2D Photo Hybrids

2D Representational Form, Hybrid Stencil



The Environment turns into The Stencil Factory

 

Stencil Artifact

 


Stencil Process



T-Shirt Stencil

Cardboard Stencils



3D Final Character Modeling

Ta Da!



Whoopi the Water Bottle



3D Character Modeling - Sorcerer's Apprentice Progress

I am using my water bottle for my character.  Not sure how it will turn out yet, as I have few preconceived ideas.  The top of the bottle looked like it had ears and that is why I chose this model.  I am listening as I go to see where I need to add something that will make an interesting character.  I thought the wires in the top might be arms in the beginning, but I liked them so much as they were that I added more.  I have some names in mind, both male and female, but don't know the gender yet.

2D Representational Form Part 2, Step 3

Gesture

Silhouette



High Contrast

Geometric



Stencil




Stencils



3D December 3, 2010 Lecture and Reading

Abstract Expressionism - 1950s - 1980s.  WWII changed everything, America became superpower and the center of the art world moved from Paris to New York.  Menil's began collecting contemporary art in Paris and later made shift to New York.   The most significant change was the enormity of scale and museums had to accommodate this change.  Before AE, art was about thinking, now about being.

• Jackson Pollock - # 8, 1948. Played to his celebrity, called "The Dripper" by Life Magazine.  The epitome of what is hard to understand about American modern art painting.  Very improvisational, happen stance in technique.  The most significant aspect of Pollock's painting was the scale.  Hans Hoffman asked Pollock if he was painting nature.  He replied he was nature.
• Franz Kline - Mahoney, 1956. Not as far out as Pollock.  It took forty years for his art to get to a  postage stamp.
• Willem De Kooning - Women I, 1950s. Unflattering view of women.  More about the way it was painted not what it is a picture of.
• Joan Mitchell - 1960. Second generation AE but denied being action painter.  Women had to find a new way of expressing movement to be taken seriously.  Pollock's style was very macho and was off limits to women.  There was a very narrow camp, very doctrinaire, short period, dogmatic.

Reaction to AE

• Cy Wombly - What came after AE was the reaction to it.  Also painted enormous canvases (Pollock influence) but made small wimpy drawings.   A juvenile reaction to AE.  Turned drawing into painting, which began with Pollock.  Wombly totally opposite Pollock.
• Brice Marden - Cold Mountain 6, 1981.  Painted with sticks.  The thought in the art world at this time was that painting was dead.  Martin proved wrong.  In the 80s rules were very stringent, now more tolerant.  His paintings proved artists can do anything, even change styles during career.  This was unlike Pollock, who never experimented with anything but drips.  Martin filled space.

Color Field Painting

• Helen Frankenthaler - 1952.  New York meant large scale, this was the biggest change. Artists were looking for other ways to drip paint.  More feminine in appearance than Pollock.
• Mark Rothko -  Untitled, 1957.  His paintings are like doors and windows.  More a description of what the weather is like than seeing landscapes or objects.  Painted the black paintings for the Rothko Chapel at the Menil Museum.
• Louis Morris -  Alpha Phi, 1960. Poured veils of color using acrylic resin on raw canvases.  

After AE - Tom Wolfe's book, The Painted Word, 1974.  Wrote about the art world humorously.  What camp are you in?

Hard Edge, Op, Pop, and all the isms - all happened within a few blocks in Manhattan.  There was competition to make money and achieve fame.

• Frank Stella - Black Stripes, 19  .  Large scale because in New York.  He was doing everything wrong.  Not about being,  life or intense emotions.  What you see is what you get and nothing more.
• Ellsworth Kelly, 1963.  Flat, hard edge color field. 
• Bridget Riley - 1960s Op art.  Nothing to know about this, don't need anything outside of what it looks like, straight forward.  Big Blue, 1981.  Still making art, hasn't changed style. Artists can outlive Art History.  She was written about in the 60s but not written about any more, outlived movement.
• Mary Hillman - Sunday Morning, 1987.  Small scale
• John Lasker - 1980s. Very textured painting, like frosting and candy colored.

Pop - The most significant artists are Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp

• Richard Hamilton - What Makes ... So Appealing? 1956.  A social satire on commercial culture.
• Andy Warhol - Background in fashion.  Loved fame and money, played to his celebrity.  Made paintings about commercialism, Soup Cans and Brillo Pads.  He brought content back to art, no longer existential.  He blatantly painted portraits of famous people to make money.  His content was about everyday objects.  Took expectations of art and created art where nothing happens.  He was a major influence of this movement.
• Jasper Johns - Painted numbers
• Robert Rauschenberg - JFK silkscreen
• Roy Lichenstein - Appropriated comic strips, very large scale
• James Rosenquist - Billboard style paintings
• Robert Indiana - LOVE logo
• General Idea - retake on Indiana logo, AIDS

Neo Pop

• Ed Ruscha - Backside of Hollywood, 1977.  Word paintings
• Keith Haring - Chalk style paintings, filled missing street poster spaces with paintings and graffiti. Early 80s.

The Painted Word, Tom Wolfe, 1975

This is very funny.  Wolfe is making fun of critiques, namely  Harold Rosenberg, Clement Greenberg, and Leo Steinberg and modern art theory.  I love his take on Hilton Kramer's statement, "... to lack a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial...." His response, "Not 'seeing is believing,' you ninny, but 'believing is seeing,'..." is making fun of how art needs to be put in a literary box, which is very limiting, to have meaning or be understood.  Even artists who enjoy art theory may do so because it defines their artistic vision of what is modern.  So there needs to be a theory first or we cannot interpret art appropriately.

Wolfe also goes after the mediocrity of art and the large amounts of money these works demand.  He addresses Photo-Realism specifically and the way it is produced by projecting a photo onto a canvas and painting it in.  Is this really art?  He says what the Photo-Realists have accomplished "... is to drive orthodox critics bananas."  He also makes fun of Kramer for dissing the Metropolitan for putting large print historical notes by their exhibit "The Impressionist Epoch".  Kramer seems to have forgotten that art has no meaning without a persuasive theory.  Wolfe jokes that future artists will have to divulge themselves of everything that does not fit into art theory.  What happened to the idea of art for the sake of art?

3D Reading: Susan Sontag On Photography

Photography:  A new visual code

• Image as object that is easy to collect
• A way of experiencing and owning a piece of the world
• Appropriation of the thing photographed, a position of power
• The book has been the most appropriate way to preserve and maintain the essential qualities of photographs

Photographs as evidence

• To involve in an accusation of a crime
• To provide proof of a crime
• Photography professes to record reality accurately, however, it is still a subjective interpretation
• The act of photographing an image is an act of aggression
• Industrialization provides realistic uses for photography and the beginning of photography as art

The Practice of Photography

• For the most part, photography is not practiced as an art form
• Social uses such as weddings, graduations, birthdays, etc. creating a family history
• Documentation of experiences, travel and trophies such as boats, cars, etc.
• A comforting act when in unfamiliar surroundings
• Taking pictures offers a "friendly imitation" of work for workaholic cultures
• Photography becomes a voyeuristic pleasure
• The photographer is complicit with the object/event photographed, no intervention
• Society is bombarded with images

Is Photography Inherently Perverse?

• Camera is not a sexual tool
• The act of photographing a subject creates distance
• Can exploit, intrude, distort, etc.
• Fantasy of camera as a phallus, a fantasy machine
• The camera as a weapon,  use language such as shoot, aim, load
• Predatory act of taking a picture steals knowledge of a person 
• In East Africa, photographic safari replacing gun safari, need to protect nature instead of protected from nature
• Documentation of time
• Photographs as a fetish, magical claim to another reality as in photos of children, lovers on desk at work or in wallet

Photographing Morality

• As sexual aids, photographs are more immediate and abstract
• As a tool to drive morality, must be linked to a specific historical event
• If too general not effective in changing public opinion, must be contextual
• Can only reinforce the public's moral attitudes, build upon fledgling ones
• More memorable than film, slice of time
• Photographs effective when an event has been politically activated by name and character
• Effectiveness of shock value is contingent upon how common place the images have become
• Photos do not keep emotional charge as time passes, all photos will eventually become art

Industrialization of Photography

• Images have become ingrained into the functioning of society,  ex. family as symbolic objects and police as information
• Photographs redefine realistic view of the world as techniques and information
• Images can convey a fictional reality such as the news
• Photographs reinforce the feeling of time being divided into unrelated units, denies interconnectedness
• Photographic meaning is subjective, to be objective, must be accompanied by narration
• Photographs are a semblance of knowledge and wisdom
• "... it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution."