Decisions, Decisions

I have a decision to make. As some of you may know, I will be entering my final semester of grad school in January (WOOT!). That means it’s time for the capstone project. There are a few options to choose from: 1) 40-60 page creative writing project (such as a collection of poems, short stories, or a novella); 2) a visual media project with a minimum 20 page introduction to the project; 3) 40-60 page research project in any area represented in my studies; or 4) a portfolio project where the parameters are determined in conjunction with faculty.

I can already cross out options 1 and 2 because I’ve never written anything like that or created a video of any sort (except I have written poetry, but I haven’t taken any courses that involve poetry so it would be hard to argue why I should go that route). That leaves options 3 and 4. Option 3 scares me because it’s 40-60 pages of research on a topic that I have to decide on quickly. Option 4 also scares me because of the whole conjunction with faculty. It’s not that I think the faculty would be difficult to work with, I just don’t know what those “parameters” consist of.

I also have to have a short paper written the first week of class that describes the project I will be doing and why. So, you see why I’m getting nervous. There are a few options in my head that I’m mulling over, but I have to narrow it down very soon and begin. One would think that since I’ve been in grad school for 2 years that I would’ve already had something in mind that I wanted to do in the end. Nope. Not this girl! I’m a procrastinator to the end. This time, I’m not sure that it will pay off.

Hopefully I will get it together soon and I will post my progress here as it goes along. Keep your fingers crossed that I can decide soon!

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"Before I die, I want to..."

I read an article recently about people all over the world who are creating blackboards on abandoned buildings or on freestanding displays with the phrase “Before I die, I want to…” and inviting passers-by to complete the sentence. Candy Chang was the originator of the idea in New Orleans in 2011, and it’s spread like wildfire. She’s created a kit and there are books available with pictures from different places who have participated. 

It’s amazing to me what some people have written on these displays. It almost seems therepeutic to some, while others are a tad out there. Either way, these displays seem to draw people in, allowing them to describe in a few words their goals before their demise. 

Let’s start a mini billboard here in the comments. What is it that you want to accomplish before you die?

Saggy Skin Sculptures? (NSFW)

Warning: Some of the images in the article may be graphic.

I haven't made up my mind how I feel about these sculptures. As the title of the article states, it does mix it up a bit from us seeing the norm of all of the airbrushed bodies out there...all the time. However, is this really the counteraction that you need to get away from all that? How about some photos of regular folks? Yeah. That would be better.

What do you think?

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Day 28: And the Challenge Ends

I have to say that I’m a little thankful that this challenge has come to an end! It’s been difficult writing every day for 28 days, but I hope the folks who have read these posts about art and artists have learned at least a little something. With that said, in this last post of the Thankful Challenge, I will leave you with some (more) of my favorite pieces throughout the art world. Please feel free to share any of your favorites as well!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and don’t get too crazy tomorrow morning!

Brooklyn Bridge

Chambord Castle

Westminster Abbey

Snapshot, Paris, Alfred Stieglitz, 1911

Untitled Film Still #54, Cindy Sherman, 1980

Altered Image #2, Deborah Kass, 1994-5

A Cotton Office in New Orleans, Edgar Degas, 1873

The Third of May 1808, Francisco Goya, 1814

The Tea, Mary Cassatt, 1880

Pieta, Michelangelo, 1498-99

Day 27: Pop Art

Pop Art emerged in Britain and the United States in the 1950s. What defined it as “Pop” was the use of advertisements, news, etc. in popular culture within artworks. Sometimes these images from ads and the news were placed in a context giving it a different meaning or with things that weren’t necessarily related to them. Most will associate Pop Art with Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein, but there were actually quite a few pop artists from different countries around the world. These are a mere few examples of Pop Art.

Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different,
So Appealing? Richard Hamilton, 1956 (British)

Artist's Breath, Piero Manzoni, 1960 (Italian) 

Campbell's Soup Cans, Andy Warhol, 1962 (American)

Drowning Girl, Roy Lichtenstein, 1963 (American)

Train With Eyes, Tadanori Yokoo, 2005 (Japanese)

Day 26: Alexander Archipenko

Alexander Archipenko (1887-1964) was born in Russia but moved to Paris in 1908 where he associated with artists like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. After a few exhibitions at the Salon d’Automne and with the Indépendants, he founded his own school at the age of 24. He is often referred to as the “Picasso of sculpture” because he was a leader in bringing Cubism to sculpture. He continuously explored the female figure and its relations to space, overlapping and interlocking solids and voids that showed different views of it all together. Archipenko moved to the United States in 1923 and became a citizen in 1929. 

Walking, 1914-15

Statuette, 1916

White Torso, c1920

Arabian, 1930-40

Lying Horizontal, 1957

Day 25: Surrealism

Surrealism came about in 1924 as an artistic style where artists and writers used their subconscious minds to create art that was mostly…illogical. If you think about the dreams that you have that come from your subconscious mind as you’re sleeping, a lot of them probably don’t make much sense either. Surrealists were influenced by Freud and Jung, too, who were extremely deep thinkers.

André Breton, the founder of surrealism, wrote the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924 (Le Manifesto du Surréalisme). In it, he explained surrealism as “Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express—verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner—the actual functioning of thought. The dictation of thought, in the absence of all control by reason, excluding any aesthetic or moral preoccupation.” If you’ve ever read something a Surrealist writer has written, you understand the idea of automatic writing because a lot of it doesn’t make much sense and contains words put together that come to mind at the time of writing. The same happened for the visual artists of the time. The most famous of these artists is Salvador Dalí, but there were many others who participated in this style such as René Magritte (my personal favorite Surrealist), Joan Miró, and Max Ernst.

Salvador Dalí

The Persistence of Memory, 1931

The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which
Can Be Used as a Table, 1934

Shirley Temple, The Youngest Most Sacred
Monster of the Cinema of Her Time, 1939

Max Ernst

Forest and Dove, 1927

L'Ange du Foyer, 1937

Napoleon in the Wilderness, 1941

René Magritte

The Treachery of Images, 1928-29
(This is not a pipe.)

Not to Be Reproduced (Portrait of Edward James), 1937

The Son of Man, 1964

Joan Miró

Harlequin's Carnival, 1924-25

Woman Encircled by the Flight of a Bird, 1941

The Flight of the Dragonfly in Front of the Sun, 1968

Day 24: Paul Klee

"Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible."

Paul Klee (1879-1940) was a German-Swiss painter born in Switzerland. He was influenced by several different art movements like cubism, expressionism, and surrealism. He was really into color theory and even wrote about it at length. Klee and his friend Wassily Kandinsky taught at the German Bauhaus School of Art, Design, and Architecture.

Because he was influenced by so many different movements, his art changed over time. He went from surrealist to abstract cubist to a mosaic style of pointillism. His late works were more indecisive as far as themes. He became ill and began focusing on his personal fate and politics at the time. He also used hieroglyphic-like elements in his paintings.

When Klee died, he left behind about 9,000 works. His son Felix left Klee’s ideology on his tombstone: "I cannot be grasped in the here and now, For my dwelling place is as much among the dead, As the yet unborn, Slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual, But still not close enough."

Third Invention: Jungfrau im Baum, 1903

Fenster und Palmen, 1914

Flower Myth, 1918

Senecio, 1922

Ad Parnassum, 1932

Zeichen in Gelb, 1937

Die Vase, 1938

Death and Fire, 1940

Day 23: Hannah Höch

Hannah Höch (1889-1978) was part of the German Dada group and is mostly known as one of the originators of the photomontage (the assemblage of photographs and other graphic material to make a picture).  

First, what is Dada?

The Dadaists came about during World War I as a kind of rebellion to a society that would even agree to the War happening at all. They were pretty pissed off about it all and used their art to express how they felt about it. Art, to them, was not art, they were not artists, and the Dada movement wasn’t really a movement. Anything they felt was a contribution to the War was attacked in their non-art—especially the traditions in the art world. They were really into the shock factor in their non-art—these are the folks who used poo humor in their pieces. (Think Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1919) sculpture that was really nothing more than a urinal and his copy of Mona Lisa, L.H.O.O.Q. (1919), with a mustache and beard along with the letters L.H.O.O.Q. at the bottom which, when pronounced in French, sounds like the phrase “Elle a chaud au cul,” translated in English as “she has a hot ass.”)

Back to Höch…the rest of the Dadaists were mostly men, so they didn't exactly consider her part of the crowd. She used anti-feminist acts in her art; she was very aware of how society treated women differently in the media vs. reality because she worked for a magazine that catered to women. She even used some of the material in the magazine in her photomontages. Höch wasn’t too fond of marriage and used mannequins and children to represent how women barely ran their own lives.  Her work often showed same-sex couples (she was bisexual) and androgynous characters.

Höch’s most famous photomontage is titled Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany (1919) as a reaction to the Weimer Republic in Germany. 

Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife Through the Last Weimar
Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919

Beautiful Girl, 1920

Dada-Ernst, 1920

Indian Female Dancer, 1930

Marlene, 1930

The Bride, 1933