2nd Art Event- Fore-edge Painting

On Thursday in the Library there was an exhibit for fore-edge painting. When I showed up to the library for this art event, I honestly had no idea what I was walking into because I did know what this art event was for. However, when I walked in I was really surprised and blown away by these works of art. I had never heard of fore-edge painting before and I thought it was a really cool type of art and a really cool idea. 

It was a really idea idea to depict and picture on the side of the book and I can only imagine how long and how difficult it would be to do this type of work. It's so tiny but it is so detailed and intricate. Also, the work that is on the front and the back of the book works well with the picture that is on the pages. The colors and the design coincides with what is on the pages. 

This type of art kind of reminds me of the little books I would make when I was little where you flip through the pages and something inside moves as you flip through.  I feel like the books have so much meaning and are so old and this art on top of it just helps give it even more meaning. Below are some of my favorite pieces from the exhibit (sorry my phone was cracked and the picture quality is not that good). 

Joyce Yu-Jean Talk

The talk with Joyce Yu-Jean was really interesting. It was nice to have a more intimate discussion with not a lot of people. Joyce talked about the various things that make her more creative. One of the things that she said that struck me was the input and output. How she needs to consume things in order to become more creative and to make her artwork. Obviously when we make art our ideas and creativity usually come from the things that we have read or seen in the past and it helps us to come up with our own ideas. She talked about how she does that before she starts a project and she reads more and observes things more for the purpose of creating something. I don't think a lot of people look at reading something or just observing others or things in our surroundings for the purpose of eventually creating something out of it.

I also think that the idea of her art is really interesting and something different, or at least something that I have not really seen before. I think the projections that she creates even sometimes using old art is a very interesting take on art. It's not your typical painting or sculpture or drawing. I think it could really help grasp the attention of our generation because it incorporates technology and things that we can relate to. Now I feel as though many people like to look at things through a digital medium and this is a way for people to do that.

After listening to her talk for a little bit, it made me want to go to art museums more and find more of an appreciation of art. It also made me want to take some time when I can and just observe the things around me more and take everything in. I think sometimes we don't take a second to appreciate the things that are around us and especially with our phones we are constantly interested in things on our phones instead of what is going on around us.

Escaping Flatland

This article honestly confused me and I felt that it jumped around a lot. I think one main point that the article was trying to convey is that two-dimension takes away from 3-D and what things actually are or look like. Most pieces of art are put onto a two-dimensional space. The things that are put into the piece of art are usually 3-D things. For example, if someone paints a picture of the Eiffel Tower, that is a 3-D object that someone is placing onto a 2-D space. It's not the same as the real thing and actually looking at the real thing. In a way it takes away from the meaning and from the true beauty of something by shrinking it, adding colors and placing on a different medium.




I liked the example of the railroad in this piece and the part when the author states, "in flatland, after all, every opportunity to spread additional information over an already-available dimension must be cherished." On a piece of paper or in a screen there is only a limited amount of space that information can fit onto. After awhile if there is too much information on a piece of paper or on a screen then it gets too confusing and too much to look at. The railroad map in the piece looks extremely confusing. There is so much information and so many things overlapping each other that it becomes all bundled together and just becomes a mess.

Postmoderism Visual Analysis

The color scheme of my piece is triadic because I use blue, red and a gold (yellowish) color. These colors form a triangle on the color wheel. I also used the sparkles to add some texture to the piece. It also adds a contrast to the other side of the piece that has more of a definite shape. There is a rectangle on one side and then the rainbow piece in the middle helps split it up. On the other side are different types of shapes. Then I added ink over top of all of this. I added splattered the black ink over top of one side of the piece. This gives it a more rustic feel for the work. It also makes it a little more modern and makes the piece more postmodern because it becomes more confusing.


The quote that I used for my piece is "You are born modern, you do not become so." The first thing that came to me were images of different celebrities. Some that were modern celebrities and others that are older but have made an impact on us as a society. They are the ideal "beautiful modern" people. The connotative meaning of this piece is that it makes you feel a little confused and that there are two sides to everything. The ideological meaning of this piece is that maybe being a celebrity isn't all sparkling and shiny as it seems. The black spots over the gold piece makes it tone the gold down a little bit and adds some confusion over top of the piece. There are two sides to being a celebrity. One side is the bright side and the good things that come out of it. The other side is that part of the glitz and the glamour but that it is not all that it seems to be, and sometimes can affect a person in a way that others don't realize. We see the celebrities most of the time happy and looking their best, when in reality that is not always the case.

Postmodernism

One of my favorite lines in the Postmodernism Intro, is "all the world's cultures, rituals, races, databanks, myths and musical motifs are intermixing like a smorgasbord in an earthquake." This line really helps you picture all of these things coming together and creating this weird and crazy world. A question I had from this article is: Is art, in all its different forms, the reason for this phenomenon? Or did art just conform with this idea of Postmodernism?

In the next article about American and Disneyland, I found it really interesting how Baudrillard compared America to Disneyland. Then at the end, said that LA was basically Disneyland. That LA is made up of all of these fake realities, its basically just filled with movie scripts and movie clips and none of it is actually reality, just like Disneyland.

Color Podcast

"What is color?"

Something that I have thought about a lot. I remember in Chemistry class in High School my teacher tried to explain to us how we basically see colors, and how colors on shirts are actually missing the color of the shirt but we see that color. Color is something that is so confusing and I still do not understand what our teacher was trying to tell us. The point it, most people just see colors and don't actually think about where the colors come from or how we actually see color. It's weird to think that hundreds of years ago no one understood this concept of color and where it came from.

The story about the monkeys was very interesting and just shows how complex and compelling colors actually are. They were able to wrap the red color gene into a virus and put in into the monkeys. It's weird to me that we actually have certain genes in that allow us to see color. To think that there are a lot of people that actually cannot see certain colors is very weird to think about. Also, the fact that people are not allowed to get this to fix their color blindness confuses me. If it could help people and they did not find a lot of problems with it then I don't know why humans are not allowed to get it.

This podcast of color reminds me of the argument over whether or not that dress is white and gold or blue and black. 

I see this dress as gold and white and I don't get how people can see it differently. It's crazy that we all see different shades of colors on things. When this started I would always try and see it as the colors of blue and black and never could but I knew people that could see those colors and didn't see gold and white. Colors have always amazed me and how many different colors we can see or the different colors that we can see.

Lastly, thinking about the fact that some women have that fourth cone that could make you see even more colors. However, some women can't use their fourth cone. It makes you wonder if you possibly know one of these women? Or what do these colors look like to them?

Color

In the first picture that I took, the white in the back looks a little yellow. The white object in the front looks much brighter but also has a little bit of a blue tint to it. When looking at these two things separately they look white. However, when you put them together you can see that even white has different variations. When these two objects are put together they no longer both look white. They have a tint of white along with tints of other colors.

In this picture I moved the objects to be in a different type of lighting. The object in the back now has a little bit of a pink/red tint to it. It looks darker than in the first picture. The object in the front has shadows on it now which cause it to look darker but it also has a little bit of a grey tint to it. Now that these objects are in different lights they show even different colors. While they are still considered white when they are alone and show white in these pictures, you can see that other colors appear in each object.

Subvertisement Project

Original 

Subvertisement

BMA Pieces

#1
My favorite piece from the BMA was Dancer at Pigalle's by Gino Severini. 

The composition of this piece was interesting. There were lines all throughout the painting pointing you to the dancer that is in the middle. There are a lot of organic shapes that are used in this piece, along with a lot of texture. It can't be seen in this photo, but there are thing that are actually raised off the page slightly. To me, this looked like a moving dancer. I felt like it was probably to an upbeat song but also elegant. It seemed like it was in the middle of the dance and while the dancer was in motion. I thought that the bottom part of the painting was the audience. Its darker than the rest of the painting which could represent all of the people that are sitting in the crowd and how it just looks like a dark blob. There also looks like there might be some people that are standing because of how it kind of goes up and down and not just a line that is straight across at the bottom of the page. I also think this is in the middle of the dance because there are light yellow/white lines that are coming down at the top of the page into the middle that looks like spot lights on the dancer. 

#2

My second favorite was Large Fish with a Cliff by Henri Matisse

This painting uses dots in order to give things in the painting texture. It also uses dull colors to set the tone for the picture. This seemed like this was at sunset possibly on a small private beach. It doesn't look like it is a big beach and I cant picture it being much more beach behind us where we can't see. When you're look at this picture you almost feel like you are standing on this beach because of the way the dead fish are laid. They are in a position where it almost looks like you are looking down on them or standing right next to them. I almost imagine this beach being in California. The colors and the dead fish kind of make it seem like there is not something happy going on in this picture. Maybe the people in the picture are planning on cooking and eating those fish and that is why they are laid out on something. Or maybe they just got washed up to land. 

#3

My third favorite painting was View of St Lazare Railway Station, Paris by Norbert Goeneutte 

This painting looks like a photograph when you first look at it in a way. There are a lot of lines that seem to pointing to one building in the middle of the painting however, they are not straight lines, it is the smoke lines from the trains. This picture seems like it is early in the morning as the sun is rising and everyone is going to work. It feels like it is during a depressing time, I imagine the Great Depression for some reason when I am looking at this photo. Also, the smoke from the trains and the trains in the stop make it seem like everyone is off to work. Putting yourself in this painting, it feels like you are at a window looking out into the town. 

John Berger - Ways of Seeing

In order for us to describe something or explain something we first imagine it. From this imagination is where we find the words to depict this image. From there it is up to the person that is listening to imagine what is being described in their own head. It is very likely that whatever the person describing this thing is thinking of is completely different than what the person listening is thinking of. The images that are created in our heads come from things that we have seen or believe in.

Invention of camera allowed us to capture these images and created this notion of time. In order for a picture to be taken, that person had to be in a certain place at a certain time. Photos weren't something that people imagined like a painting or drawing. A photo puts the viewer directly in that time and place when it is being looked at. Each photo is taken from a different perspective. When someone is looking at a photo that are in that perspective, there is nothing else to look at or understand.

The camera also allowed paintings to be seen millions of times. Paintings used to be only seen once, but now could be see across the globe. Now a painting had a million different meanings. Each person looking at a painting had there own reasons for the purpose of the painting and idea or images behind it. When before the camera, a painting was in one place and not everyone got a chance to look at it.

For example, this painting. Each person looking at this painting could have a different perspective, a different reasoning for the painting and different ideas of who these people are. 

Visibility

The idea of Visibility is something that we all understand. While reading anything we are constantly visualizing things as we read to help better understand the story. Visualizations and pictures help to make a story more clear or more understanding. It is how we connect to something by thinking of our own ideas of something. We all think of things in different ways and it is because we visual different things when thinking of something. 

Visualizations have been helping us learn things and imagine things for a long time. Mentioned in the chapter is religious images. We all have an image of what Jesus and God both look like. We have an image of many of the bible stories in our heads. That is what we were taught when we were younger, we were shown pictures to visual what scenes in the bible might have looked like. Another example is Unicorns. We all have an image in our head what a Unicorn or any fake object is even though we haven't actually seen it. 

This idea of having visualizations when reading something or simply thinking about something could be a form of art. In order for art to be made it first must be thought of. Art starts with an idea and a visualization of something. If visualizations are a form of art than it could be argued that art is everything. Since when something is invented it first much be thought of. Someone had to have an idea and visual picture when creating something. This creation could considered art. 

The Whole Ball of Wax by Jerry Saltz

First, I do not agree with the fact that art cannot change the world. Maybe art can't directly change the world, but individuals can be inspired to change the world. When something happens often times someone turns that thing into art. Through that piece of art, most people have some type of reaction to that event. A piece of art can bring out emotions to something that has happened. This is in turn is going to get some people to react and try to help out with this event. A lot of ways we get to see events happening are through photographs. These photographs are a piece of art, and this helps people to see what is actually happening and makes it feel as if one is right there.

The Time magazine cover that was shown in class is a good example of this. There is a man that is running towards the camera in that picture. That picture helps to depict that mans emotions during that moment. This will bring out others emotions when looking at the picture. You can almost sense the fear of the people during this event just by that picture. It helps to visualize the situation and to see what is actually happening to fully understand.

This is how art is used as a way to see the world. With art, we can see many variations of the way others live or their culture. It broadens our horizons where we can look at the world through different lenses. This gives us a way to see things that we don't get to see just by looking outside our door. It shows how others think and how everyone has different interpretations of things. There is no one way to do art or a right or wrong way to do art. It is all about how one perceives something. Which helps to open up our eyes to other things that are in the world and other peoples ideas and beliefs.