Artist # 20 Claude Monet

Right now in Art History, we're talking about Monet, so I thought I would do him as on of my artists. I think Monet's paintings are very beautiful. They're something that I would want hanging in my house. The impressionist style is beautiful to me. When I was really looking at the paintings in class I realized how talented he was. He really tried to paint what he saw. He was interested in the way that the eye perceives colors, and images the way a camera lens perceives them. He uses even brush strokes throughout his whole paintings. So it's very uniformed.

I love the colors in this one. They're so vibrant. Another thing about Monet, is that the paintings become this three dimensional piece. The paint is left on the canvas, it's not supposed to be an illusion or hidden. You can see the texture, and the brushstrokes. The detail of his paintings are also amazing. It's kind of ironic because impressionists are leaving impressions of images they see, but he does it in a way where there are still many details. You know exactly what the painting is of in that way.



I think that this painting of lily pads is really pretty too. Again the colors are very strong, because that is one thing that he focused on. His landscape paintings, such as this one evolved from his previous notion of landscapes. Before he painted scenes like a train station, or a shipping dock and called it a landscape. To him, every scene was equal because of how the eye sees it. Later on he shifted and painted landscapes that was the kind that we're used to-nature.

Here is the shipping dock painting:


The last paintings I chose were his grainstacks. He was interested in showing the right color, and light of different times of days and seasons. He painted straight from the scenes and so he would have to work quick to get it just right. Here are two examples of his paintings from different times, but essentially the same composition.

Napkins

Our group got together last Thursday to talk about where we're going with it and what we need to do. At that time there wasn't really anything we could do besides try to come up with different drinks to use for the display. The original three girls who came up with the idea want to use 40 napkins and to try to use as many different drinks as possible. At first I was kind of annoyed that I joined this group because if we didn't have enough they said we would just split up the drinks and buy them to use. I really don't like having to buy stuff for this class and I already had to for the other projects. I kind of wished I joined a group that wouldn't cost any money. Especially when I know it's just going to get thrown away afterwards.

This is a diagram of our instillation:


The plan was to have maybe red velvet fabric or something hanging up with the napkins pinned to that. The look we're going for is formal museum. I didn't think that red velvet really says formal museum. We went to the fabric store and picked out a black satin instead. I think that will look good with the napkins on top. I think it will tie everything together nicely instead of red. Yesterday after class we all went out buying the supplies. We purchased our fabric, found the right size of napkins, and pins. Now all we have to do is make the stains of the drinks on the napkins, make the labels and pin everything up. I think it will go pretty smoothly. Keeping the fabric up might be a little tricky, but i'm sure we can handle it.

Proposals

So, I couldn't really come up with a good way to portray my idea for this last assignment. When we had to tell our ideas to the class, I didn't really know what to say, but I did say something. Everyone seemed like they knew what they wanted to do and had groups already established. After all the ideas were announced, Veiko asked if I wanted to work with him. I was a little relieved that I wouldn't be working on my own and presenting my proposal alone.

He had an idea to do something with toys, more specifically dolls. He wanted to cut them in half and have them sitting in jars. (Like they're being preserved). I was a little confused and we were sure how we would make it work, so we tried to think of other things we could cut in half. (We like that idea). We thought of using old shoes. At first the idea was to portray migration and people who migrated to the U.S. We would mount the shoes, cut in half, on the wall and have a short version of their story. We wanted to use all different kinds of shoes though, so we realized it couldn't be base on migration. We decided to try and get all different shoes, baby shoes, high heels, sneakers, etc. donated and display them. We would have a short story of a significant event or something that happened in those shoes. It would be like telling this person's life story with their shoe. We thought that cutting them in half was a really interesting way to look at the shoe and let you see inside of it. You don't normally, or ever, see a shoe cut in half. Veiko was working in a workshop where there was a blade that he could cut the shoes easily in half, so that wouldn't be a problem.

The day we had to present our proposals came, and I was a little nervous after hearing other student's ideas. At the same time I heard some ideas that I didn't like at all, or didn't see the point that got chosen for the project. Anyways, Veiko made some really great visuals of the shoes to show while we explained our idea. I honestly wasn't really passionate about our proposal and wasn't too surprised when ours wasn't chosen. I joined up with the group doing the liquid stains on the napkins. I wanted to do a few others too, but people joined on pretty fast.

Artist # 19 Christian Boltanski

The first time I looked at Christian Boltanski's work I immediately knew it was something to do with the holocaust. Before I actually saw this picture, I just saw a very small version of it, it looked kind of freaky, but then I opened it up and saw that it was kids from the holocaust and it became something sad.
It looks like hospital cords connecting the children together and strung around to represent the life of them. To me it shows that these kids were once living, but now they're just a picture on the wall. The cords are placed all around each picture/head of the children and then are connected to each other below.


This looks like it's representing all the clothes from the Jews before entering into the concentration camps. (I haven't read the information about Boltanski's work yet). I've been to the Holocaust Museum in New York (I think) and they have heaps of shoes from the victims in the camps. This reminds me of that. The only thing is that these clothes don't look very old, so i'm assuming they're not the real clothes from back then.


Here, it almost looks like a combination of the first piece with the second piece. There are folded clothes placed beneath the photos. Something that's different here is that there are lamps placed over each photo that's illuminating a little circle on each face. The cords come down into the clothes. I'm not sure what I get out of the lights.

The last piece is different from the rest. I wasn't really sure about this one, but it looks like it's supposed to be scary.
There's some kind of wire contraption with skeletons hanging off, like they were people who were hung. There are also heads with weird long noses, maybe representing liars? I see mean looking faces and scared looking faces also. The wire contraption and everything is in the center of a room, small and is illuminated as shadows on the walls of the room.

I read that Christian Boltanski's work is obsessed with death. That didn't surprise me. He works with social, economic problems as well. I feel like my assumptions about this artist were close to what he is about. His work seems to be what it is, death.

Artist # 18 Albrecht Durer

I've learned about Albrecht Durer in art history. He's known for his prints. He's very talented and skilled when working with prints, but also with watercolor. His Great Turf is done in watercolor. It's so realistic that botanists could go in and know what each plant is. Now saying that, doesn't sound like such a great thing, but I think someone is talented if they can render nature in that way.

In class we learned that Durer believed, whoever could successfully draw nature had it. He thought that if you could do that, you were a talented artist. Nature must be pretty hard to draw in a realistic way if he made a statement like that.

His prints are so detailed. He also adds in nature and landscape in with them as well. In his Knight, Death and the Devil He is showing this knight strolling through untouched and not scared of the devil because he's wearing the full armor of God, (from the bible).
I was looking at this print closely and the detail really is amazing. He draws in the details of the tree bark and the land all around. You can see off in the mountains the tiny village, but the detail in the land is what stands out to me. Making something like this, with this much detail looks like it would take forever. I'm not sure how long it took Durer, but i'm sure it wasn't easy.

He created a print of Adam and Eve that's very different from other pictures of Adam and Eve. He put them in the forest looking background. Normally Adam and Eve are standing by the one tree, but here he placed them in the midst of many trees.
Again the detail here is crazy. The bark of the trees, the individual leaves and curls of hair. It's said that Durer wanted to create the perfect human bodies as far as proportions for Adam and Eve. That's because Adam and Eve were the first humans created, so it's only logical. When I look at this, I don't think that those are the perfect proportions. Eve looks very weird. It's kind of like a woman/manly body with a tiny manly looking face.

To finish off, here is one last example of Albrecht Durer's work:

Museum Project

I've been trying to think of ideas for our last project, and have one so far, but it's not complete yet.

I was really confused when we were first given this project. I didn't understand if the whole class was working on one project together or if we're all doing our own displays or what. It wasn't until class on Thursday that I, and I think everyone else, really understood what we were doing.

I like that we can collaborate with other students. I think that will help a lot because it was really overwhelming when we first received the assignment. It would be a lot of work to do something on your own. It's also kind of a bummer for those whose proposals aren't chosen, because then you might get stuck working on a project that you don't like or care about.

I need to have my idea more thought out by Tuesday, but right now i'm thinking about doing something with women. I want to do something that shows the world view on women. How we are perceived, what guys think about girls/women, the images that we see of women and what young girls strive to be. I'm not sure of the exact things I want yet, so it's still very broad. I also don't know exactly how I would set this up. I could use quotes, interviews, pictures from magazines, the internet, etc. I was also thinking about eating disorders because that can tie in with female imagery and I know someone close to me who has an eating disorder and that the ratio is about 1 in 3 girls will struggle with an eating disorder. It's so sad and I think much of it comes from the images that we see and the expectations woman feel they need to live up to. I was also thinking about doing more of a historical take on it. Kind of like the changes that woman have had on history, famous women, and how they looked, to show that many of the woman who made the big changes in our world were not these perfect looking people.

I'll keep thinking and developing my idea for class on Tuesday. Honestly I don't think anyone would really want to go with this idea because it is just about women and there are many males in the class who probably wouldn't want to go with this idea. Also everyone else has their own ideas too, so we'll see!

Artist # 17 Ann Hamilton

Ann Hamilton seems to work with multiples. In many of her works I see that she used multiples of the object. In her piece, Indigo Blue she used blue cotton clothing. It makes sense because in jeans there is a wash named Indigo. I'm guessing it's the same, but maybe not.

I couldn't find the name or really any information on this:


Ann Hamilton is known for her installations, so i'm guessing that this is some kind of instillation that you can walk through. (Kind of obvious with a picture of a person walking through it). It looks like the windows have a pink film over them to give a pink glow throughout the room. This piece is in a large long, rectangular shaped room with these windows lining the whole thing. I'm not really sure what her intention of it was, but I like that it's interactive with the viewers.



This photograph is apart of her "untitled (body object series)" She has a series of pictures of herself interacting with everyday objects. She attaches the objects to some part of her body and photographs it. It then looks like she has grown this object from her body, or that the object has grown a body.



This last image is titled The image is Still.
It's suspended charcoal hung by thread with a video image to go with it. Other than that little bit of information I couldn't find anything else on this. I'm trying to figure out why it's titled that, but i'm not getting anything. Maybe it all ties together with the video. Again she used multiples of charcoal here. It catches my eye because of that. I think I would need to see Ann Hamilton's work in person to really understand it and enjoy it.