Artist # 27 Pablo Picasso

In grade school Pablo Picasso is one of the artists that I remember learning about. We saw some of his paintings and then had to create our own "Picasso" piece. In middle school we had to recreate this drawing by Picasso as well:


So from a small age i've been introduced to Picasso's work, but never had really learned about him. I know now that his work went from analytic cubism to synthetic cubism. I've also heard of cubism, but didn't really know what it was. Analytic cubism is where the painting looks as if the objects or the subject matter is seen from many viewpoints. In this next painting it causes the viewer to go back and forth in the space.



In some places it looks like the room has depth, but then the body casts a shadow on the wall and that shows you that it's a very shallow room. On the right there's a curtain being pulled back to make you think that it's opening up into a deeper space, but then there's a wall right behind and so you're stuck in the same space as you're already in.

Picasso's work is breaking the figures down. The body in the above painting is treated as plains. That's why it looks so weird and unrealistic. I don't really like his paintings. Although it was a shift in art history, they're just too odd and aren't pleasing to my eye. Here are a few more paintings by Picasso:

Artist # 26 Azul De Corso

Azul De Corso is a freelance artist, graphic designer and illustrator. I love his work. I first saw this peacock and was hooked.



I love the colors. I also like how his pictures are made up of small designs and shapes. It makes it really beautiful. It's also very detailed. His work is very crisp and clean. He's done projects for many different big names such as MTV, VH1, WIRED Magazine, etc. Azul De Corso is definitely someone I can look up to as a graphic designer. (I found all of this from this website).





His work comes off as looking simple, but yet so complicated when you really look closely. He takes the basic things found in each animal, or whatever it is he's duplicating and then adds in all the detail. For example, to make the iguana to look like an iguana, he has the shapes for the scales running along the back, the, the tongue, the little gill or whatever that is, etc. Then by the shapes he uses and the direction the shapes are in he can fill in the area to make the shape of the iguana. He doesn't just use random colors either. It looks like he uses just every color and makes it colorful, but depending on the picture, the colors matter. The octopus is using a variety of browns while the iguana is using greens, blues and pinks.

I'm really glad I found this artist because I love looking at his work. I think he's very talented and it shows in the companies that hire him.

Artist # 25 Gigih Budi Abadi

I don't know why I didn't think of doing it before, but I thought I should look at some graphic design artists since that's what i'm going to school for. I came across Gigih Budi Abadi from a search on Google. His business name is Pixecute. I first saw his design of the Coca-Cola ad. This one here:



Many different artists came up with their own ad, but this was one I was drawn to. I like the colors and the overall look to it. It makes Coca-Cola look good and fun to drink, which is the point. After searching around a bit I came to his artist portfolioand saw that he has done other Coke ads as well. I like that first one the best, but here are some more that he designed:





Pixecute seems really talented in graphic design. I look through his portfolio and really liked his style. He would have many different ideas for the same product and they're all detailed and thought out. It's hard to come up with so many different looks for the same product. Hopefully with practice I'll get there.




These two pictures were just some that he was playing around with. He said they're not professional pictures, just for him to play with. I think they're really good and could definitely be professional! (Although, I haven't actually taken any graphic design courses yet).

Artist # 24 John Feodorov

In class we watched a film on John Feodorov. He comes from a Navajo background and so his work has to do with that. He said he's not trying to make fun of spirituality, but then he said that he is. He feels it's necessary. In the film he also said that he tries to create spiritual altars. He uses animals a lot in his work. He does a lot of contemporary usages of spirituality. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but he uses navajo traditions and altars them to put them into society, into the workplace.

In the film, he did a performance based art piece where employees in a company who were down could recieve this spiritual experience and then feel better and go back to work. So he not only makes things with his hands, he does some performance art as well. He makes sculptures and paints also.

He made Totum Teddies:



Animal Spirit Channeling Device for the Contemporary Shaman:



Office Myth:



and Forest at Night:

Artist # 23 Pepon Osorio

I was introduced to Pepon Osorio by the film we watched in class. In the film it showed him working on a few different rooms. He said he needs to provide a space that's overpowering and that's exactly what his rooms are. He finds artifacts and borrows artifacts from others to tell their story, or a story. He decorates and fills rooms with these artifacts and makes them overwhelming when viewing them.





Osorio usually mixes multimedia in with his pieces. He had an experience as a young boy in the barber shop and so he based one of his rooms on that. I think if I remember right he cried and had a terrible time, but the whole time he was being told not to cry. So within his "barber shop" room there are televisions showing a person crying.

In another piece that was in a museum, he had an empty cell. There was the bed, and a few things. There was a big screen next to the cell displaying just a boy, as if in an interview, telling his dad how he felt about him being in jail. It seemed like a very intimate issue and it was being projected next to the cell. I think there was also a room, of a home next to it. In fact, the picture above of the bedroom is the son's bedroom. It's very detailed and packed full of things, just like a boys bedroom might be. On the wall is a projection of him talking. (I was confused how everything was laid out from the film).

Osorio works with sculpture too. I thought I would show this because it looks different than everything else i've seen from him. It's titled My Beating Heart. It's a sculpture covered in paper, but it's also a multimedia piece.-That's the part that's similar to the others.



Osorio recorded the sound of his heart beating and it projects out of the heart. It's like he's conveying his actual heart for art. Love is representative of the heart, and so he could be saying that, how much he loves art. It could be something completely different than that, but it's the first thing I think of when I see it.

Artist # 22 Vincent Van Gogh

Along with Monet's impressionist style, I thought I would go ahead and do Van Gogh as well. I learned that Van Gogh wanted to become a priest, so he went into seminary. He ended up flunking out and then moving to Belgium to teach the scriptures. He wanted to be as the Belgium people and live poorly, so he lived in a small shack. When the church found out about that, they excommunicated him. I thought that was pretty harsh! After that he becomes very poor and barely gets by, making paintings practically for free.

He made paintings of the Dutch land and of poor workers. The purpose of the paintings was to say that these people are dignified. They live honest and dignified lives. It's kind of ironic that he went to seminary and taught scriptures because in his paintings, he's not really giving any reference or credit to God. He's saying that the people have what they have because of how hard they work. They get where they are by themselves, not by God.

Van Gogh's most famous painting, and possibly one of the most famous paintings of all time, is his Starry Night.



Each piece of the painting is very distinguished. You can tell the stars from the sky, the fields from the houses, etc. It seems pretty obvious that in a painting you should be able to distinguish those things, but when it's an impressionist painting out of lines, it could be a little more difficult. Some other paintings by Van Gogh are:

Artist # 21 Maurizio Savini

I came across this artist and thought that he was interesting. He uses pink chewing gum and fiberglass. His work is really good considering what he's using to sculpt with. It would be very difficult. Here's a quote by Mario Codognato found from this blog.

"The sensual act of chewing, the voluptuous warmth of rebelling saliva, the artificial and secretly aseptic fragrance which spreads from the mouth as a promise and missed kiss. The synthetic fleshliness of the pink color, the obsessive square shape of the product unwrapped and ready to be shred to pieces by the power of the tongue, all compete in crashing on the senses. Applying all this to the power and energy of the Sculpture and its history causes a short circuit having the capacity of turning the ludic into stately and vice versa. The strict minimalism of parallelepiped is subverted by the uniform coating with many bars of chewing-gum completely cover it, rendering chewable to desire, soft and provoking to forbidden touch, what was abstract and distant."



I read that he manipulates the gum when it's warm. He said that the most important process of his work is fixing the sculptures with formaldehyde and antibiotic.

Savini is still relatively young and his work has been displayed all over the world, selling for a lot of money. I think that his sculptures are interesting and different, but I don't necessarily like them. I wouldn't buy one or want one. I don't like that the whole thing is pink, and knowing that it's gum. It makes it seem like it would fall apart, or not be sturdy, characteristics I like to think of sculptures having. I'm not sure about the subject matter he chose for his sculptures either. He has done humans, in odd positions, and animals. I couldn't find an explanation of that, but there must be one because the positions he puts his people in is different and looks like it means something.