Reflections on Project Four.

I've been working a lot lately so this project was sort of hurried together in the last two days. Still, I think it's pretty good. I wish I had more time to go into a little more detail than I did. The idea of my theme came to me during the semester as we were introduced to different artists. Being of German descent I took interest in all the different influential German artists that are mentioned throughout the book. I had no idea that Germany had such a rich art history. Usually when you think of Germans you think automobiles and invasions of France. With a little research I discovered the "Danube School', a group of German artists in the early 16th century that were known for their landscape paintings and etchings. I decided that this was an interesting topic to pursue and there you have it. I didn't have trouble finding images but I did have trouble with the background info on the works. Thats all I've got. I hope whoever revues this project likes it.

Week Fourteen Video Review

I have to apologize for this posting, I have a terrible cold and I’m having a little trouble focusing. I’m afraid this may not be up to my usual standards. For this weeks video review there are four videos to watch. The first one I watched was “The Lowdown on Lowbrow: West Coast Pop Art”. This was a pretty cool video. Like past videos, I liked this because it was narrated by the artists themselves and gave good insight into their motivations and influences. I liked the various names the artists go by, like Shag, Brain Eater, 12midnite and The Pizz. Lowbrow art was developed as a reaction to highbrow culture. Robert Williams, who says he invented the term, doesn’t like the term or feel it’s appropriate. The genre revolves around naked girls, hot rods, pop culture and TV shows. Lowbrow art has not been well received by the established art society but lately has been received better. The art work is interesting and some of it is recognizable from album covers and posters. A pretty cool film, all in all.

The Second film I watched was “Bones of Contention: Native American Archeology”. This seems more like a scientific film as opposed to an art film, but I definitely found it compelling. It is about the movement of native Americans to retrieve the bones of their ancestors that are being kept in museums like the Smithsonian. In 1971 a native American women named Maria Pearson was upset when human were remains found by a construction crew, the remains of white people were moved and reburied but the remains of an Indian women and a small Indian girl were sent to a museum for study. The film goes into some of the history of American oppression of the Indians and discusses several different responses by various tribes in the country regarding the return of remains. It discusses the differences the tribes and the scientific community have regarding how the remains should be used. I liked this film it’s very interesting.

The third film I watched is “George Eastman House: Picture Perfect”. This film is about the Eastman Photography museum in Rochester New York. The museum is located in the home of George Eastman, the founder of Kodak. Some interesting facts I picked up from this one are that motion picture film \was invented by Eastman and Thomas Edison. Eastman introduced his Brownie Camera at the turn of the 19^th century for one dollar and it gave regular people access to photography. The film goes on about the contents of the museum, including works that represent 14000 amateur and professional photographers, the camera used by NASA in the sixties to take pictures of the moon and 3 million motion picture items in their collection. This was a descent film. Some of the history of the camera was a review of material that we covered earlier in the semester, but aside from that this was a good learning experience.

The fourth film I tried to watch was “Displaying Modern Art: The Tate Aproach”. Unfortunately, the film keeps cutting out on me a few minutes in. I did manage to learn that the Tate museum has moved away from the traditional approach of displaying art established in New York. The New York museum displays its art in chronological order on white walls. The Tate has decided to display items by four different categories; landscape, still life, history and the nude. That’s the best I can do for this one.

Week Thirteen Video Review

The first film I chose for this week’s video review was “Andy Warhol: Images of an Image”. This was fairly interesting, I’ve of course heard of Andy Warhol and this film had some good insights into his work. The “Ten Lizes” is an interesting piece. I’ve seen his work before but did not know it was done with silk screen. I liked how he was interested in making art to make money. The details on how the silk screen images were made are something new that I was unaware of.  And I like his famous quote about everyone being famous for fifteen minutes. I’m still waiting for mine.

The second film I chose was “The Power of Art: Rothco” about the life and works of American Mark Rothco. We’ve read about his works that were intended for the Four Seasons restaurant and how he painted them to make everyone sick. This went into more detail about his distaste for the wealthy people who would frequent this restaurant and why he made the paintings the way he did. The film itself I hated. What a bunch of over dramatized nonsense. Did the narrator really call him an “omnipotent sorcerer”? One of the things I’ve found that I do not like about some of the films that we’ve watched is this over dramatization of the artists and their works.

With that being said, the last two films I watched were two of the best I’ve seen this year. The first one “Hockney on photography” was really good. I like that the artist himself is narrating and gives good insight into the creative process without all the hype. I really like his Polaroid montages that he called drawing with a camera. As a child, cinema had a big influence on him. He was fascinated by perspective and his works with reverse perspective are very unique. The Grand Canyon piece is awesome. I really like the photo collage but I’m not to fond of the painting. I thought this was an excellent film.

The last film I watched “Isamu Nogchi: The Sculptor of Spaces” is probably the favorite film I’ve seen this year. Like the Hockney movie, this was narrated by the artist himself and gave great insight into his motivation and vision. He said he dad a vision of the earth as a sculpture and he wanted to turn landscapes into participatory works of art. The park he designed in Miami is beautiful and I Really liked the slide he made. His dealing with the Miami town board was a good insight on how he was unwilling to compromise his art. The stone sculpture garden in Jerusalem is beautiful as well. All of the works that were shown in this film were beautiful and I really liked getting the artists perspective.

Art Exhibit Review

The title of the exhibit I chose for this weeks art exhibit review is “Timeshare: An Historic Art Collaboration” now being shown at the Burchfield Penny Art Center. The theme of this exhibit is art that the regional history of western New York. The works look at the time period between the late 19^th and early 20^th century.

The exhibit consists of almost exclusively oil paintings from the period and they are displayed every three or four feet along the walls in a room that has been divided into two areas. One section has paintings from the 1800’s and the second room has paintings from the early 1900’s. The room itself is painted a warm grey tone and the lighting is not too bright and not too dim. The paintings, for the most part, are framed in gold and are grouped in no particular order other than time period and a few are grouped by artist. The works mostly consist of landscape and portrait paintings of the artists involved and famous historical figures that influenced the history of Buffalo and the surrounding area. The works are labeled and identified by name of the work, artist and the year the work was created.

Since photography is not allowed at the Museum, I have chosen to review three of the works found in the exhibits literature guide.

On the cover is a painting by Hamilton Hamilton titled, “Fletchers Furnace”; 1876, oil on canvas. The painting appears to be a night view of an industrial center. Smoke stacks can be seen in the distance lighting up the night sky. Just off center in the lower right, a bright door way is shown illuminating the water front. In this work the artist uses color to emphasis the doorway. The painting is very dark and this darkness is broken by the bright color emanating from the door way. When viewing this piece your eyes are automatically drawn to the door. To balance this effect, the upper left corner is very dark with very little light showing.

The second work I’ve chosen is “Flags Flying, Avenue of the Allies, Main Street Buffalo” by Claire Shuttleworth; 1919, oil on canvas. In this painting a street scene is shown. It is a corner of a city street and from the buildings in the scene, dozens of  flags can be seen on display. The majority of these are American, but in the foreground a large French and British flag can be seen. It’s a daytime view of a busy city street with many people moving about. Color is used vividly in this painting as the colorful flags brighten up what would be a fairly drab earth tone painting. The size of the large British and French flags emphasizes them to the viewer. The bright sky in the top of the painting is balanced by the dark shadow, thrown by the building on the left, on the lower section of the painting. The painting uses linear perspective to give the feeling of depth as the street recedes into the distance.

The third painting I’ve chosen is “Captain of the Lincoln Rail-Splitters” by Joseph Josephs; 1880, oil on canvas. This painting is a full body portrait of a lumber jack from the time. It is an outside scene with hills and a body of water in the background. The man is standing in uniform with an axe on his back, a giant hammer in one hand and what appears to be a lamp in the other. A sign is hanging from a nearby tree that has the title of the work and the artists name on it. Like the other works, the use of color is a big factor in this work. The main figure is dressed in a striking red shirt that emphasizes him as the central figure. The bright white sign is also emphasized due to its brightness. It appears to balance out the bright sky in the other half of the painting.

I enjoyed this exhibit. There are several beautiful landscapes included in the collection, as well as a giant portrait of President McKinley at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. Being a native western New Yorker, I really enjoyed the artistic and historic take on my home town.

Video Review: Week Twelve

The first video I chose for this week’s video review is “Matisse and Picasso”. Of the four videos I watched, this was the one I liked the most. It documents the unique relationship the two artists had, that had never been seen in art history. It describes how they both broke with tradition with their unique styles. Both were discovered by Gertrude Stein. The film discusses the difference between the two; Matisse is deliberate and rational, while Picasso is impulsive. During his life, Matisse travels extensively, while Picasso rarely leaves his studio. And although both liked painting women, Matisse liked models and Picasso rarely had people model for him. Despite their differences the developed a friendship that lasted until Matisse’s death. I thought this was an interesting film and found the relationship between the two men to be fascinating.

The second film I watched was “Dada and Surrealism”. Dada had its roots in Germany following World War I and was a protest against the conditions that led to the war. The film goes on to describe the works of Kurt Schwitters and Hanna Hoch, German artists who worked with collage.  I found the works of both to be disturbing and not very appealing, but considering that their work was inspired by war and political upheaval I suppose that is appropriate.  The film then goes on to explore the works of surrealist artists like Joan Miro, Salvador Dali and Man Ray. Miro painted a series of paintings that parodied 17^th century Dutch paintings called “Dutch Interior I, II and III”. The paintings are abstract representations of the earlier works. The film then explores Salvatore Dalis “The Burning Giraffe”. This is a pretty disturbing painting of a skeletal woman with drawers coming out of her and strange crutches holding up growths coming out of her back. A small burning giraffe is shown in the lower left hand corner, hence the title. I’m not too fond of this film or this weeks movies in general. The topic matter for most of these paintings is centered on war and death and I found them rather depressing.

The third film I chose was “the Mystical North: Spanish Art from the 19^th Century to the Present”. And speaking of depressing, the film starts with the works of Francisco de Goya. After losing his hearing from an illness he focuses his art on mans inhumanity to man. The “Black Paintings” that are shown are inspired by the Spanish civil war and are very disturbing. I found it interesting that he put his painting “Saturn Devouring one of his Children” in his dining room. The film then gets a little lighter with the architecture of Antonio Gaudi. He was the first famous Spanish artist since Goya, nearly fifty years before. Unlike Goya, Gaudi is a devout Catholic and incorporates this in his art. He attempts to build a catholic cathedral, but a lack of funding leaves the project unfinished. The film then discusses the work of Picasso, but that is a topic I have already explored but I did learn that he had done a great deal of religious themed works that he donated to a local museum. The film finishes off with the work of Salvador Dali, again a topic I had already seen in the previous film and finishes off with a look at the Guggenheim museum and how it is possibly a tribute to Picasso. Again, not a very interesting film in my opinion. The art is very disturbing and although I can see the possible appeal to the underlying motivation and messages they are trying to convey, it’s too dark for me.

The last film I watched “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” was much better. It’s a light look at the great painting by French painter Georges Seuret. The film tries to explain the possible meaning of several aspects of the film. The monkey in particular seems to be the biggest mystery. The painting is kept in a Chicago museum and viewers are asked what they like the most and the monkey is the leading answer. The search for meaning within the painting was fun and light hearted a welcome change from the depressing earlier films. I also was amazed that the painting was made with a style Seurat pioneered called Pointillism and that it took him two years to paint it with this painstaking method. If nothing else, I’ve learned this week that I’m not a big fan of Dada or Surrealism or Cubism.

Video Review: African, Asian & Indian Art.

For this weeks video review I tried to pick four videos that covered different cultures. The first video I watched was “Buddhism”. I don’t know much about Buddhism so this was educational. Some of the things I found interesting was the theory of “tanha” which states that people should extinguish all the desires that feed the ego and should be in the world but not of it. The great stupa in Sanchi, India has gateway entrances that portray the Buddha through symbolism and the three tiered design symbolizes the three levels of heaven. I thought the architecture in the monastery in Carmel, NY was beautiful.

The second video I chose was “Hinduism”. I found it interesting that Hinduism as a major religion has no founder, no profit, no institutions and do not seek converts . The stone carvings that were shown are very elaborate and I really liked the small shrines that were carved from single large boulders. But for both the videos on Buddhism and Hinduism, I thought they both were more about the religions themselves and not really focused on the art.

The third video I chose was “African Art”. This video discusses how art in the African culture is a part of daily life and is very important in traditional rituals. Since most art is created from wood and other perishable materials, most of the artworks available are less than 200 years old. African art is conceptual art that comes from the imagination of its creator, which is in contrast with traditional western art which is considered perceptual art, a reflection of the natural world. Art in Africa has great variety due to the many different cultures that exist there. This video was interesting and I felt that it was more centered around the topic of art than the first two videos.

The fourth video I chose was “Chinese Art: Treasures at the National Palace Museum”. This is a boring video. It felt more like a book with its simple focus on the works. Some of the art work was nice, I liked the curio cabinet ant the jade pendant shown in the beginning, but I quickly lost interest in this one.

Drawing my Hands

For this weeks art making exercise I drew my hands. I’m right handed so I drew my left hand with my dominant right hand and drew my right hand with my not-so- dominant left hand. I chose to do the drawings in pencil for no other reason then I have plenty of pencils in the house. Drawing my own hands was not that big of a deal. I have a six year old daughter and for some reason small children love tracing and drawing hands. I have probably drawn my hands and her hands a couple hundred times in the last few years. The one thing that was different was trying to draw with my left hand. At first I naturally would pick the pencil up and start to draw with my right hand. I had to consciously focus and tell myself to use my left hand. The final result is not too bad. Although it was awkward using my left hand I don’t think the final result is that much worse than the drawing I made with my right hand. It did take a little longer, but other than that, no big deal. Just the same, I don’t think I’ll be using my left hand to draw in the future.