lines under the eyes lead you all the way through the "beard" at the bottom of my mask.

I think my finished mask is a good representation of an actual African tribal mask. I actually liked learning about different types of masks and what they mean. I liked creating my mask, it was a very good learning experience.

Mod 10-World Religions and Art-Video review

Buddhism and Hinduism

                                            

I selected the Buddhism and Hinduism videos because they are the only ones that sounded somewhat appealing to learn about.

The key elements/concepts that I learned from both videos:

Buddhism: Bodh Gaya is sacred to Buddhists, Jains and Hindus. Stupas are memorial burial grounds and each brick tells a story. The gates of Buddha’s stupa tell the story of his life, yet he is not in bodily form. In the East, a pilgrim must always walk clockwise on temple or on a stupa, It allows the pilgrim to let go of material things for the intent of virtue. Buddhism is a child of Hinduism and India. Borobudur is a place of pilgrimage. These pilgrims would see some 1400 carvings of peace and enlightenment on the trip up the temple. The temple of the countless buddhas had 432 buddhas in all. It is a standing proof of the spreading of Buddhism throughout Asia. In Carmel New York, there is a collection of buildings dedicated to Buddhism. Using the glulam style, we are able to create buildings without internal pillars. The narrator asked the question: what have I discovered about Buddhism and all the other religions? His answer: They unraveled the tangled question of the afterlife and wove the art and architecture from local materials to create the monuments that are truly heaven on earth.

Hinduism: Like the Muslims, the Hindus can pray anywhere. Hindu worship does not focus on temples, yet Hindus invest so much in their elaborate decoration. Where the Ganges runs into stone, the story is carved into the cleft of the rock. There were other buildings carved out of the rock underneath the mountain.

Related to readings:

Buddha attracted followers from all walks of life, from beggars to kings, both men and women. After his death, his cremated remains were distributed among eight memorial mounds called Stupas. Four gateways erected late in the 1^st century B.C. punctuate the outer enclosure at Sanchi. Their crossbars are carved in relief with stories from the Buddha’s life. Interestingly, the reliefs at Sanchi that narrate the story of the Buddha do so without showing the Buddha himself.

The three deities of Hindu are the god Shiva, the goddess Devi or Shakti (Durga) and Vishnu. The temple Kandariya Mahadeva is dedicated to Shiva and the temple rests on a stone platform that serves to mark out a sacred area and separate it from the everyday world. Indian architects worked with post-and-lintel construction techniques, and thus the interior spaces of Hindu temples are not large.

What do i think?

I think that the videos were fairly informative and I learned about these culture’s art and religion. I liked looking at their stone carvings and I liked learning about how their stone sculptures meant something in one way or another in their religion.