Final Project: Artistic Response Visual Analysis

          For my final project, I took a modern war image and recreated it with Joan Miro's style. I used his painting, Personages Attracted by the Form of a Mountain, as style inspiration for my new rendition. The picture that I recreated was an image from the Syrian Civil War. I used an image from the Syrian Civil War because his inspiration for Personages Attracted by the Form of a Mountain came from the Spanish Civil War so I wanted to keep the central theme constant. Although you cannot see it in the image I selected and Joan Miro's painting, war in 2016 is much different than it was in 1936. There is new technology for weapons that make mass destruction easier than ever. The largest part of my painting is an image of a broken down tank. This shows how easy it is to take down a massive piece of machinery in this day and age.
           The focal point of my piece is the tank. From there my eye follows the barrel of the tank, to the frame of the building, down to the rubble then, back around again. I used the rule of thirds when creating the painting: the house remains to the left, the barrel and figure in the middle and the tank to the right. There are four figures on the tank: two of them look like they are playing on the tank and the other two look like they are just watching. I kept the colors the same as Miro's painting in order to clearly make the connection between the two pieces (primary colors, green, white and grey). I made things disproportionate in order show off  his original style as well as to make the more important aspects more noticeable. I also used a little more abstraction with the remains of the bombed house to the left and the rubble below.
          The connotation in this image is slightly chaotic and playful. The feeling of chaos comes from the hectic stokes of blue paint in the sky and the splattered and "messy" grey strokes below. The shapes of the cutout paper are harsh, not clean, which makes me think of rocks or remnants from an explosion. The white cutouts to the left are also messy and are frayed at the ends which again make me think of chaos. I get a playful feeling from the two figures that are swinging from the barrel of the tank. It is as if the kids are playing on the tank. The actual tank makes me nervous and reserved because it makes me think of all the different wars. The pain and struggle of people going through these wars also goes through my mind. The contrasting emotions of chaos, turmoil and playfulness remind me of the saying "its all fun and games until somebody gets hurt". The "fun and games" connects to the figures playing on the tank and the "until somebody gets hurt" connects to one of the figures getting hurt or the place that they are in: a war zone. That also reminded me of when I was younger and I would be playing in an old sand pit (somewhere we weren't supposed to be). The place that I was in was very dangerous but I overlooked this in order to play. This same idea applies to the image: the kids are in the middle of a war zone which is dangerous, so they are overlooking this in order to have a little fun.
          The ideology of this painting is that war is creating a lot of turmoil all over the world. Conflicts between countries and nations are slowly destroying our lives and the lives of our children. War is becoming a norm for the youth all around the world. Since it is a norm, they learn that violence and war is the only answer to things, which is not true. Another thing that is becoming a norm is people not understanding the true reason for war. This goes along with people not being open and accepting of people that are different. Each race, ethnicity or religion thinks that they are superior, so when somebody challenges that, "all hell breaks loose". The figures in the painting are supposed to resemble children. Having children playing on a tank shows that they do not understand how harmful that piece of machinery and war can truly be.

          By using Miro's style on a modern image, it made me realize how he emphasizes ideas that are important to him. It also allowed me to see how he was able to detach emotion from his paintings. The original picture that I picked to recreate is hard to look at because of all the ruins and destruction, but in the recreation it is a lot easier because figures are distorted with semi-abstraction.

Original Syrian War Image

Personages Attracted by the Form of a Mountain

Children Attracted to the Form of a Tank

Fragile Vessels: Julio Fine Art

          Last night, I attended the presentation Fragile Vessels by Cheryl Derricotte and Nate Lewis in the Julio Fine Arts Gallery. There were two types of art present, glass pieces and paper pieces. Despite their different mediums, the stories behind their work is similar: they did not plan out their work, they just went with it. 

          Cheryl talked about how she took a glass blasting class. In this class she created a ship and thought that it looked "ghostly": this is where her inspiration came from. With this idea in mind, she searched "ghost ship" in the thousands of pictures that the British Library had just released and found images of the global slave trade. She etched these images into glass and created her exhibit using multiple images in a row to tell a story. Her work is going to go on display in the Museum of the African Diaspora where she was recognized as a new Emerging Artist. 

          Nate started his story by telling us how he was a nurse in the ICU. As he continued, he said that he started off using the electrocardiograms from his patients as his medium and inspiration. From there he was inspired from the idea of multi cellular living that was present in all of his patients. He took this idea to plain paper and a pen and drew simple designs. He then switched to a knife and made cut outs, lines and scratches. The marks he made with the knife were intimate, just like the relationships that he had with his patients and he wanted that to be clearly represented. As he became more comfortable he moved onto ink cut outs of people. On the cutouts he would make patterns that looked like a real human. In three images next to each other, there is a slow decline in the amount of black present, which represents life slowly slipping away from inside someone. Moving forward Nate said he hopes to add more movement to the figures in his pieces and focus in on the injustice of the lack of health care for African Americans. 

          Hearing both of the artists talk was very intriguing. Hearing their stories and inspirations first hand made the art come alive and made me more connected to the story behind the pieces. Overall I enjoyed both displays and the history behind how they came about. 

Post Modernism Visual Analysis

          For this Post Modernism Project, I combined digital image cut outs, Bristol cut outs, gouache paint and black ink to form my work. Of the gouache paints, I used green, yellow, blue and purple which make up a compound color scheme. I used this color scheme because many of the colors were already seen in the planet located at the center of the piece. The colors would also be a good contrast to the black and grey background that I used. I painted the background piece of Bristol with black ink: two inches from the edge I painted a thick black line and slowly faded the ink towards the center. In the blank two inches, I put streaked purple paint and splattered paint from my color scheme. On top of the background, I glued three pieces of black Bristol cutouts. Each piece has a digital image pasted on it, a man painted green with a question mark on his face, a purple and yellow planet, and a TV with color bars on it. By placing one piece to the left, right and the center, I display the rule of thirds in my composition. In between the three black cutouts, there are smaller white Bristol cutouts with a yellow, green or purple border. Six of the fourteen white shapes have an alien head on them. Splattered paint is also found all over the fourteen white shapes. In the four corners of the background ink, there are words, two of them are crossed out. 

          Mystery is the first connotative meaning that pops into my head when looking at this piece. The colors used are an odd set that are not really seen together anywhere besides space movies. The aliens in a movie are usually always green or purple, and they come from a planet that is grey or black. Placing these brighter colors against the grey background adds even more mystery to the piece because they are not always paired together.  Another emotion that comes up when looking at this piece is confusion. The man is looking and listening towards the other planet and the TV, but why? The white shapes in between the black cut outs, cut up the flow of the image, making your eye jump around. This makes the piece confusing and hard to decipher. The words Foreign and Far Out are written in opposite corners of the background and are crossed out. By crossing these words out, the viewer is confused because to them, aliens are foreign and far out, but the piece of art is telling them otherwise, or is it? Using a TV that does not have an actual image on it adds to both the mystery and confusion of this piece. Everyone knows that when these bars of color come up the channel is not working which makes you confused and wonder why it isn't working. The white shapes in the middle of the piece are not connected which makes me think that these shapes are orbiting around the center planet, like its moons. From this idea, you can also see the other two black pieces of Bristol as planets, making the piece a whole similar to a galaxy or solar system. The general idea of a solar system and space can also be seen as zoning out or daydreaming. 

          Zoning out can be used to describe the ideological meaning of this piece. People in everyday life zone out, but where do they go or what do they think about during this time? The answer is simple: it is a mystery to us. Nobody knows where they go, including the person that zones out. This is one of the few examples in which what we are thinking about is a complete mystery. Another ideological meaning could be that we as humans piece together small bits of information in order to understand a grander concept. Many planets make up a solar system in space, just like how there are many different parts of an idea. If you only understand some parts of the idea, the idea remains a mystery. Overall, people need to understand every piece of an idea in order to fully understand it, unless the person is zoning out which still remains a mystery to everyone (except for the aliens). 

Post Modernism Progess

          Pictured below is my current state of my Post Modernism project. While it does not look like a lot, it took a little while to get it to this point. I painted a Bristol sheet purple, yellow, and blue and painted other pieces of Bristol with black ink. With these three colors, I hope to make a compound color scheme. The black pieces are laid over top of the other piece of Bristol in order to create some contrast. I still have some painting left to do on the background piece, but the smaller pieces are all done. Cutouts from my Photoshop image are going to be glued onto the black pieces of Bristol. The images are going to be in color in order to make them stand out. I am still trying to figure out how to connect the three images so you can see the relationship between them. When this project is all done I hope to have projected a mysterious aura from the piece of art that clearly relates to my quote of choice. 

The Art of Data Visualization

          The general idea of this video was Data Visualization, but it was broken down into individual parts throughout the video. The first quote that caught my attention was, "visualizations are a by product of the truth and goodness of the information." This means that the root to all the images and visualizations in the world are truthful facts and valid information. If the data is bad and not valid, then it is going to be difficult to make an image that people can understand and trust. This plays of another idea that was presented: the history of visualization data is a history of science. Science was used to come up with the data. If there was no data then there couldn't be any visualizations to go along with it. I agree with this statement because you can always make visualizations, but if they are not based off facts or data than the viewer has no content to go with the image. Another major aspect I found interesting was that these visualizations are built in a way that our sub-conscious brain activity can make split decisions off of them. Even though we don't know it, we interpret images in a certain way before we can even form words about them. Having linear patterns in these visualizations makes our decision making easier and faster so we can process more information in a shorter period of time. The quote that I thought was most powerful in the video was, "See to learn not to confirm." What this means is that you should look at data visualizations and learn new things, not confirm things you already know.  Maps, trends and pie charts are just a few examples of data visualization that people use. We do not think of these things as data but all three of them help us interpret a large amount of information with ease. There is so much data in the world that data visualizations help us learn new things in every day life whether we realize it or not.
          Data visualizations are similar to art because there is information behind them that drives the image. In art, it is often an emotion, a story or history. In data visualizations, it is obviously data. Even though art and data visualizations don't look the same on the surface, they are much more alike than you think.

Jameson and Baudrillard Readings

Jameson Reading 

            Reading the first article presented some difficulty for me. I was able to understand the general concepts about how the conversion to postmodernism changed a lot about how that art was set up and what it meant. The example used in the article was images of shoes. The first one was painted by Van Gogh. In his image, there is more detail which presents more emotion, depth and interpretations of the simple frame. Because of the detail you are able to create a background story for the image. Unlike Van Gogh's shoe painting, Warhol created a much simpler image. This image represents the postmodern era. Because Warhol's image is so simple, it takes away the emotion, depth and multiple interpretations of the painting: it is just a snapshot, not an elaborate story like in Van Gogh's painting. I find it interesting how the era you are in effects the way you interpret art. It also makes me wonder why certain eras occur when they do, and what brought about the changes in art to get to that specific era? 

Baudrillard Reading 

            Disneyland was the example used in this reading in order to showcase the ideas of hyper-reality and imagination. The reading talks about how Disneyland is a place where you can let your imagination come alive. Because you are submerged in a world that feels so real, you understand the things going on around you to be your reality. The things outside of your reality (Disneyland) become unimportant and feel like they don't even exist. This idea showcases that reality and the imaginary can be switched. I believe that the take home point of this article is that the basis for most art is the ability to find a balance between our imaginations and our realities. Our imagination is the creative aspect of the art, while reality is the ability for us to translate our imaginations into art for others. Adding a little creativity and imaginations to our reality allows us to stay youthful and experience things as if they are actually in our reality, like Disneyland. 

Subvertisement

Below is the subvertisement I made for a nutella ad. In the original ad there is a list to the right of the jar that says all the things that one jar of nutella can go on. In my subvertisement I added another list of item to the left of the jar: these are the "bad" things in nutella. I also added a question at the bottom which states: What's more important: what's in it, or what you put it on? These changes were made in order to expose the fact that nutella is not as healthy as the company says and just because you put it on something "healthy" doesn't make it good for you.