To start off, I've always been interested in art from Day 1. Ever since kindergarden doing the finger paintings to art classes I've taken in college, I've loved it from the get-go. What ultimately got me interested in graphic design was after I saw the movie Iron Man in theaters. That was the turning point in my life, where after I watched the movie, I can remember saying to myself that I wanted to do graphic design (since I liked art and was interested in computers, why not do graphic design?). Ever since I've been more observant, more up-to-date, more open to and more intrigued to make my own art. I have all sorts of inspirations, ranging from Dali's work, Escher's work and Alex Grey's work (the album artist for the band Tool). I love any kind of graffiti artwork, as well as pop art. I'm also getting more in touch with and more interested in photography. Basically, anything that catches my eye I'll be interested in. I've been told that I have a very graffiti like style, which I would like to explore more in this class, and see what I can conjure up.
The Crookers
The Bloody Beetroots
Music is also a big influence in my life. I am almost always listening to music when I create anything whether it's a project or just sketches - it not only inspires me but it makes me feel more creative as I'm working. I love basically everything and anything I listen to, with the exception of some country. I like anything from rock, rap, all kinds of techno and anything inbetween. My favorite artists would include DJ AM, The Bloody Beetroots, MSTRKRFT, The Crookers, Kanye West, Tool, Dave Matthews Band, O.A.R and everything else that I can't think of right now. I feel that a lot of what I create is a direct connection to the music I listen to. The music I listen to and the style it has has a great effect on what I can do.
If I had to describe what I am interested in with only one word, that word would be “EPIC.” I am drawn to grand narratives, whether expressed through visual, audio, or verbal mediums. I prefer focusing on the macro- rather than the micro-story. In daily life, I enjoy following geopolitical issues. Because of this fascination with the interaction between power, politics, and geography, I like maps. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a good map is worth a million.
I also like anything that allows me to feel a full range of emotions. Anything that allows me to feel seemingly opposite emotions simultaneously is a hit with me. A song that has a jagged sense of foreboding and darkness yet somehow gives an impression of peacefulness or splendor that washes over the listener, for instance, accomplishes this. H. R. Giger’s work is another example. His creatures are undeniably dark and evince nothing short of evil, yet they are hypnotically beautiful. It is a fine line that an artist must walk to succeed in taking the viewer, reader, or listener on such a wondrous ride. If I could achieve such a balance with my work, I will have achieved my goal.
The seriousness of the news in comparison to the mind-numbing, yet engaging celebrity news in
magazines, as well as
celebrity news (suchas E! News... I'm obsessed!). I have noticed due to my interest in world news, I am more willing to read intellectual books such as (Fateful Choices by Ian Kershaw and the works of Jane Austen). I used to HATE reading and would only resort to getting any kind of outside information from more fun/amusing shows, such as E News and the Colbert Report and read only magazines. However, it was magazines and the vivid use of color on shows like those on the E network that made me decide to go into Graphic Design.
I also have a passion for the art during the impressionist movement. Art
ists such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, and of course Claude Monet. I am forever jealous of those who possess the talent to paint, especially if their work has an impressionist feel.
<"Dance in the City" by Renoir
Other Interests of mine..
• Audrey Hepburn
“Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, it's at the end of your arm, as you get older, remember you have another hand: The first is to help yourself, the second is to help others.”
Even at an early age, I was drawn to Audrey Hepburn when watching her in movies such as "Roman Holiday", "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and "Sabrina". Her poise, simple yet elegant fashion sense, and natural beauty were always things that I wanted to emulate.
• Design
Layout, web, print, etc. (I love all forms of Graphicdesign, and continuing to learn more, even on my own byreading books about typography, layout, and how to create websites) is very interesting to me.
• Music
I enjoy a very wide array of music, including: The Beatles, Michael Buble, The Bloody Beatroots, Tyler Hilton, CCR, T-Pain, etc..
As for what holds me back in my work...
I would have to say lack of time, and the worry of what others might say. I take a lot to heart so when others don't approve or don't enjoy work I have done, it tends to affect me in a negative way. This semester I will do my best to push this aside in order to express myself in a manner that expresses how I really feel about a particular subject.
american painter, largely part of expressionist movement. significant predecessor to performance art because of the initiation of the idea of art as a process. The concept of art as a verb, an act of ones doing is central to the artists we'll be discussing and pollack is a reduced example of what was to come. : "...look passively and try to receive what the painting has to offer and not bring a subject matter or preconceived idea of what they are to be looking for."
yve klein
French artist and is considered an important figure in post-war European art. New York critics of Klein's time classify him as neo-Dada, but other critics, such as Thomas McEvilley in an essay submitted to Artforum in 1982, have since classified Klein as an early, though "enigmatic," Post-Modernist. Klein experimented with various methods of applying the paint; firstly different rollers and then later sponges, created a series of varied surfaces. This experimentalism would lead to a number of works Klein made using naked female models covered in blue paint and dragged across or laid upon canvases to make the image, using the models as "living brushes". This type of work he called Anthropometry. Other paintings in this method of production include "recordings" of rain that Klein made by driving around in the rain at 70 miles per hour with a canvas tied to the roof of his car, and canvases with patterns of soot created by scorching the canvas with gas burners.
Hugo Ball (Dadaist)
One of the very first dada performers, recited poem ‘Karawane’ at the Cabaret Voltaire while wearing strange costume. An excerpt from poem—“zimzim urallala zimzim zanzibar zimlalla zam”
Allan Kaprow
Happenings; events that attempted to “break the fourth wall”, participatory and interactive, with no hierarchy between artist and viewer…ex=‘Households’ where participants licked strawberry jam off the hood of a car before it was set on fire
Joseph Beuys
Beuys’s first solo exhibition in a private gallery opened on November 26, 1965 with one of the artist’s most famous and compelling performances: How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare. The artist could be viewed through the glass of the gallery’s window. His face was covered in honey and gold leaf, an iron slab was attached to his boot. In his arms he cradled a dead hare, into whose ear he mumbled muffled noises as well as explanations of the drawings that lined the walls.
Hermann Nitsch (a Viennese Actionist—known for violent and indecent performances, often arrested)
Crucified lambs in his early performances, etc., questioning the ethics of religious sacrifice; more current work deals with violence and media/culture
Vito Acconci
MFA at UIowa; In ‘Seedbed’ Acconci lied underneath a floor installed on the floor of the gallery, masturbating while “vocalizing into a loudspeaker his fantasies about the visitors walking above him”. Acconci wanted to create a “situation of reciprocal interchange between artist and viewer.”; work is very heavy on interactivity
Chris Burden
Personal danger as artistic expression; in ‘shoot’ had his friend shoot him in the arm from 15ish feet away—show video; in ‘trans-fixed’ his hands were nailed to the back of a Volkswagen; other pieces involved laying without food/water/speaking/moving for time periods from 45 hours to 22days.
Carolee Schneemann
multidisciplinary artist. Transformed the definition of art, especially discourse on the body, sexuality, and gender. The history of her work is characterized by research into archaic visual traditions, pleasure wrested from suppressive taboos, the body of the artist in dynamic relationship with the social body. The 1964 piece Meat Joy revolved around eight partially nude figures dancing and playing with various objects and substances including wet paint, sausage, raw fish, scraps of paper, and raw chickens.[10] It was first performed in Paris and was later filmed and photographed as performed by her Kinetic Theater group at Judson Memorial Church.[1] She described the piece as an "erotic rite" and an indulgent Dionysian "celebration of flesh as material." focused on conception, rather than execution
Marina Abramović
In ‘Rhythm 0’ Abramović placed 72 objects on a table that people were allowed to use in any way that they chose. “Some of these were objects that could give pleasure, while others could be wielded to inflict pain, or to harm her. Among them were scissors, a knife, a whip, and, most notoriously, a gun and a single bullet.” Initially the audience “reacted with caution and modesty, but as time passed (and the artist remained impassive) several people began to act quite aggressively” Abramović: “The experience I learned was that…if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed… I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.”; In 2005 at the Guggenheim, NY she recreated 7 historical performances including two of her own, ‘Seedbed’ by Acconci, and ‘How To Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare’ by Beuys.
Oliver de Sagazan
French contemp artist; in another performance he sculpts a head in front of an audience, muttering to himself and/or the sculpture. His muttering turns to sporadic/angry yelling and the performance quickly ends with Sagazan loosely wrapping the sculpture in cloth, lighting it on fire, and exiting the room.
1907-1914-Cubism [inspiring De Stijl, Constructivism, Neoplasticism]
1908-1915-Futurism
1916-1923-Dada
Totalitarian regimes in place in: Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union (post-1922)
Avant-garde: means "advance guard" or "vanguard". Term used by Napoleon.
Cubism: Simultaneous representations of different perspectives, *The first major movement in visual art where the concept is emphasized over the visual.
Key players: Matisse [coined the term in 1908], Picasso, Gris, and Braque.
Federal Art Project-Roosevelt Era, disbanded at the outreach of WWII.
Fernand Léger “Beauty is everywhere, in the arrangement of your pots and pans.”
“Ballet Mécanique”- American composer George Antheil and the French filmmaker/artist Fernand Léger.
DADAISM: Characterized by absurdity, chance, collage, primitivism, playfulness, whimsy, apolitical acts/processes as political acts. Founded in Zürich, continued in Hanover, Paris, Berlin (became the most politicized wing of the Dadas—The Communist Party of Germany was founded at this time)
Hugo Ball and Emmy Hemmings (both Germans) founded the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, Switzerland in 1916.
"Readymades" were found objects which Duchamp chose and presented as art. The first such object was Bicycle Wheel, an inverted bicycle wheel mounted on a stool, which Duchamp assembled in 1913.
[Right] Duchamp in drag as Rose Sélavy
The name is a pun that sounds like the French phrase "Eros, c'est la vie", which means "Eros, that's life". It has also been read as "arroser la vie" ("to make a toast to life").
Compile a series of ideas, images, texts, sounds, etc. that will inform your work this term. Think about the conceptual backbone of your artistic practice. Why are you taking this class? What are your goals? Be prepared to present and explain to the class.
Consider the following:
Relationships between Self / Environment / Others (consider: actions, thoughts, habits, desires, beliefs, culture, perception, technology, objects, nature, physical structures, landscape, stuff, political systems, power, lines of communication, signs, symbols, assumptions, ritual, myth, history, time…) What engages you? What are you curious about? What fills you with wonder? What do you want to explore or know more about? What sources are you drawn to for material? (Digital media? Magazines? Photographs? Stream of consciousness writing? Politics or the nightly news? A specific place? Nature? Micro systems? Macro systems?) What is your point of view, i.e., what is your relationship to the things you are looking at/into? What might be some questions that guide your research and artmaking this semester? What are you passionate about? What holds you back in your work? We are engaged in pure research—consider everything potential fodder for your creative work.
This project can be realized via a written manifesto, collage, series of jpgs, or an assemblage of found objects. Regardless of how you conceive it, please write at least a two-paragraph summary of your ideas. Please post to the writing and a jpg to the Intermedia I blog before Feb 1. We will discuss them as a group.
The Crookers
The Bloody Beetroots
