11.30.10

No class since last post

Reading: The Object Stares Back by James Elkins

“In order to draw something new you have to study it with the express purpose of seeing the necessary parts and remembering them.”  This article stated that to be a good artist, one must have to think of the actual act of drawing and still see at the same time.  Elkins tried to draw an aardvark from memory after seeing one and simply could not do it. Elkins pointed out that there are certain things that he is able to draw from memory, such as a plate or a needle, but without the skill of being able to draw and see at the same time, drawing from memory is impossible to do accurately and also pointless.  After reading this section, I thought about my art class from high school.  My teachers used to tell me that you couldn’t simply draw what you remember, such as a nose.  And when you look at the nose you are drawing, don’t look at it as a nose.  They said to look at the lines and shapes within it and to mimic that in my piece.  I also remember during high school I went through a period of looking at everything as if I were going to draw it.  I noticed angles and depth.  Looking at the world like this allows you to see and notice much more than you ever would, though it is a little draining.  I learned in psych that are brains are not made to pick up on every little detail because it is just an overload of information, and constantly looking at objects like this definitely feels like that.  Elkins talked about many pieces of art with insight. He pointed out that he has trouble remembering the color of people’s eyes in life and in art.  I too, have the same problem.  He said he can’t even be sure of his dad’s eye color, however I can remember eye color of the people close to me.  Elkins talks about connotations in art and what happens when one sees a certain piece.

Two questions

Does art in black and white have the same effect as it would in color?  When Elkins talks about genitalia in art, and that it subconsciously makes you either look at it or look away, he mentioned color in the work he was referring to. Would he have had the same response if the painting were in grayscale?

What are characteristics of a painting that convey death?

Discuss

I decided to look up images with death and see what characteristics convey the idea.  I Google imaged “painting death” and I noticed that the general mood is pretty morbid.  When there are multiple people in a painting, I noticed chaos – people running around with their arms in the air.  Other paintings had skulls. One image I really liked was by Simon Birch, one of the artists I wanted to study.  His painting shows a blurred face, with a black shirt.  The lack of characteristics shows that the subject just isn’t there.

Critique

I really liked the critique.  I liked how some people would share their ideas first and how others would let the class share their ideas and confirm or deny them afterwards.  The critique allowed me to verbalize certain aspects of my paintings that I merely thought about.  Sharing ideas with others allowed us to understand each other's thought processes and even dilemmas when it came to our projects.  I liked the use of mediums, and I thought the projects that weren't done on paper were very interesting.  I particularly liked Amy's project, and I think it was okay that she didn't use only nature.  Wendy's 3D comic was awesome too, and I think it really added depth to the ideas expressed in the class.  This class is about visual thinking after all, and through this project we were able to see the differences in visual perspectives.

Art Event #2

Artist Dr. Andrea Guinta came to speak about her work last week.  She is a cultural activist from Argentina and attended the Univeristy of Buenos Aires.  She has curated and contributed to many art exhibitions.  In her work she focuses on the visual culture and human rights, and she shows how art is a highly effective way of communicating political messages. 

Dr. Guinta started off by showing newspaper clips of people who have disappeared or have been abducted.  She pointed out that the kidnappings were typically young adults in college or in their early 20’s.  Dr. Guinta believes that neither forgetting nor forgiving will do anything to help the abduction issue and what’s done is done.  She went on to explain that all of the people who were abducted were a part of a certain political party.  These young people were called The Peronist Youth, and were the ones who supported the leadership and the views of their president Juan Peron.  The president reached out to factory workers and tried to help them.  Thus, he was supported by the factory workers, but not by the higher classes.  During Juan Peron’s presidency, the country survived an inflation period, but he was eventually taken out of office by a military coup that destroyed all evidence and anything associated with his social or political movements.

Dr. Giunta showed pictures of an exhibit displaying the photos of kidnapped faces.  It was pretty moving because there were so many faces, and they were exhibited beautifully; in one horizontal like across the middle of all the walls.  People always hear about the numbers and they may think the number is high, but to see each number as a photo of a kidnapped person, and each photo taking up space on the wall, it is a bit overwhelming but it is more effective than simply stating the number. 

Dr. Guinta showed drawings of the abducted people, some with the caption “Con Vida” meaning “with life.”  She also showed two photos of families in their houses in 1977.   The photographer went back in 2008 and had the families pose in the same spot that the earlier picture was taken.  In each picture there was one person missing who was a victim of the “disappearances.” She showed the photos together, which evoked sadness in the audience.  Dr. Guinta also had people sit on steps in the shape of two mapped out faces and took Arial photos.  These faces were faces of kidnapped victims.

Dr. Guinta's art and the work she showed from other artists are similar to my work in that it is focused on portraits.  However, much of the work she spoke of was photography related, whereas mine is not.  Her work is similar to a previous visiting artist Mirta Kupferminc, in that both artists focus on tragic events and their effects.

Plan

The plan for my piece is to try to incorporate some of Jenny Saville's painting style into my work.  I want to layer a lot of paint and make seemingly abstract marks come together to make something recognizable.  I'm painting the portraits of my two brothers and myself.  Saville has a piece in which she paints three bodies, yet they look attached.  Where one body stops, another starts.  I want to do this with the three faces, not separating them with space between the heads.  I like this idea and I've seen it before and I've always wanted to try something like it.

Art Event #1

On Thursday 10/28, visiting artist Mirta Kupferminc came and spoke about her life, her work, and how her past has influenced her life and art immensely.  Mirta's parents were Holocaust survivors, but she was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  Her work encompasses themes of loss, absence, silence, and Jewish questions of heaven and hell, as well as life and death.  The title of her presentation was “The Skin: Space for Repression and Expression.”  Throughout the presentation, Mirta repeated to the audience that the most important thing that happened to her happened before she was born, referring to her parents’ struggle during the Holocaust.  The first piece she focused on was photography and was also the main composition in relation to the title.  There were two photographs.  In one, her mother was sitting in a chair, and her tattoo from the Holocaust with her numbers is visible.  In the other, and Argentinean musician named Christian is sitting in the same chair.  He has tattoos all over his body, Mirta points out, were his choice, and a form of art, unlike her mother’s tattoo.  She went on to tell us that during one of her exhibits, a man was hired to give henna tattoos, but anyone wearing red would have to get a number tattoo, meaning that they would have been victims of the Holocaust during the time.  Mirta wanted to evoke the same feelings in the people who came to her show that Holocaust victims probably felt, so that they could better understand and connect with her work.  Mirta made the chair that both Mirta’s mother and Christian were sitting in.  On the sides of the chair there were wooden wings.  The chair appears in some of her other works.  The last piece of work that Mirta talked about was a video.  The camera was situated underneath of a tightly pulled material that represented skin.  At first, needles were poking the “skin” and the poking gradually got harder.  Then, the needle would thread through the skin with red thread, which caused the audience to wince.  One question that an audience member asked was if Mirta situated the camera inside the skin because she felt the need to be protected and if the skin was possibly a representation of her parents’ pain and struggles.  She said that it was not, because she doesn’t feel the need to be protected, that because the Holocaust happened before her time, history is protecting her.

If Mirta’s parents were not victims of the Holocaust, her struggles in life would not have been as intense.  She didn’t simply make art about the Holocaust, but instead focused on other themes, such as skin, to convey her pain and other thoughts.  I don’t know of any other artists who have similar ideas that Mirta does.  At the end of her presentation Mirta said that she thinks everything in life has meaning.  I know she was talking about the events in life, but relating this to my art, I try to do everything with meaning, and give every stroke or line a purpose.  I do not like to be mindless in my work.